Most people are afraid to voice out. They prefer to keep things to themselves and these include new ideas which might be able to help other people. For some of them, they just don’t want to go through all the troubles and fuss when proposing an idea or, they have no confidence and are afraid they will be regarded as stupid. But the worst are those people who prefer to stick to their roles and say “ideas should come from the top people”.

Wrong wrong wrong. Ideas can come from anyone in a healthy environment. If you have some ideas which you think have not been implemented and might be able to help improve things, then do voice out. Perhaps you can voice out to your supervisor if you’re afraid to approach the top people. Start small, maybe just introduce it within your team and see how it goes. The important thing here is to share your ideas especially if you have seen them becoming successful in other companies.

For example, whiteboarding or brown bag session, 360 degrees performance review, etc. Useful ideas that you have experienced in your previous jobs can also be introduced in your new company.

Remember that you are in a company to contribute to the business in any ways possible. Furthermore, you will be able to leave something significant and useful for others to learn and spread the next time they switch company.

In one of my recent posts, I talked about things which can be counted but don’t actually count, and how people tend to focus a lot on them. I believe part of the reasoning behind this is that these things (things that can be counted) are less subjective. Things like number of sick leaves, number of customers and number of sold cars are much easier to measure if compared to things like happiness of your employees and the loyalty of your customers.

And let’s face it, most people do not like subjective things since they can be pretty unpredictable. People prefer to have the numbers do the talking. This goes all the way back when calculus was first introduced. Since then, everyone focuses on numbers and anything that can be quantified in numbers. Well, that’s not a bad thing. The bad thing here is, we tend to rely too much on numbers.

Some of the examples I can think of:

• A mutual fund agent wants you to open an account to invest in a new fund, they will come out with all the nice numbers, projected profit, etc – all of them are numbers. And as investors, numbers are important to us so we get influenced by these agents, and go on to buy from them. But one thing that we don’t know is that, behind all these numbers, is this mutual fund agent really trying to help us by giving us the best possible advice? Or is he just trying to get our signature and then disappears forever? What about the fund manager involved? Does he just care about his own money or does he actually invest his own money in the same fund, because he really believes in it?
• A company pays the employees very well but the turnover rate is still very high. The boss would say “We pay them well! Why do they still want to leave?” Well, you can measure the amount you pay your people against other employers, but how do you measure whether they are happy to work for you or not?
• A father buys a lot of stuff for his little son – phones, cars, Macbooks (:P), etc. But he himself has no time to accompany his son due to work. In the end, the son grew up to be rebellious and started to mix with the wrong group of people. To the father, he could not understand why the son turned out this way even after all the money he has spent. But he didn’t realize that “love” is not something which can be measured by numbers.

I don’t know about you but I personally feel that people are becoming more and more ‘addicted’ to numbers. Some even do that to the extreme where only numbers are important. But time and time again, they will know that numbers ARE important but definitely not the most important thing in the world. Relying on numbers do help, but relying TOO MUCH on numbers will bring more harm than good.

Remember that numbers are there to help us make the right decisions and not to make the decisions for us.

p/s…. What happened in the recent economy crash is that there are just too many irresponsible fund managers and traders. We can measure the numbers, but we can’t measure what they are thinking or how responsible they are. That is why, at the end of the day, the people who lost the most are those who focus only on numbers – the investors.

“Work is boring….colleagues are boring….I just hope it’s not Monday tomorrow”

Most people have that kind of mentality. And most of them start counting down for weekend on Monday itself (some do that on Sundays). They just dread going to work! In fact, it’s pretty hard to find someone who really enjoys their work (not to say there isn’t any, but those who think their work is boring far outnumbers those who think their work is fun).

But what if their work is not as boring as it currently is? What if their colleagues and their workplace is fun and very dynamic? If you’re thinking it’s impossible, then perhaps you should find another job. Because to me, anything can be turned into something exciting. Yes, it requires efforts but it’s not impossible. Here are some of the things which I can think of.

• Change the way you think about your work. Don’t treat it like something you are forced to do because you have no other choice (you always have a choice, remember that). Treat it as something more meaningful….maybe you feel your job can help others, or you feel you can help extend the business, or you can help people solve problems, etc.
• Decorate your workspace. I never like the open office concept because you don’t really have a “home” in the office. You’ll just move around all the time. I prefer to have a workspace for myself, and decorate it the way I like it – pictures, drawing, plants, etc. Simple/complicated, it’s all up to me. That way, it’ll make me feel more comfortable in the office. It definitely won’t change the work/assignments, but it’ll change my mood when I’m working on something.
• Mix with your colleagues. It really makes the entire workplace more entertaining if you have close friends around. If you don’t have any, then go make some in the office. Sometimes, when the work is really pushing you to quit, you will think of the nice colleagues you have.
• Work longer hours. If you spend more hours on a single assignment, you won’t feel hard pressed for time. Yes, you do tend to lose some sleep but you can also work at a more relaxing pace. Well, at least working at a relaxing pace makes me more productive and also makes the work more enjoyable. The moment you (or your boss) start chasing for deadline, is the moment your work loses its fun factor.

Of course, all these can’t beat the ultimate “Do what you are passionate about”. That’s the best, if you have the option. But most often than not, we’ll be stuck doing something we are not so passionate about in order to feed our family. So the least we can do to make our work more enjoyable is to do those things listed above.

Transform your workplace, your relationship with your colleagues and your mindset towards everything. It’ll really make things more interesting.

And hopefully, you won’t dread going back to the office all the time. Who knows, maybe there are something in the office which makes you want to go back more!

p/s…. if there’s really nothing you can do to make your work less boring and more exciting, then it’s time to find another job. Reason being, you simply can’t perform in a boring environment.

How a typical meeting usually ends

Rate this comic: (5 votes, average: 3.60 out of 5)
 Loading ...

This is the first time I used the template. So the art is more ‘standardized’ but somehow, it took me a longer time to finish this comic. I guess it’s tidier. I just need to train myself more and get used to this. My templates are not very efficient yet.

By the way, I’m in the midst of coming out with a comic blog. Figure it’s better to separate the writing part with the drawing part.

Situation in company where turnover rate is high

A very simple comic I drew right before my flu medicine started to take effect. Really a simple one. It’s been a while since I last came out with a comic. I actually had to clean the dust off my drawing tablet before using it.

I’ll try my best to come out with more decent comics after this. Hope you guys will like it.