Posted by Sean Lew on Saturday, 29 November, 2008 under General Ranting |
One of the best advice I have ever received was from my managers is to be nice. These managers did not actually tell me anything but they have shown me something that I will take with me for the rest of my life.
I have managers that are incredibly nice. They are truly concern for one’s well being and they show that they care. They are in the business of making things happen, not in the business to spend time outside of work to spend time, interact and care. Good managers have a strong personal relationship with their subordinates and support them in times of need – during a big presentation, during maternity, during a divorce and anything else in between. Employees think twice about leaving the company when such relationships exist.
IT industry has a bad reputation of high attrition rates and I believe one of the reasons might be due to the fact that many people in IT are not good communicators thus not being able to build that relationship with their colleagues.
What I have been seeing is that managers are the ones taking the big step out to be nice. However, I believe that this is something anyone and everyone should do. Being nice doesn’t mean being a push over. It just means that treating people with respect and integrity even during a conflict. Being nice is generally not something one can “fake it” as the tone and body language says alot.
Have a nice weekend everyone. =)
Posted by Sean Lew on Wednesday, 26 November, 2008 under General Ranting, social media |
Its been a while since I last saw a presentation that I was impressed with. Just found one today. Enjoy!
Posted by Sean Lew on Friday, 21 November, 2008 under General Ranting, Innovation, Web 2.0 |
Google search engine has started allowing users to tweak its search engine so that users can get the search results they would like to get. This is highly impressive and it will make searching in a specific domain much more accurate (e.g. Enterprise 2.0 or Web 2.0). However, I would say one of the pitfalls is that similar words but not related to the topic (Enterprise 2.0 or Web 2.0) might not return the results users might be looking for. I haven’t tested the new functionality extensively and I am not sure if Google has done something to tackle this potential issue.
Another big thing Google has done is to allow commenting on search results. This is a basic feature of many web 2.0 applications and even though the straight forward benefits of this might not be known now and there could potentially be abuse on such a tool, however, time will tell. Within weeks we could possibly get the initial results on how successful commenting on search results are.
This is very exciting.
Posted by Sean Lew on Saturday, 8 November, 2008 under General Ranting, IT strategy |
Eric Schmidt the CEO of Google had a chat with James Manyika a director from McKinsey about the future of technology, business in the changing world, competition, innovation, making money in the online world and management.
There are many interesting insights he provided on the above topics and its worth to have a watch to find out what the CEO of Google is thinking.
Posted by Sean Lew on Friday, 7 November, 2008 under General Ranting |
Obama’s team has launched a new website change.gov which would document and inform people on the agenda items and ask people for their feedback and ideas on how to run the country (or at least some aspects of it). It has a blog with videos and you could even apply for a job.
The transparency of his team and campaign is just absolutely astonishing. He is open with his ideas and even more open to idea contribution from people in general. If what he is doing is well harnessed then he would be able to achieve the wisdom of crowds. Its probably the first time idea collaboration for political reasons at a large scale.
He is surely a very technological forward president and he has been doing all the right things to tap into this source of information, knowledge and people power. It would be interesting to see what will happen and change once he steps into office in Jan.
Posted by Sean Lew on Thursday, 6 November, 2008 under General Ranting, social media, Web 2.0 |
I was reading Jeremiah Owyang‘s blog on Snapshot of Presidential Candidate Social Networking Stats: Nov 3, 2008 and deeply impressed by the stats. Below is an abstraction from his blog post.
Internet Usage in United States
United States Population: 303,824,646
Internet Usage: 220,141,969
Penetration rate: 72.5%
Growth from 2000-2008: 130.9%
Stats from Internet WorldStats (Census, Nielson)
———————–
Facebook
Obama: 2,379,102 supporters
McCain: 620,359 supporters
Obama has 380% more supporters than McCain
———————–
MySpace
Obama: Friends: 833,161
McCain: Friends: 217,811
Obama has 380% more supporters than McCain
———————–
YouTube
Obama: 1792 videos uploaded since Nov 2006, Subscribers: 114,559 (uploads about 4 a day), Channel Views: 18,413,110
McCain: 329 videos uploaded since Feb 2007 (uploads about 2 a day), Subscribers: 28,419, Channel Views: 2,032,993
Obama has 403% more subscribers than McCain
Obama has 905% more viewers than McCain
———————–
Twitter
Obama: @barackobama has 112,474 followers
McCain: @JohnMcCain (is it real?) 4,603 followers
Obama has 240 times more followers in Twitter than McCain
This caused me to wonder how did social networking played a part in his success or did it even play a part in his success?
Well, first of all, people would have heard of him or liked/supported him outside of social networking tools before they would go online, search for Obama and “befriend” him on Facebook, MySpace or following him on Twitter. If that’s the case, a general assumption can be made that many Americans that followed him were going to vote for him in the elections. I am sure there are some people that were undecided would follow both and see what each candidate can come up with. However, that’s just a fraction of his followers online. So how did social networking help?
Personally, without more indepth information and statistics, I can say much. My gut feel is that social networking displayed two things 1) Information for the undecided and 2) Information to strengthen the bond with voters which he had already “won”.
The first point is pretty straight forward. However, the second point has some implications. If the bond is strengthen, through the word of mouth, he would have increased the number of people at the grassroots preaching his campaign message at cafes, diners or the bowling alleys.
I can’t really say if social networking has helped his campaign or not. However, since this generation of voters is increasing web savvy with many Gen Ys and Gen Xs being able to vote, he has reached these people at a place they are most comfortable at – the web.
Posted by Sean Lew on Sunday, 5 October, 2008 under General Ranting |
I am gone for 3 weeks for a holiday and I doubt there will be any updates during this time. Good luck with everything you’re doing!
Cheerio,
Seanie
Posted by Sean Lew on Tuesday, 30 September, 2008 under General Ranting |
Posted by Sean Lew on Friday, 26 September, 2008 under General Ranting |
I would like to understand more about Gen Y employees and the best way to start is to understand Gen Ys in general.
Everyone has a different definition of Gen Y. Here, I would like define Gen Y as anyone who is born later than 1980. When the Gen Ys were born, it was probably the peak of the industrial revolution, there was advance machinery, agriculture, transportation and socioeconomic changes. Everyone was getting richer leading a better life as compare to the childhoods of their parents who would have (possibly) been through the second world war as kids and the Vietnam / Korean war. Life was getting better. These kids grew up in a relatively stable and well provided society.
In the 80s, computers were born and by the early nineties, the more well-to-do or techno-friendly families started having computers in the study room. This is probably the time best for learning such technologies. The older gen Ys could have seen Microsoft 3.1 and windows 95. They grew up playing games like Pac-man on such machines. They soon went to college and the internet came and took over the world. There was IRC, ICQ, AOL, MSN messenger and emails originally. They had an unprecedented power to communicate with people around the world and friends on the other side of the city or just down the street. Web 1.0 allowed smoother information flow as compared to going to libraries or bookshop.
In general, Gen Ys has never gone through a big war, a depression nor anything too dramatic. They grew up in a smooth sailing environment. They had channels to voice their opinions in the comfort of their own room and was constantly connected even while playing games like WarCraft.
These people wants to be connected. They want to know things when they need to. They want access to information and speed is critical. Each has a mind of its own and does not like to conform to standards. They can manage friendships over the internet and are effective communicators. They generally can’t take much hardship too.
So the question now is how can you make them happy at work and keep them motivated? There’s alot of untapped power in each of these Gen Ys. They work hard, the play even harder.
Posted by Sean Lew on Thursday, 25 September, 2008 under General Ranting, IT strategy |
Why are projects fail? Why departments work in silos? Why are there duplicated work / initiatives? Why is there inefficiency? Why are wrong decisions being made? There are many reasons for each of the questions above but one of the common answer for all questions is the lack of communication within the organisation.
Communication does wonders and can create major havoc. Even between two person (say man and wife), communication is one of the key success factors of a relationship. Communication allows a relationship to be built between two parties. In an “all good” workplace scenario, communication will build trust and therefore its much easier to manage a work relationship after that. If we have sufficient information, we would have better capability to make good decisions. Discussions also allow people to uncover issues that they have no visibility to. In general, it will help.
If you want your organisation to run better, relook at your enterprise communication solution. There is no one size fits all solution. It must be designed to the specific culture of the organisation and ensure that your employees are comfortable with the form of communication and would use it. There are too many white elephant technologies in the workplace and lets not add to the list.
