How do you manage changes for better conditions in 2012?

I can’t believe that I have been off writing my own blog for almost a year for many personal reasons. I am still alive in this planet!

Writing this blog is to share some of my thoughts on various subjects without any intention to make anyone or anything right or wrong. The truth of the matter is really subject to the choice of viewpoint from the universe of the individual himself. 

A lot of changes happened to me last year.  I personally run into a lot of randomities that I have never experienced, especially in terms of magnitudes in the past.  Yet, I can finally learn how to come out of it and have achieved peace of mind because of my own personal belief, value and integrity with some changes of  my operating basic and personal policies.  So they’re all boiled down to what personal value one really believe and let them be part of one’s life; that they are powerful enough to handle any stops and even opposition to bring peace for oneself.

If we look around our financial and business world, the understanding and grasp of change of paradigm and rules of the games determine the fate of one’s success or failure.  

A person and even a business if failed and as long as they’re smart, they could evaluate the previous stable data they had upheld for the failure to cause confusion, and know how to search better and workable stable data, they can come out of their own confusion and help themselves move into higher and better conditions. However, one can easily get stuck in one’s own success without paying any attention to change of paradigm especially in a fast paced technological change economy; that slowly undermine one’s success model.  For example, we can’t believe that a 124 years old company “Kodak” to seek bankruptcy financing this year.  Part of the reasons for its failure was due to its underestimation of the growth of digital camera while they’re the pioneer and the leader in the film camera industry as well as the first inventor of digital camera.  The strength of one’s business model soon turned into the weakness to be out-competed by its competitors. In other words, the business failed to manage “change”, and if continued to fail to do so, it could be out of business soon.

Why are some people afraid of change?  Change may in a way invalidate what one has been doing, especially if it has been successful. Change will also shake the stable data that one has been depending for its success.  We don’t like confusion but stability.  Change if not managed well can put oneself into moments or longer periods of confusion.  Yet, let’s face the reality that if one don’t handle “change” properly, his competitors will soon bring confusion to his door.

If one can separate oneself from his own stable data without any fixation, one can easily change and adopt new and workable stable data that can allow defeating one’s earlier stable data if needed sometimes.  One simply manages change to a better and higher condition.  Then one doesn’t need to wait until someone hit it in his face by enforcing a better stable data than his to lock him out of his game.  Who are we really?   Aren't we more senior than anything around us?   Aren't we more important than our compulsion to prove ourselves right at all times?  Don't forget that you are a very valuable being! 

I wish you all the best and prosperity for the coming dragon year.  Play your game with spirits of play without too much seriousness and enjoy your life!!

What are the purposes of your job and your company?

First I would like to express my apology for not updating my blog at least once a month. Though I have not written anything on my blog for more than two months (while being away from Hong Kong and busy with many different activities), I do have many new realizations about myself, life and the world that I would like to share with you.  Life is in fact interesting.

Recently, I have attended a six days executive seminar at a cruise, regarding the subject on “Leadership and Purposes” with lots of inspiring ideas from the speakers.  Success and prosperity can always be found from any company having positive purposes to be shared by the employees and customers under competent leadership.  It’s also applied to the individual success whether one is motivated from his own purposes in life and knows how to make things go right towards the accomplishment of his purposes.

Have you ever asked yourself about the purposes of your life?  You can also ask the same question to your friends, associates, colleagues, and family members to help you getting to know them better.

We may have different responses: “Well, I have never thought about it”, or “I really don’t know”, or “Just follow what other people are doing.”, or simply, “Buying a property”, “Security in life”, “Making a lot of money”,   etc… You may find only a few people could clearly state their purposes in life right away.   You can also watch their emotional responses towards their purposes. Are they excited about them? Are they bored about them? Do they feel grief as if they have almost lost their purposes? You can imagine the level of one’s motivation by examining his purposes in life; and his emotional response towards his purposes.  Those who are more excited about their purposes have a higher chance of success.  It will be interesting to find out the survey results with questions on the purposes and related emotional response of the majority of Hong Kong People; which can give us insights to determine the rate of our success and prosperity.

Now, let’s take a look of the purposes of the majority of companies in Hong Kong?   Profitability and viability are always expected to make the company stay in the market.   What does it really motivate any company to exist and continue to grow?  However, mission statement with visions or purposes are not always published or clearly stated in any public company documents of Hong Kong companies.   It may be a good research topic to find out how the corporate purposes of Hong Kong companies are related with their success.

For example, on the company brochure of Sun Hung Kai Property Company, a listed company in Hong Kong,  said “ The Group believes in “Building Homes with Heart’ and has grown with Hong Kong over the decades offering ideal residences for people. The company is also committed to corporate social responsibility; taking an active role in charity and environmental protection. It will continue aspiring to new heights with its well-established brand and contributing to better living in Hong Kong by building quality homes.” We have witnessed the quality homes built by this company and it’s also a preferred property developer when considering buying any property in Hong Kong.  So from what the company has produced, we can see that there is an alignment of its purposes and products.

70% of our time is related with work.  If one’s purposes are in alignment with the purposes of the company one is working for, you can imagine that he’s motivated and happy in what he’s doing.  Otherwise, one may feel unmotivated with unhappiness.

If you wish, you may review your own purposes of life, the purposes of your job and your company to see whether they’re in agreement in some regards, that can help to uplift your morale to build a better future of yourself, your company and the community at large.

So let’s build a better future of Hong Kong together!

How do we channel the resentment of “anti-rich” in our community?

Economies do go through cycles of “ups” and “downs” whether they truly reflect the actual production or they’re arbitrarily monitored with speculation and inflated assets.  Whoever know better how to play the game could possibly be less the adverse effect of any dramatic changes in the rules of the game and any burst of asset price bubbles.

With the inflated prices of property assets just two years after the 2008 financial tsunami,  many Hong Kong people have complained the difficulties of owning property in Hong Kong, especially those generations born in 80s and 90s with less equity than older generation. The discrepancy between the rich and the poor is getting larger that getting a fair playing ground for everyone is apparently unavailable.

From the "Asia-Pacific Wealth Report 2010" released by Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management and Capgemini, the number of Hong Kong people with liquid asset of US$1 million or above is 76,000 as of Dec 2009.  In other words, it is only about 1% of the population of Hong Kong that could be classified as “rich people”.  Ironically, according to the research of Hong Kong Council of Social Services, the number of poor people grew more than 60,000 in just half years to reach 18.1% of the total population (1.26 million people) as of June 2010. The definition of poverty applied to those families which have household income less than half of the median household income of Hong Kong.  How to solve the discrepancy between the rich and the poor people has now become the top concern of the government.

Growing resentment of the unfair rules of games geared towards rich people (仇商仇富情緒) is getting more ground in Hong Kong recently, especially as perceived and voiced a lot more by media and internet channels, though we do not have the actual figure of people of Hong Kong with clear and expressed resentment emotion against “rich people” by any objective collection of opinion.

In fact, the term of “anti-rich” is too general  as whoever have expressed the resentment of “anti-rich” may not resent themselves being rich, but because of the stops or barriers they have perceived to prevent them from being rich to have the same  status, reward and benefit like those rich people. Rather it is truer to say that Hong Kong has always been a materialistic cosmopolitan to encourage people making a lot of money on their own in our history, that if any resentment is more resulted from not making one's life the way one wants.

Human emotion and reaction is a very interesting subject. If one knows very well, one can easily monitor and control the emotions of others towards certain direction. (please click here for more information of the subject if you would like.)

Whenever anyone is in the emotional tone of “resentment”, they tend to respond better to a little bit, higher emotional state of “antagonism”. The media is very smart by channeling the resentment emotion towards the apparent enemies: rich business people and creating “antagonistic” emotional state.  Yet, they’re not constructive emotions, but mis-emotions that could destroy the harmony within oneself and our community.

But who is the actual enemy of one’s state of condition?  The state of one’s mind and emotion determine one’s state of condition.  One will not accomplish anything if attacking only "apparency" but not the "actuality".

The call and responsibility to improve the conditions always lie on able people in any community and it’s no exception in Hong Kong.  The more able people we have, the better the living environment we have. Yet, it also requires that each of us:  the rich, the poor, and the government to help each other in providing better game fields with better rules of game. The rich people need to make money with exchange in abundance with quality products and service by doing business ethically. The poor people also need to work hard to make their own contribution to our community and soon they can improve and change their conditions themselves. The government needs to provide fair rules of games, opportunity and effective  legal systems for the rich and the poor to participate and needed help to those for minimum level of survival and protection and in cases of any emergency.  In other words, each person should take up his own responsibility no matter what role or condition one’s in and that's how the prosperity of any economy depends on.

It’s time for us to raise our emotional tone to be more “constructive” than “destructive” by taking our own responsibilities, then we will have a better life for all of us in living Hong Kong.

What leadership can we depend on for the future of Hong Kong?

When looking closely a lot of problems and conflicts in our Hong Kong community on many issues recently, there often exist a lack of observation by differentiation, inabilities to recognize the source of problems, misallocation or misassignment of responsibilities for the parties involved, addition of lies to alter the real picture and therefore problems seemed unsolvable. Let's look further:

1) Use of identification (by making everything in the incident the same value with each other to have no difference at all) method as a simple problem solving solution : For example, we assume the identification of all cases presented by “Lehman Brothers mini-bond investors” as all misled by high pressure selling methods by all related banks in Hong Kong so we have legitimate cases that we could assign 100% responsibilities to the banks, HKMA, HKSEC including their failure in regulating the business of the banks in Hong Kong; and the affected investors are totally irresponsible including the neglect of their own right and responsibilities to do inspection and regulating function on any of their actions.

It looked like a simple solution by making all other people totally responsible and the affected investor can be fully compensated for the loss from the banks as agents of the investment products.

Unfortunately this is how the minds of many people work to think in terms of identification as a solution method in life. For example, a woman who failed in her marriage and came to the conclusion that “every man is no good” when experiencing all these painful emotion. From there on, she would not try to differentiate and observe each man but by using this simple solution of “every man is no good” to avoid the previous painful emotion. However, she at the same time had lost the ability to look, no longer able to observe every man she met correctly and gave up her own chance or right to find the right man. If we look closely everything in our universe, no two things are exactly the same. Take two apples in front of you, examine it closely and you know they are not the same exactly in all aspects. So you can see the disadvantage of "identification thinking" in reducing our abilities to observe. Only when one can improve his ability to observe and differentiate, one can really enjoy any experience in life. When one can observe correctly, he or she can decide and act correctly.

Followed with this seemingly simple solution method for the case of "Lehman Brother bond investors in Hong Kong", then one may ask who had failed to regulate the HKMA and HKSEC in the first place? If we cannot find the ultimate source which had created the problem by failed regulation and supervision in the first place, one cannot really solve the problem. So one can ask and track it further down the parties including the legislative council, every Hong Kong public, Lehman Brothers, Investment Rating companies, US government, IMF, World Bank, etc and possibly one may even ask why God does not regulate us to cause so much problems? But don't you think the truth of the matter is when you examine the history of man that God only help those who help themselves.

Responsibility includes effort one put on himself and others to get thing done correctly. Misallocation or misassignment of responsibilities will therefore create problems with confusion and things get messier.

If anyone of us fails to take his or her own responsibility, it simply adds the lies to the picture and will further reduce the abilities and effectiveness of the community concerned. Don’t you think our community will only do well if everyone takes his own responsibility? And hopefully you can see why the workable solution of the “Lehman Brother Mini-Bond investor” case is the proper assignment of responsibilities which should be the purpose of any needed investigation.

2) “You are right by being the opponent with opposing voices all the time” unless....

It is true that for any opinion or viewpoint that we believe is true or helpful, we will insist on it and make sure it's heard and even to be implemented.

Do you notice that it is easier to communicate with anyone to tell you how right they are rather than how wrong they could be in many things? Ask yourself or anyone around you and I am sure you'll find a lot of examples. Even when they could admit they're wrong but they will still defend their being right to be wrong with a lot of reasons why they are doing so.

So you see that it is no use to debate with anyone whether he or she is right or not...but rather ask them to look whether the action is based on the greatest good to the greatest number of people involved (which could include self, family, group, race, mankind, earth). The true leaders of the community can assume all the viewpoints from all parties involved and make the decision based on the greatest good to the greatest number of people concerned or the least harm to the greatest number of the people concerned.

It's therefore less valuable to put oneself (like some political parties and their members) always into the position of being the opponent to the government or any real or imagined enemies when expressing one's opinion; or simply acting on behalf of a small niche of the community for some other reasons. One cannot achieve the goal of really helping the community with a more sustainable survival value in this manner by being the "opposing party" alone all the time; without offering solution to create value to the most people concerned.

What we need today is the true leaders who can recognize the source of problems, decide and take action according to the greatest good to the greatest number of people concerned.

What leadership can we depend on for the future of Hong Kong? Can we work together for a better Hong Kong for ourselves and our next generation? It is time for each of us to examine our own responsibilities and do something about it.