First break all the rules - Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman

This book is built around a fundamental idea - that each individual has his own talent (defined as a recurring pattern of thought, feeling or behavior that can be productively applied) and talents cannot be changed. This is the basis for breaking all the rules supported by conventional wisdom with regards to managing people, e.g. that we should keep working on people's weaknesses, that we promote perfomers regardless whether the person's talents are suited for the job, that given enough practice, most people can do most jobs well.

Some other takeaways!

1. The role of a manager to is to spot and fully harness the talents of each employee. To do this, one must recognise the difference btw talent, skills and knowledge. The last two can be taught. The former, it will have to be selected, and the employee will also have to be casted in the right role.
2. There are three main dimensions of talent - striving (what motivates the employee), thinking (how he thinks, strategise and process information) and relating (how does he deal with people, praises, etc).
3. Management by exception - manage each individual differently, according to their talents, and spend the most of yr time with your top performers. This is a natural step following from the understanding that the manager's role is to cultivate strength, rather than focus on weaknesses.
4. Tough love = uncompromising focus on excellence and genuine care for employees. Balancing the two well is the key to successful management.
   

The rest of the book contains many insightful steps and details relating to these issues. This will likely be the last management book that I'm picking up for now - will start diversifying into other areas :)

Drawings again!

Drawings!

Been attempting to learn how to draw! Will start posting some of my attempts.
Have made the images as blur as possible to hide the flaws.

The Audacity of Hope - Barack Obama

Had always wanted to read one of Obama's books. I have been quite taken by his charisma and eloquence on screen, and am eager to indulge myself in reading his thoughts on paper. I must say that this is indeed a very good read. Obama writes in a very simple, clear yet beautiful prose, and somehow he manages to use the most appropriate metaphors for every occasion. And I do not think that the issues that he is writing about are simple at all, which makes his delivery all the more impressive.

Some key takeaways that I have from his book. (I just found out that it is alot easier to remember what I've reade by scribbling all over the book when reading it. That also effectively renders the resale value of my book zero. Haha.)

1. The beauty of policy making
I must say that after all these time I had spent pushing papers, I am finding it harder to appreciate the greater value and beauty of the work that I am doing, nor the people whom I am serving. It may be Obama's compelling way of writing, or the clarity of his ideas, or perhaps even the book's oversimplification of what really are complex and stubborn issues, but I do feel inspired by Obama's vision and discussions on how tough problems can be solved with logic, persistence, and a little hope. And how everything shifts with the change in perspective! For example, all the endless tussling that I deal with at work appears worthwhile if I can see it his way - "through debate and competition, we can expand our perspectives, change our minds, and eventually arrive not merely at agreements but sound and fair agreements".

2. Politics
I always thought politics too challenging and crazy an area for me to even think of going into. The glimpses I have of American politics (and the ways which could potentially be applicable to Singapore) did not convince me otherwise. My thoughts, however, kept drifting to how the Senate functioned - and how this was so very different from what goes on here. It seems that issues are really debated and picked apart thoroughly in the case of the US, something which I wish we have more of here. However, the bipartisanship in the US has indeed led to a polarisation of issues to an extent that has not always been helpful.

3. Integrity and trust
It is probably a combination of alot of things. But immediately after (and throughout most of the book in fact) reading the book, I felt like I know this man, and I am willing to be led by him. (Perhaps it is also the fact that I now know that he is the 44th President of the US.) I suspect that he has managed to cook up a well balanced concoction of wisdom, vision, ambition, ability to slug it out with other equally ambitious and bright men, while at the same time exuding humility, a sense of the ground and ability to bring hope to impenetrable issues. (His unique background definitely helped in building his credibility.) These are all useful traits to learn from!

The Return of Depression Economics - Paul Krugman

It's been some time since I've blogged - almost 1 whole month to be exact! It was a combination of factors - being overworked, feeling sick of work, and then being sick of being sick of work and yet being overworked ... haha ... one gets the idea. But the root of it all is that my increasing skepticism of the value of my work (both to myself and if I could, the rest of the world) relative to the amount of time that I'm draining into it was close to smothering out the drive that was sustaining me all these time. I don't think I've actually figured a way out - althouth I've come to know alot of people who haven't either - but I've enough left in me to continue churning out a decent amount of work. The energy that I've conserved - I'm starting to put it to better use :)

But anyway! Ramblings aside! Have just finished reading Krugman's book. He has a knack for making long periods of history and economic intricacies sound short and simple to a layman like me.

Some of the lessons I learnt, apart from how nations' economies crash, many of which would sound like primary school math to those schooled in econs!
(i) The Fed and Alan Greenspan - Greenspan's pursuit of a laissez-faire capitalism, in particular, his reluctance to regulate derivatives, had contributed somewhat to the bubbles that formed during his time. In fact, the stock market bubble may have only been saved by a housing bubble.
(ii) Supply and demand side issues - Krugman made the statement that "for the first time in two generations, failures on the demand side of the economy ... have become the clear and present limitation on prosperity for a large part of the world". As such, we cannot stick to the Bush era tax-cuts-to-promote-production as a means to climb out of the current situation.
(iii) Psychology in economics - That it is difficult to apply the same set of economic principles to all situations without factoring in the human element - which is difficult to predict. There are two aspects that Krugman raised. First is that speculative attacks (such as by hedge funds) can have exceedingly high impacts on a nation's economy. Second is that the level of confidence in a nation's financial market can either spiral its economics into a meltdown or cause nothing more than a benign blip when policies such as the devaluation of its currency is made.