My wife's sick

My wife have come down with fever, high fever at around 39.2 degrees. She got a jab, some anti-biotics (doctor insisted) along with some pills for swollen throat and some "cough" mixture. Poor her, she was quite weak, and was trying to rest at each traffic light. Yea, I tell myself that I better call that driving instructor so that I can take the bloody exam soon! Life is short. No matter how hectic work life is, we have to acknowledge that there is more to it that working from morning till night, bringing back work (physical or mental) and sleeping with ideas that keep tormenting the mind. This has been me for the past few weeks. It usually occurs when I have something in mind, something new or radical.

I used to be in that state when I was handling my first project (called the Phillip Financial System). I remember that a certain logic/algorithm, to say compute the outstanding interest, would keep me awake the whole night. I was still too tired to wake up and write some more but not tired enough to sleep!

Indeed, the mental work can be more draining than physical work, especially the more mundane ones. Our brain neurons are hyper active when it comes to mental work. Trying to think of all possibilities, just like a compute is thinking of future moves in a chess game. There are times when nothing seem to come out of it but deep inside the conciousness, I believe that some solutions are formed.

Of late, it has been reading and researching on Business Process Management, especially the use of BPMN. Then it was on wiki and other collaborative tools. Spent many hours writing a paper on BPM and spent even more hours, days even, to build up our wiki (using Google sites, cos well, it seems easier to use and is free). Now, my brain is working on how/what to do to promote active collaboration. It would be useless to have a wiki with only one participants! But hey, start small, build content and then show by example. That's the way I've always fancied. Talk with no action leads to nowhere.

I remember that once, I was not so much of a "documentation" type. But I learnt my lesson in two ways. When taking over a new role, I realise that a lot of the learning is through the hard way, sometimes repeating the same mistakes. Then while handling over my previous portfolio, I realised that the transition can be easier with proper documentation. Worse, I realised that the person taking over is probably cursing and swearing the same way as I would when taking over the new role.

It then dawned upon me that documentation IS ESSENTIAL. Of course, the quality is important too but hey, start small. Ensure processes are documented. Then ensure that the documents are not done to please compliance or the boss... but that they are meant for the department itself. To get someone on board, use the stick and carrot. Anyway, doing good documentation is part of one's job description. Ask someone to learn something new without any help and challenge the person to think what they would have wished to have before doing the job.

Anyway... it's been pretty tiring because the mind cannot rest and since my wife started lecturing, there are some very early days, like today when she starts at 8am. Ends up spending my early morning at Starbucks putting more content into our wiki.

Very tired now. Will hug my wife and ensure that she rests well. Then, I'm going to sleep pretty soon so that I can be refreshed for another day's work... with lots of things to do, lots of projects to look at, lots of processes to improve, and lots of compliance issues to resolve, big or small.

It has been an interesting week so far. My assistant manager has been out of action for 1 week plus and she's probably taking another

Increasing productivity

How do we increase our productivity? Gosh, big topic ya? I do not have a clue. Hahah. Actually, I am watching American Idol and well, I'm too tired to write on such a huge topic!

Americal idol. Ahhh...Who's going out. I think it's going to be Saisha (erm, dunno whether that's how the name's spelt). Mind you, it's still playing now on Channel 5 and no, I haven't peeked at all!

Seriously, it's a very interesting competition that kept its momentum now for over so many years. Well, that's it!

The world of wiki

I'm sorry about the previous blog! I was trying out something on ZOHO and well, it worked. I was quite marvelled. I could create a database together with a form using ZOHO and I can embed the code in this blog! Amazing. So, I've used Excel, MsAccess, Ms SQL and even dabble with some good old ASP. But I am not discoverring the amazing possibilities with Free Web applications! I am no technical enough to use those tech jargons but essentially, anyone can potentially build any "system" using those free services. It's obvious that you ain't see corporations jumping on the bandwagon but hey, the powerful part of that is that anybody, absolutely ANYBODY in the organisation can do that (well, most likely the newer generation who has been brought up amidst blogs, youtube, google and other such web2 applications).

There are lots of "mini applications" that can be deployed but yet that do not meet the right cost-benefit mix to secure IT resources. I'm just thinking about having a small web applications, using a wiki? Or even Zoho directly, to allow the online dinner order. You see, my company provides dinner to whoever's staying late. Usually one of the staff will go around in the department asking who wants to order. Afterwards, the order is given to our admin department that will consolidate all the orders and then "buy" the dinners. Such a manual process. Yet, I doubt you'd get any backer if you want to spend IT resources to do such a project.

That's where Zoho and the likes are powerful. Expecting the newer generation to be brought up on such initiatives, I am sure that we can develop a simple database with a nice enough front end to allow online ordering!

Anyhow, whatever you are keeping in Excel can be done using Zoho, with a relevant interface and the ability to publish and get others to use it!

Cool I'd say....

I reached work at 8am!

Yep. The title says it all. Today was the first day that my wife's lecture starts at 8:00. So, we woke at around 6:30am (she woke up earlier since I take like 5 minutes to be ready). I did a quick breakfast and we were off at around 7:05am. We thought it would be smooth traffic but we were unpleasantly surprised that there was a bit of a jam. Anyway, I was in office around 8:10am.

Since it's kind of low volume market, I was tempted to relax a bit in the morning. So, I got to Starbucks, bought a cup of tea and read the newspaper. Went back to work at 9am!! Cool.

It's a bit sluggish, thankfully at least in terms of "issues". Nonetheless, still had a few things to sort out. Was kind of checking how many emails I replied for one week and it was around 300? That's replying. I don't want to count received emails since there definitely are "forwarded" threads. Ensured that I'd get 3 temp staff for at least the next 3 months and that was about it. It is indeed the perfect time to start on some major projects and other major initiatives. Thinking of wikis and blogs. Wikis can be a good platform for knowledge sharing and even project management.

The key to all these are 'collaboration' and 'ease' of use. I've tried mediawiki and PBwiki and am now trying google wiki (well, they don't call it wiki). Mediawiki seems a bit complicated. I've started PBwiki but am now deciding to use google sites. For the simple reason that I think they'll innovate most! Also relooking at Zoho as well as BaseCamp. There are so many out there. If we don't do anything, nothing will get done. I am very tempted to take a pick and start using it (start small) though I should be prepared to move to a different platform such as Ms Sharepoint if necessary.

I realised that it might no be easy to instill in our staff the same drive to achieve and to come up with new initiative. It's not easy because their priority is to learn. We should change our University syllabus and ensures that we have some courses that cover special technical skils such as doing a good flow chart, planning projects etc. Sometimes, the problem is that staff does not have the time, which is probably true most of the time.

Recession

I ain't any Tom, Dick or Harry. Cos it seems that the Tom, Dick and Harry are all out there predicting a recession or arguing against it. I ain't in that group for the simple reason that "I DO NOT KNOW". Heck, if I knew, I'd tell you ya? Oh, I do read the papers, including the Economist mind you! But nah, I am probably too young and my neurons have not done enough connection for me to say that there's a recession. But I can tell you this... Warren Buffet thinks so. Mr. Soros thinks so too I believe. And well, my chairman thinks so! Whether I belive that or not, here's the deal: Behave as if there's a recession! How to behave? Beats me. But as a humble employee, that's sticking to what you're doing. And do it well. Keep upgrading and keep improving your processes. You must show that you are worth keeping if ever there's a very very severe depression. And you must contribute towards ensuring that the company cuts costs or sustain, if not increase, revenues. Well, you must make sure that Singapore remains competitive!

You might say that's a naive reaction/belief. Maybe so. I am no judge of myself but at least, I live by my conviction. In back office, in such low volume, it's time to upgrade everything. Upgrade the systems, upgrade the documentation, upgrade the people of course. We must believe there'll be light at the end of the tunnel and when volume/business comes back again, we'd be ready to handle them.

But it's not easy. I sometimes find it difficult. I'd rather leave at 6:30pm and spend time with my wife. But hey, if you think likewise, you might be missing something here. It's not about leaving early or late.... It's about getting things done. It's about first wanting to improve things and then having the guts to execute them. Give a student 30 minutes and he'll stay and drink his Starbucks. Give him 1 hour and he'd still be thinking his coffee. For goodness sake, if he wants to stay the whole day, he'd still be drinking that coffee at the end of the day. This is probably the biggest problem if we are not careful.... we relax by doing the same thing in a longer time! And that's human I believe. So, leave at 6:30pm for goodness sake, ensure that you 8 working hours or so are productive, to the max. Do not leave any rocks unturned. List the issue and start hacking at them. If you're good planners, do your cost-benefit analyst... else, do not stand still and just get any initiative started. Start small but think big.

And remember, if you supervise, your staff is the most important asset. If you instill in them this sense of urgency despite a sluggish market, you'd achieve far more that you could on your own, breathing down their neck with deadlines that they do not understand. But be sure you let them off at 6:30pm!

Compliance is the name of the game

You've heard of OM? How about Ops Manual? How about Operations Manual? Well, it's all the same. It's basically a collection of the steps that you need to take to perform a task, well, give and take a few more in-depth definition. Just heard that we're changing the name from OM to OCM; Operations and Compliance Manual!! Makes sense. After all, in the finance industry, and in all regulated industry, to do business you must comply with the various regulations!

But it ain't easy to instill this sense of seriousness and importance in such OCM. Nowadays, it seems that we are looking for instantaneous things. Instant noodles? Fast food? Expressways? Panadol Fast? On the go? Looks like we like to learn something instantaneously. We prefer to learn from someone and start doing straight off! I mean, a fresh graduate was recently reading notes, ready books, reading lecture notes. Learning from reading all the materials. Yet, when they join the workforce, it's "don't bother me with reading, show me and I'll do". Granted that showing how to perform a task is a must. Nonetheless, one should not belittle knowledge captured in black and white!

I partly blame the way we usually write those OCM. Boring and wordy. But it should not be this way. It can be better. It can be interactive. It can contains lots of diagrams such as business process flows. It can have screen shots.

Well, that's at least what I want to achieve. The knowledge of a department MUST be captured in those words and diagrams else we will never move forward and will stall and we will keep "re-learning" and "re-teaching" the same stuffs.

READ. READ

Got one, lost one

Well, if you read my last blog, the latest update is that the candidate did not accept our offer. It did not come as a shock. The call was cordial though I think I was slightly cold not because I was disappointed but because it seemed like I've wasted my time and did not want to waste anymore. But hey, I'd done the same thing! If I got another offer, or I evaluate that this is not what I want, I surely would have rejected the offer.

Actually, I am happy. Glad because if I did not meet up with the candidate and did not explain in more details what she will be doing, she might have taken the job and then quit in a couple of months' time!

Reminds me of all the people that I've lost! Makes you wonder what makes those who stay, stay. What motivates them? They say that people leaves because of the manager. Perhaps. Oh well, most likely! But hey, under my watch so far, only 2 have left. One to pursue a different interest in a different field and another, well, probably due to mental stress. Yea, life is operations can be stressful. Had almost completed all the performance reviews and one of the thing that cropped up was mental stress. How do you it? Well, colleagues are stressed out. They are busy and always worried they do not have enough help. However, overtime is not that much! And when you break down the work, end-to-end it might not take more than a normal work day! Handling problems, exceptions and engaging in multiple tasks are the culprit. Probably it's all about an issue on time management. When you have an issue in your head, you tend to think too much about it, and do little. Add a few more of such issues and you probably analyse until paralyse. Well, can't really generalise but that's what I kind of feel.

That's why it's probably good to have regular meeting to talk about issues. By just getting them out, one feels better. It also gives a sense that a group is looking at the issues and there is thus a sense of group-help. Of course, it's also likely that there might be some job re-allocation, something that is not very easy to do. This may backfire though as it might be construed as a way to belittle the issues and talking without any proper re-allocation of resources at the end of the day. But I have always believe that there is always a better way of doing something, and note that I did not say a faster way!

Well, it has been hectic so far. A 4 day breakaway in Phukhet with my wife and my parents seems far away, though we just came back last Sunday. Mom's back in Mauritius and I'm back to my busy self. Trying to get things done fast so that I can start coming back home earlier to spend time with my wife, and my dad. So many things to do but well, Rome was not built in one day.... think big, start small and dig deep... Good motto.