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?