For more info:
http://www.iso.org/iso/pressrelease.htm?refid=Ref1587&utm_source=ISO&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=News
Thursday, June 7, 2012
ISO publishes new standard for business continuity management
For more info:
http://www.iso.org/iso/pressrelease.htm?refid=Ref1587&utm_source=ISO&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=News
China to lift ban on Malaysian bird's nest products
BEIJING: China recognises the presence of natural nitrite in bird's nest and will lift the import ban on the products from Malaysia after determining a permissible level, Health Minister Datuk Seri Liow Tiong Lai said.He said the Chinese authorities understood that the presence of nitrite was a natural occurrence when swiflets were raised.
“We reached a very important consensus today after we explained to them why there is natural nitrite in our bird's nest.
“We agreed that there should be no nitrite additive in Malaysian bird's nest exports to China during the production process.
“But the Chinese authorities will allow the presence of natural nitrite in the product,” he said after meeting Chinese health officials here yesterday.
Liow said both sides had set up a working committee comprising food specialists and experts with immediate effect, to determine the permissible level of nitrite in bird's nest products.
The committee will be headed by the ministry's food safety and quality division senior director Noraini Mohd Othman and two Chinese officials from relevant agencies.
“The committee started work today and Noraini will stay in China to discuss how we will work out the details and the timetable for nitrite standards,” Liow added.
He had led a delegation of officials and bird's nest exporters to China to discuss the issue with the Chinese authorities following reports of fake Malaysian bird's nest.
Federation of Malaysia Bird's Nest Associations president Datuk Paduka Beh Heng Seong said Malaysian bird's nest exporters would adhere to the nitrite standards as long as the permissible level was reasonable.
“We have assured the Chinese authorities that we will further improve the quality of our products and restore Chinese consumers' confidence in Malaysian bird's nest,” he said.
Courageous Leaders Don't Make Excuses...They Apologize by Erika Andersen
I’ve been thinking about the power of apology lately. I’ve been noticing that the people for whom I have the most respect don’t hesitate to say “I was wrong,” or “I’m sorry I…” On the other hand, the people I have the hardest time respecting seem constitutionally unable to take responsibility for their own mistakes. Even when they try, it comes out sounding like “I may have been partly at fault, but…” or “It may seem that I was wrong, but…” They just can’t do it.
Apologizing freely requires a good deal of courage. It’s not comfortable for any of us admit an error, or to acknowledge that something we’ve done has caused others harm or inconvenience. So when someone truly apologizes, we know he or she is putting honesty and honor above personal comfort or self-protection. It’s inspiring, and it feels brave.
I just today read a great article here on Forbes about this very topic called Creative Leadership: Humility and Being Wrong. The authors, Doug Guthrie and Sudhir Venkatesh, make a really clear and well-reasoned case for the positive power of admitting and apologizing for one’s mistakes. At one point in the article, they note that:
We are frequently taught that leaders, especially aspiring leaders, should hide weaknesses and mistakes. This view is flawed. It is not only good to admit you are wrong when you are; but also it can also be a powerful tool for leaders—actually increasing legitimacy and, when practiced regularly, can help to build a culture that actually increases solidarity, innovation, openness to change and many other positive features of organizational life.
And courage begets courage: your followers are more likely to make their own tough decisions and to take responsibility for them when you model that behavior. You have their backs – so they’re much more likely to have yours.I couldn’t agree more. Followers look to see whether a leader is courageous before they’ll fully accept that person’s leadership. If they see courage (and taking full responsibility for actions and admitting and apologizing for mistakes are two of the five key indicators of courage), it feels safe to ‘sign up.’ People need courageous leaders in order to feel there’s someone to make the tough calls and to take responsibility for them – they need to know that the buck truly does stop with the leader. With a courageous leader, people feel protected – not that they’re helpless, but they know the person in charge really has their back.
Because so many of us have a hard time apologizing, I thought it might be helpful to have an ‘apology primer.’ Here you go:
- I’m sorry: this is the core of a genuine apology. “I’m sorry.” or “I apologize.” It’s the stake in the ground to communicate that you truly regret your behavior and wish you had acted differently. No apology is complete without this.
- Stay in the first person: Many, perhaps most, apologies run off the rails at this point, when the apologizer shifts into the second person, e.g., “I’m sorry….you didn’t understand me.” Or “I’m sorry….you feel that way.” Suddenly, you’re no longer apologizing for your actions; you’re telling the other person that you regret their actions or feelings. A true apology sounds like, “I’m sorry I….” or “I’m sorry we…”
- Don’t equivocate: Once you said what you regret about your actions or words, don’t water it down with excuses. That can blow the whole thing. The former manager of my apartment building once said to me, “I’m sorry we haven’t gotten back to you about your security deposit, but you have to understand we’ve got hundreds of tenants.” I definitely didn’t feel apologized to – in fact, I felt he was telling me I was being inconsiderate to hold him accountable! Just let the apology stand on its own. “I’m sorry we haven’t gotten back to you about your security deposit.”
- Say how you’ll fix it. This seals the deal. If you genuinely regret your words or actions, you’ll to commit to changing. This needs to be simple, feasible and specific. “I’m sorry we haven’t gotten back to you about your security deposit. We’ll have an answer to you by this Friday.”
- Do it. I know some people who don’t have a hard time apologizing, but seem to have a hard time following through on their apologies. If you apologize and say you’re going to behave differently, and then don’t – it’s actually worse than not having apologized in the first place. When you don’t follow through, people question not only your courage, but also your trustworthiness.
So there you have it. Next time you’re clearly in the wrong, take deep breath, put aside your self-justification, your excuses, your blame, your defensiveness, and simply apologize. Being courageous in this way is generally scary in anticipation. But it feels great once you’ve done it….to you, and to those you lead.
Source:
Forbes
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
More than 100,000 salted duck eggs suspected of being processed with potentially poisonous industrial salt were found at a workshop in Jiangmen, Guangdong province, last week.Three workers were making salted eggs with industrial salt, according to investigators, in an apartment in a residential community in Jiangmen. Investigators also found 2 metric tons of industrial salt and 52,500 unprocessed eggs stored there, Jiangmen Daily reported.
The investigators seized the goods and are testing the processed eggs.
They are also trying to track down 50,000 salted eggs the boss said he had sold to agricultural produce markets in Jiangmen.
However, that may prove difficult because most salted eggs sold at markets are unpacked and bear no brand label or production lot number, said Shi Chengtie of the quality and technology supervision bureau of Jiangmen.
Industrial salt costs about 800 yuan ($127) per ton, according to the boss, who also operated a salted egg wholesale store in the community and is under investigation. Salt meant for consumption, in contrast, sells for up to 1,400 yuan per ton. according to investigators. It remains as yet unknown how he acquired industrial salt, which is sold only to properly licensed industrial businesses, said Liu Lijie, an official with the salt bureau of Jiangmen.
The three workers said they were not aware that they were using industrial salt or that industrial salt is prohibited in food processing. They said that they occasionally ate the salted eggs they made.
Industrial salt contains poisonous nitrite and may have harmful substances such as lead and arsenic, according to the website of Guangdong Salt Industry.
Eating industrial salt can cause dizziness, headache, fatigue, difficult breathing, vomiting, diarrhea and even death.
“I always buy unpacked salted eggs in small stores. Now I guess it would be safer to buy packaged ones in supermarkets,” said a woman named Zhang in Guangzhou.
In 2006, eggs processed with industrial salt containing a large amount of barium killed two people and poisoned more than 20 others in Jiangxi province. Food cooked with industrial salt sold at a delicatessen in Shanghai killed one person and poisoned 25 others in 2009.
In Guangdong this year, industrial salt was found to be used in soy sauce in Foshan, salted eggs in Dongguan, cooked meat in Guangzhou and preserved vegetables in Huizhou.
Workshops in Beijing, Yinchuan in the Ningxia Hui autonomous region and Leshan in Sichuan province, were found this year to package industrial salt in edible salt bags for sale, according to media reports.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Culture Isn't Costly by Arshad Chowdhury
Successful company culture can make the difference between a workplace people dread and one they brag about. You don’t have to have a Google-sized budget to offer great culture. Many culture-changing initiatives have no direct costs to the company. In fact, when properly executed, culture-improving initiatives can lower company costs in both the short and long term.
I’ve spent the past 10 years learning about and implementing solutions to make work better for employers and managers alike. I’ve touched hundreds of companies large and small and have seen many distinct cultures. Based on this experience I offer these simple initiatives to encourage a peaceful, productive workplace that people love.
Make Rules for the 95%, Not the 5%
Most of your employees are hard working, motivated, and professional. Workplace rules should be designed to give maximum autonomy to the vast majority of your workers. Don’t burden people with rules designed to control the 5% of employees who are constitutionally unmotivated or undisciplined. From dress code to work hours to meeting attendance, fewer rules in the workplace are better.
For one, fewer rules can start saving you money right away. Get rid of expensive firewalls blocking Facebook and YouTube. At the same time, access to these tools can help your employees research and network faster.
Celebrate Going Home Early
It’s not true that the longer you work, the more work you will get done. According to a 2010 study, flexible work hours can lead to increased retention and productivity. You can quickly improve culture by focusing on work output instead of hours of input. If you’re going to leave the office early, go ahead and announce to your coworkers that you just closed a mega account, sent out that TPS report, and are now heading for the golf course. There’s no shame in going home after hitting a home run.
Stop Swearing
Not all rules are bad. Implement a "no swearing" rule today: no swearing about or at your coworkers or customers. By cutting out swearing, you will elevate discourse to expression of thoughtful ideas instead of base emotions. An environment where people swear at one another can quickly turn toxic. The no swearing rule can save you millions by avoiding costly lawsuits where disgruntled employees--with good reason--strike back.
Cultivate Experts
Imagine if every one of your employees was an expert in what they did; if, no matter how mundane their subject, they could teach it with passion. The benefits to you, your company, and your employees would be profound. Encourage people to become experts by having them research best practices in their field and share those with their colleagues on a regular basis. At my companies, we encourage book clubs for every level of employee. We incur cost here by buying every book club member an e-book. The $79 e-book, however, pays for itself twice: once when employees brag about their incredible work environment with their coworkers, and again when employees learn to do their jobs better through ongoing learning.
Talk About the Future
Start taking people out for coffee, one at a time, to ask them where they want to be in five and 10 years. Armed with this information, help them achieve those goals, even if the goals aren’t related to your company. If an employee tells you he or she wants to be an actor, support them when they want to take acting classes. This way, in the time that they are with you, they’ll be loyal, committed, and thankful for the support.
Let Employees Manage Their Own Energy
Our metabolism is guided by our bodies’ circadian rhythms. We all experience peaks and troughs of energy throughout the day, and the highs and lows differ for each person. One-third of your employees experience a dip in energy so steep that between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. each day they need to nap. So let them nap. According to a NASA study, a nap of just 26 minutes can boost productivity by 34%.
Recognize Your Team Every Day
People don’t work for just money. They work for recognition, too, so don’t deprive your employees of this vital form of compensation. They are working to build your company every day. As such, give them specific words of thank-you the moment the occasion calls for it. You should be thanking each person you directly work with at least two times a week. As my mentor Chester Elton (coauthor of The Carrot Principle) says, reward behavior you want to see repeated.
Culture Eats Strategy For Lunch by Shawn Parr
Get on a Southwest flight to anywhere, buy shoes from Zappos.com, pants from Nordstrom, groceries from Whole Foods, anything from Costco, a Starbucks espresso, or a Double-Double from In N' Out, and you'll get a taste of these brands’ vibrant cultures.Culture is a balanced blend of human psychology, attitudes, actions, and beliefs that combined create either pleasure or pain, serious momentum or miserable stagnation. A strong culture flourishes with a clear set of values and norms that actively guide the way a company operates. Employees are actively and passionately engaged in the business, operating from a sense of confidence and empowerment rather than navigating their days through miserably extensive procedures and mind-numbing bureaucracy. Performance-oriented cultures possess statistically better financial growth, with high employee involvement, strong internal communication, and an acceptance of a healthy level of risk-taking in order to achieve new levels of innovation.
Misunderstood and mismanaged
Culture, like brand, is misunderstood and often discounted as a touchy-feely component of business that belongs to HR. It's not intangible or fluffy, it's not a vibe or the office décor. It's one of the most important drivers that has to be set or adjusted to push long-term, sustainable success. It's not good enough just to have an amazing product and a healthy bank balance. Long-term success is dependent on a culture that is nurtured and alive. Culture is the environment in which your strategy and your brand thrives or dies a slow death.
Think about it like a nurturing habitat for success. Culture cannot be manufactured. It has to be genuinely nurtured by everyone from the CEO down. Ignoring the health of your culture is like letting aquarium water get dirty.
If there's any doubt about the value of investing time in culture, there are significant benefits that come from a vibrant and alive culture:
•Focus: Aligns the entire company towards achieving its vision, mission, and goals.
•Motivation: Builds higher employee motivation and loyalty.
•Connection: Builds team cohesiveness among the company’s various departments and divisions.
•Cohesion: Builds consistency and encourages coordination and control within the company.
•Spirit: Shapes employee behavior at work, enabling the organization to be more efficient and alive.
Mission accomplished
Think about the Marines: the few, the proud. They have a connected community that is second to none, and it comes from the early indoctrination of every member of the Corps and the clear communication of their purpose and value system. It is completely clear that they are privileged to be joining an elite community that is committed to improvising, adapting, and overcoming in the face of any adversity. The culture is so strong that it glues the community together and engenders a sense of pride that makes them unparalleled. The culture is what each Marine relies on in battle and in preparation. It is an amazing example of a living culture that drives pride and performance. It is important to step back and ask whether the purpose of your organization is clear and whether you have a compelling value system that is easy to understand. Mobilizing and energizing a culture is predicated on the organization clearly understanding the vision, mission, values, and goals. It's leadership’s responsibility to involve the entire organization, informing and inspiring them to live out the purpose the organization in the construct of the values.
Vibrant and healthy
Do you run into your culture every day? Does it inspire you, or smack you in the face and get in your way, slowing and wearing you down? Is it overpowering or does it inspire you to overcome challenges? It's important to understand what is driving your culture. Is it power and ego that people react to, and try to gain power, or a culture of encouragement and empowerment? Is it driven from top-down directives, or cross-department collaboration? To get a taste of your culture, all you have to do is sit in an executive meeting, the cafe or the lunch room, listen to the conversations, look at the way decisions are made and the way departments cooperate. Take time out and get a good read on the health of your culture.
Culture fuels brand
A vibrant culture provides a cooperative and collaborative environment for a brand to thrive in. Your brand is the single most important asset to differentiate you consistently over time, and it needs to be nurtured, evolved, and invigorated by the people entrusted to keep it true and alive. Without a functional and relevant culture, the money invested in research and development, product differentiation, marketing, and human resources is never maximized and often wasted because it's not fueled by a sustaining and functional culture.
Look at Zappos, one of the fastest companies to reach $1 billion in recent years, fueled by an electric and eclectic culture, one that's inclusionary, encouraging, and empowering. It's well-documented, celebrated, and shared willingly with anyone who wants to learn from it. Compare that to American Apparel, the controversial and prolific fashion retailer with a well-documented and highly dysfunctional culture. Zappos is thriving and on its way to $2 billion, while American Apparel is mired in bankruptcy and controversy. Both companies are living out their missions--one is to create happiness, and the other is based on self-centered perversity. Authenticity and values always win.
Uncommon sense for a courageous and vibrant culture
It's easy to look at companies like Stonyfield Farms, Zappos, Google, Virgin, Whole Foods, or Southwest Airlines and admire them for their passionate, engaged, and active cultures that are on display for the world to see. Building a strong culture takes hard work and true commitment and, while not something you can tick off in boxes, here are some very basic building blocks to consider:
1.Dynamic and engaged leadership
A vibrant culture is organic and evolving. It is fueled and inspired by leadership that is actively involved and informed about the realities of the business. They genuinely care about the company's role in the world and are passionately engaged. They are great communicators and motivators who set out a clearly communicated vision, mission, values, and goals and create an environment for them to come alive.
2.Living values
It's one thing to have beliefs and values spelled out in a frame in the conference room. It's another thing to have genuine and memorable beliefs that are directional, alive and modeled throughout the organization daily. It's important that departments and individuals are motivated and measured against the way they model the values. And, if you want a values-driven culture, hire people using the values as a filter. If you want your company to embody the culture, empower people and ensure every department understands what's expected. Don't just list your company’s values in PowerPoints; bring them to life in people, products, spaces, at events, and in communication.
3.Responsibility and accountability
Strong cultures empower their people, they recognize their talents, and give them a very clear role with responsibilities they're accountable for. It's amazing how basic this is, but how absent the principle is in many businesses.
4.Celebrate success and failure
Most companies that run at speed often forget to celebrate their victories both big and small, and they rarely have time or the humility to acknowledge and learn from their failures. Celebrate both your victories and failures in your own unique way, but share them and share them often.
Source:
Fast Company
Sunday, January 22, 2012
The 10 Companies That Invented The Most Things Last Year
Each year, the U.S. Patent Office and Trademark Office awards hundreds of thousands of patents to American and global companies. Last week, IFI Claims Patent Services, a producer of patent databases, released its top 50 ranking of the global companies awarded the most U.S. utility patents in 2011.
24/7 Wall St.’s review of the IFI list finds that producing the most patents does not ensure a successful business — frequently, it can mean the exact opposite. These are the top 10 biggest patent producing companies for 2011.
Most of the corporations in the top 10 are among the most worst performers across all industries. Share prices of seven of them plunged more than 40% in 2011. Five of the companies also lost money last year. Hitachi and Panasonic, both in the top 10, each lost more than $1 billion.
Of the top 10 recipients, only three are particularly successful companies. For years, they have held the largest market share in highly profitable businesses. Korean giant Toshiba has been extremely successful in consumer electronics, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) dominates the operating system market and IBM (NYSE: IBM) is the market leader in enterprise computing. These companies have been able to rely on their constant revenue streams to support heavy investment in research and development.
Some incredibly successful tech companies are not even in the top 25. Companies like Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), which is only 39th on the list, have been extremely profitable as a result of a small number of highly successful products. Kodak (NYSE: EK), meanwhile, is filing for bankruptcy, despite being one of the top patent recipients for years.
24/7 Wall St. reviewed top U.S. patent recipients for the past five years according to IFI’s annual reports. To illustrate how patent awards relate to company performance, we examined sales, profit and change in share price over the past five years for the top 10. We also examined how these companies compared within their industry and among the largest companies in the world based on the Forbes Global 2,000. Rankings for profit and sales are out of the largest 2,000 companies
Read more:
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-10-companies-that-invented-the-most-things-last-year-2012-1#10-hitachi-ltd-jp-1
24/7 Wall St.’s review of the IFI list finds that producing the most patents does not ensure a successful business — frequently, it can mean the exact opposite. These are the top 10 biggest patent producing companies for 2011.
Most of the corporations in the top 10 are among the most worst performers across all industries. Share prices of seven of them plunged more than 40% in 2011. Five of the companies also lost money last year. Hitachi and Panasonic, both in the top 10, each lost more than $1 billion.
Of the top 10 recipients, only three are particularly successful companies. For years, they have held the largest market share in highly profitable businesses. Korean giant Toshiba has been extremely successful in consumer electronics, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) dominates the operating system market and IBM (NYSE: IBM) is the market leader in enterprise computing. These companies have been able to rely on their constant revenue streams to support heavy investment in research and development.
Some incredibly successful tech companies are not even in the top 25. Companies like Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), which is only 39th on the list, have been extremely profitable as a result of a small number of highly successful products. Kodak (NYSE: EK), meanwhile, is filing for bankruptcy, despite being one of the top patent recipients for years.
24/7 Wall St. reviewed top U.S. patent recipients for the past five years according to IFI’s annual reports. To illustrate how patent awards relate to company performance, we examined sales, profit and change in share price over the past five years for the top 10. We also examined how these companies compared within their industry and among the largest companies in the world based on the Forbes Global 2,000. Rankings for profit and sales are out of the largest 2,000 companies
Read more:
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-10-companies-that-invented-the-most-things-last-year-2012-1#10-hitachi-ltd-jp-1
Source:
Business Insider
Business Insider
Saturday, January 21, 2012
"No" is the New "Yes": Four Practices to Reprioritize Your Life by Tony Schwartz
I was sitting with the CEO and senior team of a well-respected organization. One at a time, they told me they spend their long days either in back-to-back meetings, responding to email, or putting out fires. They also readily acknowledged this way of working wasn't serving them well — personally or professionally.
It's a conundrum they couldn't seem to solve. It's also a theme on which I hear variations every day. Think of it as a madness loop — a vicious cycle. We react to what's in front of us, whether it truly matters or not. More than ever, we're prisoners of the urgent.
Prioritizing requires reflection, reflection takes time, and many of the executives I meet are so busy racing just to keep up they don't believe they have time to stop and think about much of anything.
Too often — and masochistically — they default to "yes." Saying yes to requests feels safer, avoids conflict and takes less time than pausing to decide whether or not the request is truly important.
Truth be told, there's also an adrenaline rush in saying yes. Many of us have become addicted, unwittingly, to the speed of our lives — the adrenalin high of constant busyness. We mistake activity for productivity, more for better, and we ask ourselves "What's next?" far more often than we do "Why this?" But as Gandhi put it, "A 'no' uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a 'yes' merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble."
Saying no, thoughtfully, may be the most undervalued capacity of our times. In a world of relentless demands and infinite options, it behooves us to prioritize the tasks that add the most value. That also means deciding what to do less of, or to stop doing altogether.
Making these choices requires that we regularly step back from the madding crowd. It's only when we pause — when we say no to the next urgent demand or seductive source of instant gratification — that we give ourselves the space to reflect on, metabolize, assess, and make sense of what we've just experienced.
Taking time also allows us to collect ourselves, refuel and renew, and make conscious course corrections that ultimately save us time when we plunge back into the fray.
What follows are four simple practices that serve a better prioritized and more intentional life:
1. Schedule in your calendar anything that feels important but not urgent — to borrow Steven Covey's phrase. If it feels urgent, you're likely going to get it done. If it's something you can put off, you likely will — especially if it's challenging.
The key to success is building rituals — highly specific practices that you commit to doing at precise times, so that over time they become automatic, and no longer require much conscious intention or energy. One example is scheduling regular time in your calendar for brainstorming, or for more strategic and longer term thinking.
The most recent ritual I added to my life is getting entirely offline after dinner each evening, and on the weekends. I'm only two weeks into the practice, but I know it's already created space in my mind to think and imagine.
2. As your final activity before leaving work in the evening, set aside sufficient time — at least 15 to 20 minutes — to take stock of what's happened that day. and to decide the most important tasks you want to accomplish the next day.
Clarifying and defining your priorities — what the researcher Peter Gollwitzer calls "implementation intentions" — will help you to stay focused on your priorities in the face of all the distractions you'll inevitably face the following day.
3. Do the most important thing on your list first when you get to work in the morning, for up to 90 minutes. If possible, keep your door closed, your email turned off and your phone on silent. The more singularly absorbed your focus, the more you'll get accomplished, and the higher the quality of the work is likely to be. When you finish, take a break to renew and refuel.
Most of us have the highest level of energy and the fewest distractions in the morning. If you can't begin the day that way, schedule the most important activity as early as possible. If you're one of the rare people who feels more energy later in the day, designate that time instead to do your most important activity.
4. Take at least one scheduled break in the morning, one in the afternoon, and leave your desk for lunch. These are each important opportunities to renew yourself so that your energy doesn't run down as the day wears on. They're also opportunities to briefly take stock.
Here are two questions you may want to ask yourself during these breaks:
1. Did I get done what I intended to get done since my last break and if not, why not?
2. What do I want to accomplish between now and my next break, and what do I have to say "no" to, in order to make that possible?
Wanna know more about the Power Of "No"?
Would like to recommend the book below:
The Power of a Positive No: How to Say No and Still Get to Yes by William Ury
HR Value Chain...Cornerstone of Successful HR Foundation by Raj Gupta
As an HR professional, our key job is to attract, retain and grow human capital. However, to do that, it would be an added advantage if we have an exposure to other functions i.e. sales, commercial, business analysis, quality, marketing etc. There are 4 key part of HR value chain as outlined in the picture i.e. Talent Acqusition, Organizational Development, Employee Engagement and HR Service Delivery which includes entire spectrum of HR transcation including compliance with law of the land.To build successful career in HR, it is imperative that we build depth and breadth in each of these and subset of these strands and deliver consistently on defined CTQ's (Critical to Quality). If we skip any of these and somehow manage to reach to leadership positions in HR, we will find it difficult to strategize and even if we strategize, it would be difficult to visualize the entire execution phase.
Most of strategies fail not because they lack perspicacity and sound judgement on the part of strategist, however, they fail as it is difficult to execute them and the person who strategize without going through the rigmorale, fails to antcipate the bottlenecks in execution. I have seen HR People more willing to do employee engagement / Organizational development related roles and shy away from gettting their hands around transcational spectrum of HR which is a backbone of any HR organization.
In my view, aspiring HR professipnals must build the efficiencies, depth and breadth around all these strands. This will help them in the long run and catapult them into "hands on" HR leaders where they will not demand, however, command the respect of their staff.
Source:
HR Success Mantra
Four Sustainability Trends To Watch In 2012 by Jones Lang LaSalle
The road to sustainability has been plagued with roadblocks, including an unprecedented global financial crisis and attempts by entrenched business and political interests to deny climate science. Perhaps the greatest obstacle has been the lack of consistent and comparable standards for defining and measuring sustainability. Although these issues have yet to be fully resolved, many well-coordinated initiatives in recent years have pointed the way forward for companies and cities..
In 2012, major trends shaping the sustainable development movement include:
Transparency – Buildings, companies and cities are measuring and disclosing energy usage, carbon emissions and other information relating to sustainability. Commercial building owners don’t always have a choice: Five major U.S. cities and two states have enacted energy performance measurement and disclosure policies to date, and nine more cities and states have bills under considerations, to help tenants and investors make better informed decisions. Buildings in Europe are required to display energy performance certificates, and Australia is implementing similar requirements.
Corporations don’t require legal mandates to encourage disclosure. In 2011, more than 3,000 companies, including 404 Global 500 firms, voluntarily reported their carbon emissions, water management and climate change policies to Carbon Disclosure Project in 2011, perhaps swayed by CDP’s 551 investor members, who use the information in deciding where to place more than $71 trillion in investment capital.
Transparency is also on the rise at the city level. CDP invited 58 cities worldwide to report sustainability related data for the first time in 2011, and 42 responded, with 38 of them making their responses public. This year, CDP Cities is expanding its request to 150 cities and continues to see a high response rate, as well as extraordinary awareness and commitment on climate change issues by city leaders. These leaders recognize that managing energy, water and waste not only helps attract residents and business growth but also enhances quality of life in a variety of ways.
Global Consistency – Deeper sustainability reporting by cities and multi-national corporations has intensified the need for consistent ways to measure the effectiveness of energy, water and other sustainability strategies on a worldwide basis. Given the wide regional variation in environmental priorities around the world, the end goal may not be a single global standard, but a way to translate local government and business practices into a common global vocabulary for measuring effectiveness and recognizing achievement..
LEED, the building sustainability rating system originated in the U.S., is now frequently pursued in many countries with their own systems, as owners seek to attract international tenants. ENERGY STAR, the U.S. EPA energy benchmarking standard, will soon be able to provide accurate ratings across North America, thanks to a new cooperative agreement with Canada. And in 2011 the International Organization for Standardization released the ISO 50001 standard for energy management systems, which includes specifications for measurement, documentation and reporting on energy consumption.
Consistent measurement is important to corporations as they focus on sustainability not only in their own operations but, increasingly, throughout their supply chain as well. And while CDP Cities is not attempting to rank the sustainability of cities, it is developing a globally cohesive framework for understanding the effectiveness of sustainability strategies pursued by different cities.
Public/Private Collaboration – 2011 stood out as a year when government and business organizations explored their shared green goals and realized that public-private partnerships and collaborative initiatives are often the best way to overcome obstacles to sustainability. Some of these joint efforts will start to bear fruit in 2012.
A clear example is the December announcement of a $4 billion energy retrofit commitment by the U.S. federal government and 60 CEOs, mayors, university presidents, and labor leaders. Called the Better Buildings Challenge, the eight-year initiative includes $2 billion in energy upgrades of federal buildings and another $2 billion of private capital to improve energy by 20 percent in buildings totaling 1.5 billion square feet. (Jones Lang LaSalle joined the Challenge with a commitment to work with owners on improvements at buildings totaling 98 million square feet.)
The Better Buildings Challenge illustrates the alignment between business and government goals in seeking energy and carbon reduction. Achieving those goals also requires cooperation; for example, groups ranging from the World Economic Forum to Greenprint Foundation have called for changes to loan underwriting guidelines set by governmental bodies to facilitate financing of energy retrofits. More directly, U.S. states have found they can increase renewable energy installations at buildings by offering incentives that would make solar power cost-effective for owners within a relatively short period.
As a firm that serves government and business entities, Jones Lang LaSalle sees tremendous untapped synergy between the two groups in achieving energy and sustainability goals, particularly in the area of public-private partnerships. As just one of many examples, airports and other government entities often have surplus land that’s unsuitable for commercial property development but could be leased to private companies for development as large solar energy installations;
Focus on Solar Energy – Speakingof solar power, 2011 was a breakthrough year for new installations in the U.S., and continued growth is seen for 2012, albeit at a slower pace. More than 1 gigawatt of photovoltaic solar energy capacity was installed across the U.S. in the first three quarters of 2011, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). By comparison, 887 megawatts came online in all of 2010, which represented a doubling of the total installed base at the time.
Solar energy installations at commercial properties drove much of the market growth in 2011, but the pace of new installations dropped significantly in the third quarter, SEIA reported. The big story going into 2012 is the unprecedented rise in utility-based installations, which jumped by 325 percent from the second to the third quarter.
The strength of the solar market in 2012 and beyond will be affected by several variables, including basic supply and demand economics, technological improvements, and the amount and type of available incentives. It is clear, however, that interest in solar energy continues to grow as payback periods grow shorter and fossil fuel costs continue to rise.
2012: Taking Sustainability to the Next Level
The common theme to all these trends is of an industry poised to break through to the next level. The industry has moved swiftly through initial phases of understanding the basic costs and benefits, implementing low-cost initiatives, exploring more sophisticated strategies, and navigating around roadblocks. Today, it is easier to see the opportunity for dynamic progress by cities, property owners and corporate tenants that have laid the groundwork for growth and success
In 2012, major trends shaping the sustainable development movement include:
Transparency – Buildings, companies and cities are measuring and disclosing energy usage, carbon emissions and other information relating to sustainability. Commercial building owners don’t always have a choice: Five major U.S. cities and two states have enacted energy performance measurement and disclosure policies to date, and nine more cities and states have bills under considerations, to help tenants and investors make better informed decisions. Buildings in Europe are required to display energy performance certificates, and Australia is implementing similar requirements.
Corporations don’t require legal mandates to encourage disclosure. In 2011, more than 3,000 companies, including 404 Global 500 firms, voluntarily reported their carbon emissions, water management and climate change policies to Carbon Disclosure Project in 2011, perhaps swayed by CDP’s 551 investor members, who use the information in deciding where to place more than $71 trillion in investment capital.
Transparency is also on the rise at the city level. CDP invited 58 cities worldwide to report sustainability related data for the first time in 2011, and 42 responded, with 38 of them making their responses public. This year, CDP Cities is expanding its request to 150 cities and continues to see a high response rate, as well as extraordinary awareness and commitment on climate change issues by city leaders. These leaders recognize that managing energy, water and waste not only helps attract residents and business growth but also enhances quality of life in a variety of ways.
Global Consistency – Deeper sustainability reporting by cities and multi-national corporations has intensified the need for consistent ways to measure the effectiveness of energy, water and other sustainability strategies on a worldwide basis. Given the wide regional variation in environmental priorities around the world, the end goal may not be a single global standard, but a way to translate local government and business practices into a common global vocabulary for measuring effectiveness and recognizing achievement..
LEED, the building sustainability rating system originated in the U.S., is now frequently pursued in many countries with their own systems, as owners seek to attract international tenants. ENERGY STAR, the U.S. EPA energy benchmarking standard, will soon be able to provide accurate ratings across North America, thanks to a new cooperative agreement with Canada. And in 2011 the International Organization for Standardization released the ISO 50001 standard for energy management systems, which includes specifications for measurement, documentation and reporting on energy consumption.
Consistent measurement is important to corporations as they focus on sustainability not only in their own operations but, increasingly, throughout their supply chain as well. And while CDP Cities is not attempting to rank the sustainability of cities, it is developing a globally cohesive framework for understanding the effectiveness of sustainability strategies pursued by different cities.
Public/Private Collaboration – 2011 stood out as a year when government and business organizations explored their shared green goals and realized that public-private partnerships and collaborative initiatives are often the best way to overcome obstacles to sustainability. Some of these joint efforts will start to bear fruit in 2012.
A clear example is the December announcement of a $4 billion energy retrofit commitment by the U.S. federal government and 60 CEOs, mayors, university presidents, and labor leaders. Called the Better Buildings Challenge, the eight-year initiative includes $2 billion in energy upgrades of federal buildings and another $2 billion of private capital to improve energy by 20 percent in buildings totaling 1.5 billion square feet. (Jones Lang LaSalle joined the Challenge with a commitment to work with owners on improvements at buildings totaling 98 million square feet.)
The Better Buildings Challenge illustrates the alignment between business and government goals in seeking energy and carbon reduction. Achieving those goals also requires cooperation; for example, groups ranging from the World Economic Forum to Greenprint Foundation have called for changes to loan underwriting guidelines set by governmental bodies to facilitate financing of energy retrofits. More directly, U.S. states have found they can increase renewable energy installations at buildings by offering incentives that would make solar power cost-effective for owners within a relatively short period.
As a firm that serves government and business entities, Jones Lang LaSalle sees tremendous untapped synergy between the two groups in achieving energy and sustainability goals, particularly in the area of public-private partnerships. As just one of many examples, airports and other government entities often have surplus land that’s unsuitable for commercial property development but could be leased to private companies for development as large solar energy installations;
Focus on Solar Energy – Speakingof solar power, 2011 was a breakthrough year for new installations in the U.S., and continued growth is seen for 2012, albeit at a slower pace. More than 1 gigawatt of photovoltaic solar energy capacity was installed across the U.S. in the first three quarters of 2011, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). By comparison, 887 megawatts came online in all of 2010, which represented a doubling of the total installed base at the time.
Solar energy installations at commercial properties drove much of the market growth in 2011, but the pace of new installations dropped significantly in the third quarter, SEIA reported. The big story going into 2012 is the unprecedented rise in utility-based installations, which jumped by 325 percent from the second to the third quarter.
The strength of the solar market in 2012 and beyond will be affected by several variables, including basic supply and demand economics, technological improvements, and the amount and type of available incentives. It is clear, however, that interest in solar energy continues to grow as payback periods grow shorter and fossil fuel costs continue to rise.
2012: Taking Sustainability to the Next Level
The common theme to all these trends is of an industry poised to break through to the next level. The industry has moved swiftly through initial phases of understanding the basic costs and benefits, implementing low-cost initiatives, exploring more sophisticated strategies, and navigating around roadblocks. Today, it is easier to see the opportunity for dynamic progress by cities, property owners and corporate tenants that have laid the groundwork for growth and success
Source:
Csrfootprint
Traces of fungicide found in orange juice: Pepsico
PepsiCo said company tests of its Tropicana orange juice showed low levels of a potentially dangerous fungicide, but levels were below federal safety concerns and did not pose a health risk.The company said in a statement yesterday it was conducting additional tests after the Food and Drug Administration announced on Wednesday that it would temporarily halt orange juice imports and remove any juice found to have dangerous amounts of the fungicide carbendazim.
The scare was triggered when soft-drink giant Coca-Cola, maker of Minute Maid orange juice, said it had discovered carbendazim in shipments from Brazil and alerted United States authorities about a potential industry-wide problem.
Carbendazim is used in Brazil to combat blossom blight and black spot, a type of mold that grows on orange trees.
But in the US, its use is limited to non-food items such as paints, textiles and ornamental trees, although US authorities allow trace amounts of carbendazim in 31 food types including grains, nuts and some non-citrus fruits.
The FDA said low levels of carbendazim are not dangerous and the agency had no plans for a recall.
“The results we have to date confirm that the levels of fungicide in the imported Brazilian juice we tested are below the levels the agencies said raise safety concerns,” PepsiCo said. “We will continue to test, as we take this matter seriously, and we’re working aggressively to address any concerns.”
Orange juice futures prices hit record highs on the fungicide reports, then declined.
On Friday, US health regulators cleared the way for the first shipments of imported orange juice to enter the country since Jan 4, when authorities began testing for the fungicide in juice products from Brazil.
The FDA said final tests confirmed that three samples of Canadian orange juice were negative for the fungicide carbendazim. Test results have yet to be announced for 28 import samples from Brazil, Mexico and Canada.
What Wise Leaders Always Follow by Prasad Kaipa
Smart leaders make New Year resolutions and set quarterly milestones, charting progress against ambitious plans and goals. Wise leaders, however, take a different approach: they root themselves in a noble purpose, align it with a compelling vision, and then take action — not just for that year, but for the rest of their lives. That noble purpose becomes a North Star, giving direction when the path ahead is hazy, humility when arrogance announces false victory, and inspiration when the outlook seems bleak.
In India, we call the north star "Dhruv Tara" — or "Dhruv Star." According to the story, Dhruv was a prince transformed into the ever-fixed star as a reward for his perseverance. But the idea of a guiding star can be found in many different religious and cultural traditions. North Star is a concept (pdf) that I have been using in my teaching and coaching for over 20 years to represent our highest personal aspiration — especially when it's connected with a noble purpose. (Those of you familiar with Bill George's "True North" concept may notice some overlap.)
One of the best examples of a wise leader is Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy (also known as "Dr. V"), an ophthalmologist with crippled fingers who started the Aravind Eye Care System in 1976 — with no business plan, money or resources. Aravind now sees 2.7 million patients every year, and even more impressively, treats the majority of them for free. Aravind has become a business example of compassion, as well as proof that wise leaders can radically change the world by following their North Star. The case study written about Aravind has been required reading for all Harvard Business School students for over a decade.
We have a choice in creating the life that we desire. With our judgment, choices, actions we take, we change the course of our future and steer our destiny, moment by moment. Wisdom is not about focusing on the future, but rather about acting in the present, aligned with our North Star.
North Stars align our energy, emotions, and actions in the service of our vision. Though it is not always simple to find one's North Star, once it appears, its guidance helps simplify one's choices. As paradoxical as it may seem, wise leaders are, first and foremost, wise followers. Once they become clear about their North Star, it becomes their calling, and they serve that calling willingly, happily, and infectiously.
So what was Dr. V's North Star? He dreamed a seemingly impossible dream: to eliminate needless blindness by providing appropriate, compassionate, high-quality eye care for all. Along with his siblings and their families, many of whom he had guided into medicine, he started his simple 11-bed clinic with three revolutionary guiding principles:
•Turn no one away, regardless of whether they can pay or not;
•Give everyone the same high quality of care;
•Don't depend on any outside sources for funding;
These constraints, despite coming from a deep conviction in his own values, seemed to destine him for limited impact.
Instead, Dr. V changed the face of eye care on the planet, and he did it by owning the entire problem — providing community outreach, eye care, training, eye banks, research and the production of inexpensive but high-quality eye care supplies. He realized that if he wanted to eradicate curable blindness from the world, he had to start thinking not only about his organization, but also about training others. Conventional wisdom would be to guard your secret sauce, but Aravind did the exact opposite. By giving away all its secrets, Aravind has trained approximately 15% of all ophthalmologists in India and thousands more from over 69 countries. The work of this one man is said to have touched 40% of eye care patients in the developing world to date.
I've had the opportunity to meet Dr. V and work with Aravind over the past several years. I am deeply touched, moved and inspired by the revolution he set in motion and sheer impact of his contributions on the world. How did Dr. V come up with his North Star? Was he a wise person to begin with? Can you and I do something that can have a significant impact like Dr. V?
To my mind, Dr. V was not born wise — he became wise because of his decisions and actions. Here is an extract from Infinite Vision: How Aravind Became the World's Greatest Business Case for Compassion by Pavithra Mehta and Suchitra Shenoy (a special note: Read this book!):
To Dr. V, the cultivation of empathy, the effort toward equanimity and self-awareness, the stepping back from ego, and the attempts to align with a clear-sighted, inherent wisdom are all part of his larger aspiration to be a perfect instrument.
His story provides tremendous inspiration and guidance for those looking to follow their North Star. His story also flouts many conventional rules of business. Wise leadership does not fit the strict patterns of smart analysis, but instead taps into an intuitive part of who you are at the core, unearthing counterintuitive principles:
•Compassion doesn't have to come at the cost of efficiency — it can actually drive systems and operational excellence. You don't have to separate Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) goals and project goals. You can make CSR the strategy or even the end goal for your business growth.
•If you truly focus on service, resources do organize themselves — if your main interest is in solving a problem, then there's no question that cooperation beats competition. Businesses should focus on the customer, not on profit or business model.
•When individuals (and especially leaders) stay rooted in inner transformation —being true to one's calling, paying attention to one's values and being aware of one's emotions and actions — it fundamentally alters the way in which organizations develop. Leaders aligned with their own North Star inspire their teams to do the same, not simply by words but by the power of their example.
In order to identify and then follow your own North Star, you have to ask powerful questions of yourself. Those questions will yield new insights for you and help you find inspiration in the most unthinkable places. For Dr. V, inspiration struck when he learned about McDonald's. Due to his experience as a government doctor with rural camps, he knew that he had to develop highly efficient, scalable, repeatable processes to treat the masses that came. In McDonald's, he saw that throughout the world McDonald's franchises had similar quality meals for low prices. "If McDonald's can do it for hamburgers, why can't we do it for eye care?" And sure enough, he developed systems that allow Aravind surgeons to do more than five times the number of cataract surgeries done by the average Indian doctor (and ten times that of an average US physician).
Following your North Star can also lead to quixotic decisions. When intraocular lenses (IOLs) came on the scene in the West in the early 1990s, global health professionals called it a luxury that developing countries could ill-afford. Dr. V saw the value of IOLs and literally manufactured a revolution. At a time when India was far from being the hotbed for technology outsourcing that it is today, Aravind started manufacturing these IOLs at world-class quality, driving the global price down from $150 to $10. Aravind now makes 7% of all IOLs in the world.
I hope Dr. V's story brings you closer to your own North Star. The key to making 2012 a special year is to first find our North Star, our noble purpose, and then to execute on it as if it is the only thing that matters — because it is. Wise leadership comes from identifying our own North Star, then using the light to enable others to find their own.
What is your North Star? And how can you be the perfect instrument of a higher calling? Share it with us here.
In India, we call the north star "Dhruv Tara" — or "Dhruv Star." According to the story, Dhruv was a prince transformed into the ever-fixed star as a reward for his perseverance. But the idea of a guiding star can be found in many different religious and cultural traditions. North Star is a concept (pdf) that I have been using in my teaching and coaching for over 20 years to represent our highest personal aspiration — especially when it's connected with a noble purpose. (Those of you familiar with Bill George's "True North" concept may notice some overlap.)
One of the best examples of a wise leader is Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy (also known as "Dr. V"), an ophthalmologist with crippled fingers who started the Aravind Eye Care System in 1976 — with no business plan, money or resources. Aravind now sees 2.7 million patients every year, and even more impressively, treats the majority of them for free. Aravind has become a business example of compassion, as well as proof that wise leaders can radically change the world by following their North Star. The case study written about Aravind has been required reading for all Harvard Business School students for over a decade.
We have a choice in creating the life that we desire. With our judgment, choices, actions we take, we change the course of our future and steer our destiny, moment by moment. Wisdom is not about focusing on the future, but rather about acting in the present, aligned with our North Star.
North Stars align our energy, emotions, and actions in the service of our vision. Though it is not always simple to find one's North Star, once it appears, its guidance helps simplify one's choices. As paradoxical as it may seem, wise leaders are, first and foremost, wise followers. Once they become clear about their North Star, it becomes their calling, and they serve that calling willingly, happily, and infectiously.
So what was Dr. V's North Star? He dreamed a seemingly impossible dream: to eliminate needless blindness by providing appropriate, compassionate, high-quality eye care for all. Along with his siblings and their families, many of whom he had guided into medicine, he started his simple 11-bed clinic with three revolutionary guiding principles:
•Turn no one away, regardless of whether they can pay or not;
•Give everyone the same high quality of care;
•Don't depend on any outside sources for funding;
These constraints, despite coming from a deep conviction in his own values, seemed to destine him for limited impact.
Instead, Dr. V changed the face of eye care on the planet, and he did it by owning the entire problem — providing community outreach, eye care, training, eye banks, research and the production of inexpensive but high-quality eye care supplies. He realized that if he wanted to eradicate curable blindness from the world, he had to start thinking not only about his organization, but also about training others. Conventional wisdom would be to guard your secret sauce, but Aravind did the exact opposite. By giving away all its secrets, Aravind has trained approximately 15% of all ophthalmologists in India and thousands more from over 69 countries. The work of this one man is said to have touched 40% of eye care patients in the developing world to date.
I've had the opportunity to meet Dr. V and work with Aravind over the past several years. I am deeply touched, moved and inspired by the revolution he set in motion and sheer impact of his contributions on the world. How did Dr. V come up with his North Star? Was he a wise person to begin with? Can you and I do something that can have a significant impact like Dr. V?
To my mind, Dr. V was not born wise — he became wise because of his decisions and actions. Here is an extract from Infinite Vision: How Aravind Became the World's Greatest Business Case for Compassion by Pavithra Mehta and Suchitra Shenoy (a special note: Read this book!):
To Dr. V, the cultivation of empathy, the effort toward equanimity and self-awareness, the stepping back from ego, and the attempts to align with a clear-sighted, inherent wisdom are all part of his larger aspiration to be a perfect instrument.
His story provides tremendous inspiration and guidance for those looking to follow their North Star. His story also flouts many conventional rules of business. Wise leadership does not fit the strict patterns of smart analysis, but instead taps into an intuitive part of who you are at the core, unearthing counterintuitive principles:
•Compassion doesn't have to come at the cost of efficiency — it can actually drive systems and operational excellence. You don't have to separate Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) goals and project goals. You can make CSR the strategy or even the end goal for your business growth.
•If you truly focus on service, resources do organize themselves — if your main interest is in solving a problem, then there's no question that cooperation beats competition. Businesses should focus on the customer, not on profit or business model.
•When individuals (and especially leaders) stay rooted in inner transformation —being true to one's calling, paying attention to one's values and being aware of one's emotions and actions — it fundamentally alters the way in which organizations develop. Leaders aligned with their own North Star inspire their teams to do the same, not simply by words but by the power of their example.
In order to identify and then follow your own North Star, you have to ask powerful questions of yourself. Those questions will yield new insights for you and help you find inspiration in the most unthinkable places. For Dr. V, inspiration struck when he learned about McDonald's. Due to his experience as a government doctor with rural camps, he knew that he had to develop highly efficient, scalable, repeatable processes to treat the masses that came. In McDonald's, he saw that throughout the world McDonald's franchises had similar quality meals for low prices. "If McDonald's can do it for hamburgers, why can't we do it for eye care?" And sure enough, he developed systems that allow Aravind surgeons to do more than five times the number of cataract surgeries done by the average Indian doctor (and ten times that of an average US physician).
Following your North Star can also lead to quixotic decisions. When intraocular lenses (IOLs) came on the scene in the West in the early 1990s, global health professionals called it a luxury that developing countries could ill-afford. Dr. V saw the value of IOLs and literally manufactured a revolution. At a time when India was far from being the hotbed for technology outsourcing that it is today, Aravind started manufacturing these IOLs at world-class quality, driving the global price down from $150 to $10. Aravind now makes 7% of all IOLs in the world.
I hope Dr. V's story brings you closer to your own North Star. The key to making 2012 a special year is to first find our North Star, our noble purpose, and then to execute on it as if it is the only thing that matters — because it is. Wise leadership comes from identifying our own North Star, then using the light to enable others to find their own.
What is your North Star? And how can you be the perfect instrument of a higher calling? Share it with us here.
Bird’s nest exporters need 3 quality certifications to enter China
Starting this year, Malaysian companies exporting swiftlet nests to China are required to obtain three quality certifications before their products will be allowed to enter the republic, according to Agriculture and Agro-based Industry Minister Datuk Seri Noh Omar.
He said the quality certifications were the Veterinary Health Mark (VHM) certificate issued by the Veterinary Department, the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) certificate issued by the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) and the health certificate issued by the Health Ministry.
The three certifications are aimed at ensuring the quality of the Malaysian swiftlet nests would meet the standards set by the Chinese government, he told reporters after opening Malaysia’s first Authentic Bird’s Nest Depository and Trade Centre in Puchong near here on Monday.
“These quality certifications must be adhered to in order to meet the strict requirements set by the Chinese government after they agreed to accept swiftlet nests from Malaysia last year.
“However, the Chinese government has also required that only bird’s nests with zero part per million (ppm) of nitrite are allowed to be exported to the republic,” he said.
Noh said it was very difficult to obtain swiftlet nests with zero nitrite level, but the ministry was hoping that the Health Ministry could set a minimum and acceptable nitrite level for the issuance of the certification purposes.
The minister said the company which obtained the three quality certifications would be allowed to use the “1Malaysia Best” brand on their swiftlet nest products, but they also had to identify a strategic partner in China to ease the trade and monitoring process.
“Their partners in China will also be required to promote swiftlet nest products bearing the brand of ’1Malaysia Best’ as the ones having the best quality and safe for consumption,” he said.
Meanwhile, Health Ministry Food Safety and Quality Control Division senior director Dr Noraini Mohd Othman said the swiftlet nest products containing high level of nitrite could pose a threat to human health and could also cause cancer.
“We will announce the acceptable level of nitrite in swiftlet nests after the ongoing discussion between our experts and their counterparts in China is concluded,” she said.
He said the quality certifications were the Veterinary Health Mark (VHM) certificate issued by the Veterinary Department, the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) certificate issued by the Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) and the health certificate issued by the Health Ministry.
The three certifications are aimed at ensuring the quality of the Malaysian swiftlet nests would meet the standards set by the Chinese government, he told reporters after opening Malaysia’s first Authentic Bird’s Nest Depository and Trade Centre in Puchong near here on Monday.
“These quality certifications must be adhered to in order to meet the strict requirements set by the Chinese government after they agreed to accept swiftlet nests from Malaysia last year.
“However, the Chinese government has also required that only bird’s nests with zero part per million (ppm) of nitrite are allowed to be exported to the republic,” he said.
Noh said it was very difficult to obtain swiftlet nests with zero nitrite level, but the ministry was hoping that the Health Ministry could set a minimum and acceptable nitrite level for the issuance of the certification purposes.
The minister said the company which obtained the three quality certifications would be allowed to use the “1Malaysia Best” brand on their swiftlet nest products, but they also had to identify a strategic partner in China to ease the trade and monitoring process.
“Their partners in China will also be required to promote swiftlet nest products bearing the brand of ’1Malaysia Best’ as the ones having the best quality and safe for consumption,” he said.
Meanwhile, Health Ministry Food Safety and Quality Control Division senior director Dr Noraini Mohd Othman said the swiftlet nest products containing high level of nitrite could pose a threat to human health and could also cause cancer.
“We will announce the acceptable level of nitrite in swiftlet nests after the ongoing discussion between our experts and their counterparts in China is concluded,” she said.
4 Traits of Great Leaders by Matthew Swyers
It is often said that hindsight is 20/20. By looking to the past we can learn how better to adapt and achieve in the future. By learning from lessons of old we can accomplish great things if we only listen to what we have been taught.
Throughout my life I have been fortunate to have been mentored by leaders great and those individually successful yet lacking the ability to lead others. Some individuals can achieve a great level of success but lack the ability to drive a great organization forward. As such, they are always limited to their individual accomplishments. Great leaders, however, can lead many to accomplishments above what they themselves thought possible and, in turn, to levels of success above and beyond what the individualists will ever accomplish.
Here are the traits that these leaders exhibit that give them the ability to achieve these lofty ideals.
Aspire
Great leaders aspire to reach beyond that which convention says is possible. They know that greatness is not achieved by reaching for mediocrity. They reach for figuratively, and in one instance literally, the moon.
President John F. Kennedy stepped to the podium on a warm September day in 1962 and delivered the memorable lines “…We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills…”
In this moment he set an aspiration we had never believed possible. He aspired for greatness for an entire nation. To break free of our earthly limits and land a man safely upon another terrestrial body. As a result of those public aspirations within the decade Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would take mankind’s first steps on the moon.
Great leaders do not aim for the easily achievable. They aspire for loftier goals. Why, you may ask? Because if you plan for mediocrity all that you and those around you will ever achieve is just that, mediocrity. But if you aspire for greatness, even if you come up short, more likely than not you will still achieve a level greater than that which you knew you could reach. Great leaders always aim for goals higher than others think can be achieved.
Aspire to greatness.
Plan
But to achieve greatness you must also have a plan. Aspiration without a plan is simply a dream. What materializes the aspiration into reality is the plan. On June 6, 1944 the Allies did not wake up and say, “Time to take back Europe from the Axis – Let’s Go.” There was a plan. In reality, a plan that took months to develop and one of the most carefully and detailed in military history.
By 1944 the Germans occupied all of continental Europe. To win the war the Allies had to reclaim France and other occupied territory. Planning for the invasion began months in advance. The Axis feared an invasion on the Western Front. It created what became known as Fortress Europe building the Atlantic Wall, a defensive barrier of concrete, steel, imbedded troops and weapons more than 1200 miles long stretching from Denmark to the Spanish border.
The shortest shipping distance from England to France was to the Pas de Calais region. It was here the Axis expected the Allies to invade. It was here Fortress Europe was strengthened with mines, barbed wire, other obstructions and powerful artillery.
But the Allies had a better idea – a better plan. The British and Americans selected, instead, a landing place further south, on the coast of Normandy. It was nearly 75 miles from England but was much less defended than Pas de Calais. Every detail of the invasion was scripted. Nothing left to chance. And as we now know, the details of that plan, and the countless sacrifices made in executing the same, turned the tides of the war in Europe and the fate of the world as we know it.
Have a plan.
Inspire
But before you can execute the plan you must inspire those around you that they can achieve by following the plan. You must inspire them to achieve the aspiration through the plan.
We need not look to world leaders or now iconic military figures to demonstrate this point. We need only look as far as our local heroes and those who mentor us on a day-to-day basis.
Many years ago I was fortunate enough to play football for the legendary Florida high school football coach Sam Budnyk. For 47 years he coached the Cardinal Newman Crusaders of West Palm Beach, Florida, to countless wins including victories over teams that, on paper, were superior to Coach Budnyk’s teams in every way. But as the old expression goes, that’s why they play the games.
Coach Budnyk believed in his teams and the young men who played for him. For nearly five decades every fall Friday night he challenged young men to rise to the occasion and be the best that they could be. To accept any challenge and turn them into opportunities. In short, he inspired generations of young men to accomplish more than they thought they could achieve. And we did.
To this day Coach Budnyk is the all-time winningest football coach in Palm Beach County, a region of the country which arguably can claim the largest percentage of active and retired professional football players from the NFL as well as countless athletes that played on NCAA championship football teams. Coach Budnyk’s teams included some of these athletes, but played against more, and won against most. Why? Because he inspired us to do so, to be better, to achieve greatness.
Inspire those who will act on the plan.
Execute
But as Coach Budnyk would always tell his young men, potential in the absence of achievement doesn’t mean anything. You must aspire to greatness. You must plan the path to get there. You must inspire to achieve the aspiration. But ultimately you have to execute the plan to reach your goal. There is no better example of how these four factors come together to achieve great things than the events which began to unfold on April 14, 1970 173,790 miles from Earth.
On April 11, 1970, Apollo 13 launched from Cape Kennedy. Apollo 13 was the seventh manned Apollo mission and third intended to land on the Moon. Three days into the mission an oxygen tank exploded crippling the spacecraft. In a millisecond NASA’s planned third landing on the moon shifted into a rescue and recovery mode.
Could they fix the craft remotely? Could they get it back to Earth? Could they save the lives of the three astronauts still hurdling through space towards the moon?
NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz famously stepped to the plate and with the oft uttered creed “Failure is not an option” led a team that would ultimately bring home James A. Lovell, John L. "Jack" Swigert, and Fred W. Haise.
Presented with a near impossible evolving series of challenges Kranz and his team aspired to bring the crippled ship home. They planned, tested, and re-planned every aspect of what would be needed to accomplish the goal. The team was inspired by the setting forth of all options and that failure was never considered as an option. And finally, and most critically, the team executed the plan accomplishing arguably NASA’s greatest feat: on April 17, 1970 Apollo 13 came home.
Aspire. Plan. Inspire. Execute. Achieve your greatness.
Throughout my life I have been fortunate to have been mentored by leaders great and those individually successful yet lacking the ability to lead others. Some individuals can achieve a great level of success but lack the ability to drive a great organization forward. As such, they are always limited to their individual accomplishments. Great leaders, however, can lead many to accomplishments above what they themselves thought possible and, in turn, to levels of success above and beyond what the individualists will ever accomplish.
Here are the traits that these leaders exhibit that give them the ability to achieve these lofty ideals.
Aspire
Great leaders aspire to reach beyond that which convention says is possible. They know that greatness is not achieved by reaching for mediocrity. They reach for figuratively, and in one instance literally, the moon.
President John F. Kennedy stepped to the podium on a warm September day in 1962 and delivered the memorable lines “…We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills…”
In this moment he set an aspiration we had never believed possible. He aspired for greatness for an entire nation. To break free of our earthly limits and land a man safely upon another terrestrial body. As a result of those public aspirations within the decade Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin would take mankind’s first steps on the moon.
Great leaders do not aim for the easily achievable. They aspire for loftier goals. Why, you may ask? Because if you plan for mediocrity all that you and those around you will ever achieve is just that, mediocrity. But if you aspire for greatness, even if you come up short, more likely than not you will still achieve a level greater than that which you knew you could reach. Great leaders always aim for goals higher than others think can be achieved.
Aspire to greatness.
Plan
But to achieve greatness you must also have a plan. Aspiration without a plan is simply a dream. What materializes the aspiration into reality is the plan. On June 6, 1944 the Allies did not wake up and say, “Time to take back Europe from the Axis – Let’s Go.” There was a plan. In reality, a plan that took months to develop and one of the most carefully and detailed in military history.
By 1944 the Germans occupied all of continental Europe. To win the war the Allies had to reclaim France and other occupied territory. Planning for the invasion began months in advance. The Axis feared an invasion on the Western Front. It created what became known as Fortress Europe building the Atlantic Wall, a defensive barrier of concrete, steel, imbedded troops and weapons more than 1200 miles long stretching from Denmark to the Spanish border.
The shortest shipping distance from England to France was to the Pas de Calais region. It was here the Axis expected the Allies to invade. It was here Fortress Europe was strengthened with mines, barbed wire, other obstructions and powerful artillery.
But the Allies had a better idea – a better plan. The British and Americans selected, instead, a landing place further south, on the coast of Normandy. It was nearly 75 miles from England but was much less defended than Pas de Calais. Every detail of the invasion was scripted. Nothing left to chance. And as we now know, the details of that plan, and the countless sacrifices made in executing the same, turned the tides of the war in Europe and the fate of the world as we know it.
Have a plan.
Inspire
But before you can execute the plan you must inspire those around you that they can achieve by following the plan. You must inspire them to achieve the aspiration through the plan.
We need not look to world leaders or now iconic military figures to demonstrate this point. We need only look as far as our local heroes and those who mentor us on a day-to-day basis.
Many years ago I was fortunate enough to play football for the legendary Florida high school football coach Sam Budnyk. For 47 years he coached the Cardinal Newman Crusaders of West Palm Beach, Florida, to countless wins including victories over teams that, on paper, were superior to Coach Budnyk’s teams in every way. But as the old expression goes, that’s why they play the games.
Coach Budnyk believed in his teams and the young men who played for him. For nearly five decades every fall Friday night he challenged young men to rise to the occasion and be the best that they could be. To accept any challenge and turn them into opportunities. In short, he inspired generations of young men to accomplish more than they thought they could achieve. And we did.
To this day Coach Budnyk is the all-time winningest football coach in Palm Beach County, a region of the country which arguably can claim the largest percentage of active and retired professional football players from the NFL as well as countless athletes that played on NCAA championship football teams. Coach Budnyk’s teams included some of these athletes, but played against more, and won against most. Why? Because he inspired us to do so, to be better, to achieve greatness.
Inspire those who will act on the plan.
Execute
But as Coach Budnyk would always tell his young men, potential in the absence of achievement doesn’t mean anything. You must aspire to greatness. You must plan the path to get there. You must inspire to achieve the aspiration. But ultimately you have to execute the plan to reach your goal. There is no better example of how these four factors come together to achieve great things than the events which began to unfold on April 14, 1970 173,790 miles from Earth.
On April 11, 1970, Apollo 13 launched from Cape Kennedy. Apollo 13 was the seventh manned Apollo mission and third intended to land on the Moon. Three days into the mission an oxygen tank exploded crippling the spacecraft. In a millisecond NASA’s planned third landing on the moon shifted into a rescue and recovery mode.
Could they fix the craft remotely? Could they get it back to Earth? Could they save the lives of the three astronauts still hurdling through space towards the moon?
NASA Flight Director Gene Kranz famously stepped to the plate and with the oft uttered creed “Failure is not an option” led a team that would ultimately bring home James A. Lovell, John L. "Jack" Swigert, and Fred W. Haise.
Presented with a near impossible evolving series of challenges Kranz and his team aspired to bring the crippled ship home. They planned, tested, and re-planned every aspect of what would be needed to accomplish the goal. The team was inspired by the setting forth of all options and that failure was never considered as an option. And finally, and most critically, the team executed the plan accomplishing arguably NASA’s greatest feat: on April 17, 1970 Apollo 13 came home.
Aspire. Plan. Inspire. Execute. Achieve your greatness.
What Do Good Global Leaders Do? by Tobias Fredberg and Flemming Norrgren
Is there such a thing as a consistent pattern of successful global leadership?
To answer this question, during the last few years, we have met with about 30 CEOs who pass two critical tests for succeeding globally: (1) they have outperformed most of their industry peers and they have gained respect from their stakeholders in multiple ways; and (2) they lead companies originating from different cultures and successfully operate across the globe. Despite the differences in culture and mindset, our research suggests that these global leaders — whether they are from North America, Europe or India — seem to lead their companies differently than their peers. Most strikingly, they pioneer a leadership style which engages people in very different settings. For example, they put immense emphasis on:
• A higher purpose — These leaders make people feel emotionally engaged and inspire them to walk the extra mile. The company has to mean something to people rather than just being a place to work. This is probably especially important if the company center and the local offices are far apart. An example: When Jorma Ollila of Nokia describes their purpose as connecting people, it applies to the local office in Kenya just as it does to the head office in Espoo, Finland.
• Responsiveness to communities — In many of the developing countries where these companies are active, it is not self-evident that you get a license to operate. To be accepted, you need to build trust. More than simply being a good citizen and helping to educate potential future employees, being responsive to the needs of the local settings has to do with becoming a trusted insider. That is, for example, how Carlo Pesenti of the Italian cement giant Italcementi explains how they try to act when building up cement plants that minimize negative environmental impact in developing countries.
• Creating an internal social fabric enabling good collaboration across borders/levels — These leaders seem to put a higher and higher emphasis on local activities, and on attempting to connect these local activities in a smart way. This is complementary to the global processes that they also develop. Peter Sands of Standard Chartered Bank, for example, seems to give pride to connecting local offices on different continents to help build a truly global united firm and reward people that make ideas travel across functions and geographies.
In addition to these overarching guiding principles, we found that these leaders also share a set of practices. These common practices are similar to those that leadership scholar Robert J. House and colleagues found in the late 1990s when they studied leadership in 62 countries to explore if there were leadership characteristics that were universally seen as good or bad. They found that people all over the world described good leadership with terms such as reliable, have high expectations, win-win problem solver, communicative, team builder and fair. These characteristics are even more relevant today, and we found that they still drive the success of the global leaders that we talked to:
Reliable: These CEOs are strong advocates for creating long-term successful strategies that speak to both head and heart. They have what the Finns call sisu — they stay the course, build success quarter by quarter and are persistent in creating both economic and social value.
Have High Expectations: They invest heavily in growing both the social and economic side of the corporation, and they set high objectives for both — their performance management takes both of these aspects into equal account.
Win-Win Problem Solver: They do not compromise by doing trade-offs between social and economic value — they creatively find ways to get the two to be mutually reinforcing.
Communicative: They work hard to be present in company locations all over the world, not only to spread messages but to learn and listen. They seem to prioritize direct meetings, but use all sorts of modern communication technology extensively to connect with the vast ends of the global corporation.
Team Builder: Not only do they take great pains in building long-lasting top teams; they are also very focused on building an aligned leadership system, engaging with dozens of management teams to ensure that the values and practices are spread around the world.
Fair: Most of them addressed how they were driving not only respect for diversity, but — taking it a step further — building a strong community out of diversity rather than one built on similarity. They also described how they attempted to create processes for strategy and development that would feel fair to those involved, and how fairness became especially important when people had to be laid off.
Our findings lead us to believe that a new model for global leadership is emerging — one which is not simply headquarter-centric, but one that embraces the complexity of a large organization and its role in the world, driven by the principles and practices above.
What models of global leadership, irrespective of country of origin, have you seen? What do you think qualifies as good global leadership?
To answer this question, during the last few years, we have met with about 30 CEOs who pass two critical tests for succeeding globally: (1) they have outperformed most of their industry peers and they have gained respect from their stakeholders in multiple ways; and (2) they lead companies originating from different cultures and successfully operate across the globe. Despite the differences in culture and mindset, our research suggests that these global leaders — whether they are from North America, Europe or India — seem to lead their companies differently than their peers. Most strikingly, they pioneer a leadership style which engages people in very different settings. For example, they put immense emphasis on:
• A higher purpose — These leaders make people feel emotionally engaged and inspire them to walk the extra mile. The company has to mean something to people rather than just being a place to work. This is probably especially important if the company center and the local offices are far apart. An example: When Jorma Ollila of Nokia describes their purpose as connecting people, it applies to the local office in Kenya just as it does to the head office in Espoo, Finland.
• Responsiveness to communities — In many of the developing countries where these companies are active, it is not self-evident that you get a license to operate. To be accepted, you need to build trust. More than simply being a good citizen and helping to educate potential future employees, being responsive to the needs of the local settings has to do with becoming a trusted insider. That is, for example, how Carlo Pesenti of the Italian cement giant Italcementi explains how they try to act when building up cement plants that minimize negative environmental impact in developing countries.
• Creating an internal social fabric enabling good collaboration across borders/levels — These leaders seem to put a higher and higher emphasis on local activities, and on attempting to connect these local activities in a smart way. This is complementary to the global processes that they also develop. Peter Sands of Standard Chartered Bank, for example, seems to give pride to connecting local offices on different continents to help build a truly global united firm and reward people that make ideas travel across functions and geographies.
In addition to these overarching guiding principles, we found that these leaders also share a set of practices. These common practices are similar to those that leadership scholar Robert J. House and colleagues found in the late 1990s when they studied leadership in 62 countries to explore if there were leadership characteristics that were universally seen as good or bad. They found that people all over the world described good leadership with terms such as reliable, have high expectations, win-win problem solver, communicative, team builder and fair. These characteristics are even more relevant today, and we found that they still drive the success of the global leaders that we talked to:
Reliable: These CEOs are strong advocates for creating long-term successful strategies that speak to both head and heart. They have what the Finns call sisu — they stay the course, build success quarter by quarter and are persistent in creating both economic and social value.
Have High Expectations: They invest heavily in growing both the social and economic side of the corporation, and they set high objectives for both — their performance management takes both of these aspects into equal account.
Win-Win Problem Solver: They do not compromise by doing trade-offs between social and economic value — they creatively find ways to get the two to be mutually reinforcing.
Communicative: They work hard to be present in company locations all over the world, not only to spread messages but to learn and listen. They seem to prioritize direct meetings, but use all sorts of modern communication technology extensively to connect with the vast ends of the global corporation.
Team Builder: Not only do they take great pains in building long-lasting top teams; they are also very focused on building an aligned leadership system, engaging with dozens of management teams to ensure that the values and practices are spread around the world.
Fair: Most of them addressed how they were driving not only respect for diversity, but — taking it a step further — building a strong community out of diversity rather than one built on similarity. They also described how they attempted to create processes for strategy and development that would feel fair to those involved, and how fairness became especially important when people had to be laid off.
Our findings lead us to believe that a new model for global leadership is emerging — one which is not simply headquarter-centric, but one that embraces the complexity of a large organization and its role in the world, driven by the principles and practices above.
What models of global leadership, irrespective of country of origin, have you seen? What do you think qualifies as good global leadership?
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