Loc’s Blog

Steve Jobs, the entrepreneurial genius who co-founded the Apple Corp., is a very charismatic leader of technical people. When his group was designing Apple’s new Macintosh computer, Jobs flew a pirate flag over his building. Its purpose was to signify his team’s determination to blow the competition out of the water. Rather creative motivation.

Good leaders and managers have creative ways to motivate their employees.

Robert Waterman Jr. wrote about Chiyoshi Misawa, founder and president of Misawa Homes — the largest homebuilder in Japan. At least once every decade he “dies” to arrest the momentum of out-of-date assumptions and policies. He sends a memo to his company that formally announces “the death of your president.”

This is his way of forcing the whole company to rethink everything. When employees resist change because they are used to the old way of doing things, Misawa declares: “That was the way things were done under Mr. Misawa. He is now dead. Now, how shall we proceed?” Read the rest of this entry »

Imagine by John Lennon

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today…

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world…

You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one

What is productive laziness

‘Progress isn’t made by early risers. It’s made by lazy men trying to find easier ways to do something.’ Robert Heinlein (1907 – 1988)

By advocating being a ‘lazy’ project manager I do not intend that we should all do absolutely nothing. I am not saying we should all sit around drinking coffee, reading a good book and engaging in idle gossip whilst watching the project hours go by and the non-delivered project milestones disappear over the horizon. That would obviously be plain stupid and would result in an extremely short career in project management, in fact probably a very short career full stop!

Lazy does not mean Stupid. No I really mean that we should all adopt a more focused approach to project management and to exercise our efforts where it really matters, rather than rushing around like busy, busy bees involving ourselves in unimportant, non-critical activities that others can better address, or indeed that do not need addressing at all in some cases.

Science behind the laziness – being focused Read the rest of this entry »

How Does Change Happen?
by Jennifer Corriero

How does change happen?
This is perhaps one of those eternal questions
that carries both simplicity
and depths of complexity
juxtaposed in a tension
so bright and dark that
emotions explode and identities blur.

Is your belief defined by your role
or is your role defined by your belief?

How does change happen? Read the rest of this entry »

Here are the lecture audio recordings for the second half of the term with Prof. Syed Rashid.

I reuploaded them as I found the first half of the lectures (the last lecture on the first half is on advertising topic that is really of importance).

• PSY 209 - Industrial Psychology - Lecture Audio Recordings - Part 1 (51)

• PSY 209 - Industrial Psychology - Lecture Audio Recordings - Part 2 (47)