October 2017: Why is it important to challenge your assumptions? All human activities, be it in business or in personal life, involve some sort of assumptions. Those assumptions are a main source of risks, unless they are questioned and validated and accounted for in plans. The problem with assumptions is when they are taken as facts and decisions are made on that basis. So, as a best practice, assumptions should be factored out, documented, discussed, and validated, then continually reviewed and checked for validity as work progresses throughout the activity under consideration. Validation of assumptions is done based on assessment of accuracy, reliability, probability, and impact, and it is done by the team in charge of managing the endeavor. Don't wonder when you analyze some failure to find it eventually boiling down to some wrong assumption that went overlooked.
September 2017: Is it possible to fear from success? May be surprising, but many people suffer from this. Fear from success is one of the limiting factors that prevent people from achieving their full potential. For example, the fear that makes you reluctant in taking a promotion, expanding operations, or pursuing a new project. Reasons behind this counter-intuitive feeling is usually related to consequences of success, things like lack of confidence of the ability to fulfill what it takes to sustain success, worries about competition fight back, or even desire to avoid visibility. Fear of success is simply because of 'False Evidence Appearing Real'. To overcome this prohibiting psychological state, make sure you do your upfront homework in analyzing and studying your opportunities, exploring risks, and making an informed decision by considering all available alternatives.
August 2017: Do you learn from your failures? Failures are almost always perceived as negative occurrences, and they actually are, but at the same time failures are a rich source of experience and learning to build your personal or organizational accumulated knowledge. Successes are the fruit of a series of trying, experimenting, failing, and acting upon your learnings and findings out of the repetitive experiences. This is how positive thinkers look at their endeavors, and this is how an endless journey of continual improvement and growth is pursued. Failures vary in size and impact, and could at times cause unrecoverable consequences, however what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, more resilient, and more insightful in your future endeavors. Fear of failure can hold you back from success, so rephrase fear as: Fail Early And Responsibly, to look at failure more positively.
July 2017: Are you a leader or a manager? Sometimes you need to be both, and at times you are mainly a leader or a manager. Leadership is concerned with vision, motivating and mobilizing people to adopt and achieve this vision, by playing a role model and leading by example. This also involves human development aspects of your staff. Management is more execution and results focused, planning and organizing tasks and people to accomplish a target within boundaries. Managers who have direct reports teams will need also to be leaders in working with their teams. Executive directors and senior management have more weight on their leadership side than on management side as they may not be directly managing for execution, but as seniors they are always looked at as leaders to be followed as examples. Balance need to be taken in consideration when playing both roles.
June 2017: In what is Sensitivity Analysis used? Sensitivity Analysis is a popular technique used mainly for the purpose of decision making, like in project assessment or investment appraisal. The key idea of this technique is to understand how end results are affected by (sensitive to) changes in various variables governing the subject of the decision. For example, if you are considering to undertake a new initiative, you consider how the final ROI will be impacted by changes in variables, like initial invested amount, sales price, cost of capital rate, etc. Important here is to make single change at a time, analyzing the impact of a single variable while all others are constant. This can lead to a multitude of scenarios being analyzed in order to understand the safe margins for all variables, and risks associated with changes of values, so that a go/no-go decision can be made for the investment in hand.
May 2017: How arbitration is different from mediation? In business dealings, conflicts happen all too often, and for parties of the conflict to find a resolution, they usually seek judgment by a third party. Unlike litigation in courts that consumes time and costs, arbitration and mediation arrangements are more practical. Arbitration is a more strict process, with the arbitrators being the final decision makers in the case, based on evidence and facts, and sometimes judging by laws, but out of courts, and most likely to yield a win-lose result, legally binding. Mediation is amicable dispute resolution, where decision is reached by consensus for maintaining a win-win result, all parties are involved in a personal environment facilitated by the mediator. In all cases, confidentiality and impartiality are critical success factors for the whole process to be of value.
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