Reenergised, Inspired, Motivated and more Resilient in your Administrative Role

In today's rapidly changing business environment, Administrative Professionals are facing myriads of tough work challenges. They are expected to do more than what's outlined in their job responsibilities, required to perform tasks with limited resources and obliged to work long hours due to increasing workloads. More often than not these demands create additional pressures to their already stressful lives. As such, Administrative Professionals need to learn how to manage their evolving roles to increase their expertise and success.

M - Meaningful training and upgraded skills  

E -  Employee retention and greater work satisfaction 

R -  Remarkable performance and effectiveness    

I -   Increased work productivity   

T -  Tremendous appreciation from staff    

Summit Highlights:

A - Acquire necessary skills and right behaviour to achieve career goals easier   

C - Cultivate positive ways to deal with cultural differences and minimise conflict   

H - Handle your responsibilities in a new way and perform better in times of economic recession   

I -  Increase work productivity and professional efficiency through positive energy  

E - Enhance your business etiquette and put your best face forward  

V - Vitalise your career by learning from experts and sharing insights with other professionals

E -  Effectively harness the untapped potentials that lie within you   

    

The 360-Degree Leader

The 360-Degree Leader

“Bagaimana boleh saya laksanakan apa yang di ajar sedangkan saya bukan pemimpin atasan?”Mampukah kita memimpin dengan baik sedangkan kita bukan orang penting?". Dr. Maxwell, salah seorang mentor kepimpinan yang disegani di seluruh dunia, memaparkan kepalsuan mitos ini yang menunjukkan bagaimana mengatasi cabaran dan mengajar tentang kemahiran yang diperlukan untuk menjadi pemimpin 360-Darjah.

Mitos Memimpin dari Peringkat Pertengahan Organisasi

Mitos 1: Kedudukan 

Mitos 2: Destinasi 

Mitos 3: Pengaruh 

Mitos 4: Tiada Pengalaman 

Mitos 5: Kebebasan 

Mitos 6: Potensi 

Mitos 7: Diberi Kuasa ataupun Lupakan Sahaja 

Cabaran Pemimpin 360-Darjah

Cabaran 1: Ketegangan 

Cabaran 2: Kekecewaan 

Cabaran 3: Memakai Banyak Topi 

Cabaran 4: Ego 

Cabaran 5: Tiada Kepuasan Bekerja 

Cabaran 6: Visi 

Cabaran 7: Pengaruh

Petikan daripda Mitos 3:Pengaruh

“Bukan semua orang memahami maksud mempengaruhi orang lain dari semua arah – mereka yang menjadi majikan kita, mereka yang setaraf dengan kita dan mereka yang bekerja untuk kita. Ada yang pandai memimpin anggota kumpulan mereka, tetapi menyisihkan pemimpin dari bahagian lain dalam organisasi. Ada juga individu yang menonjol dalam membina hubungan baik dengan bos, tetapi tidak dapat mempengaruhi orang bawahan dalam organisasi. Ada pula yang baik dengan semua orang, tetapi tidak dapat menyelesaikan kerja. Ada juga yang produktif, tetapi tidak berbaik dengan orang lain. Tetapi, pemimpin 360-darjah berbeza. Hanya pemimpin 360-darjah dapat mempengaruhi individu di setiap peringkat dalam organisasi. Dengan membantu orang lain, mereka membantu diri mereka sendiri.”

Dr. John C. Maxwell  

Change is Good—But First, Know What Should Never Change

Fortune by Jim Collins November 1995

Imagine a President of the United States wrestling with the challenges of a rapidly changing and increasingly chaotic world—among them, new global competitors rising in both the East and West, fickle and unpredictable voters, government bureaucracies whose systems are fast becoming outdated, information technologies fomenting upheaval in virtually every aspect of the society. At a Cabinet meeting, the President's top advisers are handed a memo that begins:We no longer hold these truths to be self-evident. We can no longer afford to hold the belief that all men are created equal …The Commander-in-Chief then speaks: 

"We need to take a hard look at the Bill of Rights. We certainly can't let those outdated values get in our way. Nothing is sacred anymore—not freedom of religion, not freedom of the press, not the right to trial by jury. We're in the third wave now. We must change." 

Of course, this is an absurd scenario. But I've created it to drive home a point: Reengineering and other prevailing management fads that urge dramatic change and fundamental transformation on all fronts are not only wrong, they are dangerous. Any great and enduring human institution must have an underpinning of core values and a sense of timeless purpose that should never change. 

Give up the bedrock principles—the "what we stand for" and "why we exist"—of a great nation, and it will eventually cease to be great.The same lesson applies to corporations. I've found that the best of them—companies like Hewlett-Packard, Disney, and Boeing, which as a group have outpaced the stock market averages some 15-fold since the 1920s—have one thing in common. They have successfully adapted over the decades to a changing world without losing their core values. They have done so by grasping the difference between timeless principles and daily practices. 

Disney, for example, has almost religiously preserved a central ideology of wholesomeness and bringing happiness to people, yet it has continually changed its product strategy—from cartoons, to feature films, to the Mickey Mouse Club, to Disneyland, to videos. Boeing resolutely held tight its core philosophy of product integrity and leading-edge aviation, yet turned its business strategy upside down in the 1950s by betting the company on commercial jets at a time when 80% of its business came from military bombers.

At IBM, service to the customer above everything else was a core value; dominating the mainframe computer market was a business strategy; and compulsory white shirts an operating practice. IBM stumbled badly in the late 1980s because it drifted from its core values (which it should never have abandoned) while remaining too rigid in its strategies and operating practices (which it should have changed far more vigorously).

So how do you tell the difference between timeless principles and ephemeral practices? First—and this is vital—understand that a core ideology does not arise from the pursuit of competitive advantage. Valuing freedom might be a competitive advantage for the U.S., but that is not why we embrace this belief. A true core value is something you would hold even if it became a competitive disadvantage (although that seldom happens).

HP founders Bill Hewlett and David Packard didn't make respect for the individual a core value at their company for strategic advantage. Rather, they believed it was the morally right way to manage. At one point they passed up significant growth and profit opportunities by turning down big government contracts that would have forced them into a pattern of on-again, off-again, "hire and fire" employment. The decision paid off, though, by fostering greater loyalty among HP's workers.The critical question to ask is, if the world changed such that you were penalized for this tenet, would you continue to hold it? If so, then it is probably part of your core ideology. 

You will likely only find a handful of truly basic principles that you would want your company to hold forever—any more than five, and you're probably mixing up core ideals and business practices. Answer this question with clarity, and you'll know what you should not change. That crucial knowledge, in turn, will then free you to alter everything else.

10 Leadership Tips from Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs, founder of Apple(NASDAQ:AAPL) and Pixar (NYSE:DIS) was an iconic manager with a zest for taking on feats deemed impossible. He was able win over an entire planet. His Eastern beliefs set him apart from Western leaders. With an intense focus on what should be, he disrupted dysfunctional markets with simple elegant replacements. His Eastern wisdom encouraged focus and to “Think Different,” which may have meant to experience the moment.

The 10 Lessons of Steve Jobs are excerpts from Walter Isaacson’s, “The Real Lessons of Steve Jobs,” published in the Harvard Business Review, April 2012 (hbr.org/2012/04/the-real-leadership-lessons-of-steve-jobs/ar/1). Isaacson gives 14 lessons.

1. Simplify

For the iPod, Jobs’ Zen simplicity shinned through when he eliminated the on/off button. The device gradually powered down, and flashed on when reengaged. Jobs also developed complex systems with integrated hardware and software so the user devices could be simple and focused on a few tasks. An  ecosystem—an iPod connected to a Mac connected to an iTunes store—allowed for a division of labor. The MAC could handle system administration, freeing the portable devices play music or show videos. Later, Jobs aimed for mobile phones, and he would grab a competitor’s phone and rant that features could not be navigated, including the address book. His iPhone did not need a user’s manual. At the end of his career, Jobs rethought the television industry, so people could click and watch what they wanted. He dreamed up ways to make television simple and personal.

2. Control the Experience

Apple took end-to-end responsibility for the  user. From the performance of the ARM microprocessor to the experience in an Apple Store, everything was tightly linked. Part of Jobs’ compulsion for “the whole widget” stemmed from his controlling personality. But it was also driven by his passion for perfection. The strategy set Apple apart from competitors.

3. Innovate

Innovators don’t have to be pioneers. With the original iMac, Jobs focused on managing photos and videos, but not music. People were downloading music and then burning their own CDs. The iMac’s drive couldn’t burn CDs. Jobs said, “I thought we had missed it.” But instead of upgrading the iMac’s CD drive, he created an integrated system that transformed the music industry. The combination was iTunes, the iTunes Store, and the iPod, which allowed users to buy, share, manage, store, and play music better than any other way. After the iPod became a huge success, Jobs thought phone makers might displace it by adding music in the handsets, so he preempted them with the iPhone.

4. Ignore Reality

Jobs’ (in)famous ability to push the impossible was dubbed his Reality Distortion Field, after an episode of Star Trek in which aliens create an alternative reality through sheer will. An early example was when Jobs was on the night shift at Atari and pushed Steve Wozniak to create a game called Breakout. Woz said it would take months, but Jobs stared at him and insisted he could do it in four days. Woz ended up doing it.5. Have ConfidenceWith the iPhone, Jobs found plastic scratched easily and decided the face had to be glass. He met with Wendell Weeks, CEO of Corning (NYSE:GLW), who told him that Corning had developed a chemical process in the 1960s that led to “Gorilla glass.” Jobs said he wanted a major shipment of Gorilla glass in six months. Weeks said that Corning was not making the glass. “Don’t be afraid,” Jobs replied. A stunned Weeks, who was unfamiliar with Jobs’ Reality Distortion Field, tried to explain that a false sense of confidence would not trump engineering challenges. Jobs didn’t accept that premise. He stared unblinking at Weeks. “Yes, you can do it,” he said. “Get your mind around it. You can do it.” Weeks recalls his astonishment and then called the managers of Corning’s facility in Kentucky making LCD displays, and told them to convert immediately to Gorilla glass full-time. “We did it in under six months.”

6. Rethink Designs

Jobs personally spent time designing the jewel-like boxes for the iPod and iPhone and listed himself on the patents. He believed that unpacking was a ritual and heralded the glory of the product. For the iPhone, the initial design had the screen surrounded by an aluminum case. The problem was that the iPhone should have featured the display, not the case. The team changed it so the glass display was the phone.

7. Team with Winners

Jobs’ rudeness was packaged neatly with the diametrically opposed push for inspiration. He infused Apple employees a belief that they could accomplish anything. His rough treatment reflected a desire to work with the best and prevent “the bozo explosion,” in which managers are so polite that mediocre people feel comfortable staying. Jobs said, “Maybe there’s a better way—a gentlemen’s club where we all wear ties and speak in this Brahmin language and velvet code words—but I don’t know that way, because I am middle-class from California.”

8. Collaborate

Jobs believed creativity comes from spontaneous meetings. “You run into someone, and ask what they’re doing, you say ‘Wow,’ and soon you’re cooking up all sorts of ideas.” The Pixar building’s design promoted unplanned encounters around an atrium. He commented if a building didn’t encourage innovation, you lose the magic sparked by serendipity.

9. Vision + Details

Jobs’ passion was applied to issues both large and small. Some CEOs are great at vision; others know that God is in the details. In 2000 he came up with the grand vision that the personal computer should become a  hub for managing all of a user’s content, and got Apple into personal-devices. In 2010 he came up with the successor strategy—the hub would be consumed by the cloud—and Apple began building a huge server farm to upload and sync content to personal devices.

10. Rebel

Jobs asserted his counterculture personality in ads, proclaiming his hippie beginnings. When he returned to Apple, Jobs helped write the text for the “Think Different” ads: “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes…” If there was any doubt that, consciously or not, he was describing himself, he dispelled it with the last lines: “While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.” In his commencement address to Stanford, he admonished students to follow their own dreams, and not to get caught up in living someone else’s life.

Fear Not

Picture the great composer Beethoven struggling to write a perfect Fifth Symphony that will stand the test of time. He starts with a simple theme. Discards it. Starts again. Revises it. Finally settles upon the famous "fate motive" (Da Da Da Dommmmm!). Inverts it. Extends it. Rends, amends, and dissects it. All in the context of a primal thematic struggle: that of light versus dark, hope versus despair, major versus minor. With great discipline he holds back the trombones, the piccolo, and the contrabassoon until their triumphal entry on the downbeat of movement four, when the forces of life and hope blast forth to obliterate the forces of angst and despair once and for all. As Robert Greenberg says in his fabulous audiotaped lecture series The Symphonies of Beethoven (The Teaching Co., Springfield, Va., 1996), "If you can remain composed [at] the beginning of the fourth movement . . . then I would check my respiration to make sure I am still alive. The Fifth Symphony … speaks to us as powerfully today, near the end of the 20th century, as it did to Beethoven at the turn of the 19th." 

Now imagine asking Beethoven during his toil to perfect the Fifth Symphony, "Ludwig, why are you working so hard? Your First Symphony has established you as one of the most popular and successful composers of the day. Your Third Symphony, Eroica, will stand as one of the great cutting-edge creations of all time, having shattered the constraints of the classical style. You've already earned your place in the history books. Why do you continue to push yourself?" Can you picture Beethoven responding, "Why push myself? Because if I don't write a better symphony, then someone else will. The competition is fierce, and if I don't improve, I'll be pummeled by those feisty foreign upstarts. Change or die. Innovate or self-destruct. Eat lunch or be lunch. It's not that I really want to reinvent and perfect my work; it's just that in this world, only the paranoid survive." 

I frequently use that analogy to poke serious fun at the fear mongering that pervades modern management thinking and writing. You can hardly pick up a business magazine, visit a bookstore, or listen to a management guru without being assaulted by admonitions designed to frighten you into action: "You'd better hop to it and [insert favorite word:change, innovate, improve, reinvent, renew, revitalize, revolutionize, whatever], or else!" 

Don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating that you stick with the status quo. Nor do I deny the importance of continual reinvention and self-renewal in a changing world. Yes, the competition will blow you away if you refuse to improve. And, yes, you will pay a hefty—perhaps even fatal—price if you operate in denial of external realities. But that is not the primary reason you should change, improve, create, and renew. I've never seen anything great and lasting created solely because "otherwise something bad will happen." As I reflect back on the research I did forBuilt to Last, I'm struck by how those who built enduring, great companies were driven first and foremost by an inner creative urge. They would have continued to challenge themselves and push forward even if they didn't have to. That is not only why they reached the top but also why they stayed there for so long.

 The epidemic of fear mongering is ultimately debilitating (not to mention insulting), for it presumes that we are all basically lazy and have little intrinsic drive to create and improve. Given the choice, would you sit there and vegetate, feeling no urge to achieve goals, create, or make things better? I doubt it. Yet this absurdly patronizing belief that fear is our primary motivator has nonetheless infected too many of us.

 I recently met with a CEO to discuss his upcoming speech about the need for corporate change. His draft for the speech sounded the "We've got to change, or else!" theme. After listening for awhile, I interrupted him: "Why do you personally work so hard on changing this company?" He responded similarly to the way I imagine Beethoven would have responded: "Because we can be so much better. Because I really want us to be a great company, and I believe we can be—if we're willing to do what it takes to transform ourselves." "Do you find your original speech inspiring?" I asked. "Would it inspire you?" "Well—no. But it would probably scare me into action. I need to give people a reason to change." "So, then, let me ask you this: How do you plan to measure progress against the goal of survival, and how will you know when you've achieved the goal? Do you plan to pause each day and say, 'Well, we've survived another day—hurrah!'?" To his great credit, the CEO altered his tune to be more in line with his own personal motivations. Instead of focusing entirely on a "change or else" theme, he shifted to a "progress toward something greater" theme. 

His people found it inspiring. But even more important, I believe they will continue to feel motivated even after the company reaches a comfortable level of success—and that is the critical point. Because what's needed is motivation that'ssustainable. I had a personal experience that helped me understand that dynamic. Shortly after receiving a teaching award at Stanford, I began to dread my course. I worried that I could not repeat the performance and that the quality of other courses would exceed mine. I felt motivated, to be sure, but it was a kind of motivation that sapped away the sheer joy I normally felt in teaching. 

Around the same time, I was reading about John Wooden, the UCLA men's basketball coach who led his team to 10 NCAA championships in 12 years during the 1960s and 1970s. It dawned on me that Wooden had never made it a goal to repeat the previous year's performance—not even if it had been an undefeated season. He focused his attention entirely on how to improveon the previous year. Wooden highlighted for me a supreme truth: that excellence is the residual result of continual creation and improvement for its own sake. Whereas the fear mongers concentrate on the demoralizing effect of failure, Wooden capitalized on the inspiring payoff of achievement—the pure, reenergizing glee that comes from simply creating something new and doing something better.It was an epiphany that changed my approach. Instead of obsessing about not losing what I had, I shifted to focusing on making the course better, even if just by a little bit. It was a liberating shift that restored the joy of preparation that had formerly guided me. I had fun again! And, most important, the course did in fact improve. I certainly acknowledge fear as a powerful motivator for all of us. I'm as subject to it as anyone. But the dark side of motivation by fear is that it is like a powerful stimulant: it can jolt you for a while, but it also inevitably leaves you more drained than before. 

Wanting to survive—to merely avoid losing what we have—is not a goal that can motivate over the long haul. It offers no promise of forward motion, of accomplishment. (You can't ever finish "not losing" something—until, that is, you're not alive to "not lose" it anymore.) Indeed, had Beethoven focused primarily on not losing his stature after the Third Symphony, rather than pushing further, I suspect we would not have the Fifth or the Ninth symphonies. And Beethoven would not have becomeBeethoven. So the next time you encounter a "Change or die!" lecture, in print or in person, remember the words of Royal Robbins, the great rock climber who pioneered ascents of Yosemite's big walls: The point is not to avoid death - if you want to do that, simply stay on the ground. The point is to reach the top, and then keep on climbing.

Copyright © 1998 Jim Collins, All rights reserved.