“Please follow the process!”. “Why aren’t you following the process?”. “The processes are there to help you”.

We hear such lines all the time in our working environment. Processes, processes, processes. They are there to assist us to be more productive. They are there…well….to calm down the bosses because if we follow processes, things won’t easily go out of control. Well, not THAT much anyway.

To be honest with you, processes are fine but sticking too much to the processes can be counter-productive. But most importantly, it dulls the creativity of your people because they are being given a pretty tight constraint to work within. After all, most processes exist in order to control the people so that they don’t stray too far away from what they are supposed to do.

The funny thing is, after introducing such limiting processes, the bosses will start questioning their employees why aren’t they using their creativity at work? Then they will try to come out with MORE processes to promote creativity among the employees.

I guess the bosses or whoever that wants to come out with processes, should remember that creativity is not something that can be calculated – unlike the results of following a process. And it is not something which should be restrained by the processes. If you want to promote creativity, then remove the processes. Those 2 can hardly work together – there are occasions where the 2 can work together, but companies have the thread carefully…because not everyone can do that successfully without screwing up or making the bosses angry.

So yes, processes do dull creativity. Tell me if you think otherwise. I cannot think of how someone can be creative when he/she has to follow step (1) to step (10) as per the process.

Last but not least, people should remember that nowadays, companies need to rely on creativity and innovation more than they need to rely on boring processes. Processes are there to help, but creativity and innovation are there to make them win in the competition. So which should you be focusing on? It’s your choice.

p/s….. having said that, I don’t deny that certain processes should always be to keep things under control. Imagine what is it like if your HR person or account person try to be too creative by ignoring the processes.

Don’t be surprised if I tell you this is actually one of the many questions which I’ve been asked during a job interview. It’s an interesting question and the answer can be quite diversified.

If you were me, what kind of answer do you think you will give?

Gossip mongers just want to network with other people? Hmmm

1. Will you confront the gossip monger and tell him you’re not happy?
2. Confront the gossip monger and tell him the gossip is not true at all?
3. Stay quiet?
4. Spread another gossip to counter that gossip?
5. Or start telling each and everyone you know in the office that the gossip is not true?

I know this is kind of touching human psychology but based on my personal experience, it’s not uncommon in our office life. Every now and then, there will be this group of people who have nothing to do but to spread rumors and gossip about other people. They can be quite notorious at times too, to the stage that whatever they said might actually affect your working experience. So it’s perfectly normal if you feel like confronting them and tell them off.

But is that how it should be done?

Based on my personal experience, it’s actually best to do item (3) which is to keep quiet. I understand that sometimes, the fire might get too hot and burn yourselves in the process but I also believe that if you retaliate to something which is not true, it will only make the fire stronger. So in my opinion, it’s better to make it as boring for them as possible, and they will slowly get tired of it and move on to the next target.

And I told this to the job interviewer and he was quite happy with my answer.

What about you? What would you do if you were in this kind of situation?

p/s….I’ve experienced it on 1 or 2 occasions. If it’s ruining my reputation and a colleague told me about it, I will just tell that colleague the real story. That’s all. As long as there are few good colleagues who know about the real story, I won’t really care what others think.

Have you ever worked with someone who leads with fear? When I mean lead with fear, it does not mean that the leader is constantly afraid of anything. It’s more like he is using the authority to lead the people under him, by constantly scolding them and threatening them – pretty much like a master and a slave. Some people call this the “military style leadership”.

But is this the right way to lead your people?

In my humble opinion, NO.

I rather lead with respect, and not fear. If your people are constantly afraid of losing their jobs (or afraid of being scolded in front of everyone in the office), they will STILL be able to work hard but the atmosphere is different if compared with people who are working for you because they love to work for you.

Totally different working environments and the end results will be totally different too. Let’s try to summarize the 2 types of leadership.

Lead with respect

• People willingly work for you
• The environment will be friendlier
• The people will be motivated and work with good morale
• Turnover rate will be lower since a good and respected leader can really keep his people

Lead with fear

• People will only work with you because they have no other choice
• The environment is quite hostile and negative since everyone is afraid to lose their jobs (or get scolded publicly)
• People will be moody and pretty much demotivated, even though they will still do the work
• Turnover rate is very very high since everyone will try their best to get out from there

From what you can see, most of the things associated with the latter are bad things and yet, there are many leaders out there who prefer to use this way. Perhaps it’s due to the way they’ve been brought up in the corporate world, or perhaps it’s due to their ego. But either way, it’s bad for the employees and also the organization itself (having high turnover rate is not a very good thing to have in any organization).

For me, the keyword here is “respect”. Respect other people and others will respect you. If you cannot even understand that simple word, then I doubt you have the rights to lead.

p/s……. and in an extremely stressful environment, the last thing you want to do is to force people to do things they don’t want. Everyone has their limits and as a leader, you need to know that.

During my first job in a local IT company, I used to play a lot of Warcraft and Starcraft games in the office with my colleagues. We would go to office every Saturday, work for half day and play for half day. It’s a very fun and enjoyable working culture – you work hard, you play hard.

And this kind of culture is not new in most companies since there are a lot of people (mostly the guys) who will use their company resources to play games together.

Seriously, I wouldn't mind if we have an employee like this playing game in the office

The issue here is, this is illegal. One should never use company resources to play games since it is not part of your job description. Company resources should only be used for work-related purposes and by using the computers to play network game (and to install illegal software into the computers), it can be considered as serious misconduct depending on how strict your IT support and HR people are.

To make things worse, there are people who actually play such games DURING the office hour.

Maybe this kind of behavior is OKAY few years ago but certainly not OKAY now. Remember that we’re in a recession now where many people are still jobless and more companies are trying to terminate people.

My advice to everyone – don’t give your bosses reason to terminate you. Misconduct is a serious offence and they don’t really need to compensate you for terminating you.

If you want to play games with your colleagues, spend a few bucks, go to the cybercafes.

After all….it’ll be very sad and pathetic if one is being terminated by the company …for playing computer games.

P/S … i might not be able to reply comments as often as before since i’m in the middle of a WAR. =_= din sleep for few days already…project going live.

There are several type of appointment-based businesses in our country ranging from dentists, medical specialists to car service centers, etc. These businesses tend to be very busy most of the time or require an extended amount of time for them to complete a particular task/assignment/work. But what will be your immediate reaction when you were to asked to deal with such appointment-based businesses as a first time customer?

For me = TROUBLESOME. Because I have to go through the trouble of finding the contact number, call them up and make an appointment. I know some allow you to walk in but some of them don’t. My question is, if I have never been to your business or I am a first time customer, how would I know how to make an appointment or which number to call? It’s still okay if your business is very well-known or a lot of people know how to make an appointment, or if your business has very accessible contact information. But how many businesses actually have any of those? Not many.

Dentist business is one of the appointment-based businesses

It’s funny how these businesses are still having such appointment-based model and most of them are still unwilling to change. If your business is unwilling to change, then at least make sure your information is more accessible to your potential customers – those first time customers. Otherwise, they will just choose another business which is more convenient to them. And believe me, during such competitive period when there’s a business closing down every few hours or so, you ought to believe your competitors are trying their very best to make their businesses more convenient and trouble-free for the customers.

Unless, those businesses are too proud of themselves that they don’t need those potential customers.

So how can these businesses change? Here are few simple ways which I can think of but do bear in mind that I’m not an expert when it comes to marketing.

• Prepare more name cards or contact cards, and pass them around to spread the word about your appointment-based business.
• Allow walk-ins but gives priority to those who’ve arranged for an appointment.
• If possible, put up a big sign at your store if walk-in is not available for the day. I don’t think the customers want to take the trouble of finding car park, only to realize there’s no available time slot anymore.
• Have a blog or publish your contact information online. Make such information as accessible as possible.
• Give very good service to your existing customers and hopefully they will help spread the word AND the contact information for you (make sure you have enough contact cards to be distributed). Or better still, reward the customers for bringing new customers in!
• Have different time slots for walk-in and appointment-based. This is to ensure that those who are lazy to make an appointment can still choose your business.

I’m not sure whether this list can help or not. But I do feel that a business should try to make it as convenient as possible for the customers. I understand that certain type of businesses HAVE TO be appointment-based but I also believe that it is up to them to make the entire ordeal as trouble-free as possible. Remember the key phrase here is businesses should make life easier for customers, not harder.

And now, I need to go and hunt for a good dentist in my area who has very accessible contact information…I don’t think I want to go around my area trying to SPOT a phone number so that I can call and make an appointment.