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• EDITORIAL – “Academics Vs Business Skills”
• Influence Your Customer Into Buying
• Make It Fun To Meet
• Basic Tips for Planning Meeting
• Invited Speaker - Rules
• Assessment Tools for September 2009
• Corporate Chameleons
• Bite Size - Fast Track to "Self Confidence "
• Competency-Based Management Training
• Public Training Courses for October 2009
• Online Training

Misunderstandings have often arisen from telephone manners or e-mail etiquette with clients and even colleagues. Sometimes cultural differences can be a barrier to good communication.
A common set back among newly employed graduates (especially Malaysians) is their difficulty to say “no”, leading to frustration when requests are not completed on time, or even at all.  Too much respect for clients and superiors can be construed as a lack of directness while attempts to be more direct, can come across as aggression. We have heard frequent complaints from company bosses not just about graduates’ lack of workplace skills, the time and money it costs to get them up to the required standards and speed. Teaching them communication, interpersonal and negotiating skills, as well as cultural awareness is simply ‘reflecting a business need’ in an increasingly globalised world. TNI is aware of such a need and has the means and tools to provide young graduates with the necessary skills to project themselves to their next level of their career development in a very competitive market of up-coming professionals.

Young graduates are normally employed and placed in a low level leadership position; perhaps as an executive in a department responsible for a small team of people. Without the necessary leadership and management training including soft skills, they would probably work without any direction or purpose. They will probably just do what they are told to do. They will become frustrated and irrelevant as they have not produced an ounce of positive impact on the company they are working for.
Under such circumstances, the company who employed them must be responsible enough to provide them the means to develop themselves under a customised structured training program or the company can encourage them to take their own initiative to develop themselves by offering them an attractive incentive scheme as a motivational factor.
Of course then, there is this fear that an employee who is well trained and have acquired the necessary skills would be a possible target for head-hunters. Generally, it is believed that if a company is able to care for its employees by providing them good fringe benefits and security, people will not leave the company for fear that they may not be treated just as good as their present employer.
However with globalisation and the many changes in the business world, development of employees has taken a different approach. Capable and committed people has become the critical source of competitive advantage. Emphasis has now been shifted from training as a series of top-down intervention to a focus on individual learning. Please see TNI’s “On-line training programs” to acquire the necessary skills to stay relevant.
Remember, the best qualification that you can acquire is “yourself”. Nowadays, employers look for performers and not a person with a string of paper qualifications,  although this will help you to get the job initially. But to stay relevant you must be able to perform and you will not be able to do so if YOU do not possess the necessary leadership and management skills.
Finishing schools are being established in India for graduates to give them an extra edge in the employment market. India is looking to the model for the approximately three million graduates it produces every year to refine the skills they need to succeed in business and give the country a sharper edge in the global market. The “finishing schools”, the first of which will be in Mumbai will also open in New Delhi, Hyderabad and Bangalore later this year, as part of a USD2million project by the Indian school of integrated learning and Speak First, a British training firm. “The schools will be taking graduates and anyone else of that academic level through a program which will give them all the skills that a business could possibly want,” says Amanda Vickers in Mumbai.
Soft skills training has huge potential but what’s more important is that TNI needs to put all these things together to make young graduates realize that obtaining a paper qualification is not the end of the road for learning. It must continue with soft skills training to stay relevant.
Browse TNI’s website (www.tnimalaysia.biz) for the many soft skills training programs available for your training requirements

INFLUENCE YOUR CUSTOMER INTO BUYING
(People buy emotionally and justify logically. Find out how you can use this to your advantage)

Imagine you need to buy a pen to write an article in a respected magazine. You see a lovely Mont Blanc pen in the shop window with the price tag of a small family car. It is sleek, shiny and gorgeous, and you dream about how smoothly the ink will flow along with the words. Your article will surely be the best prose you ever wrote. Or whatever you write. Well, something like that, anyway. The bottom line is that people tend to buy things emotionally and justify it logically.
The justification can be terribly logical, but the decision to buy is definitely emotional. Why else would you be salivating at the sight of 13cm of stainless steel albeit with gold trim and that familiar logo?

The banking and credit industry would be structured very differently if people only bought logically. That is to say, if you bought only what you actually needed and could afford, there will be no such thing as “retail therapy”. But there will be a lot more room in my wife’s side of the wardrobe, for starters. So the question is, how do you sell yourself?
Or, put it another way, how do you persuade someone to buy something emotionally rather than logically? Well, first you need to know how they feel about you and your product or service. And until you do, you are stuck in logic and simply turning features into benefits.
And that is not enough. People buy emotionally. People recognize when someone is trying to sell them something and, often, they do not like it.
Most people also do not like to feel they are being ‘persuaded’. For example, do you ever go home and say: “Guess what someone sold me today?” It is far better to work at influencing people rather than simply persuading.
Effective influencers listen more than they talk. They absorb useful information that can be used to impressive effect later. And the funny thing is, the more you let people talk to you, , the more they like you. You have to be a good listener. And nobody has ever been accused of listening too much. Talking, yes, listening, no. People buy people first, and the first stage of selling yourself is to get someone to like you and truly believe in you.
They must believe that you are more concerned with their situation than you are about getting your own way. They must believe that you will do whatever is in their best interests. Without trust and the belief that you will do what you say you are going to do, all the benefits, added value or discounts do not amount to much.
So, to be a top influencer rather than be seen as a ‘persuader’ or a ‘salesman’, you have to be sincerely interested in your buyer’s situation. After all, most people do not care how much you know until they know how much you care.
You think this is a lot of effort? Sure. But then, being professional is an effort, too. It is not what you do; it is the way that you do it. And that is what gets results.
And you may not even need to use a Mont Blanc
(By Philip Hesketh, professional speaker)

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MAKE IT FUN TO MEET
(Company meetings or in-house staff seminars can be fun, while getting the basics right)

Meetings and in-house training seminars can be a great way to educate everyone about new techniques and developments, interesting facts, or even the history of the company. But how can you keep people from dozing off or playing hooky? Make it a game! Here are some examples.

A quiz show
This is a great icebreaker and a way to educate the organisation’s employees, using questions like – ‘who writes the editorial column on page 26?’; ‘what is our distribution in Cleveland?’ or ‘what was the headline in the Life Section last Tuesday?’
Small prizes, like company pens and note pads, can be awarded. The audience will have fun while they learn.

The priorities game
I once spoke at Levi Straus, the jeans company. There were six tables, each with eight salesmen. Each table received copies of the same 13 examples of paper work they had to deal with everyday. Then each group debated the priority for handling them and handed in a list, numbered 1 to 13. What a great way to find out how they thought and to discuss company priorities in a playful context. I was as amazed as the management at how many different opinions there were from each table. Every list was different.

The Oscars
Another company, Pacific Bell, held a meeting at around the time of the Academy Awards. The creative meeting planner set up an awards ceremony and asked the managers to wear formal evening dress.
“Oscars” were given out in categories like customer service, sales, and money-making ideas. As the nominees in each category were announced, a giant screen showed slides of their photographs. The first two were always famous movie stars, the third an employee. Would you believe it? Pacific Bell employees beat the movie stars every time!
Everyone who accepted an Academy Award had to give a short speech. It was innovative, memorable and fun. Of course, most of your meetings will be much simpler. Just remember that there are always fun and innovative ways to educate and inspire while entertainming with well-conceived games.
(By Patricia Fripp, coach, trainer and keynote speaker) Back to Top

If you intend to plan a meeting, here are some basic tips to help you!!

“You did all the right things to prepare for this meeting. You invited the right people, sent and advance agenda, started the meeting on time, but it went downhill from there.”

Preparing for a meeting is step one. Knowing your role and responsibilities and those of the other attendees is step two.
A well-run meeting has a facilitator, a leader, members and a recorder. Each role has specific responsibilities. If every role is not filled or its responsibilities not met, the likelihood of a successful meeting is greatly diminished.

1. Leader

He calls the meeting and:

He conducts the meetings and:

It is his job to:

Every person in the room must participate actively. All are expected to:

IF YOU ARE INVITED TO SPEAK OFFICIALLY AFTER A DINNER, THESE ARE THE RULES TO REMEMBER:

• Know your audience – do your homework and find out who you’ll be speaking to, how old they are. The balance of men and women and the mood of the occasion.
• Use examples – otherwise your speech will be very dry. Journalists are taught to look for the ‘people angle’ – you should do the same in public speaking.
• If you are speaking after lunch – make your presentation as lively as possible to avoid the post-prandial slumber.
• Speak before 11pm – leave it too late and you risk your audience nodding off.
• Be creative – think of innovative ways to get a message across.
• Don’t pass around books or leaflets before or during your speech – the audience will look at these rather than listen to you.
• Keep the title of your presentation short and sweet – long titles are difficult for the Toast Master to remember.
• Keep stories and jokes short and sweet – don’t get into long, rambling tales that lose your audience.
• Know when to go – a wise and witty 20-minute speech is far better than a boring and flat 40-minute one.

Non native English speakers need not to worry anymore because TNI will do its very best to make you familiar with the second language as we called it.  Our English programs, will give you the opportunity to learn and become more skilled in this language.  TNI’s English courses has a lot of things to offer, from day to day English, business correspondence, grammar structure, and many more. Go to TNI’s website and make it happen!!

ASSESSMENT TOOL FOR SEPTEMBER 2009.
HERE IS ANOTHER ASSESSMENT TOOL WHICH CAN HELP YOU TO EMPOWER YOUR EMPLOYEES

Overview
People working in today’s complex, bureaucratic organizations often feel manipulated, cautious, and vulnerable. In order to help themselves feel more in control, these same people use favoured influence strategies to get what they want from others. Unfortunately, when used in this manner these strategies actually mark the actors’ dependency and weakness. The Empowerment Patterns Inventory that follows will help you identify your favoured patterns, and then learn to use them in an authentic manner.

Empowerment
Human beings are driven to satisfy a variety of needs. We eat to satisfy our hunger and drink to satisfy our thirst. We rest to overcome fatigue. On the interpersonal side, we assert our autonomy and individuality by demonstrating favoured patterns of empowerment behavior. Just as our food and drink preferences say certain things about us, our favourite empowerment pattern (or strength) tells others about who we are and what our possible contributions might be.
Consultant Peter Block contends that we are acting in an empowered manner only when we use our favourite pattern purely for its own sake, not because of its impact on other people or as a way of getting what we want. On the other hand, when we use our pattern as a means to seek a reward or manipulate others, then we are not behaving like empowered people. Used in the latter manner, Block contends that our pattern actually marks our independence and lack of empowerment. In other words, we are not satisfying our needs for autonomy and individuality. This disappointing outcome is produced whenever we allow other people’s action to define our own.
In contrast to the situational models favoured by training and development professionals, Block calls on his readers to avoid adapting their preferred patterns to the demands of particular situations. Instead, he urges people to be authentic and courageous as they assert their independence and take reasonable risks. Contrary to what a surface reading might suggest, Block’s nonsituational model doesn’t ask people to commit career suicide or to be uncooperative and inflexible. Instead we are challenged to be authentic and courageous as we walk along the path of true empowerment. We need to speak our minds, own our part of the problem, confront harsh realities facing us, avoid “I” illusions, offer no excuses, and say what needs to be said to those who need to hear it. In this way, empowered people signal their unwillingness to become entangled in politically charged bureaucratic cycles.
Attempts to change our favourite pattern usually fail, since our effort represents what Block refers to as “a futile attempt to change what is unique about us.” Instead, we should focus on learning to use our favourite pattern for its own sake, not for effect or out of mere habit. Managers and employees seeking to strengthen their sense of empowerment should first identify the patterns they prefer, and then examine the manner in which they use them
Click here to go to The Empowerment Patterns Inventory

Nokia may be the biggest phone manufacturer in the world, but the Finnish firm didn’t start out in the telecoms business. The 140-year-old company was once an unwieldy conglomerate manufacturing everything from Wellington boots to toilet paper. Then in the 1990s, CEO Jorma Ollila embarked on a radical transformation of the business, ditching all the non-core, non-telecoms business to focus on mobile phone manufacturing. The change in direction rejuvenated the company. Profits soared from zero in 1991 to $4 billion in 1999.
Nokia is one of the few top companies to have successfully reinvented themselves, either in response to external market stimulus or internal impetus. ‘Nokia is just one case’ says John Bessant, professor of innovation and technology management at Tanaka Business School, Imperial College London. ‘TUI’ is another. It owns Thomson Travel Group in the UK and is the largest European travel and tourism services company. But its origin lie in the mines of old Prussia where it was established as Preussag – a state-run lead mining and smelting company.
For many such companies, departing from the original businessmodel breathed new life into a tired strategy. For others, it made the difference between survival and extinction. A few companies succeed without significant change, but far more are consigned to the corporate history books for failing to adapt

Don’t be a whipping boy

Corporate transformation is often driven by external events. Bessant calls it ‘discontinuous innovation’ – rather than steadily improving existing products and services, an innovation is made that is a radical departure from the norm and often comes in response to advances in technology. Companies caught unawares by such advances can go out of business almost overnight.
            In the film ‘Other people money’, Danny DeVito’s character Larry the Liquidator explains the concept to the New England Wire & Cables Co. stockholders. ‘You know the surest way to go broke? Keep getting an increasing share of a shrinking market’, he says. ‘At one time there must’ve been dozens of companies making buggy whips. And I’ll bet the last company around was the one that made the best goddamn buggy whipyou ever saw.’
            His example was spot on. In 1893 Westfield, Massaachusetts, was one of the most important cities in the US transport industry. Whip City, as it was known, was the centre of the horse and carriage whip manufacturing world, with 42 companies, more than 30 factories and 85% of the town’s population engaged in the manufacture of buggy whips. That same year the horseless carriage was invented. By the end of the Second World War just two whip manufacturers remained in Westfield. The buggy whip story is a dramatic example of how discontinuous innovation can put unprepared companies out of business.
            The business world is no less turbulent today. In their books ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’, Renne Mauborgne and W. Chan Kim, professors at INSEAD business school in Fontainebleau near Paris, paint a picture of a commercial world in constant flux – a world where industries rise and then often vanish into oblivion.
            ‘Look back to the major industries of 1970,’ says Kim. ‘Very few, if any, are now significant. The big growth industries in the past 30 years are the computer industry, software, gas fired electricity plants, cellphones and the café bar concept. In 1970, not one of those industries existed in a meaningful way, and that’s just 30 years back.’
            By the same token, the biggest industries today are unlikely to be the biggest industries 30 years hence. All the more reason to be ready for change. But transformation need not be driven by such drastic events. For many companies, existing market conditions are enough to warrant a change in direction. 
‘Increasingly, as supply exceeds demand in more and more industries, companies find themselves stuck in a red ocean of bloody competition filled with sharks and characterized by commodity competition, declining price points and market share battles,’ says Mauborgne. ‘The degree to which change is imperative hinges, in no small part, on whether a company’s businesses are anchored in the red ocean. When a company’s portfolio of products or services is compromised me-too offerings, change becomes imperative. To create strong profitable growth prospects for the future, companies need to break out of that red ocean of bloody competition and create a blue ocean of new market space where there are no competitors.’

Searching for signs

Whether it is blue ocean strategy or some other strategy that a company adopts to ensure a secure future, there are important issues that need addressing. How do you know when it is time to change? And what do you do about it when you find out?
            Bessant says organizations must search their environment for triggers that may lead to a discontinuous shift, be they new technologies or new markets. Looking for such signals is not easy, though, and the tendency is to search where everyone else is searching.
            ‘It’s like a drunk looking for his keys under a lamppost because there is more light there. Smart firms already have the lamppost area pretty walled mapped,’ says Bessant. ‘Whatever is going to trigger discontinuous innovation is not under the lamppost, otherwise they would have spotted it. The challenge is how to search in what is effectively 360 degrees of darkness.’
            In other words companies should extend their peripheral vision. If they pick up early signals alerting them to new discontinuities, says Bessant, they can gain a competitive advantage. One way of doing this is to broaden the scope of research activities into new and unexpected areas. Another is to build more extensive networks with stakeholders, thus increasing the number of signal-detecting antennae.
            While it is impossible to predict the future with 100% certainty, speculating about alternative futures can reap huge benefits for organizations. One helpful technique is scenario planning, a concept pioneered by Shell Oil during the 1970s. Peter Schwartz, former head of Shell’s Group Planning Scenario team, sees it as facilitating ‘contingent thinking’ – thinking about different possibilities and asking ‘what if?’
            ‘The objective is not to get a more accurate picture of the world around us but to influence decision making inside the mind of the decision maker,’ he says. ‘Better decisions not better predictions’
            Many companies undergo scenario planning by other names. The term blue-skies thinking may be greeted with hoots of derision from cynics, but it can be extremely fruitful, as Karan Bilimoria, CEO and founder of Cobra Beer, discovered.
            Each year Cobra’s senior managers escape the ringing phones and meet at a non-work location to do a bit of blue-skies thinking. These gatherings, known as ‘hideaways’, are a potent planning weapon for Cobra. The important tools are ‘flip charts, fresh note pads and an open mind’, says Bilimoria. SWOT analysis – a survey of the company’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats – also features prominently.
            At one hideaway, at the beginning of 1999, Bilimoria’s team was considering the consequences of an invasion of Iraq. Would it trigger a global recession? How would it impact on Cobra’s business? In the middle of this, one director stuck his hand up and exclaimed: ‘Stop, stop, I’ve thought of a major threat to the business – wine.’

Against the grain

The group’s immediate reaction was: ‘Wake up, we are a beer company, don’t talk about wine.’ But as the director explained how more people were drinking wine in Indian restaurants, Cobra’s main market at the time, they realized the company needed to respond to this change in consumer tastes. In addition to lager beer, Cobra now sells wine – and lots of it – under the brand name General Bilimoria.
            As Kim and Mauborgne point out, companies may have to reframe their business models if they are to escape the red oceans of cut-throat competition. And often in a more radical way than Cobra Beer has.
            Tyrrells Potato Chips is a good example. Will Chase comes from a British farming family. He took over his father’s farm in the mid-1980s, supplying potatoes to the supermarkets. The market was a challenging one, however. There was continual downwards pressure on price as he was squeezed by his suppliers.
            With margins being cut, the future of Chase’s potato farming business looked bleak, so he changed his business model. On a trip to the US he saw ‘potato chips’ on sale and decided that there was an unexploited market in the UK. Unlike crisps, these are thick slices of potato cooked without removing the starch, reducing the fat content by more than a fifth. In 2002, he delivered his first batch of potato chips for local businesses.
            Today, instead of selling potatoes, Tyrrells supplies potato chips to a wide range of retailers including Harrods and Selfridges. Waitrose stocks his chips but Chase refuses to supply the bigger supermarkets.
            Pitney Bowes, one of the Fortune 500 top American companies, is another example of a firm that has reframed its business proposition in order to ensure its continued prosperity. The company’s initial success was built on its invention of the postal franking machine 1902. While this allowed the company to dominate the huge postal market in the US, e-mail has cast a shadow  over its core business. As it happens CEO Michael Critelli once described the company as ‘the buggy whip to the postal service’s buggy.’
            Fortunately, Cretelli was prepared for the threat. ‘For the last 25 years we have heard repeated claims that mail is dying – first it was the fax machine, then e-mail,’ he says. ‘While this is obviously false (mail volumes continue to grow worldwide), the threat has forced us to remain vigilant for new market opportunities. Ultimately, identifying new markets and creating business opportunities emerge from sustained strategic considerations, which is why I spend at least 25% of my time addressing strategy, attempting to understand how the world is evolving around us and how we can influence the outcome.’

Posting Profits

Pitney Bowes cleverly redefined the way it looked at its markets. ‘We noticed that an increasingly diverse stream of mail, documents and packages flowed in and out of an organization – everything from bills and e-statements to direct mail and catalogues and, more recently, goods ordered online, like DVDs,’ he says. ‘We term this flow the ‘mailstream’ and see it driving economic growth throughout the globe. It’s also a $250 billion opportunity  for Pitney Bowes’
            It would be easy to get knocked off course during such a transformation. One major challenge is to keep everybody on board and working for a common strategic purpose. Here, says Critelli, corporate values and good communication are essential.
            ‘We stay on track by paying close attention to the values passed down to us by our predecessors,’ he says. ‘The company was founded on the premise of trust, reliability and security. As we enter new businesses and expand existing ones, we stick closely to these values. We also communicate frequently with our employees, listening to their perspectives. Our software, solutions and services would be unrecognizable to our founders, but I expect they would find that our ethos and values remain the same.
            The impetus for transformation doesn’t have to come from outside a company. Some highly successful businesses such as Tesco, Cadbury Schweppes and Smith & Nephew have an innate capacity for transformation as part of their natural evolution, according to research by senior fellow Gerry Johnson and other academics at the Advanced Institute of Management Research in London.
            Although the research is ongoing, Johnson has identified some tentative reasons why these companies might possess this ability. ‘All the firms seem to have evolved ways of operating where they have accommodated productive rivalries,’ he says. This ability to facilitate internal debate may play an important role in allowing an organization to transform itself.

Setting a new course

One thing is certain: for many companies, transformation will make the difference between survival and extinction. Nokia might have continued to pursue its traditional core business, but former CEO Ollila (now chairman), gave the company’s rudder a heave and caught the winds of the latest technological revolution. By reducing the number of business groups from 45 to just two, and focusing resources on mobile phone technologies, he transformed the company into the world beater it is today. If he hadn’t we might never have heard of Nokia.
            Companies like Tyrrells Potato Chips, Pitney Bowes and Nokia demonstrate the power of corporate transformation. They prove that organizations with the ability to transform themselves are far better positioned to adapt to increasingly rapid changes in the external business world.
            It is a simple message: search for the ‘blue oceans’ of opportunity and encourage genuine internal debate about strategic issues – or be left holding the buggy whip.

Hope this newsletter has benefitted you in some way or other.

End of News!
Cheers!
Jimmy ong