Tetap Tersenyum

Mampukah kita untuk selalu tetap tersenyum, kapanpun juga, dalam keadaan apapun juga ?

Saya terkesima dengan sebuah kedai jus di depan kampus PNU. Setiap hari, saya selalu melihat seorang bibi yang menjadi penjual di kedai itu menebarkan senyuman yang paling ramah pada setiap orang yang lewat. Apa tujuannya ? Supaya setiap orang yang lewat tertarik membeli jus.
Setiap kali saya lewat, saya selalu melihat senyuman yang paling indah dari beliau. Kata2 yang diucapkan juga kata2 yang paling sopan (dalam tata krama orang Korea).

Suatu hari, saya pulang rumah melewati jam 12 malam. Suasana depan kampus tampak lenggang, tapi tetap terlihat beberapa orang melintas. Ketika saya melewati kedai tersebut, saya melihat sang bibi tetap tersenyum kepada saya dan menyapa dengan bahasa Korea yang paling sopan. Saya sangat terkesima dengan tindakan beliau. Saya yang pada saat itu capek sekali, tiba2 berubah menjadi segar melihat ada yang memberi sapaan yang begitu ramah dan menyenangkan. Karena lagi lapar, maka saya memutuskan untuk membeli roti dan jus dari kedai tsb. ^^

Apakah kita bisa tetap tersenyum dalam keadaan apapun juga? Kapanpun juga ? Beberapa tips untuk dapat tetap tersenyum dalam keadaan apapun juga.
1. Setiap masalah memiliki cara penyelesaian yang berbeda-beda. Masalah rumah tangga jangan dibawa ke tempat pekerjaan. Ketika kita bisa membedakan masalah dan memilah-milah waktu untuk menyelesaikan masalah tersebut, maka kita akan dengan mudah membawa diri kita lepas dari masalah dimanapun juga.

2. Setiap masalah memiliki waktunya sendiri-sendiri. Tidak mungkin kita bisa menyelesaikan masalah rumah tangga dari tempat kerja kita. Oleh karena itu, ketika kita bisa memilah-milah dan membedakan cara menangani sebuah masalah, maka kita mudah membawa diri kita. Dengan kata lain, kita bisa dengan mudah tersenyum tanpa memikirkan masalah kita di tempat yang berbeda.

3. Setiap masalah berhubungan dengan orang dan/atau objek yang berbeda. Janganlah kita melampiaskan sebuah permasalahan kepada suami/istri kita, padahal permasalahan utama ada pada pimpinan kita di kantor. Permasalahan dengan orang yang berbeda akan memberi perspektif penyelesaian yang berbeda. Jangan melibatkan orang yang tak bersalah dalam permasalahan kita. Hal ini juga membuat diri kita susah tersenyum kepada setiap orang.

Semoga hal ini dapat membantu untuk meringankan beban anda dan membuat anda lebih mudah tersenyum kepada semua orang.

The Harmony of Discipline and Creativity

"Creativity and discipline go hand in hand." So said best-selling author and business guru Jim Collins during an interview in the April 2009 issue of Inc. magazine. These words resonate and bounce around in the back of my head. I work with some extremely creative people and a few highly disciplined ones. Both in running a business and in helping others to run theirs better, the two poles of creativity and discipline seem to be either completely out of balance or in constant threat of conflict. What we need is harmony between discipline and creativity.

In the TPS we may have a model for this harmony of discipline and creativity. Take for example standard work and kaizen. Taiichi Ohno himself said you can't have the latter without the former, and you haven't really done kaizen until you have documented the new standard work. Standard work provides a baseline process for examination and redesign and kaizen reinvents that standard work. Standard work and the difficulty in following it perfectly every single time challenges people to do kaizen. Discipline inspires creativity. Just as necessity can be the mother of invention, we create because we are challenge or moved in some way.

For most of us it is clear as day: creativity is good, discipline is bad. For athletes, soldiers or teachers discipline may not be bad but as a general rule society rewards and respects great creativity before great discipline. This may be due to our education or the work environments we find ourselves in. There is a misconception that discipline means command and control, bureaucracy and boredom while creativity means freedom, possibilities and fun. Neither is completely true. In fact if someone were described as being "extremely creative" what would you think? Many times this is a euphemism for something not completely benign. And someone who is "extremely disciplined" may not always inspire envy, but they always inspire admiration and respect.

The root of this tension may be that while discipline is extremely easy to enforce externally on others, it is almost impossible to enforce creativity on others. While "letting go" can lead to high creativity, it can also mean a total loss of discipline and resulting personal disaster. We need harmony between discipline and creativity. Another important and related pairing is freedom versus responsibility. The United States is a nation built on freedoms and liberties, highly individual ones. Although we may speak of the civic duties we must bear as the price of liberty, too often these are much more abstract when compared to the individual liberties we enjoy. Here again an imbalance between creativity and freedom with discipline and responsibility needs to be corrected in order for us to enjoy a harmonious society.

There is much more to this topic and how it ties in deeply how we practice lean thinking and lean management but enough for today.


Jim Collins quote goodness

Reading over the Jim Collins interview again looking for more insight on the idea of the harmony of discipline and creativity, instead I found several quotes that could have come from a lean thinking textbook. He said about being an entrepreneur, "It's not about temperament or personality. It's about action." In other words, it's not who you are (or even who you know) it's about what you do. The TPS is practice, not theory.

On challenge

I think we need to have absolute faith in our ability to deal with whatever is thrown at us. And we need to have a complete, realistic paranoia that a lot can be thrown at us. It's our ability to put those two contradictory ideas together: we need to be prepared for what we can't predict and, at the same time, have this total, unwavering faith that we will find a way to deal with it all.
On people

Do you have a culture of people who A. share a set of values, B. have very clear responsibilities, and C. perform?
It's stunning to realize but most organizations I have witnesses are C-B-A in priority, not A-B-C. Many speak of shared corporate values but are happy enough with just C-B. And too many are solely focused on C... Performance is important of course but shared values and accepted responsibilities are what make sustained performance possible.

On entrepreneurship today

There has been a big shift away from seeing entrepreneurship as the creation of a better mousetrap to viewing it as the development of a better process.
Hey, he's talking about kaizen!

Isn't it much more important to create a better process that will produce many mousetraps over time?
Well, that depends on how many mousetraps the customer wants, Mr. Collins. We wouldn't want to overproduce, or overdesign the process.

On leadership

If I put a gun to your head, I can get you to do a lot of things. It means I have power. It doesn't mean I've led. In business, we largely have power, not leadership.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you, Mr. Collins...


Asked what he has learned from all of his so-called "turbulence research" on the rise and fall of organization of the past few decades, Jim Collins admitted, "I've become a total paranoid, neurotic freak." He keeps one year's operating capital budget as cash in the bank and runs a fiscally tight ship so that he could operate one year without revenue if necessary. He wants to be in a position where he can say, "If we dont' get a penny for three years, we'll be fine." Cash is king, think long-term and always run to stay ahead of whatever you can't see that is chasing you: these two are principles that make and keep an organization lean.

And the quote that started it all:

You cannot build a movement without having a strong, strategically sound business underneath, held together by a really effective set of processes and values. Those mechanisms enhance the discipline of what you're doing and therefore enhance the creativity. Creativity and discipline go hand in hand.

source: www.gembapantarei.com

Menjadi yang terbaik vs. menjadi apa adanya

Last week, I joint a workshop of LIT (Logistic Information Technology) Institute. There are 4 major teams. Each team consists of several projects related on their theme. I am a part of team number 1 where all projects have relation with technology called as RFID.

All members should present their projects using English. Eventhough they are Korean, the director encouraged and "pushed" them to speak in English. What a surprise ~~. I have never seen such kind of experience. Almost all presenters had a good english pronounciation. I thought they are foreigner, but I finally realized that they're pure Korean. Where are they on this time being ? I always find Korean who couldn't speak good english in every path during travelling in Korea. I think... they, who have the english talented speaking, are always in the lab for studying ^^

To be honest, I was impressed by their effort to present their project idea. Most of the ppt slides shows to the participant that the presenters had a good preparation. Most of them shows us to be the best. They want us to know that they did the best on previous project and they will do the best for the future project. They try to convince us that their proposed idea is something new, good and contributing for the world. They showed also that their idea could be offered as a patent, either domestic or international.

It is the next good experience for me after several years I stayed in Korea. I feel that I enjoy being to be myself. But, most of the members of LIT (whom I saw in the workshop), they try to be their best. I learnt something from the workshop. And, I hope this writing could motivate anybody who read my article. Try to be the best in everything you do. God give you a lot of blessing. It is the time to show your ability, not only being your self, but being the best of you.