Does incentive work?

Incentive works if it motivates people. But would it? People are motivated to do something if they know this: "If I do this, I will get what I want." Managers often get it wrong by telling their employees: "If you do this, we will give you what we want to give you." Managers should stop assuming that they know what their employees want.

Product knowledge

The recently held computer and consumer IT exhibition COMEX 2009 made record sales in its history with S$63 mil of goods sold.

Indeed it's a popular event packed with people. I came back with two nothing in hand and two disappointments.

First is the item which I was looking for, Panasonic Lumix LX3, is not on display. In fact Panasonic did not participate for whatever reason.

The second disappointment is that most sales persons I spoke to do not understand what they are selling. One look really confused when I asked about the lens' aperture. The other one told me that there is no difference between a 24mm lens and a 28mm lens, "All you need to do is to take a step back," she said.

For people who studies consumer behavior, this type of places is one of the best to conduct field experiment and see if the theories are adequate. After all, with such level of product knowledge, and not forget about the economic situation, we still see a record in sales here.

Raising a sick child

The way corporations is managed today is akin to raising a sick child -- with TLC (tender loving care). The logic is simple, if corporations cannot survive beyond tomorrow, all the talks about long term visions and values are as good as thrash. It is not an easy task to manage a corporation that is constantly pressured to deliver short term results.

It is similar in raising a sick child. What if the child does not live beyond tomorrow, next month, six month, one year, five years... Tender loving care, the doctors will tell you. Educating a sick child with values and principles that will help make him a better person when he grows up sounds like a nice thing to have, but maybe irrelevant.

I have seen in paediatric wards how some parents struggle emotionally to 'educate' their children. I remember one mother said, "I will just give you whatever you want, anything, anytime." It is heartbreaking to hear this under such circumstances.

At the back of these parents' mind, there is probably another question -- What if the child lives long enough, longer than the parents? While science has advanced tremendously, the survival rate of many illnesses still bogged down to a probability game. There are simply too many factors that affect a patient's survival.

Turning the lens to the corporations. Many corporations are fighting for their survivals; and their survivals are similarly affected by a confluence of internal and external factors. Should the management think only short term then?

My family is rather unfortunate that one of the youngest member of our family is diagnosed with an uncommon illness since he is merely 16-month old. I have the pleasure to host him for close to a year when he's in Singapore for medical treatment. While the adults keep saying that we should treat him no different from a normal kid, the reality is that it is a very difficult thing to do. It seems like two simple choice: 1. Treat the child as perfectly normal kid and schooled him with values and principles the way we were raised. 2. Treat it like there is no tomorrow and spoil the child with tender loving care...

As with most rational people, we chose the middle path. And as with most parents (we have a daughter of our own), we soon found that we were jumping from one extreme to the other, and couldn't stop blaming ourselves for being too hard on him or spoil him when he should have learnt his lesson. Now, we stick to certain principles, but not setting fixed boundaries.

This experience doesn't make me better in managing similar situations. What I do learn, though, is that middle path is a means, and so is other choices. We took a principle-based approach. Others might prefer TLC. The end motive is probably the same.

Getting back into hardcore KM

Not that I have ever left KM completely. But my friends over at iKMS would probably suspect that I have abandoned them for a fatter job elsewhere. Anyway, I am back.

While trying to revive some old memory, I stumbled upon this article by Jan Torsilieri and Chuck Lucier of Booz-Allen & Hamilton titled: Steal This Idea and decided to quickly steal it. I am probably the n-th person who do so, as the article was published here in 2000 (registration required).

Here's a quote from the article which I tend to agree, unfortunately, which sums up the challenges in KM:

" The theory behind KM is simple: If you give people access to each other — and to the core content and information they need to do their work — everyone will make better decisions, make contributions to the health of the enterprise, and be happier.

Of course, it doesn't work quite that simply. KM requires people to do things that are, well, unnatural. It demands that they share their best ideas freely, giving up a piece of their personal competitive advantage, often without getting credit. It also obliges them to use other people's knowledge, which means admitting that somebody knows more than they do. Finally, it requires that they keep looking for ways to improve — what's good enough today will never be good enough tomorrow. KM calls on us to steal boldly and let others pilfer freely from us, day after day. Needless to say, the change program associated with knowledge management can be really hard."

All along I have been interested to learn more about why people give and take knowledge to and from other people. To say that knowledge sharing and learning from others is against human nature may be a little over-sweeping. Such tendency may be stronger in some people than others. Such individual differences would mean that managers need to also know the personal traits of their employees better in order to manage learning and sharing more effectively.

A KM role with CPA Australia (Singapore Div)

I have just joined CPA Australia (Singapore Division) a week ago. CPAA is a not-for-profit professional accounting body, and one of the largest in the region. My role is to create more values for members through knowledge offers. What's really in the job remains to be explored. I am sure thrill with excitement over what lies ahead, which is not very clear yet at the moment.

The AWARE saga: Two Wrongs Do Not Make A Right

The debacle surrounding Aware is most unfortunate for a voluntary organization which has served an important role in our society.

Some said the damage is done. If this is true, then both the old and new guards need to shoulder equal responsibilities. If Aware goes down, both the creator and the conqueror will have only themselves to blame.

An issue that is in the center of the debate is about homosexuality. The old guards are accused to 'promote' homosexuality; while the new guards are accused for being 'anti' homosexuality.

None are politically correct positions. Naturally, they have both denied the accusations. But their actions and words do not seem consistent.

In yesterday’s Straits Times, the new guards’ ‘mentor’, Dr. Thio Su Mien, talked about the old guards' pro-homosexuality stance. Although she denied to be anti-homosexuality, she blamed the old guards for not labeling homosexuality as a 'negative' word, alongside ‘pain’ and ‘HIV/Aids’. Another new guard, Ms. Maureen Ong, cited her worry that her children may be influenced to become homosexual as her motivation to join Aware.

But the old guards should shoulder half the responsibilities too. The concerns about their pro-homosexuality orientation are not new. There were questions from the members and public, for instance, one from Dr. Thio, about why it has chosen a film on homosexuality in one of its event. My guess is that those concerns have not been addressed to the satisfaction of some people. They were warned, but they choose to ignore the warning. Some comments in the past weeks have attributed the fall of the old guards to complacency. I would think that this is more of poor judgment than complacency.

Now, the old and new guards are like two ostriches who bury their heads in the ground. They thought they are fighting against their enemies. The truth is that they are fighting against themselves. The real fight is between their personal belief and their willingness to acknowledge it publicly.

Perhaps, they are both not suitable to lead an organization like Aware, if we can agree that most women do not consider homosexuality as 'the' major concern in their life. I wouldn't mind, subjected to the approval from the Registry of Societies’ office, to see two new societies, one for, and the other against homosexuality. At least, if they fight again, we will have a 'neutral' Aware as a mediator.

My experience with KK Hospital

Over the next few days, I will be sharing an experience with the KK Women's and Children's Hospital that my family had a couple of years ago. One that is unforgettable but also one that we really don't want to keep in our memory. We simply can't.

Why only talked about it after so long? Well, I will explain...

Procastination

A great post on procastination by Celine Roque on webworkerdaily.com

Protect the workers; put the greedy employers behind bar!

I read about this yesterday: http://business.asiaone.com/Business/News/Office/Story/A1Story20080515-65281.html

Amid the disastrous cyclone in myanmar and earthquake in china, it makes me feel more angry reading about such human behavior!

It is a classic case of the rich wants to get richer. Well well... rich and poor are relative terms aren't they? This is not the first time news about employers mistreating the employees broke out in Singapore. There is a very strict set of law preventing criminal acts. But there's none, to my disbelief, that would protect the basic rights of the workers.

In the case of yesterday's news, an employer get around the employment pass (EP) system by hiring workers from oversea, promise them the minimum pay under an EP, which is S$2,500, but pay them only $800. The workers are 'housed in a small and windowless room at the back of the restaurant packed with about 20 workers.' Their meals were also sub-standard. 'We got the yellowing vegetables that they could not serve to guests. And meat such as duck's head that was a day old,' said the worker who brought this into the open.

The punishment for employers who're convicted of wrongdoing? According to the report, "Between January and September last year, 52 employers were prosecuted and fined between $1,500 and $5,000 for cheating the system."

I remember reading news that petty crimes like shoplifting can bring a jail sentence. I doubt any employer, especially those richer ones, will be deterred by a mere $5,000 fine.

And the real crime is not in cheating the system, it is really in violating human rights, and breaking the labor law.

It is time to rethink about the punishment. I say let's put these sicko employers in jail!