Plain Ideas for Indonesia

An interesting article to read. It could also be referred when you writing undergraduate thesis.  ---- In this guide, Tara Brabazon gives her top ten tips for doctoral failure My teaching break between Christmas and the university’s snowy reopening in January followed in the footsteps of Goldilocks and the three bears. I examined three PhDs: one was too big; one was too small; one was just right. Put another way, one was as close to a fail as I have ever examined; one passed but required rewriting to strengthen the argument; and the last reminded me why it is such a pleasure to be an academic. Concurrently, I have been shepherding three of my PhD students through the final two months to submission. These concluding weeks are an emotional cocktail of exhaustion, frustration, fright and exhilaration. Supervisors correct errors we thought had been removed a year ago. The paragraph that seemed good enough in the first draft now seems to drag down a chapter. My postgradu...

A recommended article to explain the different between "to influence" and "to command/control". The ability to influence others is a basic competency of leaders. However, what they thought "to influence" sometime it meant "to command/control". Of course, one of the failures in leading the people is when leaders give too much attention in command and control. They should change the way how they lead. Source: http://smartblogs.com/category/leadership/inspiring-others/ The ability to influence others may be the most important thing leaders do. An organization I work with lists influence as one of its top leadership proficiencies. Their description, paraphrased: “The ability to generate support from others to achieve desired business outcomes. Leaders who exhibit this competency apply it in a planned and strategic way, never randomly. They motivate people to want to follow them even when they don’t have to,” When I ask leaders what influ...

This week, Indonesian  Ombudsman Office released its report related with public services quality. According to its report, some government offices are listed as the worse government offices in serving the public. They are Ministry of Education, Ministry of Public Works, Ministry of Social Services, Ministry of Labour, and Ministry of Agricultural. This report has been quoted by some media. It has also been published as an headline in some newspapers. The worse government offices are given red flag. Of course, some of the ministers were not happy with the release. However, I think they should not reluctant with report. It could be used as an initial indicator of their public services quality. Government offices that received red flag should give full attention on how to improve their services in the future. On the other side, we should give appreciation to Ombudsman Office because its courage in releasing the objective and transparent evaluation results. In reality, Ministry of...

New good article from Harvard Blog Network. Every leader should read this article. by Douglas R. Conant  |  12:00 PM July 12, 2013 Comments (83)         Even a brief interaction can change the way people think about themselves, their leaders, and the future. Each of those many connections you make has the potential to become a high point or a low point in someone's day. Each is a chance to transform an ordinary moment into a touchpoint. What is a touchpoint? A touchpoint is an interaction with one other person, a couple of people, or a group that can last a couple of minutes, a couple of hours, or a couple of days. Those Touchpoints can be planned or spontaneous, casual or carefully choreographed. Every touchpoint is spring-loaded with possibilities. Each one can build — or break — a relationship. For instance, when I was a first year graduate student at the J. L. Kellogg School of ...

Aileen Ionescu-Somers and Fransisco Szekely | Sat, 04/06/2013 12:59 PM | Business has entered a challenging new world full of opportunities for strategic innovation, and sustainability will be a major driver of these opportunities into the future. Let's look at some of the trends that indicate the emergence of this brave new world. There is a widening gulf between the replacement economy of industrialized nations and the first-buy economy driving consumption in poor and emerging countries. There is also increasing tension between material and non-material economies: production, demand and commodity prices are rising, while the costs of immaterial goods such as shared multimedia content are falling. And there are new markets springing up to serve the "less poor", who earn between US$2 and $10 per day. Other important trends include the flourishing "south-south" economy — where emerging economies are trading with each other and with less developed c...

What do you do if you're a leader in a large, successful organization with an entrenched bureaucracy, and you see the need for innovation? Can you change the way a large organization — such as the federal government — does its work, when all the forces are arrayed for stability and conservatism? Consider the story of the  Business Transformation Agency  of the Department of Defense, which was founded in 2005 under Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, and "disestablished" in 2011 by  Defense Secretary Gates . The Business Transformation Agency was populated by people brought in from the commercial sector. They were bold and brash and injected fresh new ideas that challenged existing policy and practice in many quarters of the Department of Defense administration (such as finance, human resources, procurement, and supply chain processes). They ran into many of the familiar challenges of making changes in the federal government: the difficulty of firing; the complexity of hiring at m...