Let Go and You Will Receive More

What a life!

It has been a long time since I graduated from my Master Degree study. Long story short, the degree and my experience of working in Toyota Europe Headquarter in Belgium could get me through into joining Toyota in Indonesia.

Life takes you to unexpected places, but love brings you home

Not As What I’ve Expected

Being a part of Toyota is really a dream come true. However, as they says, Becareful of what you wish for, because you don’t know what happened if your wish really come true.

It turns out, even though I joined Sales Training Div. , Most of the time all my job revolves around car, engines and the knowledge of machines. Well, I am certainly not a car guy and has no intention whatsoever dealing with mechanics.

I adore Toyota because of its kaizen soul that lives and breed in the culture and I love to be a part of the time that will nurture it through people development, lean process and soon. In other words, I am process and people guy.  And so I bailed out and venture in my own journey!

 

A Jungle It Is

Never in my life I imagine that I would be an entrepreneur. Especially since my MBTI- myers briggs personality of mine is INFJ. A hell big no no if you know what I mean.

If your design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.

And so I seek out courses and books and knowledge to help me do just that. An INFJ entrepreneur is totally do-able.

For those of you who are introverted and in the same position as I was and wondering whether should just go for it. I say go for it and use these resource below to help you smoothen your way through the nitty gritty of becoming introverted enterpreneur.

• The Introvert Entrepreneur : book links here
• Quiet Influence : book links here
• Networking for People Who Hate Networking : book links here
• The Introverted Leader : book links here

Those are my top 4 most influential books that help me deal with the irony of the dominant extroverted world of the enterpreneurship.

The key is, as Gary Vaynerchuk points out,

Playing in a way that feels right to you, before it feels right to anybody else around you.

A Shed of Light

I now start my own micro/small business together with my wife. We do importing jewelry and marketing it through offline stores and online ( lazada, shopee, instagram). At other times, I will share the story of how I started those.

As an INTROPRENEUR (introvert entrepreneur), I enjoy my life more now, since I can quite apply kaizen and lean management practices in my small business. (not in a grand scale of course)

As a business owner though, I now focused my learning on Lean marketing and digital marketing.

Is this coffee time yet? cheers!

 

 

 

Milestones of Life # I graduated !

Time really flies!

Huff….I can finally take a breath from all the rush I had..

From the late night study before exam, intensive internship in Belgium, until the tight schedule of thesis work.. It’s all finally comes down to the fun festivities I had the last few weeks.

Since Last Month Wednesday, April 4 2013, I can officially say that I am now Dipl.-Ing (FH) Yosef Adji Baskoro M.Eng !!

I would like to share a huge milestone in my life with you. Just look at my face at the photo taken just after my thesis presentation outside the room. (two thumbs up with a HUGE smile on my face!)

My master degree is Technical Management with focus in Industrial Management. In plain words, it is similar to MBA degree with focus on production management and I am so thrilled to be able to apply the knowledge I gained in internship. I hope in the future I can combine my love for production management, teaching and human side of productivity.

A few highlights of my graduation…..

Yes, that is me, PROUDLY holding my certificate

 

My amazing parents flew in from Indonesia to Germany for my graduation and we made a little round family trip around Europe!

Graduation Dinner with my ONLY Indonesian friends in Germany in the same city where I studied..They are really amazing friends!!

 

Some of my international friends!

We did it!! PROST!!

Thank God for the achievement and I hope I will have a less bumpy route ahead…cross my finger and trust in God!

You are educated. Your certification is in your degree. You may think of it as the ticket to the good life. Let me ask you to think of an alternative. Think of it as your ticket to change the world ~Tom Brokaw

Supplement for Productivity Boost: Which one is for me?

Similar like in a body building world as it is in our daily life. Be the best means doing the task with full immersion, focus and wholehearted. Sometimes, winning takes a lot more than that. In a situation where a lot of competitions and desire to be the best owned already by many, a lot of time this challenge will brings men to the search of additional boost to reach a level that would not be possible if the same men wish to attain the same level in which he desires in a short amount of time with fairly less effort.

In bodybuilding world, this additional boost came from supplements and there are magnificently vast amount of choices about it. All supplements, created for the benefit of the general user. However, everyone is not the same biologically and therefore smart decision is needed. Choosing the right supplement could mean a good well shape body or in the other side of the coin partly disable body.

In our daily life, higher productivity is attainable by an additional boost to our brain power through the use of “supplement”. A trivial decision is about answering questions such as what are supplement for brain power and which one is actually fit to our personality, biological nature of our body, etc, etc. So that in the end we are sure that our decision will actually prove us to achieve more and become more productive.

English: Everyone take a drink (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Recent interesting hot topic about “brain” supplements by consuming everyday drinking create blind followers and fans to a certain supplement. There  are lots of debate about which one is the best, coffee or tea or wine or beer ? Some of them are, Does drinking beer makes you more creative?,  What Coffee do to your brain?, Why tea is really the best drink of the day?, Stay young with the health benefit of red wine.

Turkish Tea (Photo credit: dimi)

All of those articles and many more are trying to study and find out which one has better health effect or decreasing stress or any other effect which at the end will have an impact on enhancing general productivity. However, following all the advice blindly is fool and so neglecting all the advice.

Wise men don’t need advice. Fools won’t take it. ~Benjamin Franklin

Smart decision is needed so that we don’t be like fools that either follow all advices that are coming or reject all advices. It is better to be stupid as stupid people learn, getting better and at the end thrive and become wiser and smarter but fools are unwise and can’t be made wise.

 

 

Can of Brain Toniq (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

A word to the wise ain’t necessary. It is the stupid ones that needed advice. ~ Bill Cosby

That is the reason that we should pick the right supplements that really fits our needs. Personally, I drink all of them but with different function with I unconsciously has strategically decide which drink I will drink when and how much. However, my personal favorite that I always drink everyday is tea.

Related articles

• Your Daily Multivitamin May Be Hurting You (outsideonline.com)
• 10 Easy Ways To Boost Your Cognitive Performance (damnweirdarticles.com)

Why Getting Better is the only way…

In the world that keeps moving faster and faster, everyone is challenged. The constant velocity of  change set pace to an even greater need to become better and better at a multiplied rate than before. Innovation has become a sacred word that even books on the topic become hunted by entrepreneur, managers, CEOs, even daily house mother that just try to run a business while baby sitting her children.

As country against country and organizations against each others to take the lead in the competition, it seems that the race to become better seems to take additional burden on personal level. It is because organization behaves as organism because indeed humans drives it and when organization would like to become better, humans inside it has to become better as well.

 

“You learn something everyday if you pay attention” ~ Ray LeBlond

The pressure that will build into personal level is actually where the challenge is the biggest. In this micro level , with the already many life problems that faced by each ones of us, loads of responsibility to improve are put on our back by the necessity of organization to improve. Even it is understandable that if organization is not improving, at the end we will have the consequence by having much more problems (such as layoff, salary cut,etc.). Thus this becomes non-negotiable deal that led to rapid change in our lives. Those who can learn fast will adapt to the organization and those who do not improve will be left alone.

“Each day learn something new, and just as important, relearn something old.” ~ Robert Brault

My remarks is that to keep pace not only we have to learn something to get better. Getting better means not only to learn something new, but also to never hesitate to re-learn and most importantly unlearn the things that is of no value for the future.

“Education consist mainly of what we have unlearned.” ~ Mark Twain

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Learning to Learn : The Feynman Technique for Productivity

Researchers have been recently analyzing about organizational learning so vigorously because the many facts that proves that organization that could learn faster than their competition could lead the race. One of it is the works of a notable researcher from MIT, Steven. J. Spear in his book The High Velocity Edge. He mentioned that the top organizations that he investigated could lead their industry year in and out because the learning capability. It means success comes not only because of a good performance or planning, but more accurate is when learning and learning it fast.

brain (Photo credit: TZA)

The value of learning could not be emphasized further by human as every parents sent their children to school and for some until university. The result expected is beyond a paper that prove the child to be graduate as an engineer or a doctor, but to prove that the child can actually learn. In school and/or university, people learn how to learn because it is no doubt that those who could learn faster has a big probability of getting way easier in this life and be more successful than those people who are considered a hard learner.

Feynman  is an influential theoretical physicist and his works is radically changing the world. one of his works is in the development of atomic bomb as an important assistant. He is also considered a pioneer  in the field quantum computing and introducing the concept of nano-technology. Behind his successful career, he shares with the world a method called Feynman Technique to teach how to learn anything faster.

 

Productivity cannot be separated from learning as by learning, one can devise a thousands of ways to reach a goal and hence increase their productivity. Leaning to learn as a way to become more productive is very deep concept. In a sense that being more productive involves updating and enhancing our foundational concept and remake the structure of our minds in learning things. This knowledge inside our head will at the end gives additional capability to us to think about probable improvement of methods that will later increase productivity of our desired goals.

To get to know who is Feynman:

Related articles

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• Richard Feynman Biographical Comic Out Today (tested.com)
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! Book Review (Brag! The Art of Tooting Your Own Without Blowing it)

Brag!: The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn without Blowing It by Peggy Klaus
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I love this book because its unconventional and direct way of delivering ideas. Its structures are clearly divided by points and followed by explanations. What’s more about it is that for me, this book really match with The Dip by Seth Godin. While The Dip intelligently describe how we can achieve our goals and going through the bad times with persistence, it somehow pass an important point of how can we enter into the road that leads to our goals. Brag! is all about leveraging your capability to enter the path of your dreams.

The book turns up side down the conventional notion of bragging and by calling “Bragging is an art” and pointing vital phenomenon that the 21 century workplace is no longer a safe and secure haven for anyone or any career because job security is virtually non existent.

The motto of this book is that if you don’t speak up yourself then who will? The idea lies in bringing out a new paradigm in which we are the product, nevertheless of where we work and how long we have already work, we are a product for employer. Therefore, the goal is for us to create the most valuable product that worth to be offered.

What I like about this book is the so called Myth of bragging. It really open up a whole new horizon about what bragging truly is. In the book it is presented 7 point on the Myth of bragging. Of all of those points, number 1 and 4 are what gets me excited about learning to brag because I have done exactly these myth and now that I know that, I can change.

1: a job well done speak for itself
2: i don’t have to brag people will do it for me.

What I don’t like about this book is the assumption that introvert is the same as shyness. Because bragging is not just for an extrovert, but for all. In fact, the best performers are often an introvert and as Malcolm Gladwell repeatedly remind us, performance and introversion could go along really well.

A last note about this book will be besides learning the art of bragging, it also gives a resourceful tips for those who struggle with performance review and and will help with tips for those who need to pass job interview.

Related Book:
The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to QuitSeth Godin

The Dip (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

 

 

 

 

View all my reviews

To get to know about who is Peggy Klaus (The Author):

Where productivity comes from? Relation between Quality, Lean, Efficiency

From my last post about over months ago, we have grasped the idea and underlying concept of Lean. That the divine purpose of Lean is to give value to customer. Lean means providing value to customer.

In previous post also, we know that there are fundamentally 5 Principles of Lean which are:

1. Specify value for the customer
2. Integrate Value Stream
3. Create Flow
4. Pull from the customer
5. Aim for perfection

Looking deeply between the initial definition and the 5 principles of Lean. It seems logically correct that providing value to customer is indeed will be achieved through all the 5 principles of Lean. However, this indeed is also a deception for many.

Not that I say those principles are useless, on the other hand, people has to know those principles by heart. Despite of that, in my opinion, 5 Principles of Lean are not comprehensive enough in serving higher purpose of providing value to customer because it somehow lacks of comprehensiveness. If we look at those all 5 principles and pondering on those points, we can have assumptions that Lean is all about efficient of operations to provide value by means of faster, responsive and flexible operation by implementing integrated value stream, flow, pull and then aim for perfection.

These points have failed to serve the true comprehensive definition of lean which is providing value to customer because it simply do not pay attention to “quality” matter. In fact, none of the 5 principles seems to talk about quality (poka yoke, inspection, culture of quality).  This had led many to miss-understanding that lean is just efficiency (value stream, flow, pull). Lean comprise efficiency indeed, but not only that. It is also quality and all that is required to bring value to customers.

Because as we come back to the true definition of lean that is providing value to customer, we realize that Lean defintion is larger than 5 principles of lean itself.

That ambiguous translation from basic definition of Lean into the principles of Lean, make a miss-conception about achieving Lean in relation with improvement culture. Improvement has twofold and people have always been mistaken when talk about improvement. Lean improvement as perceived by most people as working toward a more efficient operations is preferable in most case because it gives a sense of boost to ongoing operations and increasing productivity. On the other hand,   quality improvement sometimes not as popular because for many it just don’t seems boost their production quota. So, they tend to prefer efficient improvement compare to quality improvement.

People has mistakenly grasped the concept of improvement that they tend to associate improvement to efficiency because by and far, it will boost productivity quickly. This is bad in a long term because quality is stronger and has a bigger impact in a sense that on the long term, focus on quality improving productivity and increasing quality. Both quality and efficiency however have similarity in the need to specify customer value and strive for perfection.

Sometimes we deeply understand about the need for efficiency improvement because it directly impact our output in short term. But those who forget to deal with improving quality is in the long term will be definite loser because while you neglect quality, others not. They improve productivity through both quality (inspection, poka yoke devices) and efficiency (integrate value stream, flow, pull)  improvements of operations which give them a twofold advantage to their productivity increase compare to those who only care about increasing efficiency.

So, I want to again stress that the 5 principles of Lean is in fact very important to remember. But one shall never forget the in-comprehensiveness of the principles and that the fundamental definition of lean is always comes first.

Lean is providing value to the customers.

Related articles

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• Kudos to the quality gurus (better-operations.com)

Small Changes, Big Achievement!

I just read a blog by Beyond Lean that is so insightful. In his post, with the title Small Change vs. Large Change, he highlighted about how Paul Akers at FastCap often talks about 2 seconds kaizen.

I have read Paul Akers’ Book about 2 Second Kaizen which describes his personal journey on creating kaizen culture in his small to medium size business (at that time). Following my current reading on Workplace Management by Taiichi Ohno, this post really spark a light for me to set out this post about small changes.

Company has been the center of all attention for decades. But scaling further to a level of personal kaizen, big achievement by means of doing small changes can definitely be a roadmap to improvement. I would imagine if we are not only focus on doing productive works but in addition to that, we apply 2 seconds kaizen on how we went throughout our day.

It has been acknowledged that doing the right things before doing things right will elevate productivity in our lives by preventing doing the wrong things. But truly I said that bigger achievement is attainable by performing small changes in doing things right. Now I invite you, my fellow travellers, let us set for ourselves to do everyday at least 2 achievements (productivity) but as complementary also do 2 seconds of kaizen ( improvement in method of doing things).

Related articles

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• Backstage pass…kaizen shooting (emmamiranda.com)

What else increases productivity : Brain Tweaking!

I could  agree when the crowd mainstream shout for so long that psychology is a degree that apparently not so useful in the job market. Just take a look at yahoo answer,  social anxiety forum, until student awards. Most of the graduates indeed found their job have a little or no relation at all to the degree they obtained. Psychology even included in 20 most useless degrees in a famous blog the Daily Beast.

People who don’t intend on becoming Psychologists or working in the field as a mental health professional shouldn’t pursue degree’s in Psychology.

Somehow, I felt that the quote above is right to the point and contain a bitter pain fact that should be accepted by those who hold first degree in psychology. However, I always captivated to watch an expert in psychology shows their understanding and ability to understand human.

When psychology combined with TED Talks, it’s exactly my guilty pleasure. Who wouldn’t like to watch TED with all the inspiring persons talk about how we can actually improve our self, our community, and even not surprisingly our world. This week, I came across a video which lighten up my mind and open my view into another eye opening fact about increasing productivity through the use of Neuropsychology.

Improving your brain means everything in your life start from your body, to your money, your relationships, to the level of innovation.

Daniel Amen, a psychologist gave a TEDx Talk about what impact a healthy brain has on innovation that human produced. He revealed a study about brain using a sophisticated brain scan study that looks at brain blood flow and activity pattern to figure out at how brain is working and what it can bring to human productivity.

His thesis is simple that healthy brain makes us happier, wealthier, wiser, more creative, more innovative whereas unhealthy brain will bring sadder, sicker, poorer, not as smart, rigid and inflexibility to us.

We can accelerate the aging process with our behavior and you can decelerate it. It works the same with innovation. ~ Daniel Amen

What is interesting about his talk is that he presented about some activity that could lead to unproductivity. I was so amazed when I saw the video because not only he mentioned the kind of activities, but also the reason why. It turns out that obesity damage brain function in a way that as the weight goes up, the actual physical size and function of our brain goes down. Additionally, smoking and high blood pressure also very important to monitor. High pressure causing low flow blood to brain and smoking cause upnormal blood flow.

Below, is the quick summary from Daniel Amen talks about what kind of activities we should have to enhance productivity by means of making our brain healthier.

WHAT ENHANCE YOUR BRAIN ?

These powerful recipe will guide us to a more effective journey toward gaining more productivity. In fact, I started to apply some of the techniques given by his TEDx Talks and in the near future I will let all of you fellow travelers know about my journey on this one.

Related articles

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• How to Train Your Brain to Stay Positive (entrepreneur.com)

Tea and Productivity

Several days ago, I walked down to city center on Saturday morning to get myself a little exercise in the weekend. When I walk, I like to pick new routes, so besides exercising, I could get a totally new refreshing perspective of the neighborhood where I cross. This time, I went through some roads and alleys that I have never had gone through before and in the middle of my walk, a store window caught my attention.

Through the store window, I could saw many kinds of teapots displayed behind the window. From outside the store, I could look into the store these big tubes contained tea leaves. My curiosity made me to enter the store to just find what this interesting store could offer me.

I entered the store and it is so wonderful that I really felt like I am in a library of tea. The store called Le Palais des Thes. First of all, when you entered, there will be various tea leaves that were ready to be smelled (you choose tea by smelling it!). These tea that come from China, Japan, Afrika, India and this is in fact only a glimpse of what this store could offered. Further back of the store, they have a whole lot many tea leaves, teapots and books about tea. Just what a person need to travel the world of tea.

From visiting this store, I could understand more about tea and decided to bring two distinct tea types from Afrika. From it, I also know that tea is beyond what traditionally be a medicine to increase condition of our health. For me, I mainly drink tea because it is refreshing in non-destructive way. The interesting part that lends itself to an increase in productivity is that compare to coffee, tea has more benefits.

First of all, I want to once again correct the assumption that caffeine in tea or coffee will help us during our work to be more productive by increasing alertness.

Peter Rogers, professor of biological psychology at the University of Bristol, after years of studying caffeine, he sees no evidence to suggest that it improves mental alertness.

However, if we know the right time to drink tea or coffee, a good effect will be obtained.

Professor Andy Smith, an expert in occupational health psychology at Cardiff University said that Caffeine is rightly prized by workers for combating fatigue, with a 2002 study of US Navy Seals showing the drug’s ability to override severe sleep deprivation. What caffeine does is to get you back on form. “We use the term ‘restoration of function’. The effect of caffeine is to restore your function closer to normal,” he says.

Therefore, caffeine can still has contribution to our performance to help us when we have fatigue at work. Additionally, hot beverages have numerous advantages. Here is some facts about contribution of Hot beverage in our workplace whether it is office work or home office.

• 61% of employees feel that their employees cares about their well-being if they provide good hot beverage options such as in office coffee and tea.

• 43% reported experiencing a positive effect on their work productivity.

• 90% of decision makers and 85% of employees believe that quality coffee and tea can contribute to increased productivity and morale.

Both tea and coffee are a complex drinks. However, Tea could give better contribution in many ways.

First of all, tea contains Theanine, which researchers argue has a relaxing effect and has been shown to reduce blood pressure. Secondly, Randy Murray blog in his article “Simple Productivity Task of The Day:Make A cup of Tea” really point out a benefit of tea psychologically. He ’ve found that the process of making tea is also soothing and ritualistic, which is good for helping him slow down and regain focus. To learn simple ritual of creating tea in your office your could see it below.

Just This from Dave Caolo on Vimeo.

Additionally, you can better awake when you drink a cup tea compare to drink a cup of coffee . Yes! It seems not true because every time we drink coffee we can get the effect of waking up instantly right? It is apparently true that coffee will give you more instant effect. However, it turns out that drinking tea will give us longer wake up time because the way caffeine works in tea is different than coffee. When drinking tea, caffeine inside the tea will slowly be absorbed by our body and this will lead to long consumption of caffeine for our body which will keep us awake for quite a longtime.

Hence, those three (3) simple benefits that I tried to highlight (reduce blood pressure, psychologically soothing due to it’s ritualistic nature and better works of caffeine) will give more than enough  for you incorporate tea to your daily productivity agenda.

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