Buzzlair Voufincci

2010 and 2011 have been my years of philosophical study. Tremendous time was spent on reading phylosopical books such as Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, How to Think Like Da Vinci by Michael Gelb, The 6 Most Important Decisions You'll Ever Make: A Guide for Teens by Sean R Covey and many others.

2012, i have made up my mind - to set a new course of direction of my reading habit to achieve my reading objective. This year, i will be a bit more focus on subject of reading. I call this year (2012) as 'the observation of leaders'.

A new set of mechanism has been setup to make it measurable(clearer) and more systematic(organizable). 

Every month, for 12 months, buy 2 books that talk about leader. It could be an autobiography, a memoir or journey of a company from the founder's point of view. For example, Onwards by Howard Schultz or The Education of an American Dreamer: How a Son of Greek Immigrants Learned His Way from a Nebraska Diner to Washington, Wall Street, and Beyond by Peter G Peterson.

In a year, i could have read 24 books and learned a lot from this 24 great inspiring leaders (assuming each book focusing on one leader which is unlikely).

Dear reader, setup your own and lets make it happens.

And this is how euro-crisis moved me and all of us who have been following the in and out of the whole economic turmoil since from 2008 (altho i am not an economic major). get deep into the story if you may and hopefully some of you would be interested to do a random act of 'wow'-ness to CHANGE people (and things) around you.

I hope one day Syberia game will be turned into movies. Magical and inspiring. Packed with stories and interesting turns.

Syberia

And within 10 years, i will be making this kind of movies. Inspired by the latest Hugo and Series of Unfortunate Events.

Hugo

Series of Unfortunate Events

Some people take 10 years in a startup. They learnt the up and down of startup. Whats wrong with me deciding to join a startup tha generates $4000 a day and already on a success path? Nothing wrong with it. And now my role is to make sure this startup could double the daily sales in 6 months and build a team that could make the business run by itself. Developing a process for a startup has always been a challenge but who doesnt like challenges?

Gen. Stanley McChrystal on How to Lead Like a General What happens is someone writes a very good e-mail. They'll frame a problem and then they'll give background to it, and then they'll make a recommendation

Why Google — Channeling George Costanza — Is Suddenly Interested in Banking With a virtual wallet transacting your purchases smoothly on your phone, who would want to go to the trouble of signing up for a competing, untested virtual wallet?

Coca-Cola's CEO on Doubling the Size of His Company Create a vision 10 to 20 years ahead and after 5 to 7 quarters, look back if you are on the right track.

A Fashion Line's Old-World Branding Evokes Bygone Glamour To make Honor look as if it were an old-world atelier with a rich history that had been revived.

A Challenge to the Small Business Image Most of the business owners tended to be lawyers, plumbers, doctors, shop keepers, and real estate agents—businesses that fill a need, to be sure, but nothing innovative.

The importance of employee engagement A visualized representation of how to make your working place a heaven.

(download)

Click here to download:

untitled-FvuEEerCwihBlqJjIotm.zip (263 KB)

So, i cant link the image to it's original owner?

The hat

Underwater Photos

There was this (inspiring) person who posted on facebook

The first rule in management is: Do not send DUCK to EAGLE school

I don't understand what does it mean at first, but one of the respond helped me figure out what does it mean.

no matter how hard u try,u cant teach a duck to soar like an eagle! if u already see d weakness,why still try? dont waste time n money,always choose d best.some times,and most times life in d fast lane,we hafta forget about giving chances. u are after all;not a charity organisation,right?

This reflects my experience, yes. I believe this is important for every visionary leader to understand that ditching out pessimist is just a right move. I responded:

If Duck is portrayed as pessimist, then i would say yes to that. Nurul is right, dont help people who dont seem to have the initiative, willingness to help themselves. Waste of time waste of resources. Some people trying to be nice, by retaining poor talent for the sake of approval from people around them 'what a nice CEO, helping the poor John Doe', while what John Doe doing on daily basis is playing Facebook and complaining about work. This is recipe for disaster. Stay away from this kind of disease cause it will effect you as optimist and positive thinkers.

If you keep them in your organization. It is like an unhealthy seed. A recipe for disaster. A virus that spreads. Worst, it could become viral. It will effect the people of the opposite attitude. Eventually, it would affect the company as whole. Those day, i told myself, 'why waste time?'

This is not applied only to the working environment. Friendship as well. If you found out a friend or friends have those disastrous attitudes, stay away from them.

At some point, you can easily be wrong at evaluating their attitude, because of its personal condition. Keep your integrity at high level while evaluating. See the relationship from a different prespective. Observe and recall everything that could help you evaluate the relationship with minimum bias. Seek advices if necessary. The ultimate goal is; to have the highest possible integrity in your decision you are going to make.

A research found that working for more than 2 hours non-stop contribute to a damage to productivity.

By having 15 minutes of short break (also known as smoking break), employees are able to re-coordinate their workload (optimize productivity), refresh their mood (minimize stress) and promote communication among them (employees usually mingle around with their colleagues).

First 15 minutes break : Around 10 am

Second 15 minutes break : Around 3 pm

2 companies i compared in my study recently support this. A marketing company produces outstanding works that got them commisioned for a year full and a software company having trouble with getting new client and having existing client to stick to them.

Because the people behind the scene is reluctant to learn a new way to do things, and new technology to ease down and speed up process. 

Few years back i met a director who refuses to use new camera techniques. He also refuses to use  new software to ease down and speed up processes. He has been in the industry for more than 20 years but when i mention to him about Premiere and After Effects, they know nothing about it. Others i met, majority, stick to what they already know. Imagine what kind of reaction you would get from these people when you propose them new sentence called 'Embrace change and constant innovation'. Funny enough, they put up a 'blurry' reaction. "What the heck is that?" is a question you can expect from them.

Since then, i became interested in getting to know more about this fear for innovation and change within the industry (exception to the visionary David Teo).

I met several other players in the film-making industry and the responds are almost similar despite of difference in subjects and contexts. 

These people became fearful of change. They are stagnant and too comfortable with their current technique. Certainly because they think it works best. But works best doesnt mean it is good. Knowledge advancement among these people are hardly seen.

I have also met some people from this industry who compliment their product first instead of being inquisitive of how people would view the quality of the product produced. They tend to say 'This is a good stuff right?' with a face of needing an instant approval, instead of 'What do you think about this stuff and how we could improve it?'. The most common post-behavior you can identify among these people are; they shout out loud of the contrary behavior. More like exagerate and bragging for approval.      

Some of these people felt offended when i introduced them solutions. They felt like their knowledge in film-making is challenged and i got this respond from over 90% of the industry player i met. Eventually, they would walk off from the conversation cause they cant even imagine how to not to use traditional focal focus rathen than using software to achieve the same effect at a lower cost and a freedom to control the effect.

When i analyzed the responds, it is hard to ignore that majority of the people behind the scene are poorly-educated people (not all). They were brought into the industry by connections of the people of their intellectual standards. They are not brought in for talent, skills, credibility and integrity. But more a personal relationship they had. Of course, the same person who did this, you can easily recognize their level of integrity.

This is however exceptional to some organization such as KRU Studios. I dont know much these people from KRU Studios but they certainly have the best mind in the industry and the product they produced are industry's ice-break. Kudos.         

Read below and try to recognize skills advancement and process innovation.

He eschews storyboarding software in favor of sketching by hand, then scanning his panels, before sequencing them on a computer. "I've spent a career doing it fast in traditional methods and some cases speeding it up with digital tools," Burgard says. "I like to make my characters act when I'm drawing them, but it's really very technical.... Once I have a good layout in my head and I know what's going to happen, I can extrapolate both forward and reverse angles, and run movies in my head." He laughs, "That's my superpower."

Read at least 5 articles every 3 hours and if you can make it to 10 articles, kudos. Spend approximately 1 hour every session. In a day, you could have spent reading at least 15 articles.

Articles in this case is including blog posts, journals and so on.

The hard part is to be consistent. For the first one week, you may be tired of this. Too much information, too systematic. But think again how much knowledge you have gained just by following this simple system. The second month, it becomes part of your ritual. I can assure you this one. You will eventually realized that when u didnt do it, you felt something is missing. Try it.

Imagine those days you were on the internet doing nothing really useful than just Facebook-ing. Yes, you may argue that you did stumbled-upon some interesting articles and you read it. Right, i agree but do you have objective when you are reading? Do you get any concrete knowledge that would benefit you in the near future. Stop being ignorant.

What if you could set your mind to learn something new everyday and following the system will make you be in control and will give you a clear reason why you are doing it, what you want to gain from it and how you are going to use it in the near future. With objective, it will become more meaningful.

Jot down something. Start calling yourself a loser when u realized that you read 5 articles already, but without joting any note down. I did this and it helped motivates me to jot down note diligently. Telling yourself not to be a loser (for this case) consciously will train your mind to not to think about becoming the opposite.

Subscribe to websites within your interest. Dont mess up your inbox with useless newsletters. For example, i love learning about busines management, dynamic thinking and technology. So i subscribe to bnet.com, hbr.com, inc.com, fastcompany.com and wired.com. The more the better but if not within your core interest, forget it. Be selective, really selective cause it will help u in a long term.

My interest is in strategic management, innovation, neuro linguistic programming, leadership, communication efficiency, practical management, technology, programming, marketing, social media, cognitive and psychology and economics.

You dont lose anything by doing something useful that could help you increase your wealth of knowledge (better than average people) and make you a dynamic thinker. Now shut up and imagine yourself as a visionary knowledgable person. Imagine how people around you respect you because of your wealth of knowledge at young age. Imagine you are talking to a visionary leader who talk about topics and terms that average young guy dont know but you talk to them like you are in the business for more than 5 years already. You talk the way they talk. You speak their term. You measure stuff and evaluate and justify things using their standard of thinking. It is not cheating, it is not show off, it is not bragging, it is about how eager you are in learning something new everyday, sometimes out of people expectation. A smart people will recognize your core values by just talking to you and they will keep you in their circle and keep retaining you.

Go go go.

Teach yourself to think 20 years ahead and be realistic about your goal. If you are a leader, create an environment that would foster this kind of thinking. Talk to your people about the goodness of thinking that way. Embrace the idea and make it  seems 'sacred' if possible.

Low confident level is not an excuse. Dont teach your mind this kind of thinking because you are missing a lot on this. Feel like surrounding yourself with Audi-quality people when you are just a Proton-quality kind of a person? Go to them, mingle around with them. Be inquisitive but use your best judgement to ask people question to spark conversation. It is no brainer, it is just practice. Face your first 5 minutes of awkwardness the most important rule is, be genuine when you talk, be genuine when you act. Be honest.

Everytime you want to post something on the social media atmosphere - facebook, linkedin, twitter and so on, make sure you be honest and sincere, with a dash of humor and humility. If you constantly refining your post based on those element, you will be the next social media rock start in no-time.

Go back to 5 years or 10 years back. What is your highest achievements? That might be your x-factor. Everyone has an x-factor. If you search, you will find. Identify what kind of job or task that would relate to your x-factor and pursue for it.

Happy 20-year birthday to internet. A huge thanks to Tim Berner-Lee for inventing the miracle and August 6 has been one of the most momentous moment ever. Web developers like us, it is a sacred day.