Decision By Objectives - How to Convinces Others That You Are Right

In this contemplation associated with a management process, I can say I have a lack of experience in executing decision especially  in Crucial Decision Area. I often feel there is something wrong or something not fit yet when I have to decided. As a result I usually feel comfortable to make many scenario with all of its detail but when I face off the compulsion to take a decision/judgment, I have an adversity in it. So I think it is my weakness that to be improved.

At first I have a slightly confused with the starting point to do it. I've known many popular decision making techniques tool both of quantitative and qualitative methods in management. But I think I need something more praticed related with it.

And this is some good tips from "Decision By Objectives - How to Convinces Others That You Are Right" by Ernest H Forman & Mary Ann Selly- 2001;  World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd that I think fit to my needs.

I got areas that I should to developed related to my needs according to this book are :

• Prioritize

• Evaluate alternatives

• Allocate resources

• Deliver powerful presentations

• Justify/defend recommendations

• Make meetings more effective

• Improve communications

• Achieve consensus

• Eliminate fifty percent of your business worries

And I've learned too there are common mistakes when making crucial decisions:

1. Gathering information and reaching conclusions without thinking about the crux of the issue or how decisions like this one shouldbe made
2. Setting out to solve the wrong problem because your framework causes you to overlook attractive options or lose sight of important objectives
3. Failing to define the problem in more ways than one, or being unduly influenced by the frames of others
4. Failing to collect key factual information because of overconfidence in your assumptions and opinions
5. Relying on 'rules of thumb' for crucial decisions, or on the most readily available information
6. Trying to keep straight in your head all the information relating to the decision rather than relying on a systematic procedure
7. Assuming that a group of smart people will automatically make a good decision even without a good decision process
8. Failing to leam from evidence of past outcomes either because you are protecting your ego or because you are tricked by hindsight
9. Assuming that experience will make lessons available automatically
10. Failing to create an organized approach to understanding your own decision process  

That's I got a hindsight to improve my lack in decision making....eventhough there are still many things to learn and do, at least I have a driven factor to do it..... 

He Is Lord - Hillsong

                                

This song is really inspired ....!!!

Stop Looking Beyond My Craetor

I just came across this quotable quote while reading today.

You can't go on 'seeing through' things forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it... If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To 'see through' all things is the same as not to see.

It made a whole lot of sense to me. Some people try to look beyond an issue, and go too far only to find nothing of use or benefit to its existence. Some people seek to change something, but in fact, what he seeks to change is nothing. This nothing-ness can't be changed, and the scary part is, this dis-illusion sometimes can't be corrected either.

So a balance between the simple and the abstract is often needed.

With age, abstraction and complexity often attracts man, but is as often not needed. Simple things done simply can yield as good a result and if not better and in a shorter time. I need to remember that. Perfection sometimes can be so far away that the process of attaining it becomes so confusingly imperfect. Maybe its not just age... its a whole load of pride and a foggy experience of reality...

Some people look through creation and see God... Many try to look beyond God and find theory... Maybe if they looked deeper... they'd find emotion and raw unbelief...

I choose to stop looking beyond my Creator... I don't see how I could ever understand as much as what the Creator of the universe does.

My Confession About Happiness

"Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you."

In the end of my ordianry day, I've something crossed in my mind said: 'Should our happiness is absolutely determined by our plan for our own ultimate goal, our success?' And my first response to it "NO"..."But why?"...I've wondered.

I am sure some of you might not agree with me... but I am not saying that you should not plan for your future to be successful or to become wealthy, what I am trying to say is that even though you are successful or wealthy (now or in the future), there is no guarantee that you will be happy!

Like the quote above said, sometimes when we try with all of our effort..., don't know why Happiness is always beyond our grasp.....and I think it really true that sometimes Happiness come alight upon us when we just do our life in a mediocre rhythm!

To put it another way, if we are feeling not in right mood today, can we tell yourself "Ok, today is not my day, I will plan to be happy only tomorrow!"?. The thing is, when tomorrow comes, will you be really happy because you have planned it yesterday?

Now, do you agree with me?

To me, in all walks of life, there will always be a bunch of people who will stay happy regardless of their situation, and there will be another bunch of people who will remain unhappy even though they might be filthy rich or very successful.

To be happy, you just need to enjoy what you have while looking for what you don't have! Don't wait to be happy only when you have what you don't have. By that time you have what you don't have, you might not have what you already have!

To be happy, you need to plan your future at the best you can do it but not to live with it cloaky-and-daggerly. You plan your future at your best and live it ...YESS I AGREE....but you should not to forget that there is an amazing invicible always be with us that can able us to live in adequate amount of everything.

 

Cheers!

Get The Early: Seeing The Future to Compete In The Present

FREE EXCERPT: Get There Early: Seeing the Future to Compete in the Present

It’s a guidebook for what’s going to be, for the future that is really not optional — the VUCA world of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. Because it will give you an entirely new angle on how to approach your job as a business leader in this VUCA world. Bob Johansen has created a book that is exceptional in its originality and clarity of expression as well as in its effective blending of theory and practical examples.

But you may well ask: “Can I really do the things described in this book and make a difference in my business?” From personal experience, It can again say resoundingly, YES. We all need a better way to engage with the dilemmas that are increasingly apparent all around us. This book provides that better way.

 

An excerpt from

Get There Early:

Sensing the Future to Compete in the Present

by Bob Johansen

Published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers

Eternity by Yuriko Nakamura

One of my favorite contemplative piano play to accompany my serenity time....hopedully you can enjoy it too...!!

Why Our Brains Do Not Intuitively Grasp Probabilities

Have you ever gone to the phone to call a friend only to have your friend ring you first? What are the odds of that? Not high, to be sure, but the sum of all probabilities equals one. Given enough opportunities, outlier anomalies—even seeming miracles—will occasionally happen.

Let us define a miracle as an event with million-to-one odds of occurring (intuitively, that seems rare enough to earn the moniker). Let us also assign a number of one bit per second to the data that flow into our senses as we go about our day and assume that we are awake for 12 hours a day. We get 43,200 bits of data a day, or 1.296 million a month. Even assuming that 99.999 percent of these bits are totally meaningless (and so we filter them out or forget them entirely), that still leaves 1.3 “miracles” a month, or 15.5 miracles a year.

Thanks to our confirmation bias, in which we look for and find confirmatory evidence for what we already believe and ignore or discount contradictory evidence, we will remember only those few astonishing coincidences and forget the vast sea of meaningless data.

We can employ a similar back-of-the-envelope calculation to explain death premonition dreams. The average person has about five dreams a night, or 1,825 dreams a year. If we remember only a tenth of our dreams, then we recall 182.5 dreams a year. There are 300 million Americans, who thus produce 54.7 billion remembered dreams a year. Sociologists tell us that each of us knows about 150 people fairly well, thus producing a social-network grid of 45 billion personal relationship connections. With an annual death rate of 2.4 million Americans, it is inevitable that some of those 54.7 billion remembered dreams will be about some of these 2.4 million deaths among the 300 million Americans and their 45 billion relationship connections. In fact, it would be a miracle if some death premonition dreams did not happen to come true!

These examples show the power of probabilistic thinking to override our intuitive sense of numbers, or what I call “folk numeracy,” in parallel with my previous columns on “folk science” (August 2006) and “folk medicine” (August 2008) and with my book on “folk economics” (The Mind of the Market). Folk numeracy is our natural tendency to misperceive and miscalculate probabilities, to think anecdotally instead of statistically, and to focus on and remember short-term trends and small-number runs. We notice a short stretch of cool days and ignore the long-term global-warming trend. We note with consternation the recent downturn in the housing and stock markets, forgetting the half-century upward-pointing trend line. Sawtooth data trend lines, in fact, are exemplary of folk numeracy: our senses are geared to focus on each tooth’s up or down angle, whereas the overall direction of the blade is nearly invisible to us.

The reason that our folk intuitions so often get it wrong is that we evolved in what evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins calls “Middle World”—a land midway between short and long, small and large, slow and fast, young and old. Out of personal preference, I call it “Middle Land.” In the Middle Land of space, our senses evolved for perceiving objects of middling size—between, say, grains of sand and mountain ranges. We are not equipped to perceive atoms and germs, on one end of the scale, or galaxies and expanding universes, on the other end. In the Middle Land of speed, we can detect objects moving at a walking or running pace, but the glacially slow movement of continents (and glaciers) and the mind-bogglingly fast speed of light are imperceptible. Our Middle Land timescales range from the psychological “now” of three seconds in duration (according to Harvard University psychologist Stephen Pinker ) to the few decades of a human lifetime, far too short to witness evolution, continental drift or long-term environmental changes. Our Middle Land folk numeracy leads us to pay attention to and remember short-term trends, meaningful coincidences and personal anecdotes.

Source: www.scientificamerican.com

Debt Elimination: Managing It Through Turbulent Times

 

Debt is a tool that must be smartly managed. Getting on top of it is the single most important financial step you can take. Here's how to do it.

The Business Cycle

To explore the fundamentals behind the historic, destructive forces wreaking havoc upon individuals, businesses and governments alike, one must understand the term business cycle. The business cycle is a characterization of the direction of economic activity within a broader economy. The five stages are as follows: expansion, peak, recession, trough, and recovery. According to Investopedia.com, the average post-World War II expansion has lasted 50 months, while the average contraction has been just eleven months.

During expansions, individuals, governments and businesses typically finance growth through the acquisition of significant amounts of additional debt. During contractions, the same parties attempt to reduce debt in order to mitigate uncertain or declining revenues. Needless to say, the former is far easier to accomplish than the later.

The Root Causes

During the roughly ten-year "greed is good" era between 1996-2006, the general world economy experienced a long, broad-based expansion, interrupted only briefly by the mild recession of 2002-03. The short recession was combated in the United States by the Federal Reserve reducing the overnight Fed funds rate six times in the 21 months following the September 11, 2001 attacks. The lowering of short-term rates triggered a corresponding reduction in mortgage rates, which in conjunction with low unemployment, reduced underwriting standards by lenders and other factors, fueled a real estate boom.

Starting in July, 2004 and lasting for the next two years, the Fed starting ratcheting up interest rates in an effort to thwart inflationary pressures and put a damper on excessive growth. However, with sub-prime lending in its heyday, the effort only served to invert the yield curve, as short-term rates were pushed higher than long-term rates, held low due to voracious demand. Real estate investment and speculation therefor continued nearly unabated until 2007 when the market finally peaked, and shortly thereafter, crashed.

The Net Result

The cratering of both the real estate market and the broader economy as a whole over the past three years has caused trillions of dollars of wealth to evaporate from financial statements. The global impacts will last for years to come, as asset values have seriously degraded while the debt has remained relatively constant. As a result, many borrowers are struggling to pay debts correlating with assets worth substantially less than they once were.

Psychology

First off, it's important to acknowledge the cyclicity of the economy and, as such, recognize the likelihood that if the assets in question have depreciated in value due to the global economy, they will eventually return at least some of their lost equity over time as the markets heal. Secondly, understand that although equity carries important psychological value, until it is leveraged or cashed in, it has no immediate financial value. Thirdly, if income remains constant, the ability to service the debt should be unimpeded. Lastly, realize that the obligor (you) have an absolute, dollar-for-dollar ability to create equity by doing nothing more than taking heed of your own personal cash flows.

Understanding Your Personal Cash Flows

It is vitally important that you understand your own cash flows — now. You do not need a finance degree to become keenly aware of your own situation. If you are not a spreadsheet-maker and if so desired, you can literally go low-tech by grabbing a pencil and paper.

List your monthly take-home income (A) and your monthly debt payments (B). Include only actual debt payments (such as credit cards, mortgage and car payments), not monthly operating expenses like food or electricity. Divide the debt payments by your take-home income. Ideally and as a benchmark, that ratio should be less than 40% of your take-home pay.

Go through the remainder of your non-debt expenses, which would include everything else: food, clothing, standard monthly bills, discretionary expenditures and the like. If you believe there are no items that would skew them artificially higher or lower, take a six-month average of what they have been historically (C) and throw that figure below the listed debt payments. If you can't track that far back, use at least a three-month average. Feel free to remove one-time expenditures that you are certain will not recur from your listed totals, but be very careful about doing so, as life throws plenty of curve balls and it is safer to assume there will be others down the line.

Now, subtract debt payments (B) plus all other expenses (C) from income (A). Is the number positive or negative?

If Positive

If the figure is positive, your personal cash flow should be generally in balance. More importantly, the positive number is a figure you can reasonably rely upon to put into savings or investments and/or against your debt, whether it be credit card balances, your car loan, a home equity line of credit or your mortgage. Without having to belt-tighten, you have the flexibility to create equity every month. Be aware that using an average as suggested above does not allow for monthly variances, so take that into account when you do your math.

Decide on a ratio that you believe is reasonable (50/50 is a good starting point) and follow through aggressively. Take half of the positive figure and put into savings or investments, and apply the other half as a principal reduction against one or more of your debts. Both will create dollar-for-dollar equity on your financial statement, as you will be left with an asset (cash) and/or reduced liabilities to show for the proactive application of your positive cash flow. Note: although paying higher-rate debts first makes investment sense, applying the extra against debts that will be retired soonest makes the most cash flow sense, as that creates permanent positive benefits. My recommendation is to do the latter.

If Negative

Obviously, this is a thornier issue, as it means you do not have sufficient income to cover your debts and monthly expenses. However, you now have a gauge as to how far behind you are going every month. In all likelihood, this is approximately how much your savings are being depleted or how much your debt is increasing on a monthly basis to cover the negative portion of your cash flow. Consider the following:

• Reduce your discretionary expenses every month by that amount, and preferably more. Typical discretionary items to target include dining out, "sin" expenses like beer, cigarettes, and other non-necessities, and recreational activities.
• Increase your income every month. In these times, this is a difficult solution, but if possible — whether it be a spouse going to work, obtaining or increasing additional income in other ways (overtime, a second job, changing your employment) — you can eliminate the negative portion of your cash flow through increased income.
• Refinance higher-payment obligations with a lower-payment option. Be careful here. You're trying to create equity, not trade debt. However, if you're in the negative, it is essential that you stop the bleeding.
• Ask family for assistance. Be very careful with this option. If utilized, borrow just enough to eliminate sufficient debt to get into the positive, and pay them back as soon as possible (no doubt they'll want that!)

As with the positive cash flow strategy above, your goal is to create equity. Stemming the negative tide will stop the monthly net outflow further eroding your net worth beyond what economic forces are already doing to your assets. You cannot control the latter, but you can control the former. Moreover, beyond just leveling off and to the extent possible, take one or more of these steps to create positive cash flow. Once accomplished, you can apply the excess into savings or against debt as suggested above to create equity on your financial statement on a monthly basis.

Summary

It's not too late to fix your personal finances. To repair the damage, you need to be aware of what happened, why it happened, and the steps you need to take to solve the problem. Once you've taken stock of your own financial situation, discipline yourself to create positive personal cash flow and begin applying the excess as principal reductions against debt, into savings, or a combination of the two, every single month. Think of it as another bill that must be paid, but now you're paying yourself.

Before long, you'll find that your personal finances are under firm control and you're beginning to create equity. The process may be slow, but it will add up over time and it's wholly within your control — you're in charge. And all you needed was a pencil and paper along with a bit of self-discipline. That's not too much to ask of your favorite boss.

Sources:

• Investopedia.com
• WSJ.com
• WashingtonPost.com
• Economist.com
• Budgeting Suite 101

Finally Avatar II's Trailer has been released, can't wait this show on cineplex...

The Vroom-Yetton-Jago Decision Model

How you go about making a decision can involve as many choices as the decision itself. Sometimes you have to take charge and decide what to do on your own. Other times its better to make a decision using group consensus. How do you decide which approach to use?

Making good decisions is one of the main leadership tasks. Part of doing this is determining the most efficient and effective means of reaching the decision.

You don't want to make autocratic decisions when team acceptance is crucial for a successful outcome. Nor do you want be involving your team in every decision you make, because that is an ineffective use of time and resources. What this means is you have to adapt your leadership style to the situation and decision you are facing. Autocratic styles work some of the time, highly participative styles work at other times, and various combinations of the two work best in the times in between.

The Vroom-Yetton-Jago Decision Model provides a useful framework for identifying the best leadership style to adopt for the situation you're in.

Note:
This model was originally described by Victor Vroom and Philip Yetton in their 1973 book titled Leadership and Decision Making. Later in 1988, Vroom and Arthur Jago, replaced the decision tree system of the original model with an expert system based on mathematics. Hence you will see the model called Vroom-Yetton, Vroom-Jago, and Vroom-Yetton-Jago. The model here is based on the Vroom-Jago version of the model.

Understanding the Model:

When you sit down to make a decision, your style, and the degree of participation you need to get from your team, are affected by three main factors:

• Decision Quality – how important is it to come up with the "right" solution? The higher the quality of the decision needed, the more you should involve other people in the decision.
• Subordinate Commitment - how important is it that your team and others buy into the decision? When teammates need to embrace the decision you should increase the participation levels.
• Time Constraints – How much time do you have to make the decision? The more time you have, the more you have the luxury of including others, and of using the decision as an opportunity for teambuilding.

Specific Leadership Styles

The way that these factors impact on you helps you determine the best leadership and decision-making style to use. Vroom-Jago distinguishes three styles of leadership, and five different processes of decision-making that you can consider using:

Style:	Autocratic – you make the decision and inform others of it. There are two separate processes for decision making in an autocratic style:
Process:	Autocratic 1(A1) – you use the information you already have and make the decision
	Autocratic 2 (A2) – you ask team members for specific information and once you have it, you make the decision. Here you don't necessarily tell them what the information is needed for.
Style:	Consultative – you gather information from the team and other and then make the decision.
Process:	Consultative 1 (C1) – you inform team members of what you doing and may individually ask opinions, however, the group is not brought together for discussion. You make the decision.
	Consultative 2 (C2) – you are responsible for making the decision, however, you get together as a group to discuss the situation, hear other perspectives, and solicit suggestions.
Style:	Collaborative – you and your team work together to reach a consensus.
Process:	Group (G2) – The team makes a decision together. Your role is mostly facilitative and you help the team come to a final decision that everyone agrees on.

Tip:
This is a useful model, but it's quite complex and long-winded. Use it in new situations, or in ones which have unusual characteristics: Using it, you'll quickly get a feel for the right approach to use in more usual circumstances.

To determine which of these styles and processes is most appropriate, there is a series of yes & no questions that you ask yourself about the situation, and building a decision tree based on the responses. There are seven questions in total. These are:

1. Is the technical quality of the decision very important? Meaning, are the consequences of failure significant?
2. Does a successful outcome depend on your team members' commitment to the decision? Must there be buy-in for the solution to work?
3. Do you have sufficient information to be able to make the decision on your own?
4. Is the problem well-structured so that you can easily understand what needs to be addressed and what defines a good solution?
5. Are you reasonably sure that your team will accept your decision even if you make it yourself?
6. Are the goals of the team consistent with the goals the organization has set to define a successful solution?
7. Will there likely be conflict among the team as to which solution is best?

Use Figure 1 below to follow your answers through on the decision tree and identify the best decision process for your circumstances. Not that in some scenarios, you don't need to answer all of the questions.

In general, a consultative or collaborative style is most appropriate when:

• You need information from others to solve a problem.
• The problem definition isn't clear.
• Team members' buy-in to the decision is important.
• You have enough time to manage a group decision.

An autocratic style is most efficient when:

• You have more expertise on the subject than others.
• You are confident about acting alone.
• The team will accept your decision.
• There is little time available.

Key points:

The underlying assumption of the Vroom-Yetton-Jago Decision Models is that no one leadership style or decision making process fits all situations.

By analyzing the situation and evaluating the problem based on time, team buy-in, and decision quality, a conclusion about which style best fits the situation can be made. The model defines a very logical approach to which style to adopt and is useful for managers and leaders who are trying to balance the benefits of participative management with the need to make decisions effectively.

Source : http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTED_91.htm