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I want an iPhone 3GS
Dec 17th
My sister-in-law and her family visited my family over a weekend last month and we had a good time catching up. Her son, Ryan, is 11 years-old this year and although I have known him since his birth and have even taken care of him for a short spell 4 years ago, he is growing up to be his own man and, entering his teenage years, he now tends not to enjoy adult conversation nor company.
Ryan spent most of the entire visit glued to my laptop computer that was in the living room where everyone was. I would peek at what he was doing occasionally (mainly to ensure he was not messing up my files) and found him on the Apple Computer website.
Specifically, he was on the iPhone pages of the Apple website.
Before I knew it, he interrupted the adults who were happily chatting away over coffee.
“Mom, look! The iPhone 3GS is so thin and it’s so cool!”
Three minutes later, he shouted again, “Mom, the 3GS can take videos and upload them to YouTube! Isn’t that something?”
Another 5 minutes later, he exclaimed, “Mom, there is voice command for the 3GS! Wow!”
This time, his mother responded, “Ryan, you don’t need an iPhone. I’m not buying one for you. You already have a mobile phone.”
It turned out that Ryan had been bugging his mother over the past week to get him the latest iPhone 3GS. And when I asked him why he needed an iPhone, he said, “Everyone in school has one and it’s really cool” to which I responsed, “Ryan, the iPhone cannot make you cool. Only you can.”
Of course, Ryan didn’t understand what I meant and he also didn’t get the iPhone 3GS he coveted.
From this little episode, it reminded me of the way most of us try to persuade, influence and convince others of something – in other words, our “selling” strategy.
And guess what? Job-hunting is a “selling” process whether you like it or not.
Most people think that the best way to sell is to do what Ryan did – promote the features of the product or service: The iPhone is thin, it can take videos, access the internet, and issue commands via voice, etc.
In job-hunting terms, most people promote ONLY their features thinking that those will sell: Their degree(s), work experience, internship experience, special skills, awards, extra-curricular activities, community service, professional memberships, etc.
Just like Ryan’s mother, the features of the iPhone 3GS meant nothing to her. They may be cool to Ryan but they do not appeal to his mother at all. In fact, an iPhone is expensive to buy and to maintain, especially for an 11 year-old.
Remember: To an employer, you are always on the right-hand end of this simple equation:
Profit = Revenue – Cost
To make business sense, you will only be hired IF:
1. You are affordable (i.e. low cost), and
2. You can generate sufficient value (or revenue) to cover the cost of employing you (i.e. high benefits).
And so, your features may be cool to you, but they will only be cool to the employer IF and ONLY IF they can generate benefits to the employer.
In order to sell successfully to employers, you must approach from the BENEFIT angle: How exactly will the employer benefit from having you on the team? What value can you bring.
No doubt, features can be part of the selling process to provide support for the benefits but features should never be the main focus.
Remember: We don’t buy features. We buy only benefits.
When Ryan understands this, he will be in time to get an iPhone 3GS for Christmas.
My Basil and me
Nov 23rd
While preparing for a personality assessment workshop 2 weeks ago, I was reminded of Basil plant I grew some 7 years ago.
You see, cooking is a hobby of mine and one of the key influences on my cooking style is my having lived in Thailand for 3 years.Of course, it also helps that I once owned and operated a cafe that served great food. ; )
Thai cooking uses a fair amount of Basil leaves and instead of buying them from the grocery store each time I want to cook, I decided to grow them in home.
Growing them was easy. I bought the seeds, got some soil in a pot and within a week or so, I saw the shoots emerging from the soil and before long, I got a full grown Basil plant from which I harvest the fragrant leaves for some of my favourite dishes.
The Basil plant was placed just inside my apartment next to a large ceiling-to-floor window with good exposure to sunlight and was given sufficient water each day.
However, all of a sudden, I noticed that the leaves started to wilt. And the Basil plant became rather frail although it wasn’t totally gone. I thought it might be lacking soil nutrients and began to supply it with fertilizers.
Still, the situation didn’t improve and I became increasing puzzled. My Basil plant had all the resources it needed (or so I thought). What else was the problem??
One day while shopping at IKEA, I noticed that some window hooks for potted plants were on sale and I bought a few with the intent of hanging the Basil plant outside of the window.
Guess what?
Within 3 days of putting the Basil plant out, its leaves grew plum and it blossomed into quite a bush!
It appeared that although the Basil was exposed to sunlight previously, it was indoors and the light was filtered by the window. It couldn’t thrive under that environment. Being outside the window, the Basil plant received direct, unfiltered sunlight and this made all the difference. It seemed like a small difference to me but it was a matter of life and death for the Basil.
The lesson I drew from this little episode is that the same principle applies to each of us.
We each have a preferred type of environment that is most conducive for us to grow and develop. Without such an environment that fits our personality, we can be given all the resources and motivation yet we will find ourselves struggling and wilting away, energy drained from us instead of being energized.
Before you jump into a job, it is vital for you to gain a keen awareness of who you are (passion, values, beliefs, skills) and what your dominant personality types might be.
With these, it is then possible to identify jobs and work environments that are most suitable for YOU which will enable you to thrive. It is with such a compatible match that you are more likely to be successful in your career.
There are several prominent personality assessment tools available which you should consider – examples are Myer-Briggs Type Indicators (MBTI), Holland’s Codes, and DiSC.
If you are studying, your university career centre may have some of these tools which you can take for free (mind you, some of these can be expensive!).
If you’d like to take a quick and accurate (and cheap too!) assessment online, here’s one on our website.
Write Me a Reference Letter
Nov 10th
It is graduate school application season and loads of students (that I know of in or from mainland China) are attempting to go overseas for their Master’s degree next September.
Other than the standardized tests like GMAT, TOEFL, GRE, and IELTS, many universities requirement a personal statement and at least 2 reference letters from every applicant.
Over the past 2 weeks, I have been approached (“ambushed” is a better word) by more than 10 students asking me to write them recommendation letters and/or personal statements. And these requests all came with deadlines, “I would like the letter by this weekend and I want 15 copies of it.”
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m always happy to help.
But these students are not doing it right.
First of all, they have not kept in touch since the final exams last semester (which ended in June 2009). For that matter, most of them didn’t even bother to know me or let me know them. So, out of the blue, I get students (yes, I do recognize their faces but…) suddenly appearing in my path or in my email inbox when they have never previously bothered to talk to me.
Secondly, they are outright demanding without being considerate. To ask me to do them a favour today (Tuesday) and give me a deadline of this weekend is presumptuous that I have all the time in the world, just sitting around as their beck-and-call.
Thirdly, they think they are the only ones asking me to help.
As more students approach me with the same request, I get the feeling that I am simply being used. For I know that, after getting what they want, they will once again disappear from my sights and email inbox. And Ethan Pang will only be a distant memory.
They have yet to learn that this world functions on the principle of reciprocity. In the real world, it’ll be very hard for future requests if there are no goodwill or favours returned for the current one.
When Leaders Fail
Oct 18th
About 2 weeks ago, I wrote about courage being a necessary attribute of leaders.
I was reading the news over the past week on SCMP.com and came across this piece of news:
“Police widen Ernst & Young forgery probe”
Have a read and let me know your thoughts.
I’m sure this is not the first time you’ve heard of such a case. The people involved are not low level staff but usually middle-level or above. That is, they are leaders in the companies and in society as well.
Other recent cases abound – just look at the Hong Kong Legco Lawmaker Kam harassment fiasco and this insider-trading fraud case.
And how about the situation in banks since the failure of Lehman Brothers. Who are the ones who asked for and received public money in order to stay afloat?
These are the same companies who pay their executives (read: themselves included) huge bonuses (from bailout money) even when the companies are on the brink of collapse.
These are also the same companies which are held at high esteem by so many people around the world – especially students with finance major. You may be one of them and will gladly jump at the opportunity to work in one of these companies.
You would almost think that because the “best” and the “most brilliant minds” run these companies, it is almost impossible for them to fail. Perhaps this is the exact attitude that brought them to their knees.
Looking at these cases, what do you think is lacking in their leadership and management?
My take is: Integrity.
This attribute is not only necessary in leaders. It is REQUIRED to be a properly functioning human-being.
Integrity is the one attribute that ensures all other attributes in a leader.
E&Y Probe
Oct 13th
Police widen Ernst & Young forgery probe
Staff quizzed in wake of Akai case
Naomi Rovnick, Barclay Crawford and Clifford Lo
Oct 10, 2009
Police have widened their investigation into alleged forgery of legal evidence at the local practice of accounting firm Ernst & Young.
After the arrest last week of an Ernst & Young Hong Kong partner, police are now interviewing other staff at the firm, which was accused in a civil case last month of falsifying and doctoring evidence to shield itself from a negligence claim brought by the liquidator of failed electronics conglomerate Akai Holdings.
A police spokeswoman confirmed the investigation was continuing but said no further arrests had been made.
Akai went bankrupt in 2000 owing creditors more than US$1.1 billion. On September 23, Ernst & Young paid hundreds of millions of US dollars to settle the audit negligence case. The firm’s defence collapsed when the liquidator, Borrelli Walsh, told the court Ernst & Young staff had tampered with and fabricated audit files relating to Akai after the company failed, and the firm relied on the suspect files in its legal evidence.
Ernst & Young admitted in a statement on the day of the settlement that some documents were “altered”.
On September 29, officers from the Commercial Crime Bureau raided Ernst & Young’s local offices and also seized documents from Borrelli Walsh and the liquidator’s solicitors, Lovells. Edmund Dang, an Ernst & Young partner who had worked on Akai’s audits, was arrested at his home and then released on bail without being charged. The liquidator alleged in the High Court trial that Dang’s handwriting was on many of the questionable documents.
People familiar with the case confirmed the police probe had widened beyond Dang, who was a mid-ranking manager at Ernst & Young when Akai collapsed, to examine whether he had potentially acted on the instructions of others.
A senior police officer said this was routine in commercial crime investigations. He added officers would question everyone who might be connected to a case before deciding whether to make prosecutions.
Borrelli Walsh had sued Ernst & Young Hong Kong for around US$1 billion. The liquidator claimed the accounting firm turned a blind eye when, between 1997 and 1999, Akai founder James Ting looted US$800 million from the company and covered his tracks with false bank accounts and fabricated investments. Ting was imprisoned in 2005 but released a year later on appeal following errors in the prosecution’s case.
The civil trial opened on September 16 with explosive claims from Borrelli Walsh about the suspect evidence. On the first morning of the hearing, the liquidator’s barrister, Leslie Kosmin QC, handed the judge, Mr Justice William Stone, a thin green file containing a lengthy description by Lovells of more than 80 doctored papers.
Kosmin summarised that some of Ernst & Young’s Akai files from 1994 to 1998 were “written in variety of hands and a variety of colours of pencil”. He added some papers appeared to have been taken out of files, annotated, then put back in.
He also said some papers were back-annotated, in Dang’s handwriting, to direct anyone reviewing the Akai audit files to papers that Borrelli Walsh’s forensic examiners said were fabricated “sometime after” January 2000. Akai made a US$1.72 billion loss for the year to January 2000 and was wound up seven months later.
Kosmin also claimed it was doubtful that Dang acted alone, because Dang did not start work on Ernst & Young’s Akai team until December 1997, while the suspect papers dated back to 1994. Ernst & Young Hong Kong suspended Dang on the day it settled the Akai case.
In a statement yesterday, Ernst & Young said: “As we have stated previously, it is our intention to engage with and support further investigations into the Akai matter.”
Interview Who?
Oct 13th
My wife and I just applied for a place in a kindergarten next year for my son who is just over 2 years old.
After submitting all the necessary documents, we were handed an acknowledgement slip which stated an interview date for my son 3 months from now.
Interview? A two year-old?
Interesting enough, just last month, I heard from a friend who brought her son to be interviewed at a kindergarten about her “ordeal.”
It was her son (2+ years old) who was supposed to be interviewed but it was her who was completely stressed out.
In fact, she got so upset with the interviewer she almost cried when he said, “Most children at this age should be able to follow my instructions without problems. But it seems that your son couldn’t.”
Such experiences are very real today. Competition is so keen that schools, even kindergartens, must institute a selection process.
But they beg the question, “What are schools for?”
In my mind, the mission of schools is to educate. This means that the a school would best serve its reason for existence when it manages to turn an “uneducated” student into one who is “educated.”
However, with all these selection and filtering processes, schools are taking in only “the best.” These are already the better lot and so, how much more education do they need to be excellent?
Look at it this way: It is a matter of “INPUT > PROCESS > OUTPUT.”
If a school can produce excellent output no matter what input it is given, then that is THE ONLY VALID indicator of the quality of the school.
Just like many parents are busy trying to impress the schools just so that their children can get in, most job-hunters will go to interviews thinking it is a one-way street – That is, employers are choosing them.
I beg to differ.
As I have always taught, an interview is a two-way street. They choose you and you choose them. There are so many employers out there, why should you work for this particular one?
My point is this: You should not be there to beg for a job. If you are, then you are putting control into their hands.
Remember that an interview is a business meeting to discuss a business problem. No business will hire if they don’t have a problem.
As such, you are there to provide value to help solve a business problem. Thus, employment, when it occurs, is a fair exchange.
This is one key reason why you MUST have questions to ask in any interview.
Coming back to the school topic, I’m sending my son to a school to be educated, not to be judged.
You can be sure that when I bring my son for his interview, I will have loads of questions for the teachers as well.
What’s the guarantee?
Sep 20th
I recently received a question from one of my readers which, in effect, asked the following:
“Your posts are interesting and to some degree, I agree with them. However, with no evidence and examples provided, they remain theories to me. What guarantees do I have following your advice?”
I hate to disappoint you but there are no guarantees. As university students you would know the results of any research you conduct will only give you a probability (high or low) and a correlation between the factors involved.
The suggestions that I have given are based on my own experiences and those of others which are well documented in one way or other. So, I can say that they worked well for me. Whether they work for you or not, I really can’t say since one man’s meat is another’s poison.
This reminded me of my son when he was a baby. As he grew, I would encourage him daily to try new things – flip, sit, crawl, stand, walk, run, jump and also to talk, shout, sing, whisper. I wonder how it’ll be if he had asked, “What guarantees do I have listening to you and following your suggestions?” and not try anything until he knows for sure it’ll work.
I’m glad what he did was to try things one step at a time, get the feedback from the trying, adjust his next move, and from there do better and better each day. As he grows older, he is now able to ask for advice and suggestions on what he should do. Even though he doesn’t ask for proof, he himself is living proof.
The only things we can be sure of in life are death and taxes. The others are up to you.
This is not right!
Sep 16th
Part of my teaching work brings me to a college up in Zhuhai (one
of the cities in southern China just north of Macau).
This being a new semester in a new academic year, I was assigned
the role of a subject leader which means that it is my job to
coordinate with all the professors teaching the same subject I am
teaching – Business Communication.
So, I held a first meeting with all the teaching staff, professor
and teaching assistant to discuss the syllabus, textbook,
assessment schemes, teaching approach, and so on such that we can
all on the same page.
I taught the subject last semester and so, thought it a good idea
to share what I did and experienced as well as what worked and what
didn’t work with the team so that we can make the necessary changes
this new semester.
Interestingly, even before I could start saying anything, one
professor, who was the subject leader for this subject last year
(and whom I took over from) said:
“Ethan, I saw from your syllabus that you have made significant
changes to the syllabus and assessment scheme which I wrote for
this course last year. You have also changed the textbook which has
been used for the past 3 years. I don’t see why you should make
these changes. This is not right!”
Well, you are just reading the words that she said here. If you
could hear HOW she said them (in terms of her tone and volume), you
would know for sure that she was not happy.
There being other teachers around who have no idea what she’s
talking about, I told her that I will address those issues later
and proceeded to give my background of the subject as planned.
From then onwards, she protested against everything that I had to
say (including the poor customer service provided by the publisher
of the new textbook I adopted for the course) and insisted that HER
syllabus and assessment scheme were the proper ones and whatever
changes I have made were simply “unaccredited.”
At the end of that first meeting, all I heard from her were the
problems that she perceive. No solution or way forward whatsoever.
No discussion.
The next morning, I got a call from the Dean of the faculty and was
told of the complaint that she lodge with the management.
I was dumbfounded and could feel a sense of anger rising up in my
chest. My shoulders tensed up and a frown started to show on my
face.
It was at this moment that I was reminded that it is not my job to
judge her. I mean how can I judge her when I don’t want her to
judge me! In any case, putting what I teach to work, what she says
or does is really… none of my business and as such, I can choose
the way I want to respond.
Once I began to let the anger go, something happened.
I was told by the Dean that I have not done anything wrong or
against any course accreditation. I later found that such
antagonistic behaviour from this particular professor is nothing
new and so, I shouldn’t take the adversarial stance personally.
The complaints didn’t stop there but I decided not to spend
unnecessary energies on unreasonable people and to put the effort
into more productive endeavours instead.
Still, I wondered what triggered such behaviour from such an
“educated” person who refused to communicate so that the matter can
be resolved amicably. How can she be a good role model for her
students considering the fact that she’s teaching “Business
Communication”?
I realized that she might have taken the changes that I have made
as an attack on her capability or worth. This means that she’s not
actually unhappy with the changes that I’ve made per se but she’s
upset with what she perceived as my judgement on her when I made
those changes:
Changing the syllabus means the old one was not good enough.
Changing the textbook means the old one was not good enough…
Well, from my end, there was no judgement at all; only making sure
that what I teach is always improving. The fact remains that I
don’t even know her.
Her reaction was based solely on what she THOUGHT was happening. It
was not based on what’s REALLY happening in reality.
So, are you responding to what you perceive things to be OR are you
responding to the facts? Start being aware today and you’ll realize
how easy it is to change your thoughts and get better outcomes in
your life.
News Report: Remote workers aren’t going anywhere – literally
Aug 30th
Here’s news report today from Reuters which cites a trend in how the workforce is being employed today. Telecommuting is not a new concept and is gaining popularity among companies. While it is definitely workable, the employer company needs to be highly result-oriented (which means all they care about is the results that you can deliver – not where you do it, how you do it or when you do it) and there has to be very clear and specific work and outcome standards specified.
http://www.reuters.com/article/smallBusinessNews/idUSTRE57P2SQ20090826
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