Good Decision Versus Correct Decision

Assume we are rationale all the time and have the necessary information for decision making. It is natural rule without doubt that making any decision will still lead to a consequence, unless causality proof to be wrong

The question is “are you making the correct decision”? Next, this the correct decision good?

Can a good decision be a correct one or a correct decision must be good? Normally, when we say something is good, we are saying the something met or exceed our expectation, however the something can be wrong. It is contradicting as good and correct may not sync well.

In addition, good decision to one party may be bad to another. Take recent decision of the farmers burning forests in Rao of Indonesia, a good decision for the farmers and a bad decision to others. If the farmers decided not to burn the forecast and use more environmental friendly approach to resolve problem, the problem can still be resolved at higher costs, but this will consider not a good decision from the farmers’ perspective. Such not a good decision is however a correct decision and also a good decision to others.

Conclusion can be made easily here “good decision not equal to correct decision; correct decision is good in broad perspective but may be bad to some at more personal level”.

As long as human make decision from personal perspective, the “good” element normally hardly good due to selfishness. Can an individual make decisions that are both good and correct? Observe people around, who can make decisions that are good and correct?

What elements lead to better actions?

Why different people react to a same piece of information differently?

Why results from different people of a same task are different?

You might be surprised that your actions are driven by values and not rationale or emotional decision making.   Whatever thoughts or dream and whatever actions you take on your own behalf, honour your  values make them real in the world through your behaviour:

1. What you want to BE?
2. RELATE an achievement(s) so that you can BE what you want
3. What you need to GET in order to solve the RELATED matter?
4. To GET that, what you need to DO?
5. In order to DO, you need to KNOW what?

In addition to the principle of “Be, Relate, Get, Do, and Know”, we must integrate with the concept of “ONE TRUE FRAMEWORK”, i.e. “Being Congruent”, to bring  “Think, Go, View, Decide, Create” together in harmony, for better result from actions.

When the art of balancing not functioning within the “ONE”, outcomes hardly can be joyful and satisfactory.  Loosing balances would means your thoughts and your actions don’t sync in and your personal values may be hurt too.

By now, you should know that results from different people tend to be different because they have different values and belief system!

Belief system’s importance cannot be undermined as a person’s values tied closely to his belief about the world in general.

Below is a brief description of the ONE TRUE FRAMEWORK (OTF)

• “Think as one” … Value, belief, and vision with emotion [thoughts are driven by values and fuelled by emotions]
• “Go for one” … Mission makes sense to go for with direction and expectation, such basis leads to ultimate goal and other sub-goals
• “View as one”… Diagnosing of situations and linking them to goals; skills in diagnosing becomes critical
• “Decide the one”… Strategy, execution plans, working methodologies are pointed towards the goals.  Match and harmonize the “think”, “go”, and “view” in a concept of “ONE” for more accurate and responsible decision.
• “Create the one”… creation and action make sense as the Decision comes from “ONE”.

Key notes to remember:

1. “One true” framework can be trained.  Decision is where the leaders in actions.
2. YOU are in control of your thoughts
3. Your belief system governs your value systems vice versa
4. Be, Relate, Get, Do and Know that which affirms and esteems your best Self!
5. Match and harmonize the “think”, “go”, and “view” in a concept of “ONE” for more accurate and responsible decision.
6. As a master of your life, you are responsible for you life!
7. When under pressure and uncertain situation, do not allow emotion to take charge.
8. When factual information is UNKNOWN, the “value” shall do the judgement.  Therefore if you have lousy values, you probably creates lousy decisions.

Success Guaranteed

Are You Yourself or Part of a Self?

Am I what I am?

When I graduated as an accountant many years back, I was told to look for jobs like banker and accountant that can earn more money rather than those I like to do.  Then as I grown and experienced, I realised that he who works for what he likes can make a lot of money too!

There is a Chinese say, “it is important for a man to select a right career and for a lady, the husband”.  In our modern context, selecting a right career and life partner are applied to both man and lady.  The question is whether by selecting the right job will lead you to SUCCESS?

Getting jobs that can make more money or finding that right “jobs” seems to be correct in somewhere but still not sound correctly if you examine it further.  A contradicting Chinese saying, “There will be a champion in every trade/ job”, which suggesting that there is not single type of job will determine a person’s future.

What should we do? Find the right job? Choose the job that fetch the most income? Do you best in any job you do and you will be successful?

There is no guarantee success method in this world as long as there are living things around, the uncertainties will be there. However, there is  a way to increase the chance of success as long as the way goes in line with the law of nature.  Take a successful career for example:

Vision

• Whether it is a religious mission, dream or some ideas from 3rd parties, it is still a mere thought
• The thought needs to convert into written blueprint
• Broad roadmap and goals need to set-up

Position

• Selecting the right job base on your interests and personality – keep you more innovative and motivated
• Selecting the job that potentially can fetch you higher income – position you a higher cooperator ladder to climb

Achievement method

• 3CTT One Truth = Think + Go + View + Decide + Create for ONE
• One Achievement Management System (AMS) = Expected results are the input of decisive information, responsible decision, proper execution, and risk minimizing
• Goal settings and strategic positioning set direction, 3CTT One Truth governs the thought process, and AMS makes things happen!

Will

• Teaching can be done by others, e.g. learning a skill
• Helping can be done by others, e.g. helping to complete a project
• Willing to work, work hard and with great determination will depend on individual.

Surrounding

• Are your wishes supported by people surrounded you?
• Do those people who willing to help you have the sufficient strengths?
• Will the economy, labour, social and political environment accept your kind of career?
• How far you can go without helps from others?

Responsibility

• Act according to your duty
• It is too late to say sorry when you act
• Take responsibility to your decision
• Take due care to avoid any side-effects due to your decision
• Avoid wrong decision by  be more composed, improve your interpretation skills, avoid 6 daily illusions and heuristic bias, and practice art of moderation.

So do you think you are successful because of yourself? or you are only part of group?  Are you really what you are?  Hope by now we agree that  success of an individual can only happen when the individual is responsible and acquired the relevant capabilities with support from friends and interest groups, fit well to the environment and execute in a perfect just-in-time manner.  Missing anything here will reduce the chance of success,  We can just say “NOT EASY“, success needs to earn and not to be given!

Would you like to still working very hard without having a useful Achievement method?

Define Success

When deciding to write this topic, my questions are whether a success is an incident or a series of incidents and so how can we apply to our lives and contribute to society?

It also came to my mind that:

1. Will this definition invite controversy? Yes, i believe so.
2. Will there be a better definition for success than mine? Yes, definitely
3. Than, why still many people trying to define it? For Individual’s inspiration or for a cause or for a business purpose or for whatever reason.

So what, my mind iterates for a while, if I don’t contribute my thoughts, how am I going know how whether my idea is acceptable or not? And also this additional contribution will be another definition for people to refer and compare too!

Definition

I think no matter how I define, the definition of success will be somewhat correct and somewhat wrong.  Here the definition goes …

“Success is when producing of the creative values within the given constraints”

Notice that:

1. “When”
   1. a specific time is used to when we talk about whether a status is successful or not;
   2. another meaning of “when” is the just-in-time of the occurrence.
2. “Producing of the creative values”
   1. the values need to be creative to bring genuine impact to the world;
   2. a net gain (value created exceeded expenses incurred from such creation) can more scientifically to determine the extend of success;
   3. the scope the net gain covers however depend how individual perceive it to be.
3. “Given constraints”
   1. it is contradicting, but the truth prevail, creativity needs constraints to show its worthiness;
   2. a dream runs on non-constraint platform but cannot produce any real value, consider worthless at that point;
   3. while a creation’s wilderness moves are restricted in the reality, it is when it evolves and survives within the reality boundary, can we consider it as a creation.

Questioning the Definition

The above definition can refer as an incident or a series of incident, it can be an individual and/or a business life journey.  Does it makes sense? Let’s see the compare below:

“Success can be as simple as getting a 50% mark in a history test for a child who never achieve 20% mark in the whole life VS a great scientist who invented a time machine where it’s benefits outweighed its side effects”.

Now more questions pour in:

1. Is the success means to achieve something?
2. Can success means happiness?
3. Is money equal to success?
4. Is healthy means success?
5. Being a president means success?
6. A great scientist means success?
7. A high profile spiritual leader means success?
8. Having extrasensory perception (ESP) is successful or monstrous?
9. and so on

I advocates all workings on value creation through normal course of actions are the attempts to build success.  Whether for a business or for an individual, keeping everything internally and externally in harmony and able to create values is consider success.  As per the definition, the “Given constraints” and “When” lay your conditions internally and externally, and one need to produce values exceeded the expenses incurred within thoes conditions to make successes.

Therefore having any of the above alone may consider having a success of an incident.  However we need to discount the possibilities of these success incidents set on the expenses of others or cause harm to the humanity and the environment.  Simply achieving things without concerning about humility, environment, and timeliness leads to disastrous inevitable.

When the warm light falls upon our cold body, we find a sense of secure and comfort.  The same warm light falls upon our heaty and sweaty body, we are both frustrated and aggressive.

Therefore the just-in-time occurrence is essential.

We had covered also everything about the above definition.  I welcome constructive criticisms and supports, feel free to post your comments.

What’s Next

Is there something call sustaining a success?  This becomes even harder to define, with more parameters to work on and priorities set by people.

1. How long can the success result sustains?
2. What if the subsequent success result backfire?
3. Will the same action leads to the same success?

We shall look at this in the next post.

Working on Business Strategies

I just went to search on the Internet for a quick summary of different types of business strategies.  To my surprise, I was caught in the scene of chaotic school of thoughts!

1. Some people view key strategies are bounded by business levels: Corporate strategies; Business strategies; Operation strategies

2. Some people view strategies as functional strategies: HR strategies, Sales strategies, Marketing Strategies, Financial strategies, Operation strategies, and so on

3. Some people went into breaking down the strategies further to like price scheming, diversification …

I advocate integrated approach when viewing the business strategies.  If we view the strategies separately, it is less meaningful useful and there is a danger of developing imbalance development within the organization, which is quite destructive.

Here is how it goes from an integrated approach to handle the business strategies:

I only see 3 positioning strategies … growth, contraction, and maintenance.  Any position strategy will impact all business levels, business functions, and sub-strategies.

For example, let’s go for a growth strategy!  What can we expect from here?

1. A strategic positioning to move the company from current to the future.  This may be to increase the market share by 30% more in the existing segment, 50% more in a new segment, but a reduction or maybe an exit of the sunset market.  (Notice the growth position strategy can includes contraction and maintenance strategies too!)
2. Marketing strategy may run in phases and integrated manner to handle all the 3 different market segments to produce synergistic marketing campaign.  A mix of pricing scheming coupled with product differentiations and co-branding with the recent acquired subsidiary …
3. Disinvestment through selling one of the existing business unit to the operation management team for a management-buy-out.  We can engaged them as outsource partner to boost the company’s strengths and at the same time to manage the sunset market.
4. Business restructure to streamline certain departments while the HR’s strategy is to increase headcount in another departments.
5. and so on …

All levels of the business are covered, across all functions are integrated and different time lines need to insert into the plans.  This is what I call business strategies.

That’s how I work with my clients and normally I’ll produce the business blueprint and roadmap as the output of the strategic planning process.

How can you develop the most appropriate strategy for your organization?  Below are some thoughts flash by:

1. Be very creative;
2. Do not view things in isolation manner;
3. Need to be realistic;
4. Sound methodology in developing strategies;
5. Able to mobilize your team to put on their thinking caps;
6. Have a very clear mind with clarity in business direction;
7. Capable to view thing from holistic viewpoint;
8. Able to align all strategies into a focus point to deliver significant successful result; and
9. Communicate well.

This is the end of this short post, cheers.  Below is something to confuse you a little.

Should I Cry or Laugh

Laugh or Cry

I had been providing integrated and holistic management consulting solutions for many years. After nearly 15 years of research and of which 8 years of practises, my team had invented Achievement Management System (AMS), a proprietary methodology, leading all actions moving in the direction of the organization’s desire to achieve goal congruence. This unique approach helps many of my clients operating very successful businesses. Such results had been the main booster for me to work harder in providing even better solutions. Why is the solutions unique? You may look at the Youtube link in the “About” page to watch the solutions uniqueness.

This approach, however, demands lots of mental exercise and appropriate decision making, prove to be challenging to many CEOs and entrepreneurs. Many potential clients and new clients normally cannot buy in such idea. This is funny, why people reject good things and accept bad things? It just like the doctor give a very sick person a pungent and awful taste medicine, you know it is good for you but you don’t wish to take it. I had concluded that the resistances are due to:

1. Ignorance – very common, especially for the new CEO, inexperience entrepreneurs and low educated bosses. Sometimes my solutions are used to compare with other different vendors line by line totally ignore the importance of integration and the sequence to deploying strategies.
2. Different agenda – the decision maker may have some personal goals
3. Ego and complacence – the decision maker do not wish to make much changes and may thought that he knew the business better
4. Heuristic bias – another common observation: a) cheap means good; b) vendors/ consultants are maximum their money (sometimes I provided valuable advises with good intention to the clients without any monetary return from my side, but the client think otherwise)

Should I Cry or Laugh? The feeling is mixed! Illustrate two cases:

A. Seeking bank loan

About 10 years back, I was approached by a Real Estate Agency to seek bank loan simply because lack of money to finance expenses. A quick review showed that his company is eligible and high chance for the loan to approve. I also conducted a top level holistic review of my client’s business while continue talking to him. There, I highlighted that he should focus on improving sale processes and redesign sales strategies to recruit more sales agents rather than getting bank loan to finance expenses and doing costs cutting, business contraction was not a good strategy then. I was confident to make him a successful business.

My client became very unhappy and stated he only interested to get the bank loan and that if I cannot help him, than no need to talk further. As I would like to close the deal, the loan was secured, and received my client’s appreciation and gratitude.

Less than 3 years after the loan secured, my client went bankrupt and he told me he regretted not to listen to me that time. Until now, we still meet up occasionally for a drink and he still remains bankrupt status. I feel very sorry to him and strongly felt that I am also partly responsible to contribute to his current status by securing loan for him.

B. Expansion Strategy

5 years back, my client decided to expand his business and I was introduced to him by a friend of ours. It is a golden period as the construction industry was rather good and the banks are very supporting to us. Few keys growth directions had been identified: a) Increase project size per project; b) double targeted sales amount; c) redesign job scopes and groom managers; d) upgrade IT applications; e) setup Project Management Office; f) implement management system (management approach, performance evaluation, planning, decision making); g) upgrade design department capabilities.

I developed a 3 years growth program to incorporate the above and identify all relevant personnel to involve and appoint project-in-charge for each project assigned in this program. Everything seemed to progress very well, until we recruited a senior project manager to take up construction projects assigned to him. This senior project manager did not follow the office instructions and deliberately made decisions recklessly. After 15 days of recruiting him, through observation and performance reviewing, I proposed to remove him but this was rejected by my client (the managing director). The reason was that managing director although he knew the senior project manager was not performing and disregards of company’s regulations, but he wish to test how far such issue can go and he can afford the losses. I was so surprised and explained to the managing director that it is very critical to remove the senior project manager, the impact was not just the salary of the senior project manager, but also the project(s) and the rest of the employees. The managing director decided to do the “testing” and insisted I not to intervene … anywhere within 3 months here are the impact:

• losses from the projects, nearly half a million
• the growth program needed to put on hold so that all energy can focus on the catching up delayed construction projects
• cash flow become very sensitive
• 50% of the staff strengths resigned
• three hundreds thousands value of variant orders cannot be claimed

The managing director came to me with the above and asked me what to do. How should I react? Cry or Laugh? New business for me!

Within 1 week times I proposed and subsequently executed the following:

• ease cash flow by negotiating with banks and get some private fund and “interim” measure
• setup a “rescue team” led by the managing director to catch up delayed construction projects
• recruit and train new team
• enhance the internal controls
• enforce rules for project management

The entire growth program had been held back and it was resumed after 1 year later and we are making great progress with good profits. I suppose the lesson was an expensive one, however if we look from another side, it may good in the sense that, the managing director is now a more well thought person. By the way, I did not ask for any payment for the “saving” of the company, but the company did pay me a nice bonus subsequently.

Hope you enjoy the reading.

Product Review Approach

Using Achievement Management System (AMS) as the review approach:

Information x Decision x Action x (1-Risk) = Expected Result

Every review will include the following question :

1. What is the uniqueness of the product?
2. What kind of outcomes can the product generated?
3. Who will be interested in the product?
4. What is the necessary skill(s) the buyers need to have?
5. What possible risks exposed when using the product?
6. How to handle the risk?
7. How to use the product?
8. How to decide whether the product is worthwhile to buy?
9. What other similar products available and who are the competitor?
10. Where and how to get more information?
11. When is the right time to buy?

The main purpose of the review is to give people a chance to make a better choice in selecting the products to help them more successful.

Lesson Two – Clear Blueprint and Roadmap

Topic is : Attracting Angel To Finance, Lesson One – Blueprint and Roadmap

Before you can sell you need to talk with sense.  As an entrepreneur, you need to know clearly not only your product and market but also other business domains. Please click to enjoy the short video to learn more.

A 12 insightful short videos that last for 3-5 minutes each.

Each lesson is compacted and content focused to let the people quickly grab the key points to help their business to be more successful.