People do not leave jobs, they leave their bosses

This is my 5th article to be featured in the Straits Times and it all started from a controversial topic on why people leave their jobs. In my experience working with clients, I noticed that most people often leave their jobs because of their bosses.

Read what are the top reasons why they leave and how to avoid people leaving your organization.

You can read download the article here.

You can read other related articles that were featured in the Straits Times:

Do Motivational Talks Really Work? (Appeared on Straits Times, Recruit- 21 May 2010)

Build Trust With Your Team (Appeared on Straits Times, Recruit- 22 Mar 2010)

Build A Successful Team (Appeared on Straits Times, Recruit- 26 Feb 2010)

Go From Good To Great (Appeared on Straits Times, Recruit- 17 Apr 2009)

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Dedicating to yourself to your personal development goals is a great step in the right direction. When I talk about personal development, it means dedicating time to learn work on your mental fitness, health, skills and knowledge.

Upon completing these goals, you may notice that you have gained some sideline spectators as well. In most cases, you are catching their attention because of the changes you are making. I frequently think that success breeds more success. This means that when we have achieved a small level of success with our work, we tend to have people attracted to what we do. For example, when I started gaining small successes in the speaking industry, I started to get more offers to speak in different countries and seminars.

By gaining someone’s attention, you are serving as an inspiration to others. This often happens naturally and is another big commitment. You have committed to be consistent with your actions and to serve as a role model for others to follow.

If you want to make the most out of this occurrence and really impact other people’s lives positively, you can use the steps below. These steps are designed to create an amazing life:

1. Passion and excitement: A person will usually only serve as an inspiration to others if they are passionate and love what they do. It is a known fact that the more excited someone is about something, the more they will excel in their work. What makes you passionate? Does it excite other people to pursue theirs as well?

2. Goal Setting: Always set goals for what you are looking to achieve. The use of goals has proven to be very effective and allows for a greater commitment factor. It is important to make them detailed so you know when you have actually reached the goal. You can then celebrate the accomplishment of that goal and move on to create another. This will not only keep you motivated, but show others that goals are attainable. In addition, this will get people to draw their inspiration from you and desire for more out of their lives.

3. Go big or go home! You need to set goals to push your limits. By doing so, you will achieve more and really shine to yourself and others. The important thing to keep in mind is to make sure you are not creating goals that are unrealistic. There is a distinct line between goals that are challenging versus those that are just not plausible (eg. walk on the moon without a breathing apparatus).

Another aspect to keep in mind with very challenging goals is to make sure you measure them by performance. In other words, the outcome might not have been the outcome you wanted but you gave your best performance in achieving it. This means that you might fail at times, but knowing that you have given your best shot at it, it is alright to fail. You just need to change completely or modify your strategy and take massive actions on it. Which leads to the point 4 below.

4. Consistency and Persistency: To be truly exceptional, you have to make sure you are reaching goals. Be continuous in your efforts in reaching challenging goals. The harder you work for the goal, the more you will appreciate it. Moreover, persistence, as seen from an outsider, is what really motivates and inspires someone. This persistency in handling problems is what is termed as Adversity Quotient (AQ), where you demonstrate resilience in tough situations. It is not talented people who succeed all the time, but people who have strengthened their AQ over time and are able to keep moving forward even when situations seem bleak or rough.

In my life, I do not always have all the answers, but I know that it is just a matter of time before I find the answers that I seek. I just need to be consistent and persistent in my quest. In my line of work, I never knew it was possible for me to be invited to speak in seminars or even give keynotes because I started out doing small group training (I first started out with only three people in front of me and now it has grown to hundreds) The question I feel is never whether you can or cannot do it, it is always “how can I do it?”. Persistency will pay off if you keep at striving for different ways to make it work. Will you decide to be relentless?

5. Share what you know: It is important, as an inspiration to others, that you share knowledge you have. Let people know how you did it and encourage them just the same. I have personally found that some people just need you to light the fire in their hearts and they will start their search for greatness.

It is important to remember that you need to keep a positive attitude and always look to the future. With doing this, you will not only enrich your life, but you will do the same for others. No man is an island, everything we do affects another person.

Make a decision to inspire someone today! Who will they be? Do leave your comments.

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As society gets more and more busy, we realize that we are constantly pressured to do more and more in lesser time. Sometimes when we look at the end of each week, we notice that we have put in so much time at work but did not know where it went? Where did it all go and was it worth it?

As a results oriented individual, I’m always experimenting different ways to make myself more productive and efficient. I do not want to just simply put in more hours at work but rather, seek to make better use of the time that I have.

Here are the 54 no frills way of improving your productivity right now!

Habits

1. Hermit Time. You need to allocate a time slot where you will totally be undisturbed and being incommunicable (just like a hermit).

2. Momentum is key! Remember that there is always momentum when you work. It is very important to ensure that the momentum is not disrupted by other things, e.g. phone calls, checking emails, people stopping by to talk to you and etc. Once the momentum is lost, it will take some time to get it back.

3. I-can’t-see-you. Turn off anything that distracts, i.e. Instant messengers, TV, newspapers, facebook, twitter and etc.

4. Stop multi-tasking. There is a white paper that says that it makes you stupid, impatient and reduce your concentration ability. Doing one thing at a time also makes you focused to accomplish a task quickly and to high standards.

5. Stop being a perfectionist. You can take whole day to ensure that small little things are in order, but is that effective?

6. Say “NO”. Taking more things doesn’t make you more focused or effective if you are already struggling with the amount of things to do. There are always more things to do, but it should not be done at the expense of what is the main purpose of your job.

7. Performance Reviews. Conduct self evaluations at the end of each day and ask how you would have done it better.

8. Maximizing “On the go time”. When you are traveling, can you listen to a CD or MP3s to educate yourself?

9. Buzzword is Effectiveness. Remember that activity does not mean accomplishment. You can be doing a lot of things and running around in circles. Strive to be effective first before being efficient.

10. Effectiveness Percentage. Calculate your Efficiency percentage= [ (Time doing Real Work¹) / (Time spent at work²) ] x 100%. Where ¹ is the amount of time you actually spend doing real work, while ² is the office hours you put in. You will be wise to improve efficiency percentage by maximizing your time.

11. Invest in yourself. Read, attend courses or seminars that will make you think faster, make better decisions and improve your gut feel for things.

12. Avoid information overload. Today’s society tends to give us too much information about things that we rarely use. Unsubscribe yourself from websites or reduce reading newspaper content. Read only relevant ones that impact you.

13. Schedule Pit Stops. Even a high performance car in the F1 needs to enter a pit stop to refuel and change tires. They do it so that they will continue running at an optimum speed. You need  your rest so that you can carry on working better.

Daily organization

14. Plan ahead. Create a task list of things to do by the morning. Put check boxes next to them so that it will encourage you to complete them.

15. Finish by 12pm. Do the important tasks as quickly as possible before lunch time.

16. Schedule dailies. If you set aside time on a task or habit, you will tend to finish the long waited book, losing weight or learn an entirely new sport.

17. Spell Deadlines. Give yourself deadlines to everything you do. Remember that deadlines are spelled as deadlines, not datelines. Cross the line and you are dead.

18. Break-up. Break up huge tasks into smaller sizes. This prevents procrastination and getting lost in the immensity of a task. Finishing small bite sizes of work tends to be much easier to manage.

19. Peg time limits to each task. This prevents you from using too much time to finish a task.

20. Keep files for everything. This will prevent you from looking around for lost documents.

21. Prioritize your work. What is urgent may not always be important.

22. Ignore doing, if possible. Before you do anything, ask yourself if you really need to do it? Sometimes the consequences of not doing anything may be acceptable. There are some things that do not even need to be done.

23. P-Cycle. Decide when your most productive time is. There are personal cycles of productivity and you should schedule your most important tasks at that time.

24. Batch your work- If you batch your work into chunks, it might be easier to manage. Think of all the functions of your job scope and complete it a chunk at a time, e.g. make phone calls, run errands or clear administrative work.

25. Be like e good chef. Before a chef cooks, he has all the ingredients laid out before him already. Gather all the resources and tools before you start to work.

26. Cross-pollination. Bring good ideas or best practices from other industries and ask if they can be applied to yours as well.

Emails

27. Stop excessive emailing checking: Check your emails only twice or at maximum three times a day. Excessive checking of emails tends to make you waste time.

28. Act on all emails immediately: Do it by deleting or replying to them. Do not try to read an email first and then decide to reply later. This makes you waste time in re-reading emails.

29. Short and sharp. Reduce the length of emails so that other people do not find it too daunting to read and you will also save time in the process of crafting it as well.

30. Boilerplate. Use them for frequent questions or repetitive proposals. Boilerplates are essentially templates to typical questions or proposals without having to constantly reinventing the wheel.

31. Craft subject lines clearly. Since most people decide to open emails based on subject lines, it is important that you need to write relevant and descriptive subject lines.

32. Number your points. It helps to ease reading and guide others to reply according to your points.

Communication

33. Quick Chat. Strive for the quickest and most effective way of communication. A one minute conversation one-to-one phone call can deliver the better results than you making a lengthy reply through emails or Short Messaging Service (SMS).

34. Clarity of speech. Be clear on your thoughts and purpose for every conversation. Most people don’t communicate well because they do not know what they want to achieve from every conversation. Communication is considered effective only when the recipient receives your intended meaning.

Meetings

35. Do I need to be there? Always ask if you really need to attend the meeting before hand. Some meetings are just for information and you can just read the minutes after the meeting.

36. Agendarise everything. Ensure there is an agenda in all meetings. This is to make meetings purposeful and clear.

37. Time Limit. Decide that you will end the meeting at an appointed time. This helps reduce unnecessary conversations.

38. Homework. Before you do anything new, consider talking to people first. You can save precious time from avoiding mistakes that other people have committed.

Work Environment

39. Conducive Environment. Maintain a work environment that encourages you to work. Distractions from people or a messy table might affect you. Think through about what items need to be close/far from you to encourage you to work better.

40. Adequate Lighting. Ensure that there is enough lighting to avoid eyestrains.

41. Good ergonomics. Ergonomics is defined as the science of measurement and a person’s relationship to it. You should have good posture in everything you use. This includes desk, height of computer, distance of the computer from your eyes, your feet resting comfortably flat on the floor and etc.

Outsourcing or Delegation

42. Value Generation. Consider out-sourcing or delegating part of your work out if you feel that it does not bring generate the most value for your company. Can part timers or personal assistants help? Anything repetitive can usually be outsourced easily.

43. Need a freelancer? You can outsource your work (almost anything can be done there) to professionals from other countries at a reasonable price. Try elance.com or getafreelancer.com.

44. Hire good people and get out of their way. Be clear on their job descriptions and how they add value to the company. Coach them to succeed and empower them to make decisions so that they can improve your company’s effectiveness.

Personal motivation

45. Hang out. Stick with people who inspire you to take positive action in life. Identify friends or colleagues that inspire you to take massive action to improve your life. I’m sure that if you were to hang around with Bill Gates, Warren Buffet or Steve Jobs, you will want to do something significant with your life!

46. Get pumped up. Staying motivated is extremely important in getting you to complete long duration tasks. Realise what keeps you motivated and constantly remind yourself of it.

47. Mantra Mantra. Recite “Do it now” again and again until you are too tired to hear another time and get it done.

48.Get a personal mentor or coach. They will help you identify your blind spots and coach you to overcome them and focus on what you do best.

49. Reward yourself. Give yourself a reward when you achieve certain milestones in your work. This will give you incentive to work harder the next time.

50. Practice makes permanence. The more time you spend in doing something, the better you become. This reduces the amount of time to do it again. Hey, being good at something also pays well too!

Computer Techniques

51. Better software skills. Consider upgrading your software skills and learn short-cuts and hot keys to finish a task faster.

52. Email consolidation. Programs like Gmail has the ability to consolidate several email addresses into a main account. This means that you can avoid logging into too many email accounts and asking yourself if your email is placed in which account.

53. WPM. Improve your typing speed (measured in Words Per Minute). Secretaries to learn how to touch type (which means typing without looking at keys) and tend to be faster than anyone else. You can type faster by memorising the keyboard and using all your fingers.

54. Use updated tools. Ensure that the software and hardware tools are all updated so that they can function at an optimum speed. A computer with a good processing speed and internet connection speed is essential to ensure that it does not impede your work.

PS: If you have new ideas that you think should be included in this blog post, do leave your comments here. Do share about which one above you feel resonates within your soul.

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