Positive Mind Means Positive Living

Posted on September 4, 2010 by Wayne

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People who measure themselves with others’ scales always fall short, but those who measure themselves with their own scales measure up. – dokwayne

There is no point of comparing what we can do with what others are doing. It’s true we learn from other people. We look up to them, and they inspire us. That sounds sound. But when we begin to belittle our capabilities because of what lacks us, that’s insecurity, or worse yet, envy.

It’s a natural feeling for humans to sometimes feel unworthy. We are not impeccable. We commit mistakes continually. In words or in actions we hurt ourselves, and we hurt other people. We fail ourselves. We fall short to goals. We are rejected and feel dejected. Do these things make you feel stumbled, unimportant? Think again.

If we are the same, there is no variety. The secret of creativity is diversity. Most organizations which have diverse groups of people are more innovative. Diversity is a prolific source of ideas. Different backgrounds, races, colors, make up a good soil to creative idea to germinate. Be glad you’re different. You are unique.

Do not say that you are weak and incompetent either. Who you are right now is what the role you play in the society, organization you belong, and in the family circle. If you are weak, why do you exist in the first place? When your father brought you to existence, he ejaculated approximately 300 million sperm cells. There was only one fertilized your mother’s egg — that was you. You were once a mighty sperm cell. You outdid the other millions. See? How powerful you are.

Think positive of what you are. Capitalize and concentrate on your strengths rather than dwelling your minds on your limitations. Look up to others that they might serve as examples to follow, never allow them underestimate you.

by: Sherwin Ragos

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Managing Crisis @ ezinearticles.com

Posted on September 2, 2010 by Wayne

Recently, my first ever article submitted to ezinearticles.com was approved and went live. I was moved to write the article because of the incident happened last August 23, 2010 at the Quirino grandstand — the manila hostage drama — wherein 8 people lost their lives. It was a sad story. It really was a crisis.

If we can only undo what had been done, we could have done so. Since it’s irreversible, what is within our grasp is acceptance and be able to move forward and learn from it. It might be a hard learning experience but it is still learning in the first place. We grieve at the demise of those foreigners and share the feelings of the bereaved as well as of their whole country.

It’s September. Few days from now we will commemorate 9/11. Of the same vein, it was a crisis that never forgotten. It will always be remembered. Why? It’s not only because of the remorse and excruciating pain it brought to many. More importantly, we saw how it solidified us — the humanity. Many things have changed since then. It proves one thing that is certain, we have learned a lot and learning still.

These underpin the fact that life on earth is unpredictable. We have deciphered the seemingly undecipherable, understood the supposed incomprehensible, achieved what is somewhat unattainable, but we are still left no prescience. There must be someone powerful, the omnipotent and omniscient who can reverse our predicaments and to erase them completely from our memory. It is God’s business so to speak!

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A Review on Crisis Management

Posted on August 31, 2010 by Wayne

Almost every crisis contains within itself the seeds of success as well as the roots of failure.

Crisis is not always detrimental to business organizations. It is an opportunity to manifest how strong they are amidst difficult times. As one saying goes: “Calm seas never make a skillful sailor”, when the water is stormy, seafarers are tested and their resolve is challenged.

Crisis is an event; it is a painful and difficult event. At some point in the lives of many people, crises happen and did happen during the most unexpected time. But we are not left altogether empty-handed during such turbulent times of our lives. Along with it are opportunities, exceptional benefit when they are managed properly.

It is but illogical to say that crisis needs to be managed when it is not an organizational resource. But think again… Crises happen to people, money, machines, materials, methods, data, and info. These are important organizational resources that proper management must be instituted, so the evolution of crisis management. Crisis management is a field of management that embodies the managerial functions from planning to implementation and evaluating what have been executed. Putting these principles and theories in action is managing crisis.

In his article in the Harvard Business Review on Crisis Management, Norman Augustine identified stages in managing crisis: Avoiding crisis, preparing to manage the crisis, recognizing the crisis, containing the crisis, resolving the crisis, and profiting the crisis.

Avoiding Crisis

The essence to this first stage is prevention. Most of the crises that had blown away business organizations could have been prevented. Avoiding the crisis is the least costly and the simplest way to control a potential crisis.

Prevention

  • Make a list of everything that could attract troubles to the business, consider the possible consequences, and estimate the cost of prevention.
  • We usually cannot seek revenue growth without also expecting increases in expenses; we cannot encourage risk taking and then be surprised if some of the risks result in greater exposure.

There are things that could attract the occurrence of crisis much as “tornadoes are caused by trailer parks,” When we speak of natural disasters, we are not simply speaking of dramatic display of natural forces. Every year there are thousands of earthquakes, large and small, and dozens of storms, cyclones, hurricanes, typhoons, volcanic eruptions, and other violent phenomena that do nothing more than become statistics in some record books. However, when such events cause great destruction of the normal way of life, they become disasters. Avoiding issues or controversies that could put the business in crisis can be very helpful in this stage of crisis management

Crisis prevention is costly, but dealing with a malignant crisis would make the cost negligible. As the economic reasoning go: “If the relevant marginal cost is greater than the relevant marginal benefit, don’t do it, if the relevant marginal benefit is greater than the relevant marginal cost, do it.”

Avoiding crisis also involves discretion and privacy. If you need to maintain secrecy, limit involvement to as few people as possible and certainly only to those whose discretion can be trusted absolutely. The real problem, however, is that perfect prevention is perfectly unattainable.

Preparing to manage the crisis

Managing crisis should involve plans how to deal with a variety of undesirable outcomes if disaster does strike. Plans can be an action plans, communication plans, fire drills or drills, essential relationships, crisis teams, and contingency plans. At this stage, a manager should view and plan for the inevitability of a crisis. Crisis, therefore, is anticipated, planned, and practiced.

Stephen Covey, the author of 7 habits of highly effective people, said that “all things are created twice.” They are first created on the mind and that is conceptual creation. When we plan for crises, we simulate as if they already happened. When they did happen, we’re no longer surprised of their occurrence because as if they already happened before.

Communications is also critical in difficult times. The best-laid plans are worthless if they cannot be communicated. Much is needed when things went wrong. Especially, some were left no one to turn to during such times.

Recognizing the crisis

One habit that causes crisis is wishful thinking. When there is a problem, we say, “There is no problem. Everything will be all right.” We make pretense that there is no problem while in fact there is a problem. We tend to postpone dealing with the crisis, because we were taught to avoid unpleasant situations and go first with the easy ones.

Problem definition is important in this stage of managing crisis. In systems approach to problem solving you start looking for the questions or problems before you look for answers. When ever you say the problem is out there, that very thought is the problem.

Containing the crisis

This stage of crisis management requires triage: stopping the hemorrhaging. In this phase decisiveness is critical—and the timeless advice of Yogi Berra is sound: Some reasonable, decisive action is almost always better than no action at all. Tough decisions have to be made and made fast. In business, though, “good decisions do not necessarily guarantee good outcomes. Dealing with the crisis, is also stating clearly that you do not know all facts. Then promptly state the facts you do know. One’s objective   should to get it right, get it quick, get it out and get it over.

Resolving the crisis

“Even if you’re in the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” In this stage, speed is of the essence. A crisis simply will not wait. For instance, when there was a bad publicity escalating in 1970’s about M&M’s red dye coat of chocolate that has carcinogenic substance that can cause cancer, they pulled out the product from the market. You really need to resolve the crisis and do something about it before it is too late.

Profiting from the crisis

The final stage in crisis management is making lemonade from the abundance of available lemons. At the outset, we described crisis as an opportunity rather than a threat. Taking advantage to the opportunities can bring exceptional benefit to the business. This is an opportunity to recoup some losses at least partially and begin to repair the dislocations.

“Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.” – Oscar Wilde

There can be no better way in learning than to experience it. Learning it the hard way is still learning. Pictures would mean a thousand words but experience would mean a thousand pictures. If we learned from experiences, we become braver, stronger. And the next time we encounter the same problems or crises; we are prepared to face them without hesitations.

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Socioeconomic Model of Micro and Small Entrepreneurship

Posted on August 29, 2010 by Wayne

A business is an entity that has a distinct personality apart from its creators. It exists because of factors that are inseparable and interwoven. As a system, a business can interact with its environment and adapts itself to the changes it brings. A business should work towards existence, and avoid extinction.

Creation Factors

These factors are the reason for existence. Whether stated formally or informally, explicit or implied, the creation factors are fire within that led to the business existence and continuance to struggle to avoid extinction.

The three corners of the triangle signify the vision, mission, and goals of a business.

Internal Key Players

To unleash the fire within and propel that business towards realization of the vision, mission, and goals, there are internal key players—owners, employees, and customers.

The business’ internal key players are characterized. The owners have entrepreneurial qualities, the employees have the skills and potentials, and the customers have the craving for services for needs and wants satisfaction and benefits.

Core Factors

The arrows signify the interactions that take place. Owner-employee interaction takes place because the owner needs manpower, and employee needs salaries for economic reasons. Employee-customer interaction takes place because the employee is the service provider and the customer is the service receiver. Owner-customer interaction takes place because the owner is interested in the customer’s needs and wants to cater, and the customer is interested of continuous service satisfaction which the owner is in control.

Internal Factors

As pointed in the study, there are internal factors that support the internal key players and the core factors. These are profits, efficiency, and business sustainability. The internal factors are not mutually exclusive. When efficiency is achieved, more profits come in, and these two would sustain the business socioeconomic activities.

External Factors

External environment: market, technological, governmental, and societal exerts pressure on the business. These pressures are in the form of opportunities and threats that the business can exploit or avert. In turn, the business gives back to the environment socioeconomic contributions.

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Managing crisis

Posted on August 25, 2010 by Wayne

A risk is a potential problem. When it happens, the risk becomes a problem. When the problem gets tough, it turns into a crisis. Crisis is a difficult situation. What makes it difficult? It is when life is at stake. Do you think the hostage drama at Quirino grandstand a crisis? If you do, you’re right. Lives were taken and that would make it really tough.

Crisis management is as important as risk management. But a crisis has different level of urgency. We need to act quickly in a crisis or we might be run over by it.  Crisis management sprung from the uncertainties in the world — from natural calamity to terrorism. More than ever, we need to manage crisis.

Prevention. As the saying goes: “an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.” To avoid a crisis, let us avoid its causes. In order to prevent car accident, you simply don’t drive a car. If you want to avoid being hijacked in a bus, avoid riding on a bus. Simple. But of course in life, you can’t avoid all things. Don’t tell me, only to avoid accident you go to work or school on foot.

Drills. Practice makes perfect. Do not practice, however, during crisis. As I have said, a crisis is urgent. It demands quick response. We need to anticipate it. Do some fire, earthquake, terrorism, hijack drills. Drill, drill, drill…

Crisis Management Team. The team members must know they belong to the team. They know their roles. Team leaders should know where and how to contact his members. One important criterion of a crisis management team members is: speed.

“Every crisis is an opportunity, an opportunity to manifest how strong we are. A ship cannot be tested on calm waters. It is when the water is stormy that a ship becomes mighty.”

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Horses, reading, tools, and other old paradigms

Posted on August 23, 2010 by Wayne

by: Sherwin Ragos

We have been persuaded by the belief that “new paradigms” are better than “old paradigms.”  Paradigms are mental models how we see the world. They affect our minds and in turn the way we behave. Do old or traditional ways really lost their charm? That conventional things no longer fit the modern world?

Reading. When “Sesame Street” was introduced in  television, it is believed that it could revolutionized learning of children. Reading would become a secondary method of acquiring knowledge. When computers become ubiquitous, many had predicted that time would come when we’ll no longer read on paper. That when paperless society ushers in, bookstores will decline and that industry will come into a denouement. Did we forsake the old way? As we get more IT savvy the more we use papers. There may be proliferation of e-books but sales of bookstores inexorably increasing. We still love our novels on paperback and reading is still one of the most enjoyable intellectual activities for young and old alike.

English language. I remember my English teachers painstakingly let me and my classmates read orally paragraphs of an article or short story in a book. It was not only during elementary or high school days, it went on until college. There has been an observable decline of English proficiency among Filipino students. The culprit could be the new paradigm of technology. Most college instructors provide hand-outs, annotated or slide-format, or simply photocopied books. After that, help yourself!

Horse. Horses had their days. They were once major transporters.  Carriages are pulled by horses for many centuries. Cars, motorcycles, buses, and other land transports gradually replaced the horses. Did we completely discard the horses? Not at all. Didn’t you know that horses were used to reach some terrorists or the taliban in the middle east? At mines’ view Baguio City, you can have nice pictures with what? Horses. See? Horses are indispensable.

Tools. The ax was outdone by more advanced tools like chainsaw and other cutting tools. But, what did the SWAT team use in a hostage drama at Quirino grandstand to contain the crisis? Ax!

We can utilize both paradigms, old and new, in juxtapose with each other. We can shift from one model to another and back. Do not forget the basics. Embrace the new yet stick firmly to the old.

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Bottled water, is it right for you?

Posted on August 20, 2010 by Wayne

“This once free commodity, now became a multi-million dollar business.”

I watched bottled water video many times since I downloaded it last year from itunes U. I shared it with my marketing class. “Bottled Water” is a product that never existed before, 2 or 3 decades ago. Water was free. Clean water was accessible. This once free commodity, now became a multi-million dollar business.

Why do we pay much for a supposed to be free? Bottling water incurs much costs. First, sourcing the water.  The source of water maybe from lakes, glaciers, or ordinary tap water. Second, the purification or the distillation process. The water undergoes these processes and becomes distilled or purified, or simply “glorified tap water.” Third, the plastic container. It requires much energy to bottle a water. The cost pushes the price high. Now, consumers carry the burden for safe drinking water.

How about the bottle after we emptied it? Others recycle it. Caution: several reuse of the bottle will make the lid toxic. If you can’t reuse it, you throw them in the trash bin or it might be sold for recycling back to China and becomes plastic products like toys, chairs, etc.

Bottled water, is it for you? Think again.

The bottle lid is toxic when reuse -- Open University

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SPSS and its role in statistical analysis for a positivist business research

Posted on August 18, 2010 by Wayne

“When data become tremendous, SPSS is more reliable than MS Excel.”

SPSS or Statistical Packages for Social Sciences is the most commonly used software for statistical data manipulation. When data become tremendous, SPSS is more reliable than MS Excel. I have been using SPSS since graduate school days when I was pursuing a doctoral degree. I become more interested on statistics because, aside from it’s one of my fave subjects in the undergrad, I am forced also to teach it in the college of business and accountancy. Hence, I am forced to study it.

Last year, I ordered an SPSS book over the internet. While reading a TIME magazine article, I came across www.abebooks.com that sells used and unused books. The book came all the way from the US and it took 3 months to reached the Philippines. It’s ironic that I got tired waiting and then I received it only for shelving in many months. It took almost a year also before I found time to unshelve and read it.

Now, I finished the first 3 chapters of the book. I am able to apply it on the researches I am part of. There is convenience in the data analysis. However, the user does the interpretation. When you’ll use it you still need the aid of an statistician for the interpretation. The statistical tools needed as well should be determined by an expert.

In the data entry and declaration of variables, a basic knowledge of application software is a must. SPSS is, nevertheless, user-friendly. It’s also in GUI or graphical user interface — it has menus, icons, windows, and pointing device to utilize it.

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How leaders use their intuitive powers

Posted on August 15, 2010 by Wayne

www.famouspeople.com

You are probably a leader in your organization. Or you might be an instigator of change or a “change-catalyst” maybe in your family circle, school, church or institution. You initiate change and you want to make a difference. Hence, you are a leader in your respective position. Being a leader is being a decision-maker and a problem-solver. Where to cling to when you are bombarded with decisions or choices to make? When problems arise or when opportunities come? Can you rely on your intuition?  You might be surprised with your intuitive powers when you were able to unleash them. So get acquainted with the power within that you unknowingly possessing them. Here are some reservoirs:

Emotions. Don’t you know that in split-seconds our snap judgment on things can even be more reliable? That is, what you see and what you feel in the first two seconds can be a “thin-sliced” of the whole thing. You might not believe in first impressions but they could be true. Sometimes inexplicable they may seem but when you decide on certain matters, what you feel about them and how they appear to you are what they really are. Trust your snap judgment. I have trusted on it that’s why I came up with this thing. It’s just a thin-sliced however.

Past experiences. Sensation-perception or the empiricism philosophy underscores experiences as a source of knowledge. When you are faced with pressing recurring problems that demands ad hoc responses, you could arrive at solutions based on your past experiences. What you did in the past that worked in solving a problem might work again in a current situation. Remember, you won’t need complex mathematical models to decide on intricate problems. Just sit back and go over your previous strategies.

Cognition.   What if you encounter a non-recurring, new problem that you haven’t experienced it yet in the past? Well, the mind has reasoning power and understanding. As you acquire knowledge, your level of understanding elevates. When a problem you are facing is something new, then it requires a solution that is something new. Your previous experiences won’t work this time so you need devising a creative and novel strategy. According to Albert Einstein, “Imagination is more important than knowledge because knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world.”

Qualitative approach like the use of intuition is a powerful tool in solving difficult problems and in deciding on whether or not to take advantage to opportunities. It is built-in and it doesn’t require sophisticated formula. All you need is to listen with your eyes and learn to trust on what you see and what you feel. It is a guide like compass, it always points the north. But it needs to be readjusted every now and then, because it becomes callous when wrongfully exposed and misused. So use it properly so as not to lose it.

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Pros and Cons of EzTest Online at dokwayne.com

Posted on August 12, 2010 by Wayne

Now, students can take quizzes or exams anywhere they are as long as they have access to the internet.

Eztestonline is a site by McGraw Hill. It is an academic support for instructors as well as students. Now, students can take quizzes or exams anywhere they are as long they have access to the internet. The online test allows instructors to prepare tests of any type — alternative type or even essay type questions. They might take the questions from the test bank provided by McGraw Hill, formulate their own questions or import questions from a text file. Its convenience lies on the checking. The system does the checking. A grade book where scores are stored can be downloaded in an excel file and then incorporated to the class record.

I started using eztestonline almost 2 years ago. It took me a couple of years to familiarize the system. Now, almost all of the subjects I teach such as management information systems, professional salesmanship, special topics in human resources management, organizational development, recruitment and selection, human behavior in organization, market research and development, and feasibility study have eztestonline. My students can partake in the quiz at their convenience.

Cheating and unnecessary collaboration of students during the test can be minimized through settings. Online settings can be time pressured, one way navigation, and one submission only.

There are, of course, disadvantages of online test aside from dishonesty. Physical risks such as power failure, slow computer, slow internet access or bandwidth. Since, my students are business majors they should know how to take the risks. After all, business is risk.

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