I actually missed the 4th session because I was having disturbing backaches that kept me from turning my neck (can't drive), which later caused me to nurse a fever. Was told that this was caused by the way I sit in front of a computer. In any case, I was able to download the readings and PowerPoint presentation. The gist of which is: "Maturity is defined by the way you 'transact' with people."

This is so much like marketing. Sometimes, when you need to sell a product or persuade people to use whatever it is you're endorsing, you actually make them respond to what they need in a more positive light. The old way of selling, say, beauty products is to make you look ugly so that you'd purchase these things. The new way of selling something is to make you feel that you're perfectly all right as you are, but to maintain your natural beauty, you need these products. (The dynamics of stroking, hehe, in this case...the ego.)

There was also this discussion about the different kinds of information you process in the different stages of life: (1) Parent, (2) Adult, (3) Child. A thought entered my mind regarding something that my parents taught me as a child: Never have leftovers on your plate. While I was growing up, I believed that leaving leftovers on your plate is a sin, especially when there are people growing hungry in Somalia. So even if I am close to throwing up, I really finish whatever's on my plate. It was only as I was reaching adulthood that I learned how to partition my food, like for instance, getting bits and pieces from buffet dinners (and not getting rice) and just coming back for the dishes I like. I was never taught that I should get small portions if I'm not sure of the dish; I only adjusted my eating habits as I became an adult.

I realize later on that much of my dealings with people is similar to the way I adjusted my eating habits. My mom used to say that I should stay away from children she considers to be "bad influences". I kind of ditched that way of thinking when I grew up because I realize that there will always be "bad influences." You don't think of them as "bad influences" but probably collective "works in progress." Now, the challenge here is to not stay away from "bad influences" but to actually influence or persuade them into adopting better habits either by way of example or by the respectful way you deal with them. It still could be considered as some form of marketing, though.


+ - + - +


Because my professor, Sir Jerald, urged that we take the right-brain-left-brain test (see previous entry), I took another one. This one's more detailed and is somewhat more accurate than my [9 left / 9 right] results that still say I'm left-brained. ^^ I now understand why the test I took earlier said that I'm left-brained and right-brained at the same time.

Anyhoo, I got this more detailed test off: http://memoryedge.com/brain.html

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Results:
auditory 40%
visual 60%
left brain 70%
right brain 30%

Beatrice, you are strongly left-hemisphere dominant and show somewhat of a preference for visual learning, a positive combination of styles.

Your left-hemisphere dominance imples that you are strongly organized, logical and detail-oriented. Visual preference indicates that you learn in an active, simultaneous and multidimensional fashion.

With this pattern, you would likely be good in fields such as engineering, architecture, drafting, computer graphics and the like. It is likely that you will find situations which demand auditory processing somewhat frustrating unless you can impose your own structures and categories while processing it.

Another possible barrier to using your talents to the fullest may be the excess attention that you can tend to give details in your day-to-day operations and learning. You can acknowledge the existence of "the bigger picture" but concentrate on the details and expect that the picture will emerge from the details themselves.

You strive towards goals and this, coupled with the active nature of your learning preference, creates a sense of you being "driven." Your tolerance of ambiguity is, at times, in conflict with your preference for the straight path and directness in everything. You tend to be as impatient with yourself as you are with others.

You have enough auditory learning capability to somewhat balance your more natural chaotic learning style. It is likely that you "slide into" the more sequential auditory learning mode when you get frustrated with the amount of input to be processed.

You are somewhat likely to be driven and distracted, but you have some capability for articulating and visualizing goals, which helps to reduce frustration. You can listen to others, but not without occasional agitation. There are times when your left hemisphere cannot categorize your learnings and place them in context, because that is the domain of the right hemisphere.

http://web-us.com/brain/braindominance.htm - I got this from my class. "You responded as a right brained person to 9 questions, and you responded as a left brained person to 9 questions. According to the Hemispheric Dominance test, you use your left brain the most." Haaah? How did I become a left brain thinker if I got the same results for the left and the right? Labo.

In any case, last Saturday's class was actually quite amusing. See, I brought along my mom's laptop because I thought that we would be presenting this week for two subjects. Funny thing was, while Sir Jerald was discussing Meeting of the Minds, I accidentally opened up one of my mom's powerpoint presentations...which turned out to be discussing the exact same thing that my prof was talking about. Of course, my mom's and Sir Jerald's presentations weren't identical, but the context said the same message: Motivation and Recognizing Human Capital. (This isn't surprising, though, because my mom became an HR consultant after she retired from her post as VP for HR in San Miguel Brewing Group's Greater China Operations. I'm just shocked that I never realized the extent of my mom's work until Sir Jerald introduced us to this topic.)

The session led me to another round of mind boggling reflection. See, I drafted my career path about a month ago, but I had not thought about it the way Maslow or Herzberg did. I must admit, I am leaning towards Maslow's approach. In my early 20s, I wasn't really after the money (although it's ironic that I earned more in my early 20s than my last job). As long as my social and esteem needs are satisfied, I felt great. Now that I'm in my late 20s, I feel like I'm back to square one in Maslow's hierarchy. My thoughts are survival, survival, survival. Part of me also says that I don't want to just survive, I want to live! Which basically means, I not only want to secure the first level, but also the second level of the hierarchy. Meaning, I don't want to be living on the boundary of survival, but I also want to be able to help my parents, who should really be completely retiring. Oh, wait, that covers the fourth level also.

Doing the individual assignment also covered a lot of things that I had been thinking about. That would be connected to Level Up!'s Human Capital Management Matrix's 2nd quadrant: Easy to Replace - Low Value Added. While some people in that quadrant may be easy to replace with an automated machine, there's still the fact that the human touch can never be completely eliminated from an entertainment company like Level Up! Inc. A sample analogy of this would be internet courtship. It's true that this happens frequently in Ragnarok Online (people falling in love with 2D sprites because they were so cariñosa), but do you think those guys would actually court a sprite with automated responses? There are still real people behind those sprites, even if those real people happen to be actually males (the alternate definition of MMORPG: many men online roleplaying girls).

Our professor discussed something like the history of organizations, which can basically be divided into three categories: (1) Agricultural Age; (2) Industrial Age; (3) Information Age. Since we now have laptops, PDAs, instant messaging, the internet (information superhighway), and cellphones, I suppose we'll all think that yeah, we are in the Information Age already. Funny thing is, the more I listened to what my professor was discussing, the more I think most of the companies in the Philippines are still in the Industrial Age, or worse, the Agricultural Age. Well, I guess you can't really remove manual labor that easily because we still need people to operate the machines that are used to make the small components of the gadgets we are using now. But see, what's even funnier is that I think most of the IT organizations are in the Industrial Age (I might even go so far as to think that some of them are in the Agricultural Age), not in the sense that they are technologically backwards, but more in the sense of how resources are treated within the organization. It's not that people are working as if they're in a mass production line. It's more like, when brilliant people leave, the information that they brought into the company actually goes with them. I'm assuming this is probably one of the reasons why many solutions companies fold in just a couple of years. And while you do try to retain the information brought in by brilliant people, this information also becomes mass-produced. You can't exactly have the same process over and over and over, especially when you're dealing with information because everything evolves in the Information Age.

Our class was basically divided into two groups and we had 2 sets of questions that we had to answer with Always True, Mostly True, Mostly False, and Always False. While one group reported, another group would critique. Hm. Easy enough.

Except it was total chaos. I noticed that the two groups would actually be saying the same things but would argue incessantly, not because they disagree but because they were arguing on different levels. Sometimes the critiquing group would interpret a statement differently from the reporting group. What was actually frustrating was trying to make the other group see where we're going without debating heatedly. And that was where we began to see the importance of having everyone on the same page. There has to be a meeting of the minds, so to speak. I suppose this was like a classic example of how politics would work when it comes to combining different departments in one conference or something. Given the difference in our backgrounds, there would indeed be different levels of interpretations.

But there was one statement in that session that had me changing my opinion from Mostly True to Mostly False. It goes: "People should be monitored in their area to ensure efficiency and effectivity." I answered Mostly True because being well-acquainted with Gantt Charts, I know how important it is to set timelines, deadlines, deliverables, and responsibilities. I am the type of person who would follow up tasks on a daily basis or even a weekly basis as opposed to a person who would check up on you nearly every hour -- unless, of course, the project is alarmingly delayed. Our professor said that monitoring isn't what's being done now. The trend nowadays is reviewing. While I thought I completely understood what that meant, it wasn't until a week later I would see an example of it.

I asked a particular director (of a multinational company that manages an international chain of hotels) how his boss, the Senior Vice-President, would give tasks. Would he be someone who gave out specific tasks with specific deadlines, or was he the type to give out a general directive and it's up to you how to do it or map it out? Being the SVP, he was the latter. That was when it hit me. An SVP who is based in Atlanta wouldn't have the time, nor the inclination, to monitor his people, who happen to be living across the world. Given a general task, with very basic and rather vague idea as to what the task was about, the director used his resources (the people) to pull out the information that he needed. He was given a day to complete the task, but he was able to come out with the project proposal because he made good use of the network of people within the company. I realized then that this was what my professor was talking about. Upper management do macromanagement, not micromanagement. Middle management are the ones who will be making sure that the details are ironed out, but it's the upper management that comes up with the general direction. And no, this kind of management isn't about monitoring. It's about gauging a worker's performance based on his track record (reviewing), and how he pulled and managed the information he acquired. Besides, with the kind of technology we have now, constant monitoring isn't really that much of a viable option anymore, especially in a company that relies heavily on information rather than manual labor.