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Dear
!*FIRST_NAME*!
Here
is the latest edition of HRD Alert! to which you subscribed.
If you have trouble reading this, an online copy is available
here.
You can load it into your browser or save and read it off line.
EDITORIAL
At
the end of year it's timely to consider what we've achieved during
the preceding year in our personal and business lives. Are our
relationships stronger than they were when we began the year?
How are our careers and businesses progressing? It's a good time
to take stock. For those of you who were subscribers for edition
one this year, you may recall the item on Setting and Achieving
Goals. If, following that article, you did set some goals for
the year, did you follow them? More important, did you achieve
them?
I
traditionally use this time of year to read a swag of books and
articles that I haven't had time to read, as well as renewing
my friendships. Reading is a carryover from my days as a teacher
and student; you know the scene, work your butt off all year and
then six weeks holidays from early December through to late January
into which to fit a whole lot of leisure - novels and books you
enjoy instead of compulsory text books.
My
first book for the season was 'You Inc - How to attract amazing
success into your life and business', by John McGrath. Next was
'Who Moved My Cheese?' by Dr Spencer Johnson. The first captures
a host of good ideas which, if we adopt them, will contribute
to our success (as the titles suggest). The latter is very thin,
but provides some very sound advice about change and how to deal
with it. Both are excellent. If you'd like to read something motivational,
I recommend both as a sound investment.
Yesterday,
before working on my Vision, Goals and Strategies for my business
in 2004 I read my old favourite, 'The Science of Getting Rich'
by Wallace Wattles. I've been sending a copy to new subscribers.
If you haven't got a copy but would like one, email me and I'll
send one to you in Adobe PDF format.
Another
great work is 'When You Can Walk on Water, Take the Boat', by
John Harricharan. If you read nothing else before the year is
out, I recommend you read this. It's an inspiring work that is
good for the inner being, in the same genre as those of Deepak
Chopra and Og Mandino if you are familiar with them. Do yourself
a favour ... download it right now from here.
Do it now and read it, it will put you in a good frame of mind
to face the vagaries of Christmas. (But sadly, it's no cure for
a hangover!)
I
wish all of you, many of whom have been subscribers since the
very beginning, a happy, safe and relaxing festive season. I hope
you can face 2004 reinvigorated and with a new sense of hope and
awe.
Until next year,
yours
in HRD
Robin
Henry
Principal Adviser
CONTENTS IN BRIEF
Common Courtesies
Disappearing
Lately I've become
saddened by the fact that while organisations continue to rabbit
on about customer service and how important it is, often when you
write to them, you never get a reply.
More
...
The
Workplace of the Future
Following my
article of the last edition about the evolving method of
communication, I thought I'd follow up with some predictions about
the workplace of the future. Whether I'm right or wrong, or even
part right, it promises to be different. Join me in this
futuristic adventure.
More
...
[TOP]
COMMON COURTESIES DISAPPEARING
I send letters and
email to people for a variety of reasons and have noticed an
increasing trend for people not to respond. I can understand it in
some cases with email where most of us are inundated with spam,
but not with letters.
Sometimes our email
doesn't even reach addressees because it's been filtered by an
over-active spam filter. In fact the experts now suggest that mail
is a better way to ensure your message arrives. Isn't that a 360°
turnaround?
Each week I receive
a dozen letters from real estate agents wanting to sell my
properties on the Gold Coast (that's in Queensland just south of
Brisbane for overseas readers). Because they are cold-calling or
prospecting, they really don't expect me to reply to each and
every one saying' 'Thanks, but no thanks'. They do expect that out
of the hundreds, perhaps thousands of letters they send, someone
will contact them and ask for their property to be sold. It's
called marketing.
However, when I
send a letter to a firm asking if we could establish a joint
venture, I expect to receive some kind of reply eg, 'Thank you,
we're not interested', 'Thank you, we'll think about it', or
perhaps, 'Thank you, it's a great idea for us to work together,
tell me more'. But lately I haven't been getting replies at all.
Occasionally when I
send letters asking for information about products or services I
don't receive a reply either. This astonishes me and so I take my
request, and my business somewhere else. How can people make money
with such tardy approaches? Beats me.
I'd be interested
to hear if your experiences have been the same. What policies and
procedures exist within your organisations regarding responding to
client requests?
Write and let me know.
[TOP]
THE WORKPLACE OF THE
FUTURE
It seems not that
long ago I was a police officer on mobile patrol within the
Brisbane Metropolitan area. Fax machines were scarce, computers
were only found in headquarters of huge organisations, but when I
took a crime report I could stop at any public telephone box in
Brisbane and enter Criminal Occurrence Report details into an
answering machine; 'A: Time of offence, B: Date of offence, C:
Type of offence ....' and so on. In Australia in the Seventies, it
was best practice within police forces, much to the credit of
Commissioner Ray Whitrod, who was a visionary.
My message would be
read by one of a dozen police department typists and typed on the
official COR form. A day later it would arrive at my desk for me
to proofread, sign and distribute. We've come a long way in 30
years and in the next 30 we'll go even further. The question is,
can we expect an automated Utopia, or an Orwellian nightmare?
Will the next
generation of workers go to offices, or will they work from home?
It's difficult to see jobs such as taxi driver, retail assistant
or pilot becoming a work-from-home job, but for many of us
involved in IT-based knowledge and processing functions, it's very
possible.
I can envisage a
'Star Trek' type person with a small gadget attached to his head
that provides up-to-the-minute news, messages, feedback about
bodily functions, and also has the ability to access vast
databanks of information. 'What time does the next bus leave for
Larapinta Drive? ... buzz, click, '1430 h from bus stop 23'.
Maybe we'll step
into special gadgets and have cyber-meetings, or even, God forbid,
cyber-sex. Sex with all the emotion, physical sensations and
tactile experience, but no risk of disease, pregnancy, or
complication. Just imagine, you dial in the physical
characteristics of the person with whom you wish to couple and
bingo, he or she is there in cyberspace ready and waiting to join
in. But, my mind wanders ... back to business ... the cyber
meeting where everyone meets in cyber space. This is almost the
case with video conferencing, but cyber meetings would allow you
to smell the different scents that are present, feel the
temperature of the meeting place and so on. Much more realistic.
Imagine if we
worked from home. When we started our day, we'd log on to the
corporate computer to find - 'sorry, no jobs at present, try again
later.' We'd be paid piece rates for the work we did. If there was
idle time, that would be our problem. Maybe we could have more
than one employer. Maybe there would be an Ebay type bidding
auction; several firms all bidding for your labour - pick the
highest bidder and do the work, have the pay immediately credited
to your Internet bank.
Perhaps you'd spend
your working day on 'Robin Cam' so that your employer could see
what you are doing to earn your money. Big Brother at home.
There are many
scenarios one could dream up. I'm sure there have been numerous
authors trying to predict what the world of work will be like in
future. I guess those of you young enough to still be in the
workforce in 30 years will find out - It'll no longer be of
concern to me since I'll have returned to the great void.
[TOP]
No Significant Difference
For those of you involved with elearning and training in general,
there are some good research articles here suggesting that there
is No Significant Difference between elearning and classroom learning.
More
...
Performance
Dynamics®
Many of
our readers are internal consultants or performing internal consulting
activities as part of their job. Performance Dynamics claims to
be the 'leading consulting skills training program in Australia'
.... and an impressive range of other countries. I expect that
is a touch of hyperbole, however, a visit to the site indicates
that Performance Dynamics runs three day seminars on internal
consulting. The content appears highly relevant, interesting and
includes simulations and emotional intelligence assessments.
More
...
[TOP]
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