Second Profession for the Second Half of Your Life

People in our age may start to think about the following question: what would I do in my second half of the life?

Just take an example: I worked in Telecommunication Industry for last 18 years and can hardly image to continue in that industry for next 18 years until I would be able to retire officially. Even if I would like to, my employer with best intention may not be able to keep me that long.

A colleague of mine, a highly capable female professional decided two years ago to be a Yoga teacher. And now she seems to be extremely happy with that decision.

During today’s lunch I opened this discussion with few colleagues. I started saying to a colleague: “You are maintaining an image of a perfect detective with you cool look, a long coat, analytical capability and communication skill.” He laughed: “There might be a market for coaching for second profession for the second half of the life for you. But detectives are absolutely not what I would do.”

People with our experiences are extremely valuable when we focus on our strengths. And generally education in its broadest scope can be one of the areas you might want to look for opportunities. In that industry your value will increase when you get older, provided that you never stop adapting and learning new things.

Another growth industry will be something I would call “how people spend their leisure time?”. Think about how often you go to massage in China compared how often you go massage in Germany. Productivity will grow, efficiency will increase. People will work generally less time with more results. They will generally have more money and have more idle time. What are they going to do with the extra time and extra money? There is a market from macro economy perspective.

Then we have some well known growth industries such as alternative energy and health care. If you are working in one of the related industries, you are lucky and can try to move to one of the hot spots for your second half of your professional life.

It is your life and you absolutely deserve the best out of it.

Selective Memories: Improve Your Live Instantly

Years ago I learnt a method to improve my achievements. It is called success book. It tells you to write down every success during a day, big or small. That way you are much aware of your success. You can also create a love book or happiness book.

I know a woman who is very bright. She tells every small or big positive aspect of her life to everyone she likes, when she bought new shoes, new clothes, new jewelry, when she started to learn a new language or new music instrument, when she visited a new bar or restaurant, when she tried a new spa or ate a delicious cake.

On the other side when something negative happened to her, for example a car accident, she tried to remember the good side of it, e.g. the guy was nice or fortunately the cost of the repair was all covered by the insurance.

From above two examples I realize that maybe initially what happened did not really change. But if you emphasize the positive side of the reality, the positive side will have more weight to you. You select the things to remember you like. By any time of your life, it is not what you really have experienced, but what you can remember, will make up your (subjective) reality.

At the second stage however, when you get used to focus on the bright side of your life, your mood will be better, you will have higher energy level and you will have better judgment and make better decisions which will change your quality of live, improve your efficiency and increase your level of happiness.

Motivation Factor Number ONE: Sense of Purpose

On the way to the office this morning, I observed 2 elderly people, maybe aged at 70, standing next to the traffic light, directing the flow of the walkers crossing the street. The temperature was 31 °C. Both of them wore a sign: Volunteer.

Then I observed some young, nice dressed ladies in the air-conditioned office building with the best views to the Huangpu River, got bored for what they have to do, waiting for the clock to reach 5:30pm, so they can enjoy the night life in Shanghai.

So I start to question myself what really motivate people to work, not just to do an ordinary work, but a job with passion, independently on how much one gets paid for. I reflected to my own 23 years working experiences with all the emotional ups and downs and came to the conclusion that people need strong sense of purpose to work with passion.

For me the purposes are

1) When the work has a component of personal development, either for me or for other people.

2) When the work really creates values, either for the company, other people or for myself.

If none of the above exists, I tent to switch off my light and fire. I will still do a job well. But I may not go the extra miles.

I am pretty sure that every one has his own sense of purpose. The manager’s task is to find it out and to design the job for the subordinates such that it makes sense (of purpose) to them.

Networking in Internet Age: First Gathering of German Expats in Shanghai

If you are an executive or a business owner, I bet that more than 80% of your success is dependent on your capability of networking. And networking is made extremely easy at the internet age. Here an example.

The group German Expats in Shanghai (/https://www.xing.com/net/shanghai-de/) was created Dec 15, 2008 with the networking tool XING (https://www.xing.com/). Today, three and half months later, there are already 913 registered members. The group had the first gathering March 1, 2009, in Bund Brewery, 11 Hankou Lu 汉口路11号 with around 100 people. All the registration and organization was done online. So everyone could know who else were coming with full details of their profiles, what they offer and what they are looking for.

My personal experience: I spoke with a lot of people there and decided to explore with two people for future business cooperation. I had recommended one person who is looking for a new opportunity to a company which is searching for talents with her profile. This is all because I had some online communications before the dinner. You can call this efficiency.

By the way, the location was very nice and the food was acceptable (except the quantity could be more, probably the restaurant owner was not aware, how much a German can eat, namely always the double size :-). But this was compensated by the free flow of beer, as German people consider beer as food.

Big thanks to the moderator of the group Martin Hackl, Comberry Ltd. and team who organized the wonderful dinner (also for creating the group before - online). Look forward to the next gathering, hopefully very soon.

The Future Value of Time

Every morning I share taxi with two colleagues on the way to the office. And we wait for each other on the taxi rank near the subway station at around 8:20am. When I come earlier, usually between 5 to 10 minutes, I sit down in the subway station and use the time to read business books. You could bridge 5 to 10 minutes easily by doing nothing and just wait. However here is what I have learnt about time.

The first concept about time is the famous “time is money”. Actually, most people, maybe over 90% of working adults get paid by their time. Every one may have a different hourly rate, but principally they sell their time either to their employers or to their clients and customers. People are more generous to waste their time, but they are more careful about money, even small change.

The second concept is that actually you can “invest” your time to generate future value. Learning a skill or building an expertise with your time is a great way to invest your time. By learning smartly you will be able to increase your hourly rate, because you will be capable doing a higher paid job or offer a higher value services. Think about what you could earn with 5 minutes some day and then decide, if you still want to waste it.

The third concept is that time is your life. Suppose you want to live 80 years. That is exactly 42 millions minutes. That's all the time you have and it is very limited and individual, no one can really lend you any more time. So to waste your time is equivalent to waste your life. And maybe this is the most common sin across country and culture boarders in the whole world.

Why Didn’t You Take More Initiatives?

Years ago a friend of mine moved to a new department within his company and got a bad boss. The boss was not really a bad person, but had no clue at all what leadership means.

My friend was very bright and highly motivated to work hard and to change the way how things were done inefficiently in the department. One example: every one kept the information for himself. There is no central data base for things with common interests. And if you need some information, you need to go to certain person to get it, again and again.

But his boss felt threatened by the dynamic guy, and stopped everything the young man initiated. The boss told him that he was not entitled to do such things, because that was the job of the boss.

Slowly the young man realized that he would go no where with his ideas, energy and initiatives and decided to imitate the way how his "good" colleagues were doing, namely just followed the orders of the boss and did exactly what was told. The relationship between him and his bosses had improved. There were no argues any more. The department was doing the same thing with the same inefficiency as before.

In the year end review however, the performance of the department was moderate and the boss got a warning from his boss. He called every one in the department afterwards and tried to motivate them to do more next year. After he called my friend in his office, he told him: “Your performance is moderate. You do everything well what was told ONLY. But you can do much more. Why didn’t you take more initiatives?”

Berger Executive Resources: A High Performance Company

Since years I am looking for real life case studies of high performance companies. Today I happened to have the chance meeting a business woman who owns such one. Her name is Chen Wei, head of Berger Executive Resources focusing on HR consulting, mainly head hunting.

What did she do differently than other average head hunters? By the way there are thousands alone in Shanghai. She runs the firm successfully without overtime and she does not request employees to do overtime as well. Why is that possible in Asia, in China, in Shanghai? Because she does not waste any time and trained her employee to have the same discipline. The results: Berger Executive Resources belongs to top 10 according to on-line polls.

Some other head hunters including some big ones try to follow any cases they can get, with 10% to 30% hit rate. So 90% to 70% time are actually wasted. Chen Wei’s style is just the opposite, she ONLY follow the cases which 100% winning chances and sign exclusive contracts with down payments.

What are the benefits? For the company there are effectively no wasted resources including time and money. The clients get 100% care and focus and absolute quality job. The candidates have better chance to land positions which best fit to their talents. The employee always works on projects for which they will get bonuses. And who would like to leave such company to other average ones? Employee royalty leads to client royalty. Client loyalty leads again to high performance of Berger Executive Resources. A truly win-win-win situation.

I wonder why do not all the companies in the whole world follow the same concept?

Contacts:
http://www.bergerexecutive.com/
wei_chen@bergerexecutive.com

The Power Of Switching Off Mobile Phone

I am not a friend of working long hours, especially for things which can be avoided or which do not add any customer values.

Recently I had a conversation with a friend who has to work very long hours as a manager and is forced sometimes to come to the office at the weekend. He never switches his mobile phone off, even while sleeping or during the vacation. He would worry about missing a phone call, maybe from his boss. But one experience changed his entire life forever.

Once he took one week vacation with his family to Tokyo and had not been aware that his GSM mobile phone did not work in Japan. The first day he was very nervous, because his mobile phone did not ring. He felt that some thing could happen and he was not informed. The second day, his fear reduced and he got used into it. After all what could he do?

From the third day he started to enjoy the complete silence coming from the mobile phone and realized how nice it was to spend the quality time with his wife and kids without any disturbance.

Today he switches the mobile phone while sleeping and during the vacation. He delivered even better performance than before, because a human being can not really be always on!