I’m still stuck in the office, and will most probably stuck in the jam later (road closures~~~). Just want to take this opportunity to wish all of you a very Happy New Year. Hopefully this coming year 2009 will be a great one for everyone, irregardless of what our economists are saying.

And do remember to spend the last few hours of 2008 to prepare for your 2009 resolutions. It’s still not too late to do that.

Courtesy of http://www.gorillasushi.com

So have fun people and thanks for all the support for this humble blog of mine. Looking forward to post up more in 2009 and will also try to start another IT and design-related blog soon.

Take care and good luck.

It might be funny to come out with such a topic but don’t be surprised if I tell you that most people who organize a meeting do not have any form of meeting agenda. But that does not mean they do not have anything to discuss. They do! But without any agenda, how can they remember so much? They might be able to remember 1 or 2 issues for the meeting but does that mean they only have that 1 or 2 issues to discuss? Nope. They just can’t remember the rest of the issues.

Also, without an agenda, they will not know which issue is more important and urgent. They might end up spending a lot of time discussing an issue which is not important at all just because they cannot remember the other more important issues. If they do have an agenda, they will realize it and can choose to skip the not so important issues first.

Having an agenda is also important when you go for a meeting with the client. It helps to keep you focused and organized, and also gives a positive image to the client. Imagine if you do not have any agenda during the meeting. You asked the client 2 questions and after the meeting, you realized you have few other questions. You ended up calling the client to ask the remaining questions. Do you think this is a good move? I doubt so.

So, if you are the type who do not like to prepare meeting agendas, maybe it is time to change your behavior now. Be more efficient and most importantly, learn to respect time – other people’s time and also your own time.

Hope it helps.

When it comes to preparing your Curriculum Vitae (CV) or resume, there are generally 2 types of belief. The first is those who believe that attaching your latest photo in the CV will help increase your chance of landing a job interview, and the second is those who believe it is better not to attach your photo in your CV at all.

But I believe that there’s no definite right or wrong here. It depends on what you want to achieve with that photo of yours and how confident you are with it.

When applying for a job, you are hoping that the company will give you a chance in terms of job interview based on your qualifications and experiences and NOT based on your look. Unless, you are applying for marketing or personal assistant kind of role where good look is very important. Otherwise, in my opinion, it is better not to attach any photo in your CV. Why?

• Your photo might not look like your real person. This might cause a very big disappointment to the interviewer if he/she calls you for an interview based on your “good-looking” photo.
• Your photo might be mislead the interviewers and they might neglect your true qualifications.
• Your photo might not be as nice as you would’ve hoped for. Thus, by placing your photo there, they will just filter you out without looking at your CV’s content.
• By placing your photo in there, you are trying to cover some facts about your skills and trying to mislead the person doing the filtering. And yes, I’ve said this before.

Not convinced? Let me give you an example. The other day, I was talking to a recruiter friend of mine who used to work in the Human Resource department of a large multinational company. She has to go through a lot of resumes and CVs in a single month…and I do mean A LOT. Some of the CVs have the photos attached and whenever she saw such type of CVs, there will only be 2 outcome. Either the photo is very bad and the candidate got filtered out straight away, or the photo is very good and she will proceed to the content. Because by placing a photo there, that is the first impression you are giving to the HR. Imagine if you received a CV with a photo belonging to someone who cannot even open his eyes properly…the sleepy and tired look. Do you think you want to hire him as a consultant? Ok, first filtering done….so she called up the group of people qualified for the job interviews. Apparently, a lot of those with good looking photos, didn’t appear to look as nice. Some of them were …well…ridiculously different. And they got penalized for that too because they were not being honest.

Do you want to hire an employee who always looks like this?

Conclusion? I really feel that the disadvantages you get by placing your photo in the CV or resume far outweight the advantages.

That’s why I’ve never adviced any of my friends to attach their photo in the CV or resume (even though some of my friends are really good looking people). Whenever they ask why, my answer will be “Don’t blindfold them with your photo. Convince them with your skills and experiences. That is how it should be done.”

You don’t have to be the most creative person in the world to come up with the best idea ever. And even if you do come out with a ground breaking idea, do you think you can implement it and most importantly, market it successfully? Coming out with an idea is not difficult but coming out with a good idea is not easy too.

That’s why some businesses especially the big boys don’t tend to come out with their original ideas. They steal other people’s ideas or buy from them. Well, not many buy actually, most of them prefer to steal or …improvise. For example, Apple did not come out with the first MP3 player of the world. They did come out with the first IPod in the world and the first ITunes (which is pretty similar to Napster, except you need to pay). What they did is to capture the heart of the consumers and to see what they need – performance and beauty. That is why IPod is such a big hit. It sounds better than most MP3 players and it looks a lot prettier than its competitors. Same idea, different implementation and marketing plan.

What about Google? They are definitely not the first company to come out with a search engine. We have Lycos, Yahoo, AltaVista (which..somehow..disappeared) and the terribly unsuccessful MSN Search. You might argue that Google was the engine behind Yahoo’s search engine…but that’s a totally different story. What matters here is who came out with the idea first? Maybe it’s Yahoo and maybe it’s Google…but from what I can see now, Google is far more successful than Yahoo because they redesigned the search engine and added a lot of goodies to the users. More features, better and more optimized results, but all built from the same idea.

Another example, our very own Air Asia. Are they the one who came out with the idea of budget airline? Definitely not. There are already other such ideas being implemented in the world but mainly in US and Europe. What Air Asia did was to take the idea and reimplement it in this region because nobody else has done this before. And they become a very big hit in a very short amount of time. Same idea, same implementation, different location and different timing.

From the above examples, you can see that you don’t really need to come out with a good or even great idea. Because it’s not that easy. If you can come out with one, then kudos to you but if you can’t, don’t blame yourself and it’s not the end of the world. You can still start a successful business and have a successful product. At the end of the day, it’s not just about the idea, but the way you market it, the way you position your product, the overall implementation and the timing.

So for those people who always say “Why do you want to start a business when you don’t even have a great idea? Come out with one first before you plan anything!”, maybe it’s time to reposition your stand?

Want to help your business to cut cost? Need a plan to survive the recession? What about retrenching some of your employees? Do you think that is a good way to cut cost?

Yes, and no.

It’s a good thing to reduce the total workforce since that will surely help reduce the total cost significantly. But do bear in mind that reducing the workforce will also reduce the productivity rate of your business. However, you can minimize the drop in productiviy if you only remove the workforce which is not productive. The problem thing, most businesses don’t really care about that. They care about the numbers. They care about the total cost they are required to pay now. And they are desperate.

Thus, they reduce the workforce without taking the time to select the proper people to be “removed”. Even if they do that, there will surely be some mistakes and some important and productive people will be reduced. And reducing your skilled and good workforce will be bad for your business. It might cause your business to suffer a heavier cost than you originally wanted. Always remove the bad performers and keep the good ones.

That is why in my opinion, I feel that reducing the workforce should always be the last resort. There are many other things which you can try to reduce. For example, reducing the total salary package of the top management people. By reducing 20% of their pay, you can surely keep some of the better employees at the bottom of the food chain. But most of these “bosses” will not be willing to sacrifice their own skin for the business.

Maybe the business can get rid of the more expensive clients? Clients who are giving more troubles (thus higher cost) than anything else. Get rid of them, and focus on other clients who are less expensive and more profitable.

If it’s cheaper to do something by outsourcing, then do it. Having a dedicated team to do a non-core jobs (non-core, in other words, means not profitable) can be quite costly. Or if you think it is more cost efficient to have your own people do it, then by all means, let your own people do such non-core jobs. It really depends on what your business wants to focus on.

Reduce the salary of employees is also a good option. As long as you do it company wide and don’t overdo it, then it should be fine. A 5-10% drop for 1 year is always better than retrenching people. Just make sure you give a timeline to your people because that will be an important promise. If you don’t revert their salary back after that 1 year, then be prepared to lose a lot of good people and also have your reputation ruined. Also, don’t ask for a big cut all of a sudden. 5-10% is still okay but 20-30% is not okay at all. And if you are planning to do this, do ensure you still keep your employee benefits because that will help retain the good people.

Besides that, controlling your company’s other expenditure is also important. Bosses using Business Class to fly? Change to Economy then, or maybe Air Asia. Also, stop all the external trainings unless they are necessary. Start giving trainings internally. I think by doing those, you can actually save quite a lot.

At the end of the day, what kind of cost to cut depends on your business’ priority and direction. But one word of advice, if you want your business to sustain and survive this recession, always try your best to keep your good and productive people. Without them, your business will find it very difficult to recover even if your business manages to survive through the global recession.

Hope it helps.