Steve Jobs and Bill Gates

Getting Along with Other People

How do we get along with people with opposing personality, likes and dislikes? That is not going to be easy. The following article might provide some new approaches to make that job a little easier.
Relating to Other People

Managing Stress@Work

Do you know how to manage stress at work? We all face stress, yet many of us have no idea how to cope with it. Read the booklet through the following link:

Stress At Work: Information Booklet

Joy of Work

Self Improvement

PickTheBrain.com is an interesting site that offers a broad approach to self improvement including any and all experiences that contribute to a fuller life. This site will help you use the power of your own mind to create the life you deserve.


Pick The Brain

Business Ethics

Passion

Passion

Passion about Work

Managing Your Customer and the Your Workplace

EXPERT Magazine is a training & development and meeting planning publication, providing articles and resources to make organization more effective.

A Crash Course on Customer Service

Learn to say "No"

Building Trust with Your Customers

Expert Magazine

Managing Your Time

To be successful in your career you need to master the skills of managing your Time.
You should learn to:
- Identify the main obstacles to effective Time Management in your daily role..
- Understand the nature of Time Management.
- Understand a range of tools, techniques and concepts for Time Management.
- Use apprpriate techniques to build an effective Time Management process

Read the book using the link below:
Making the Most of Your Time: Going Beyond To-Do Lists By Rajesh Setty

Toastmasters Clubs in Singapore

Public speaking is an important skills. Regardless of what we are doing, each one of us need to master the art of public speaking. What is the best way to learn how to communicate well? try joining a ToastMaster Club. For a club close to you try the link below:



ToastMasters Clubs in Singapore

For Your Reading Pleasure

Start reading. Thee following links provide some interesting PDF books for your reading pleasure. Enjoy it

The Happy at Work Manifesto
By Alexander Kjerulf
Happy at Work

When You Absolutely, Positively Should NOT Use Email: A Civilized List
by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe
A Civilized List


Forget Formulas: How Managers are Fooled in their Search for Success
By Phil Rosenzweig
Forget Formulas

The Greening of Business: Recent Trends & Remaining Hurdles
By Andrew Winston
The Greening of Business

Customer Service - Where do we get started?

Every business organisation knows the importance of customer service standards. Some simply stay with a practical but a powerful GST approach - Ask their employees to Greet, Smile and say Thank You. When every business start incorporating GST in their service standards, you no longer enjoys a competitive advantage. Is there a way to stand out from the rest of crowd? You have to make sure every employee at all levels are actively involved in making their service speacial and unique. Employees at all levels with differing abilities can actively participate in proving customer service. If you want your employees at all level to go for the extra mile, then ask each one to watch this video in the link provided below.

If you are keen to get a in-house customer service excellence workshop for your organisation then: Send E-Mail to Centre for Creatve Thinking. Clients from Malaysia may call: 012-3479113 as well as email for details.

Customer Service Excellence - An Inspiring Video

Developing The Leadership Potential Within You

Is it possible to develop the leadership potential within you? First you must belief that you have the potential for becoming a leader. It is that belief that becomes the basis when unfolding the leadership potentrial within you.

A thorough self awareness of your strengths and weaknesses is the first step if you are keen to develop the leadership skills. Seeking feedback form your friends, colleagues and close family members is one way to assess your strengths and weaknesses. If you are not so comfortable seeking feedback from thes egroup, then stepping aside and learning to self relflect is another option. You should be able to identify a number of assessment tools you can use to identify your areas of expertise, strengths and weaknesses.

Complete the assessment tool below to gain a better understanding about yourself:

Know yourself

Understanding Leadership

Then start with the leadership development plan referred in the following document:

Developing The Leadership Within You

Understanding Leadership

EQ versus IQ

Does IQ really that matters? How important is the EQ skills. Though the term Emotional Intelleigence was coined in 1990 by 2 researchers, it was the publication of Daniel Goleman's book on EI that popularised the concept. View the BBC video.

Battle of the Brain

Understanding Chinese Mind and Chinese Culture

The link from the University of Texas Austin, will be useful in acquiring an understanding of the chinese culture and business practices. It covers a whole range of chinese practices, you will find it useful.

Understanding Chinese Culture and Business Practices

Managing Work related stress

Stress is something we are unable to avoid completely. It is important to learn how to cope with the stress encounters we face in our work. You will find the following document useful.

Understanding Work Related Stress

Writing Resume - Getting it Right

How do we get a potential employer become interested in us? When you see an advertisement for a job opening and decided to follow-up with your resume you must remember a number of important factors. Try and follow the following guidelines and visit the links provided at the end of this posting:

Never send a standard resume to an employer. You should customise your resume to a particular job opening.

Read the advertisement(s) carefully. Pay attention to the details about the nature of the job. Recognising the key duties and responsibilities is a critical first step before you get your first draft of your resume.

List down the key words from the advertisement. These key words should be in your resume, when documenting your experience.

In the process of documenting your work and professional experience, you should highlight your personal experience relating to the key duties and responsibilities stated in the resume.

Use actions verbs reflecting to the key duties and responsibilities. Use the search engines to locate the powerful action words.

Highlight your critical skills and professional qualifications. Whenever possible adopt a 'Functional Resume', as this will enable you to highlight your specific expertise.

If the advertisement states that candidates with certain skills or experience are preferred and you do hold them, then you should emphasise those skills and qualifications more prominently in your resume.

Do an Internet search for help and guidance in getting your resume right.


Getting Your Resume Right

Arul John Peter

Managing Stress at Work

Today’s workforce is experiencing job burnout and stress in epidemic proportions. Workers at all levels feel stressed out, insecure, and misunderstood. Many feel the demands of the workplace have become too much to handle. The financial impact of stress on corporations is staggering. This workshop explores the causes of such stress, and suggests appropriate initiatives for the company and its employees to undertake.

As employees we need to:

* Understand that stress is an unavoidable part of everybody’s life
* Recognize the symptoms of over stress
* Identify those situations in your life that cause stress
* Identify those actions which add to our stress
* Develop strategies for managing stress
* Develop techniques for dealing with the situations that can’t bechanged


Visit the following site to learn how to cope with the stress in your life.
Stress Management

Mayo Clinic Stress center

Tools for Better Decision Making

We face problems and opportunities all the time. This would mean we need to make choices. Making choices is about making decisions. Unfortunately making decisions is not always easy, unless we master the skill using some reliable tool. Inmeetings we are always under pressure to make decisions. Unfortunately, when inadequate time was spent in problem identification and solution development, the quality of decision making suffers.

When you have to make a decision in your next regular management meeting, because it has been in the agenda for sometime, just ask “Are we ready for making a decision?”. Unless everyone can answer with confidence that they are in a position to say 'YES' you should not rush into making decision.

We should familiarize ourselves with a number of decision making tools that can be used to evaluate each ideas. For a start try the following website:

Force Field Analysis

Prioritization Matrix


Arul John Peter
Centre for Creative Thinking

Leadership in Business

Carly Fiorina, former CEO of HP discusses the leadership concept. It is a very interesting speech. According to her leaership is about building capability,collaboration and character.


Leadership and Choice by Carly Fiorina

Understanding Singapore's Economic Competitiveness

The abstract below is extracted from the author's website/Mr Leo Kee Chye is well versed in Economics and several other discilines). I strongly recommend you read the article.

Abstract
Based on a research paper (2002) by the McKinsey Global Institute, this essay argues the importance in the role of the government in focusing on a few strategic sectors. The McKinsey paper reveals some surprising findings: 1. Much of the United States labour productivity growth jump in the period 1990-1999 was real and will continue. 2. The productivity growth jump was concentrated in only six out of fifty-nine economic sectors in the United States. Therefore, if the Singapore government choose to focus on these few strategic sectors, they can potentially drive the overall Singapore economy.

This essay also argues how the above strategy can be complemented by leveraging on the opportunities accruing from the globalising economy, and by identifying city-state's role in the portion of value chain in an increasing China-centric world, to enhance Singapore's competitiveness on the international stage


How can Singapore remain competitive in a globalising economy?

Brainstorming Technique

Any one who is serious about using creativity to develop new ideas, must learn the art of conducting brainstorming. The following links provide adequate information. Read, reflect and Use it regularly.


Brainstorming Technique

Handouts on Brainstorming

Eight Rules to Briliant Brainstorming

Developing Conceptual Skill Through SUDOKU

How fast you can complete this SUDOKU?

Economics Course from Carnegie Mellon University

You can access the Carnegie Mellon University's online course workbooks used in the full semester course on Micro Economics taught at the following link. The access includes the complete online workbooks including all expository text.

Economics

How to Apologise?

We all make mistakes. We do need to apologise at time. The problem is how do we say sorry. You may find the following link useful:



The Art of Apology from Harvard

Managing Difficult People

We all face difficult people at work and in our social encounters. How do we manage them Read the following article:

Managing Difficult People

Dealing with difficult people workbook

Insights on Creativity -

The preference to stay as we are right now is the norm rather than exception. The uncertainty and risk associated with new things and new ideas are the main reason for the avoidance attitude. We need to adapt and change to survive. Remaining status quo is not going to bring you anywhere. Organisations need to accept the truth - innovate or die.

Organisations who wish to survive and grow need to adopt innovation as one of their basic strategies. Innovation demands that the people in the organization learn to THINK differently, so that they are able to bring about new ideas. Managers must recognise that creativity and inovation are not meant to be limited to R&D department. Creativity and Innovation should become the norm in all types of activities. Once we become committed to the reality that innovation is required in all our processes, management policies, marketing, services and products we will be able to convince the employees of the need to THINK more Creatively.

The million dollar question is - How do we make people think creatively? First you must accept the fact that all of us are creative. If that is so, why are the majority of employees reluctant to think more creatively? Generally, the processes and structure in the workplace discourages creativity. The best place to start is to take a comprehensive review of the present practices and processes that are in place and ask whether each of this practices encourages or discourages creativity.

One should be prepared to slaughter sacred cows if you want to move on to become a more creative and innovative organization. Business organizations need to think of new products and services so that they can stand out from their competitors. Thinking and developing new products and services demand that the employees be equipped with creative thinking skills. Innovative business organizations know how to create the right work environment for innovation.

Employees at all levels must be trained on creative problem solving techniques, so that they will be equipped with competencies and skills that will enable them to generate creative ideas, when dealing with problems in the workplace. One needs to create the environment that supports creative thinking first, so that employees can move to a higher level of creating new products and services. To take the innovation and creativity to a higher level, you must remember that creativity is about generating new ideas, while innovation is about introducing feasible business products or service. Gaining an insight on creativity is the best way to develop effective problem solving skills.


Arul John Peter, is a Facilitator with the Centre for Creative Thinking, based in Singapore (www.creativityasia.com). He conducts training workshops on creativity and related soft skills for clients in Asia and Middle East. He holds an MBA and majored in strategic human resource management. He also holds a Bachelor of Science as his basic degree and professional qualification in administrative and people management from the Institute of Administrative Management, United Kingdom. He is a member of the American Creativity Association.

Creativity Techniques

Training and Staff development is becoming critical for the success of an organisation. Training executives play important role in this aspect. They need to have the right skills and tools in order to improve the Abilities, Skills and Knowledge (A.S.K.)of individual employees. Training managers in the process of managing and providing training and development programme are helping their employees to acquire critical skills and competencies that would enable them to enhance their performance. There are other independent trainers who are also involved in providing similar services to business organisations. if you are always looking for some interesting puzzles then this is
the site.

Creativity Techniques

If you wish to have a workshop exclusively for your colleagues/employees in your workplace on Creative Thinking, then you may contact Centre for Creative Thinking (Tel: +65 63370098) www.creativityasia.com for details.


John

Marketing Book

If you would likw to know more about marketing, then this free ebopok is your reference. This is an interesting ebook on marketing:

Marketing Book

John

Resources at Open University

You want to familiarise yourself with various topics. The Open University, UK is the place you should visit. In the Internet age, you are just a click away. Good Luck.


Open University, UK

Arul John

Famous Speeches

Searching for great Speeches from the past is not easy. Try the History Channel. Hear the Words that Changed the World. The site below provide a vast collection of speeches is drawn from the most famous broadcasts and recordings of the 20th century.

Great Speeches

If you wish to have a workshop exclusively for your colleagues/employees in your workplace on the Art of Public Speaking, then you may contact Centre for Creative Thinking (Tel: 63370098) www.creativityasia.com for details.

Martin Luther King's Speeches

To learn how to speak, you must listen to great speeches. Listen to the speeches of Martin Luther King. Ask yourself, what can I learn from his speeches.


Martin Luther King's Speeches


Arul

Successful Public Speaking

Learning to speak well in public is a valuable skill.Feeling nervous and uneasy before a speaking engagement is normal. Learning how to manage the nervousness is possible. You may wish to join organisation such as Toastmasters. Try thr following link to get started.


Toastmasters

Great Speeches

Martin Luther King Jr's Speech - I Have A Dream

Understanding Statistics

Regardless of your position in the organisation, you will come across the use of statistics. Unfortunately many of us have no ideas about it. To some of us it is a nightmare.You no longer need to suffer. The Sofia Open Content Initiative, provide an easy to follow lessons and video clips to understand the topic. Try it.

Elementary Statistics


Video on statistics

Regards.

Arul John Peter

Managing Change

Change is part of every organisation. You need to know how to manage and cope with the changes. In this aspect the following links would be useful.

Understanding Change

Change Management

If you find that you need help in managing change in your workplace, then you may wish to talk to your Training manager about the workshop titled "Riding The Wave". The 2 day workshop is designed to bring about a new perspective to the employees. You may send an email to: info@creativityasia.com





Regards.

Arul John Peter

Creativity Quotient

I have posted two links to test your creaivity Quotient and Effective Executive
skills.

Visit:

Creativity Quotient

John

Management skills

You may find the content at the following site useful:

Management Skills

The Centre for Creative Thinking (Tel: 63370098) conducts workshops exclusively for supervsiors and new managers. EQ Skills for Managing people, The Art of SuperVision are some of the workshops are some of the workshops offered by the Centre for Creative Thinking.www.creativityasia.com for details.




John

The Art of Delegation

To be successful in the work place you should know how to delaget. Read the article at the following site to familiarise yourself about delegation:

The Art of Delegation





If you wish to have a workshop exclusively for your colleagues/employees in your workplace on the Art of Delegation, then you may contact Centre for Creative Thinking (Tel: 63370098) www.creativityasia.com for details.



John

Building Trust@Work

If you want to know how to build trust in the workplace, please read the
following articles:


Building Trust

If you wish to have a workshop exclusively for your colleagues/employees in your workplace on the Building Trust @ Workplace, then you may contact Centre for Creative Thinking (Tel: 63370098) www.creativityasia.com for details.



John

Decision Making Made easy

We all need to make decisions all the time. Additional information on
decision making process. It adopts a comprehensive approach. If you
have the time, this is an interesting
site to visit:

Decision making

John

Understanding Management Concepts

No time to attend classes to know more about management. Then you will
find the following site useful:

Management Concepts


Regards.

Arul John Peter

Managing Your Career Transition

If you would like to read and familiarise yourself about Career
Transistion then this site should be useful:


Managing Your Career Trainsition

Arul John Peter
www.creativityasia.com

Challenging Your Mind

The articles at the following website useful. They are free to read
online, but requires payment if you want to download them in PDF
file.

Mind Tools



Regards.

Arul John Peter
Centre 4 Cre8tive Thinking
www.creativityasia.com

Creating Positive Image

Your success depend on how well you manage your image. Interested in creating positive professional image, read the article from harvard:

Creating Positive Image

Arul John Peter

Resume Writing

The following sites provide a broad understanding about writing an effective resume. However, do not seek their professional services, as they will charge a fee. If you are interested for an hands-on session, check with your neighbourhood Community Centres.

Get started in writing your resume. Visit the following websites:

Resume Writing

resume writing and Interview Skills

John

Managing Your Next Job Interview

Do you know how to handle the job interview? Visit the following site
for details on job interview

Managing The Job Interview

Understanding Leadership Concepts

If you are looking for practical tools that will enable you to become
a better supervisor, try the following links:

Understanding Leadership

If you wish to have a workshop exclusively for your colleagues/employees in your workplace on leadership skills and leadership related training, then you may contact Centre for Creative Thinking (Tel: +65 63370098) www.creativityasia.com for details.

Communication Skills for Supervisors

How do you keep track of the job skills.To be effective regardless of your position you need to know how to communicate. Try the following link:



Communication Skills for New supervisors


Regards.

Arul John Peter
www.creativityasia.com