Go Slow, Go Fast

I just finished attending a 2-day workshop on capital stewardship today. An internal company session for equipping leaders with a systematic methodology on managing capital investments in light of leadership behaviors, decision making process, and organizational capability.

During a series of business simulations, we were challenged to make good decisons upon a portfolio of project initiatives with financial consequences in the future, conflicting interest of various stakeholders, and needs to comply with regulatory requirements and environmental concerns. Within a limited time constraint, we were pressed to make various decisions.

One of the takeway nuggets from this excersise is Go Slow to Go Fast. On being confronted with pressing situations, in our daily life, we most often go fast trying to solve the problems. This is done without giving enough time upfront for some planning, process organization, and agreed approaches in cases of involving others in the decision making. Quick, quick, quick as timing is part of the game. At the end, we frequently end up with running out of time resolving the issues with a lot of confusing information as things do not get organized neatly and clearly.

It proves to be, on average in general, spending some time upfront on ways and approach to tackle the issues is contributing more to coming up with good decisions: things move faster at subsequent steps, information can be intelligently digested. Time spent is amazingly shorter than otherwise. It's slow at the beginning, but then it's moving much, much faster afterwards. This can be applied to, as simple as, our business meetings: spend intial time to reach an agreed agenda: points to discuss, process to resolve issues, ways to tackle disagreements....prior to adressing the subject matters.

In managing big projects, as we are aware but often neglect, spending enough efforts and time for upfront planning provides solid basis to execution that give more predictable good outcome. Re-work on construction phase is much more expensive than re-work on planning stage. And we seem to be frequently reminded: good planning with bad execution generates most-likely better results than poor planning with good execution.

But how often that we appreciate in performance appraisal for those already delivering 'good planning' (no execution stage yet) as compared to those already delivering some execution results?

Note: I am trying to be back on blogging -- reviewing/finalizing some unfinished write-ups, including this entry ...

Going Green with IT

Last night, I was having dinner with friends and visiting colleagues from Center of the International Cooperation for Computerization (CICC), Tokyo, Japan. Having friendly talked about good past time and state of the art IT development in some Asia Pacific countries, we came to a chat about energy conservation. Some offices in Japan set the aircon to an unbeliveable 28%C to conserve energy! The buzzword is now cool-biz - no tie, no suit in the office so that your business activities would demand less (electrical) energy to consume.

It seems that energy conservation has been becoming very serious matters for the business community in Japan. Mr. Yutaka Ikeda, GM Planning & Coordination, then handed over to us a 5-page paper from the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry - METI (whom CICI report to) : Green IT Initiative in Japan. This whitepaper is quite neat, addressing a framework to halving global (CO2) emissions by 2050. As a follow up of Kyoto Protocol and Heiligendamn Summit, Japan establishes US$ 10 billion fund to support developing countires with Cool Eart Partnership program, and will be investing US$ 30 billion in R & D in the environment and energy sectors over the next 5 years.

As developing countries are becoming more industrialized and the world is moving toward more information-intensive society, the need for both energy and IT are growing fast. Electricity consumption of IT devices is estimated to grow 5-fold in 2025 than that of today, as the whitepaper reports. The efforts are then directed toward two ultimate goals: minimizing energy consumption by IT use and maximizing contribution of IT to energy efficiency.

Radically going green for IT is still posing some challenges for some to take bold actions, yet opportunity are widely open. Replacing reliable IT infrastructure today with new stuffs just for going green is of great concerns. Nevertheless, there are now available to offer an array of green IT solution: wind-powered data centers, dynamic power management software to shut off power in semiconductor chips until it's needed,...

On the other side, effectively (strategically ?) using IT for minimizing energy consumption is quite real and can be expanded to contribute more. When things go virtual on daily busines practices, physical undertaking can be minimized to save energy. On-line net meetings and video conferencing facility saves people from travel, freeing from a chain of energy consumption for physical transportation. Intel uses heat recovery chillers, in its new development center building in Israel, to recover waste heat from data centers and other equipment to heat the building in winter and to provide hot water for the bathrooms and kitchens year-round. The system eliminates the need for energy-consuming gas or fuel-oil boilers and reduces CO2 and NO emission. Intel claims, in its Premier IT Magazine (Summer 2008), to save around US$ 235,000 annually due to reduced fuel consumption.

Green IT iniative should be fairly adopted by IT shop, especially those big ones managed in big organizations. Not only that it reduce energy consumption by and potential hazardous waste from IT equipment. It could be creatively taken into a next level of strategic function for maximixing its use for helping business to reduce pressure to environment and optimize energy efficiency. There might be some costs incurred in the beginning. Managed smartly, it could at the end contribute to the positive impact of the bottom line.

So, how green are you ? Green business shall be good business. Or as some are starting to say, green is beautiful.

Remembering the Day of Reflection

A day has lapsed since August 3. As a self-performance review, not against the annual goals, but to the journey of life, I was reminded by a sign board on the wall in the Kid's World, a school building I was visiting August 2, Saturday.

Happiness is not to get what you want, it is to enjoy what you have. Above all, it is the time that we can best utilize is the precious one - currently and for the forseeable future. How much time we have wasted in the past, standing still as the world was moving in dynamic motion. Or at best, just walking into the path as the crowd was going, ending the day as usual. Following the heart to have the one we would enjoy requires a bravery, a bold action and persistency. Whatever it is that we want to pursue.

It is a simple realization, yet sometimes still catch us off-guard, that we could not change the past. How often that we "visioning" to have a different course of direction of our past journey ? It's gone. Today shall be made better than yesterday. Each day is providing an opportunity for us to create a masterpriece of our own. We frequently get it passed by without doing nothing worthwhile. We sure know the changes we need to make to give path to our journey. It's our call to change job, career, or life in which we are stagnating. As with the Serenity Prayer: God grant me the serenity, to accept things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

Another day would have passed by. Need to have encouragement, to get a kick-off for a right path to the future. Many of the past might have been regretted by now. It's time for a better look into the future. As English novelist, George Eliot, said, "It's never too late to be what you might have been".

Pursuing to get what you want is a journey of minds, enjoying the ones we have is a state of heart. Happy birthday!