Thinking process/technique

Once I was in a queue at the Monash University branch of the now defunct State Bank of Victoria. While waiting to be served, I overhead a teller informing a man at a counter very near where I was that the transaction will attract a fee. I can still see this man fidgeting for a few seconds and he asked "How can I avoid it?" I can't remember what the teller said but essentially this man was told there is no way around it.

What struck me at that point was the thinking process of this man which i am not familiar with. Interestingly, that is also the event that sparked my interests in thinking techniques! Allow me to elaborate.

Have you ever experience learning something where the instructor shows you a neat trick where it feels as though you have just been shown some valuable secret revealed only to a privileged few? This could be a sporting technique, a magic trick, a chess move etc. Well, it is no different for thinking process/technique. You can learn how others think (their thinking process) from what they say or do. Try this. The following is normally told as a joke but I found it to be very similar to the event above.

There is this policeman who would have lunch at this restaurant everyday and he would always order a whole roast chicken. Over time, the owner of the restaurant noticed this and would reserved one just for this policeman. One day, a man order for the same whole roast chicken and there was only one roast chicken left that was essentially reserved for the policeman. But since it was very late the restaurant owner thought that it would be very unlikely that the policeman will be coming for lunch that day and he might as well serve this man the last roast chicken.

Just as this man was being served the chicken, the policeman showed up and said, "That is my chicken! Whatever you do to that chicken, I will do the same to you. Cut it and I will cut you. Poke it with the fork and I will do the same to you!"

Let's pause for a while here and think what you would do if you where this man? You have just being served what you ordered and this policeman has just threaten to do to you what you do to the chicken he claimed is his!

You could let him have it and asked to be compensated by the restaurant or you can do what this man does.

This man casually poke his finger into the backside of the chicken, turned it back and forth a few times, pull it out and put it into his mouth to suck the juices off it!

Hope this forms new thinking grooves in your thinking!

3 letters

This is another one I heard from Kee Meng. I have changed some minor details but the gist of the story is unchanged.

One day, as the new CFO of a company was entering his new office, he met his predecessor on his way out. They exchanged greetings and before they parted ways, the new CFO asked his predecessor for some advice. "Yes, I have left you 3 letters in separate envelopes numbered 1, 2 and 3 in the top drawer. The next time you encounter a problem you cannot resolve, open letter number 1. The 2nd time, number 2 and so forth."

In the next annual general meeting (AGM), the CFO was having difficulties justifying his number and thought to himself that this must be the time for letter number 1 and so he opened it. In there was a note saying "blame it on the previous guy!" So the CFO went to to explain to the shareholders that the damage done by the previous guy requires time to fix and that bought him another year. In the next AGM, the CFO experienced a similar problem and opened letter number 2. In it was a note saying "blame it on the economy!" The CFO explained to the shareholder that uncertainties in the economy and fluctuation in prices of certain raw material have resulted in poorer than expected numbers for the year. Again, it bought him another year. On the 3rd year, the CFO open the last letter and in it was a note saying "it is time to write your 3 letters!"

Four different categories of learning

The lesson we learned can be classified into the following 4 different categories. These are lessons learned from events where:

1. You experienced it yourself. In other words, it happened to you.
   
2. It happened to someone else, and you where there when it happened.
   
3. It was explained to you by someone who have had the experience or were there when it happened to someone else.
   
4. You read or view a documentary about it.

You will agree with me that the most valuable of these lessons are those you experienced personally. Almost as good are those that happened to someone else and you were there when it happened. Next are those told/explained to you by someone who have had the experience or were there when it happened to someone else. Lessons learned this way are not as good as the previous two as missing from these are elements such as body language, air of the moment, details too difficult to articulate etc. The last of these categories are those you learned from reading a book, case study etc. This is very similar to the previous category in that you are removed from the actual experience but unlike the previous category, you cannot ask what you are reading to clarify your understanding but you can of the person relating the experience to you.

There is a subcategory that is somewhere between the 2nd and the 4th category. MBA style case study where a group discusses a case benefits from the combined experience each member brings to the discussion.

Helping others

Toward the mid of my postgraduate studies (something around 1993 I think it was), a student who had done all her PhD research work at a prestigious university transferred to Monash University to essentially writing up her dissertation. I was wondering why she would want her degree from Monash University when she could have gotten one from the other more prestigious university and so I asked her! It turns out that her supervisor (or advisor in American terminology) was supervising another PhD student and she has been asked by her supervisor to help this other student. It reached a point where she could not take it anymore and decided to transfer out of that situation. She was saying that it is not that she does not want to help this other student and she would if she is in the position of strength. Just that at that point in time she has her own PhD dissertation to work on and is not in the position to supervise another person! This is actually a very valuable lesson I fail to learned in time.

There will be a fairly high profile Collaboration Agreement signing between an American and a German Fortune Global 500 company later this afternoon. The product/system at the heart of this agreement involve the usage of RFID technology in health care. The fundamental concept for the system that resulting in this high level collaboration between two multinational giants was first conceived in a "garage" - just the name of an office space used by a small team based in Cyberjaya. This is also a case of one team member helping another. What is disturbing about this is that, it was me who came up with the idea behind this system yet I am here typing this when everyone is now at the ceremony! I have not been invited nor recognized as the "inventor." My failure to learn about helping from a position of strength has resulted in my effort being taken advantage of.

Leadership and The Art of War

Sun Tzu's military treatise, The Art of War, is considered one of the most influential book on strategy in the world to date and it would be interesting to learn what Sun Tzu has to say about leadership. Sun Tzu begins with a chapter on strategic assessments as follows.

"Military action is important to the nation-it is the ground of death and life, the path of survival and destruction, so it is imperative to examine it. Therefore measure in terms of five things, use these assessments to make comparisons, and thus find out what the conditions are. The five things are the way, the weather, the terrains, the leadership, and discipline.

The way means inducing the people to have the same aim as the leadership, so that they will share death and share life, without fear of danger. The weather means the seasons. The terrain is to be assessed in terms of distance, difficulty or ease of travel, dimension, and safety. Leadership is a matter of intelligence, trustworthiness, humaneness, courage, and sternness. Discipline means organization, chain of command, and logistics."

Note the five virtues of a leader and the order in which these virtues are stated. To understand this better consider the following commentary by Jia Lin.

"Reliance on intelligence alone results in rebelliousness. Exercise of humaneness alone results in weakness. Fixation on trust results in folly. Dependence on the strength of courage results in violence. Excessive sternness of command results in cruelty. When one has all five virtues together, each appropriate to its function, then one can be a military leader."

[Above excerpts are from Thomas Cleary's translation of Sun Tzu's Art of War available at Shambhala]

A leader stands infront, with and behind his people

A leader leads from the front seeking adventure and a better world away from harm for his/her people; work with his/her people whenever necessary; and will stand back to allow credit to go to his/her people.

Consider these - all based on true events. A young engineer working on a project noticed that an important feature was missing from the requirement and discussed it with his manager. This young engineer proceed to detail what he thinks is the right way to implement that feature. His manager agrees that the feature should be implemented but override the young engineer on the formulae for some calculation despite the young engineer's protest. When the solution was deployed in the field it was found that it has implemented a faulty formulae just as the young engineer has expected. As this formulae calculates amount of money owing, the sh*t very quickly hit the fence. All blame was then channeled by the manager to this young engineer!

Compare that with this. A team was under fire for some mistake and their manager, as one of the team member describes it, threw herself left, right and center to take all the bullets! Then back at the office behind closed door, this manager would, like a strict parent, make sure that everyone learned from it and not repeat the mistake. A very though manager I was told yet she has many followers.

Lastly this. A team worked long hours over 8 or so months to tape-out a chip on schedule. During this period, the team overcame all issues encountered without troubling their manager. The silicon came back and functions as expected with no major problem. In other words, bugs found were very minor where software work-around can be found. The manager was credited for the success. In the subsequent spin of the design, the manager had a tough schedule to meet and that was passed to the team. A schedule that could not be met given the limited compute resource available to the team. But the manager couldn't or wouldn't do anything about it. As one of the team member commented, "how would he know, he was asleep when we tape-out the first chip."

See this team got their fingers burnt by shielding their manager from the difficulties they were going through with the first silicon. They didn't want to trouble their manager unnecessary but what happened is that the manager got the impression that it was easy and it was his leadership that got them through the first silicon hence him accepting the credit for the success and thought nothing of it when he gave the team a tougher schedule.

The difference between a leader and a manager

A manager is like a technician in a factory. He/she will oil, clean, fine tune his/her machines to ensure smooth running. A leader is a person who will take you on a journey/advanture.

Two kind of good manager

There are 2 kind of good manager. One knows the work and will roll up his sleeves and get his hands dirty if necessary. The other does not and makes coffee for the team!

I once asked a very successful operation manager at an American MNC in Malaysia what's her secret. The first thing she said was this. "I don't know anything about the machine in my production line. But my people do and they will take care of it. In turn, I take care of my people."

Two women, 4.5 month ~> 1 baby?

I heard this from an ex-colleague while working for a Japanese MNC in Australia. His team was running badly behind schedule and he was relating to some of us how some managers where trying to solve the problem by throwing resources at it. Sometime certain task just cannot be rushed and he explained that very succinctly in the following manner.

1 woman, 9 months => 1 baby
2 women, 4.5 months => 2 "half" babies

Common sense is not common until it has gone through your head once

I was approached by some investors sometime around late 1996 to participate in the starting up of an IC design company based in Shah Alam (a city some 25KM west of Kuala Lumpur). As with most small startup companies, pioneers will need to play multiple roles. You are the receptionist, the engineer, the admin, the manager, strategist, negotiator, sales, finance, office boy, coffee lady, driver for the bigger bosses or customers and in some cases you may even be the janitor. As you will be involved in a wide variety of tasks, you will also encounter a wide range of problems. Frequently problems you would never imagine you will ever need to solve if I were to ask you during your final year in university. Yet these are problems you will need to be able to find good solutions to. What I have learned in the 2+ almost 3 years at that startup is that these solutions are usually simple common sense!

In 1998 the MD of a sister company and his business partner were invited to Ghana by the uncle of JJ Rawlings (the 10th President of Ghana). The purpose of the trip was very much to explore business opportunity and I was somehow talked into going as well. Prior to the trip, this MD and I were at the office of the CEO of our holding company and the MD asked the CEO for advice/guidance that would be useful for us during the trip. The CEO said, "use your common sense" and he explained it using an example as followings. He said, whilst holding a small PCB in his hand; "If this board costs $5 don't tell him it is $10. He will be able to work out the actual cost of the board. Instead find ways to do business with him by value adding." The simplicity of this example got me thinking. One would think that if a customer wants a product I have to sell, I would acquire it for $X and sell it to the customer with a margin. Yet it is true that if I were the customer, I will want to know if I am getting a good price. I will even bring my business elsewhere if I am not getting a good deal. Yet up until that point in time, this common sense was not common to me. In other words, common sense is not common until it has gone through your head once.