Art vs Science

Is it "art" or "science"?

Many a times, we've heard people said that, for instance leadership is more of an "art" than "science". Whether it is "nature" or "nurture". So are you born to be a leader or can you be trained to become one?

I believe it is both an art and a science.

My interpretation is as follows: its first a science than an art.

Especially in the area of "leadership", if you look at the number of titles on the topic, you'd be overwhelmed. If people are born leaders, then it would be a complete waste of time to read such books. Its either you are or you're not. As simple as that.

However, leadership can be taught; to a large extent.

First, one can acquire an awareness about leadership. Beginning with an awareness helps in understanding what leadership is and what it is not. Many people can tell you that leaders and managers are different. For example, leaders set direction for an organization, while managers ensure that the strategies are executed according to plan.

Next, after gaining an awareness, one can then pick up a certain skill-set of leaders. For instance, we can learn how to set directions, how to come up with a plan. We can also learn some soft-skills like people skills, EQ, how to listen to your people. These constitute a series of learnings, which you can learn from reading a book, to attending a course, to even perhaps watching how other leaders do things.

Now, having learnt all these skills, the next step is to be able to apply them. Knowing alone is just not enough. We must put it into practice. Find an opportunity to practice it. Or perhaps set a goal such as during this week I will practice what I've learnt about "how to listen".

Here, it is where the organization can help. Perhaps, if you have sent your staff on a leadership course, you may want to create the opportunity for your staff to practice those skills. Or perhaps, you want to set aside time to review and coach your staff in this area. You may also get your staff to reflect upon his actions to see how he has applied those skills and to what success.

Of course this could take many forms. A good practice would be to adopt this four-step approach of (1) identifying the opportunities or platforms for the staff to practice or apply those skills. (2) to allow the staff to develop his mastery of those skills. (3) then there must be some ways to evaluate his development of the skills. And finally (4) to acknowledge his progress thus far.

In order to carry this out effectively, specific goals and objectives must be established and agreed upon by the staff and yourself. And certainly, a time frame must be set or it could result in a never ending process.

Now, up until now we have been talking about the science part, where creating the awareness, acquiring the skill-set, and providing the platform for application. From here on will be where the art component will kick in. Much like going from conscious competence to unconscious competence.

How long does this take? It depends. For some it could be faster than others. According to Malcolm Gladwell, in his recent book "Outliers", his thesis of the 10,000 hours of practice is what it takes for someone to go from good to great.

While that is true, I believe it only offers one side of the story. Besides, practice does not make perfect, always. If one has been practising the skills wrongly, then even with the 10,000 hours put in will only make this person really good at being bad.

In order to understand how this can bring out the "art" component requires insights into the person's beliefs, values, attitudes, and identity. Now, I am proposing that unless one truly believes in what he is doing, no number of hours will make a person great.

As such, even through one practice till it becomes an unconscious competence; unless it is aligned to his beliefs and identity he will never become great. Or make it an art.

If you study the lives of great artists, engineers, writers, musicians, teachers; you will find that first and foremost they believe in what they are doing and most importantly, they also see it as their life's work!

Many Japanese great masters spend a lifetime just focusing on the one thing that they do and do it to excellence, if not perfection. And their ability to be creative is just unbelievable.

One such example is O'Sensei Morihei Ueshiba. After spending many years training various forms of martial arts, O'Sensei created a form of martial arts called Aikido. Each time O'Sensei learnt a new martial arts form, he was able to to synthesize what he has learnt with what he already know. Hence making his existing knowledge of martial arts more effective, in terms of executing the moves.

However, O'Sensei did not stop there. In fact, he later on created a new art form called Aikido, where it is now practiced all over the world. And the success with Aikido, I believe, was also the philosophy. Which was what's aligned to O'Sensei's beliefs and identity, such as one should be in harmony with the opponent, and to love the opponent. These were what O'Sensei believed in and also lived by it. And because he believed it and lived by it, he has become synonymous with the philosophy.

Of course he did his 10,000 hours, no doubt.

Hence, to become good at something, be it leadership or Aikido, one can acquire the skills through practice. That's the science part. There are various avenues to acquire those skills; not just knowledge.

But to become great at something, to master the art of it, one must align it to his beliefs and identity. To do that, it requires a whole lot of soul searching. So, to become great, I believe each and everyone of us must first identify what our life's passion is going to be. Or some may say, what's your life's mission or purpose.

For those who wish to embark on this journey; I strongly urge you to read "Purpose Driven Life" by Rick Warren.

Your friend,
Melvyn Tan
(Sent from my Blackberry Bold)

Do You Dream?

I do.

In fact every night before I hit the sack that's when I dream. Yes, I dream before I sleep. Now how's that possible? To dream even before I go into REM?

Well, I dream about my desired outcomes. My goals and visions in my three dimensional roles; personal, people, and professional.

These days my dreams are filled with achieving these goals with the various people in my lives. My wife, my friends, associates, schools we are working with, and schools we will be working with.

In fact, you might like to know that one of my dreams are fast becoming fulfilled way in advance.

Now, of course you've heard about the merits of having your goals written down and have them staring at you (or is it the other way round?) everyday before you sleep and each morning when you awake.

Those of you who have watched "The Secret" would remember the "vision board". For the uninitiated, it is essentially a board (I used the 3M sticky board) where you'd put up pictures of what you want or wish for and stare at it day and night. You've got to also envisage how you would enjoy them; meaning imagine you've already achieved it and how you would feel about it.

Now, there's several reasons for this. Principally, it evokes certain feel-good emotions which will fire up in your brain. Each time you do that, it intensify that feel good emotions. Only condition is, you've gotta do it consistently.

Thinking behind this is, we are all emotional driven beings. Hence, after a period of doing this consistently, you would be driven to take the necessary actions to work towards the goal, hence fulfilling that need for the positive emotions.

You see, emotions come before actions. That's why they say sales is 100% emotions. Only when you feel good about something will you take action.

So how do we apply this in an organizational context?

First, write down all your goals and have them put up on a board that is visible to all. Yes, you can make it colourful and pretty but essentially it must make people want to look at it.

Second, ask your team to talk about these goals. How they would feel if these goals are met (emotions). What it means to them (purpose). Then align the emotions to the purposes. Because unless it really means to something to them, they will not be motivated to do something towards the achievements of those goals.

Third, ask the people what they can do to work towards these goals (behaviors). Have them brainstorm and discuss how they can contribute towards these goals (checking for alignment to their purposes).

Fourth, pre-schedule regular meetings to share about their progress (reflect); celebrate the successes and also identify what else can be done to help them work towards these goals (clear the way for them by giving them the support they need).

I've found this to be extremely useful. So, go on and start dreaming.

Sweet dreams, my friends.

Respectfully yours,
Melvyn Tan
(Sent from my Blackberry Bold)

The importance of testing assumptions

Behavioral economist Dan Ariely’s talk from the TED conference, where he discusses about the importance of testing assumptions through experiments - something very relevant for innovation.



Respectfully yours,
Melvyn Tan

Ben Franklin

For those of you who have been working with me will notice that I am a great fan of FranklinCovey. I'm like a slave to FC; bags, planning tools, organizer. FC, as you probably know, was a merger between two great companies, Franklin Leadership and Covey Leadership. Most of you would be familiar with Covey as the author of the 7 Habits.

What most of you might not know is Franklin Leadership, or Benjamin Franklin. Franklin, who at 26, thought he was a failure. If you read some of his accomplishments at that age, you wouldn't think he is a failure. But that's what he thought about himself. (Did you know that he invented the flippers?)

So, he took some time off and thought about what he's going to do about it. And he listed 12 virtues (we would have called it values) that he wanted to live by. So he showed it to a friend and the friend suggested that he should include a 13th; humility.

Hence he took those 13 virtues and written down statements that clarify what they meant. Following that, he decided to work on them but not all at once. He decided to work on one each week. Word has it that he worked only on the initial 12. Reason why he didn't work on the 13th was it wasn't his. It was suggested to him by that friend. Joke has it that with what he had accomplished, he couldn't be humble about it!

This idea has been adapted some what by Schools in Singapore; where they will work on one value for a month or a week. What they seek to do is to infuse it into the lessons, take about it during the assembly programs, or even have themes around these values. One school we know, actually created a number of action characters that embodied these values that children can identify with. They even have a story book on the characters so that the parents can read those stories to their child at home; hence reinforcing those values inculcation programs.

One main challenges that many face is the issue of "how do you know when you get there" and also "how do you know if the programs are effective". In actual fact, the key thing to do is to have clear descriptors; like how Franklin did it, so that we all know and can visualize how each value, when it is being manifested, looks like.

As the manifestation fo these values are behaviors; we can then append a certain way of spotting those behaviors. For instance, if learning and growth is one of our values; then we must be able to describe what kind of behaviors would we expect to see. For instance, we could say that; staff are engaged in different forms of trainings, they are seen to be sharing these learnings at various platforms, and they demonstrate mastery of those learnings through the development of teaching packages.

Now, behaviors; especially new behaviors will not happen automatically as people are used their old ways of doing things, they are not sure if these new ways might work, or they could be so caught up in day-to-day activities that it just doesn't happen.

If in doubt, let's say you would like to start an exercise regime, where you would exercise at least three times a week and each time for at least 30 minutes. Now, unless you schedule time for the exercise; or if you sign up for an exercise class, chances are you are going to find it hard to comply, let alone meet. Or perhaps, you could engage in the exercises but when there seems to be other pressing needs (like reports to do) we often time would forgo the run.

Likewise, if we expect people to engage in a new set of behaviors, we ought to provide the platforms and structures to facilitate those new behaviors. It could be setting aside one-day a week for trainings, or it could be a learning fest, or it could be a white-space for staff. Toyota, for instance, gave their employees one hour a day to just reflect and think of ways to improve current processes. Imagine if you don't provide the platforms, how on earth would they find time within their working hours to do this?

Having said that, there must be a way to know if that platform is effective. Short of being there to measure or gauge its success, we ought to identify clear objectives of these platforms. For instance, if white-space is a platform, and to measure effectiveness; we got to ask ourselves what was the reason we provided that in the first instance?

Once we are able to answer that questions, these then become our objectives. Such as, to discuss or share curriculum matters during white space; then we have to measure some form of activities or outcomes that can lead us to say that the platforms were effective. Otherwise, we could all be doing it diligently but unless we know whether it was effective, we can't make improvements or even scrap the platforms to make way for something else.

Hence, my own review of my weekly planning process based on Franklin's methodology is; start each week by committing to live by a value each week. Look at what are the ways that can reinforce living by that value. Also, look for the opportunities during the week that can allow me to put that commitment to the test and push my limits. After each week, to review my activities and behaviors based on that value. Then move on.

Respectfully yours,
Melvyn Tan
(Sent from my Blackberry Bold)

Change - A Leadership Choice

You often hear people say, well I gotta do this, I have no choice. Usually when someone says that to me, my question would be "what if you didn't do it?" or "who says you have no choice?"

Often the reply would be, "well, then I ..." You fill in the blanks as you'd probably been there before.

I was listening to the audio training CD by John Maxwell on "Leading through Change" and I think he have an excellent point.

Usually when change happens, we have four choices actually. We can (a) change it, (b) leave it, (c) live with it, or (d) change self.

Give you some examples; (a) change it: when something happens we can choose to change it. For instance when you find that you are now tasked with more projects and hence have less time to do things then you used to, you could choose to change it. Don't say you have no choice, as if you choose not to change it; then already that is a choice! You choose not to choose! Of course, whether you are able to change it depends on your circle of influence. If your circle of influence is tiny and cannot delegate the work, then you may have to live with it or leave it.

(B) Leave it: when it becomes unbearable then you might want to leave it, meaning leave the job, the post, whatever. You may just have to walk away altogether. Of course some of us would say, but I need the job to pay the bills! Well, then maybe you should go for option (c) live with it.

I once heard an audio training CD and the trainer was saying just too many people whine about the weather. His response to them, blunt as it may seem, was; "well, when you get your own planet, you can do whatever you want, but as long as you are a guest on God's earth you'd just have to bear with it!" In other words, live with it! Of course then some people are still not happy; which leaves us with the final option of change self.

John Maxwell said "if I had to kick the person responsible for all my failures, I'd probably not be able to sit!" Michael Jackson said, "if you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make that change." What wise words (who says listening to pop music can't teach us anything?).

Hence our final option of "change self" is probably the most obvious, everyone knows it but why is it that so few of us are doing it? That's because if we raise our own "self-leadership" standards, we would then be able to do so. Until then, you'd just have to be happy with the choices you make.

Therefore, change is a leadership choice; that of self not your boss. Until then my friends, have a great weekend and for all educators, have a great holiday!

Respectfully yours,
Melvyn Tan
(Sent from my Blackberry Bold)

Is it really passion?

We spoke about courage. Some of you might be thinking, but how is that measurable? You don't. Courage, as we have discussed is about having a moral compass as a guide. It's like a list of rules that tell you the do-s and don't-s. It is essentially based on our values, beliefs, and principles.

I cannot emphasize enough how important principles are. In fact, there appears to be scope for talking about values vs principles. In a nutshell, values determine the kind of action we will take. It shapes our behaviors. It defines our response to a certain situation.

For instance, if "success" is a value, to one person it could mean working really hard. To another it could mean doing whatever it takes to get to the top. Both are behaviors that different people will adopt. However, the main difference could be that working really hard just to get ahead; using all your talents, resources, and intellect to get ahead. But doing whatever it takes can mean, even if one needs to cheat to get ahead, one will do it. The differences lie in the consequences. The first doesn't have any negative consequences but the latter, if found out will result in being deemed as dishonest.

Herein lies the difference and because each carry a different principle. Therefore, values such as "courage" must be combined with a positive intent principle.

Now, coming to measurables, we need to look at learning and growth, excellence, and innovativeness and creativity. These are essentially activities that can be measured. For instance, if someone is passionate about an area; she will read anything related to the topic, go on to do deeper researches, talk to experts, and the list goes on. However, knowledge alone is insufficient as we'd still need to apply it so that it can really be a skill.

That's the reason why I included growth with learning. I can learn, read, research, or even speak to Michael Phelps about swimming, but unless I jump into the pool to put those knowledge into action, it will never become a skill. At best, you could end up being an armchair critic. Much like some academics who could write books about what makes a great organization but unless they have actually run and manage one, their intellectual discourse are just that.

Hence, growth would mean certain outcomes that can be measured. For instance, if our staff engages in a learning community (learning), this is but only an activity! Everyone can clock in hundreds of hours in that community. But unless we see outcomes (not necessary positive) such as a completed project that is a result of those hours spent in the learning community, there is no growth. So, this is a pair of activity and outcome indicator.

Next, let's talk about excellence. Someone who is passionate will strive for excellence. Not to be confused with perfection. That is why Lexus' tagline of "Relentless Pursuit of Perfection" just drive me nuts. When we are obsessed with perfection, we stress ourselves out. Firstly, let's face it, it will never be perfect. Secondly, if we go for perfection then it could even result in us not willing to put out any work or to try anything until we have perfected it.

This is absurb, which is why it should be the Relentless Pursuit of Excellence. What is means to me is that, in everything we do, we will (a) review it, (b) identify areas for improvement, (c) look out for best practices, and (d) do it better, faster, more efficient, more effective the next time. How to measure? This would involve demonstrating that we have structured review processes in place. Additionally, we review the review process. We identify areas for improvements that are strategic and not just operational kinds. We would compare and benchmark ourselves against the best-in-class. And adapt and adopt such best practices into our organization. And finally, we must compare our outcomes against previous years and with our peers/competitors to see how we are doing.

The next discussion will focus on "innovativeness and creativity" and "abundance".

Respectfully yours,
Melvyn Tan
(Sent from my Blackberry Bold)

Passion... Hmm... How can you tell?

It is said that if we are passionate about what we do, we need not fear, as the money will follow.

That is probably the biggest lie ever told.

Passion, like many other attributes, are difficult to describe; let alone quantify. And if you can't quantify that, then how can you tell? How do you measure it, and how do append a dollar value to it?

Many people know that I am passionate about my work but can I tell my clients that, "look, because I am so passionate about what I do, you need to pay me $x for my work and pay me an extra $y for my passion?" I'd probably be shown out of the door, if not thrown out.

So, first how can you tell when you see someone who is passionate about their work? I believe you would see these characteristics of courage, learning and growth, excellence, innovativeness and creativity, and abundance.

I'm sorry if some of you think I am trying to sell you something, but it is something I truly believe in.

Courage stems from not just doing things right but more importantly, doing the right thing. I mean, I could be passionate about destroying the world or eliminating the Jews (like Hitler) but unless I do the right thing; nothing else matters. I will not see sustenance and also it would be self-destructive.

So, first we must be prepared to do the right thing and what the right things are depend on your mission in life. As for me, my mission or purpose in life (up till this point; why I say up till this point is that overtime as I review I may change or modify it) is to resolve to live each day according to the Principles of Engaged Mastery to be a leader who engages with integrity. I see integrity as my moral compass, of telling me what is right and what is wrong.

Right and wrong can be subjective, but if we see right and wrong in terms of principles or natural laws; then it is anything but subjective. Because you can ignore these principles but they won't ignore you. Much like the natural law of gravity; as long as you are on earth; you can choose to ignore gravity by walking out of the window of a skyscraper but gravity will act on you and bring you down to earth.

We'll continue with the rest in our next discussion.

Respectfully yours,
Melvyn Tan
(Sent from my Blackberry Bold)

Turning Vision into Reality

A vision provides the long-term strategic direction of your School.

However, it can prove difficult to translate the long-term vision into day-to-day activities and making sense of it all.

Effective School Leaders understand and apply the three critical ingredients to turn vision into reality.

Vision Alignment
In other words, it is to be clear about the vision. Peter Marshall once said, "Give us clear vision that we may know where to stand and what to stand for - because unless we stand for something we shall fall for anything”.

That would mean having a comprehensive set of indicators and milestones along the way to let us know where we're at currently, and where we want to be. Once these indicators and milesteones are clearly defined, the next step is to brainstorm about how to get there, formulate winning strategies, and work out a plan.

Journey of Change
Now that we have planned the work, we must now work the plan. Embarking on a journey to realise the vision usually requires us to do things differently. Taking the cue from Stephen R. Covey, "If you want to make incremental improvements, work on behaviors; but if you want to make quantum leaps, work on your paradigms."

Organizations resist change because people become comfortable with the way things are and they prefer what's familiar. Hence, it would require the leadership to re-examine the mental-models of the School; then filtering down to re-looking at whether current programs, practices, and policies are reinforcing the desired behaviors that would lead us towards the vision.

Engaged Mastery
With changes, come resistance. Therefore, it is critical to understand the concerns of the people. In John Maxwell's “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership”; under relationships it is said that, "If You Get Along, They’ll Go Along".

On this journey towards the vision, there will be speed-bumps along the way. As such, it would require each individual staff member to not only have personal mastery, but engaged mastery so that it would create an environment of high trust. This happens when everyone lives by the values of the School and also have the necessary competencies to achieve the vision. Only then, can the School fulfill its mission.

Capital

We've all experienced how various forms of capital can contribute significantly to your organizational goals. There are essentially three types of capital.

One, that is capital in the form of financial capital or money. Every organization needs money to survive, to grow, to make a profit. Which is one of the reason why when financial institutions are threatened, like the current crisis, governments need to step-in to ensure it does not collapse. As with a credit freeze, the entire economy gets affected. Businesses do not have access to capital to grow or do business; individuals face increased criteria for borrowing money to make purchases.

Two, that is capital in the form of intellectual capital. In other words, its an idea that has a value, which if is protected can bring about tremendous returns for the organization. Look at Microsoft, where the "idea" of the Windows operating system, which essentially is a protected idea that accrues the rights to MS to sell it at a price. This form of capital is subjected to imitations and copy-cats; where can over time lose its value.

Three, that is capital in the form of human capital. This form of capital is, by far the most difficult to accumulate but if done properly can bring about exponential benefits. There are various ways of developing or nurturing human capital. It can be developed through training and talent grooming. There is, however, a more sustainable and self regenerating manner and that is through building a culture where individuals are not just productive or committed' but engaged.

To build a culture where individuals are engaged requires efforts at all four dimensions. These dimensions include (i) people dimension, (ii) customer dimension, (iii) stakeholders dimension, and (iv) internal dimensions.
Respectfully yours,
Melvyn Tan
(Sent from my Blackberry Bold)

Calculus of Change

Change is one of two "constants" in our lives (the other is principles).

In management theories, we were taught that people resist change. Some people also think that "change" is painful. To get out of our comfort zone, we were told. And of course, Obama and his "Change, yes we can" campaign.

In all, many people see change as a bad word. Or some may even proclaim that change is a necessary evil. Whatever the case may be, change has triggered one too many negative connotations that people usually associate it with pain.

From a calculus stand-point, I'd like to share how change can be understood in order to drive home the point.

Let's say we have a quadratic equation; y = x-square + x + 1. When we perform a differentiation on this equation, we have dy/dx = 2x + 1. A further second-order differentiation will give us (d-square) y/d(x-square) = 2. And a final third-order differentiation will give us the result "zero". And that is because differentiation of a constant gives us "zero".

Here's where the fun begins. If we remain constant, that is we do not change what we do, how we think, the way we work; we will be like the third-order differentiation result; zero. In other words, for a small change in "x" (let us substitute "x" for time), we will see a zero displacement.

If we are slightly better, being like the second-order differentiation result of 2x + 1, we will be progressing albeit at a linear fashion. Meaning to say that, our results will be a direct function of what we put in, in a linear fashion. Hence, if you put in more time; you will get more. But you cannot see exponential growth unless you assume the quadratic equation.

Only then, will you be able to get results that have a multiplier effect. Assuming you put in 2 ounce of effort, where "x" is effort, your results would be seven ounce of outcome. And if you increase by another ounce of effort, your results do not follow a linear progression, but you get 13! Here, by increasing your effort by 50% you see an increase in output by some 86%! What a great difference (in which case for the linear equation you'd only see a 40% increase).

So, how can we all assume the power of the quadratic equation? I believe the answers lie with "leverage", "synergy", "abundance", and "empathy". When we "engage" another person using those 4 principles that I've just mentioned, we see growth explodes. And say, for every person that you are able to "engage" it would mean you equation moves in tandem.

Say, if you work alone, over time at best you can only grow in a linear fashion. But when you work with another you become a quadratic equation, two more people and you become a cubic equation, and so forth.

Hence, when you change and we don't just mean doing things better or faster, when you work alone at best you will see increasing linear results. But when you change the way you do things and are able to "engage" others to move in tandem with you, you'll see exploding growth! Much like those cartoons where the line goes out of the chart's plotting area and upwards to the wall!

But as "change agents", you must also understand and obey the principles stated above. These principles are like natural laws, where whether you acknowledge it or not, it will act on you; nuch like gravity.

So, my friends, "change, we must" and when it is painful that's when you know you are growing for without pain we will not grow.

Respectfully yours,
Melvyn Tan
(Sent from my Blackberry Bold)

How Do You Measure Up?

Say you walk into a game mid-way, what's your first question? If you're like most of us, it's gonna be "what's the score?"

Well, the answers can come in various forms; someone could tell you simply which team is winning, or they could say the number of times the ball was saved, or simply 4-2.

Each measure has its uses. If all you knew was either your team (if you're the coach) won or lost, then all you could say is, "oh, then this is what we're gonna do in future".

However, if its half-time and you found out the number of passes that went stray, you could then re-position your players to prevent that from happening.

Hence, the main difference between the first and the second measure is that with the former, once you found out the outcome; there ain't nothing you can do about it, except to whine and witch-hunt. On a positive note, you'd think of what else we can do about it the next time. Such lag measures can be disastrous if it was the last game of the season and you need to win in order to emerge the champion. It is even more unthinkable in the school context as that would mean a cohort that we missed.

The latter are leading measures, which allow us to re-think what we can do in the interim. Its like I can look at my speedo to see how fast I'm doing without having to get a ticket before I know I've sped. In other words, leading indicators provide a useful function that tells us how we are doing along the way without having to journey through to know we are in the wrong place.

Apart from lead-and-lag indicators, there are another two series of indicators, namely activity-and-outcome indicators and cause-and-effect indicators. Briefly, these two series of indicators not only help us measure progress; they also enable us to drive the type of behaviors that are consistent and aligned to our organizational culture.

For instance, if we value creativity, then we ought to have measures that not only determine the number of creative projects (outcomes) but also the number of platforms we have to produce such projects (activities). Hence, measuring just outcomes or activities alone only provide us with an inaccurate perception of how our organisation is doing. And with inaccurate perception comes ineffective measures to address the issues at hand.

Likewise, with "cause-and-effect" measures, it tells us what we can do that has a direct (note, the "activities-and-outcomes" series constitute a sufficient but not necessary condition - you can still have creative projects (outcomes) without platforms if your people are really passionate about innovation) link between the two. For instance, number of individuals pursuing degree programs can be linked to number of graduates in the near future. You get the point.

Finally, all measures must of course be valid; in that they provide an accurate measure of the outcome. It must also be reliable; in the sense that if the measure can be easily manipulated, then you'd better have checks-and-measures in place to ensure the reliability of it. Then, there is the issue of scale and scope, where if you have been achieving a certain level of success, will it still be important to measure that?

You may judge by the number of times your child forgets to brush his teeth before going to bed, but would you do the same for your spouse?

Hence, it is important that we have a range of indicators that satisfy the above to tell us how we measure up.
Respectfully yours,
Melvyn Tan
(Sent from my Blackberry Bold)

Life's a Test

Life's a test, so how do we ace it?

3 ways:
1) Keep the Faith
2) Live according to Principles
3) Reflect on your Actions

I believe many of us already know that. The question is, why some of us are not doing it? Common sense may not be common practice. Or do we try to rationalize it intellectually that we spend time trying to reason instead of practice.

Personally it is a struggle for me to put them into practice. But how I see it is that, it is through these struggles that I grow. If there are no struggles then it would mean that I am living within my comfort zone.

In fact, when there are no challenges then we'll be doing the same old, same old. Which also translate to, if we are always doing what we've been doing, then we'll always get the same results; ceteris paribus.

These days, if we have stood still, or doing what we've been doing, we will be overtaken by our competitors or new competitors that have emerged from out-of-the-blue.

So, if we keep doing what we're doing, we may even get poorer results over time.

I think one of the most significant lesson for me in this aspect was when I was in Primary 1.

You see, I got the exact same scores for my mid-year and year-end results. But my position in class slipped from 13 to 25! I was puzzled, yet worried at the same time as I would need to account for my results when I get home!

I asked my form teacher how could this be so? Her immediate response was, "others improved, you did not." That was my first lesson on the need to keep up.

From that day onwards, it created a competitive streak in me to want to do better than my classmates. And with that thinking, I then sometimes become selfish. Not willing to share notes even. And being the only child (up until when I was 12) didn't help. The concept of "share" is just alien to me!

When I was in University, I majored in Economics, which then reinforced my perception of a scarcity mindset.

But what happened changed my thinking about sharing notes and explaining concepts to my classmates. I realized that when I do that it actually helped me as I now understood the concepts better.

Thing is, it was still about how I can benefit. So while seemingly I was 'helping' my friends, I was in fact helping myself.

It was not until when I started my own business and especially when working with the Schools that I realised that helping others can be such great fun, it can also be rewarding, and at the same time bring tremendous satisfaction at a level that money can't buy.

You see, I kept the Faith by looking through the world with an abundant mindset. Why ponder over if the cup is half-filled or half-empty with water; what if we see that the water is of unlimited supply? Meaning, who cares if its half-filled or otherwise, drink the content, quench the thirst, and you'd know that the next time you need water, it's there!

How can the water be of unlimited supply? Well, if we think about the traditional way of where we can get water then it would be limited. Or maybe we can seek ways to improve, enhance, and refine the ways we get water. If we can do it faster, cheaper, more efficiently, more effectively, reduce the defects per millicubic, etc. In other words, we turn to excellence.

What if, we thought of creative and innovative ways to get water? Water can come from the ground, the air, trees, animals, plants, insects, and so forth. If there are unlimited ways in which we can get water, then there will be unlimited water!

Next, how do we come up with such creative and innovative ways? Of course, we must have strong foundation of how to get water. Else, we'll be no difference from a mad man who thinks that monkeys come from trees. Hence, we need to continually learn and grow. Only when that takes place, then we can come up with unlimited ways to get water.

Now, finally, it all boils down to one final element, and if that element is not there, then all the preceding discussions were just hot-air. And that element is the courage to know that there is water in the first place.

So, how does it link to our 3-steps to ace our test in life?

First, we must have the courage to keep the faith. In our above example it was water. It could be "value" for customers, "hope" for the future, or just "food" on the table for some. Having said that, this faith must be good faith or else we'll never see sustainable impact of greatness. It would be impact of evil, like Hitler.

Next, live by a set of principles that transcends culture, time, and space. These principles in our above example were learning & growth, creative & innovative, and abundance. Think about the work you do, if you keep on learning through the synthesis of new learnings and existing knowledge you'd inevitably grow! And with such rich knowledge and experience; you now can be creative and innovative in your work! You need a lot of foundational practice before you can create an innovative piece of work!

With your ability to now create your own knowledge you'd not be afraid that someone else might steal it. Because you'll always have new ideas flowing! Just like the unlimited supply of water! How wonderful!

And course, finally, reflection is a behavior of individuals of greatness. You reflect, you search for ways that are consistently sound; you find new ways to improve, enhance, refine; that in short is the spirit of excellence!

So, my friends, I hope we can embark on this journey together and have you share your experience with me. (Is your cup half-filled or half-empty? Hee)

Respectfully yours,
Melvyn Tan
(Sent from my Blackberry Bold)