Do the right thing

One day when I returned home, I saw that there was a lot of grasses in front of my flat. My daughter later told me that she was house keeping the rabbit’s cage and she dumped all the grasses in front of the house. So, I became hysterically mad about myself as I was the one to teach my beloved daughter to have a sense of responsibility. Later on, she said the cleaner would come to clean the building at night. That may be her excuse!
Little things are great for little man

Many of us do not understand the great significance of the little contributions that we do daily. Small contributions, on daily basis, can grow into a big contribution to the company in the long run. For example, for Toyota, there is the “Kaisin” programme which is seeking everyone to improve a little bit in his own role!

Now, we have to face with the century’s worst economy crisis. That causes most of the financial vehicles to melt down, world’s largest bank to be diminished more than 80% in a few months, lay-off pile up…with 4,000,000 job loss in USA… and it is still unknown whether the worst has come to an end…

The global semiconductor industry will continue to witness a revenue slump until 2013, forecasts given by research firm Gartner. The firm also said that worldwide semiconductor sales are projected to generate $194.5 billion in 2009. World global chip sales dropped 31% in Jan 2009. That may remain dormant until 2013.

The new niche
Although we are one of the world’s largest equipment suppliers, we are also affected by the world economy’s turbulence as we rely on our semiconductor houses and assembly houses for our product sales. There is forecast that the IC market will not be as good as 2008 and full recovery may be realized only by 2013. Discrete and power, which is dependent on China’s drive for increasing the domestic consumption, is still strong as domestic electrical appliances are sold to rural districts. Until the current old stock of the specific product is consumed, there will be no new need for equipment, nor new need for discrete or power device manufacturing equipment purchase.

On the other hand, LED will be an emerging market due to the drives from various national energy clauses for greener energy, the multiplication for more efficient illumination devices, household illumination, replacement incandescent light in Traffic light, for public TV, BLU for LCD TV and hand phone and the need for decorative light and signage board… We can see that the LED will continue to grow. If we can capture the market at this instant, there is a very large market potential out there.

Our Difference
Being a staff of company, a sense of responsibility is to support the captains’ instruction in steering the ship on the rough seas... and whatever seasick would be temporary and once we surpassed the storm, there will be rainbow. Now, all of us need to cooperate and work hard - almost 180 percent as I mentioned to Bloggers of mine because 130 percent is not enough at this time of the day.

Our company is different from our competitors. Many of them are busy concentrating on cost cutting and lay offs. On contrast, our staff are busy innovating and creating new products and lending more support to our customers. Our Service Engineers are busy solving outstanding issues. Along the way, when the customer needs a new feature in their products, we will definitely be the first to know and eventually we can become their choice partner!

What is the Right Thing?
Now, this question: “Do you have a sense of responsibility?” The probable answer is ... yes. Most people do. Most of the employees do have a certain sense of responsibility. So what is this sense of responsibility?

We can help manage the entire process from concept to implementation of running with complete visibility to ensure the maximum recognition with and viability of your brand. This boils down to YOUR will to do the right thing, combined with OUR knowledge and experience.
Firstly, we need to know that doing the "right thing" will increase the impact to our organization. This is something the wider society desperately needs. Likewise, business needs to be nurtured. We can strive to build a caring and responsible organization.

People of the wider society will also be more willing to deal with responsible organization when it comes to businesses and services. This is all about trust. This is something outside the normal parameters of profit.
So, how could you do the right thing? How could you be recognized as being responsible and of beneficial to society?
You need to evolve into something better. Have a plan. Visualize.
There are several ways which you can promote a sense of responsibility in our staff.

1. Be a good role model
Your staff watch everything you do. If they see you as being responsible, they will be more inclined to be more responsible.

2. Provide Structure
Empty talk has no effect on your peers so you have to work in such a way to show to your staff that being hard working is equally important in maintaining a healthy work force. People said work smart does not require a person to work hard. To a certain extent, this is not right because when a smart guy works harder, the effect is not 1x multiple but it may become 10x multiples!
You can help your staff to stay focus and succeed by creating a structure in which he can succeed. Coaching on the need for team work is our responsibility.

3. Keep track on sales and service programmes and production progress status
By creating lists, tally sheets or charts, your staff can monitor his own progress on sales and service activities. This will remind him of the jobs he has yet to complete. It will also allow him to achieve a sense of worth and pride when a task has been completed. This, in turn, will promote a sense of responsibility and high self-esteem.

4. Empowerment
Try to load more work to your staff provided they are being well monitored for the progress and if they can handle the work on their own, the higher self-esteem they will have. Paradoxically, in many situations, the lesser you help your staff, the more you will be helping them.

5. Set arm stretched goal for the staff
Do you demand $10 million or $15 million sales per quarter in their territories? Set some guidelines for them to realize your expectations. If they meet those set targets, their successes will definitely contribute to their self-esteem.

6. Allow adequate time for the task
To learn new products, to prepare sales speeches and to finish sales reports - all these need time. The sales team who rushes through may follow directions by mimicking what you are doing but may not understand the significance of the task or the new proposal. Furthermore, if insufficient time is given, you may be applying pressure to your sales team and they may become discouraged. So remember that building responsibility takes time.

7. Keep encouraging your staff
It is common to make minor mistakes in our work. Allow space for that mistake. When a staff is occasionally discouraged either by the weight of his responsibility or by his failure to be responsible, you can counteract such discouragement by reminding him of his successes in previously performed tasks. Recollect, with the staff, the successes and not failures.

8. Highlight the logical consequences of irresponsible behaviour
Once you are certain that your staff is capable of performing a task and has enough time to do so, then he needs to bear the consequences (the effects) of irresponsibility (the cause) if he does not perform the task well. These consequences should be neither punitive nor abusive.

9. Set fair and sensible guidelines
We all need guidelines, staff and managers alike. They serve as boundaries to establish what is and what is not acceptable. Managers begin setting boundaries for their team mates. To be effective, the guidelines need to be well thought out, logical and fair to all involved.In conclusion, as responsibility is essential to the development of good character and business success, it is wise for manager to give thought on how they can facilitate the process. If your goal is to have an educated, responsible and well-adjusted sales team, then the Production Engineer, Support group and your whole division team need to work together, sometimes making sacrifices, to achieve that goal.

Will it be easy? No! But it will be worthy of your time and energy!

"Things turn out best for the people who make the best out of the way things turn out."
- Art Linkletter


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