Research #3

http://bigfatfinanceblog.com/2010/07/12/an-interview-with-a-ceo-you-might-want-to-work-for

http://bigfatfinanceblog.com/2010/11/16/a-better-approach-to-planning-initiatives/#more-1250

"Hurricane response centers don't just go back and assess damage, they get out in front of the storm and into a position where they're anticipating what's happening. They have contingency plans in place, and they know what they will do if the storm moves left or right," explains Player, who says that finance now fills the "navigator function" for a firm.

As such, Player says, finance is the translator for the organization and must be "multilingual" in order to tear down any figurative language barriers that exist.

source: http://businessfinancemag.com/article/back-future-0916

Why study and learn?

The more you study, the more you learn. The more you learn, the more you forget. The more you forget, the less you learn. So why study? The less you study, the less you learn. The less you learn, the less you forget. The less you forget, the more you learn. So why study?

...

What does this have to do with enterprise performance management? Plenty. The success for how its various methodologies get communicated and implemented is highly governed by managers and employee teams. If there is a culture for learning, metrics, and discovery, that will be a good start. If not, these social issues are barriers that will need to be overcome.

Organizational transformation is about people changing practices and systems – not the other way around.

source: http://bigfatfinanceblog.com/2010/06/14/the-real-world-vs-mba-textbooks/ (LOL! Ok I need to discipline myself!)

Research #2

The biggest area of strategic bias is the value-versus-profit dilemma. Some organizations focus on the customer, following the philosophy that profits will follow as a logical consequence of providing value. But this is not always true. Most customer profitability analyses show that a certain percentage of large and respected customers are often simply not profitable. Having large account teams, offering quantity discounts, and other measures to keep and grow large customers adds to the cost of sales, which is not always considered in the customer relationship.

source: http://bpmmag.net/mag/dealing-with-dilemmas-0824/index3.html

http://bigfatfinanceblog.com/2010/11/23/the-new-talent-crisis-in-finance/

Research #1

HauteLook’s push into Facebook could indicate that social commerce—the notion of using social media to generate traction around online shopping—may become more critical over the coming months for the success of e-commerce companies.

source: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/22/hautelook-brings-flash-sales-to-facebook/?scp=7&sq=luxury&st=cse

From 2003 to 2008, women's apparel sales tended to peak in September, Mr. Berry notes. "When the economy is sailing high...people buy new fashions as soon as they're on the shelf, rather than buying a sweater to stay warm," Mr. Berry says.

But this fall, that habit changed. In September, when new fall fashions hit stores, sales of women's apparel fell 0.2% compared with the year before, while footwear was up just 0.7% according to MasterCard. By October, when cooler weather hit, apparel and footwear sales rose 5.3% and 5.9%, respectively. Markdowns didn't play a role in the uptick, Mr. Berry says.

To better accommodate women who want to buy now, wear now, Net-a-Porter has changed tack: It stopped heavily discounting seasonal items like boots and coats a few months after they shipped—as many other retailers do—to make sure it has goods in stock to match the weather. "There's the challenge that other retailers are marking those items down, but it's a risk we're willing to take," says Holli Rogers, Net-a-Porter's buying director.

To maintain a steady supply of new fashions throughout each season, Net-a-Porter has been inking deals with designers for exclusive collections with later delivery dates. This summer, British label Issa will offer a line of bright, summery lace dresses on Net-a-Porter in April or May, instead of the typical delivery in February. "You want to make these purchases when you need it, not way in advance," Ms. Rogers says.

source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704865704575610452319977706.html?KEYWORDS=luxury

Ralph Lauren is perhaps most famous for creating and communicating an entire world through the power of storytelling, an approach that has brought the brand tremendous success. All the more surprising, then, that what this sequence of giant-sized models, polo horses and products lacked most was a compelling narrative. While the overall undertaking was impressive, and Ralph Lauren deserves credit for pioneering the use of projection mapping in the fashion industry, new technology alone does not make a powerful consumer experience. Subtract the technology from the equation and you have spinning products and giant perfume bottles, but no lasting emotion or feeling.

While the London event was meant to mark the launch of Ralph Lauren’s “digital flagship” in the UK, the brand could also have made more effort to build pre-event buzz amongst end consumers and failed to directly link the 4-D experience to the new e-commerce site. Neither the physical experience, nor the quiet announcement on the brand’s Facebook page, drove enough real consumers to these amazing events, which were mostly attended by industry insiders.

In sum, we think the brand missed an opportunity to capture value by embedding natural opportunities for commerce and consumer engagement within the digital extravaganza. One wonders what might have been possible had a larger consumer audience, armed with iPhones, been assembled and enabled to actually influence and interact with the digital spectacle — and perhaps even buy products.

source: http://www.businessoffashion.com/2010/11/digital-scorecard-ralph-lauren-4d-projection-mapping.html (Ralph Lauren's blending of merchandising and entertainment)

http://www.socialtimes.com/2010/06/3d-projection-mapping-taking-the-advertising-world-by-storm/ (3D Projection mapping, nicee!)

http://vimeo.com/11188067

http://vimeo.com/11160666 (COOL!!)

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=590 (a dying media)

The List

I shall have the list at bay, but still keep in mind that I do have to always be honest. Why? To protect myself, and to protect everyone else. I'm like a ticking time bomb. It could happen anytime, and ANYTIME at all.. DIE!!!!!!! But anyway, the list is convenient, and helpful. There must be a reason for all this to happen. Should the sky fall down this minute, I am at peace of mind, because I have been honest, the ticking time bomb. It's like the saying I believe in, if you can tolerate it, stay, if you can't just go and leave me alone. Yeah, it's better off like this. The list, the back up plan, and the will of the solitary melancholy, happily ever after. Tough lesson to bite.

Everyone's beyond repair. Take it or leave it.

The List - It is made by experience and stories from myself and my girlfriends accumulated and summarized into a neat chic list, as a reminder for myself and anyone else, for what better rule but the rules of feminism, and flower power, yaw! Haha.

The Consequences

Prior to my previous post, you can do so on your own and practice your Googling prowess. I am humbly too lazy to share that as it only caters to those with acquired taste and I am in no mood for that now.

However, I do want to share on how we often forget to think further ahead with our present actions. Sure you made mistakes but did you ever think that they were mistakes when you had them? Of course you didn't. For the optimists, we find them as experiences, but for the pessimists, you just whine and complain about how everyone else is going against you, when in fact, you didn't realize, it was your own undoing. Had you realize that you were being a pain in the ass for not being cautious, you would've saved all the trouble, but no, everyone else is at fault and you are the sole righteous one, victimized and oppressed; and you go about thinking that the one person who had always been thinking the best of you is going behind your back.

Please, get a grip, it stays in the past because we're past that, and we're looking forward. Unless of course, if you feel that my presence is an offense, or that I am jeopardizing your perfect mistake-free prim and proper fantasy world. Bahahahha. Just wait another year or two. Or if you're unlucky, you will come to realize what a waste of your life waiting around for the thing or person you thought is the most perfect thing in the world to hold on to and it'll be too late for you to do anything because you have a biological clock in you and that will not wait on you.

I write generalized things such as the above to rant out whatever that I have in mind at the moment (and I don't care if it's not structured and if you feel like I'm bringing you from one point to another without a proper introduction or conjunction to string one story to another) because even though I may seem mute, I am not. InsyaAllah, I will calm down and keep myself poised.

When you're so used to being at war, you just can't stop wondering is this it, or is this just the calm before the storm.

Kun faya kun- Be and it is.

Silently Productive

Don't ask me why I was googling this. I've been keeping myself busy, but at the same time I've been looking up many articles including short stories of famous people before they came to be and of alhadith from Al-Bukhari on menses, providing for the family and of being good; voiding myself of self contempt and irrational self criticizing and hurtful online contents from unimportant people.

The following is something I would like to share with whoever who stumble upon this blog, obviously from my social webpage or from blogger's random search, which I highly doubt, or from my friends' blogs. Hi bloghoppers and readers alike!

The Loneliness of Smart

February 10, 2008 by eclexia

I want to write a few posts about a topic that is personal and hard for me to talk about. It is an area that I often feel misunderstood. As such, I have little confidence that I am even going to make sense with what I write. I don’t even know where I’m going to go with it, or how I’m going to end up. I’m not sure if the post itself will connect to the title. The title is what is on my heart. Getting there may be long and confusing. I need to talk about this. I need to try to communicate it. Please bear with me if I don’t make sense. Or to put it in the words of an alternate post title I thought of, “I’m Smart, Please Like Me Anyway.”

Let me start off this post with a disclaimer and some background presuppositions. I’m going to be talking about a word I don’t really care for:Smart. I dislike this term, because: [update: It's still me talking in the list--I can't figure out how to indent in this template without WordPress automatically inserting the big quote mark]

1.It can mean way too many things. If you call me smart, what do you really mean? With this particular label, I find that what one person means when they use the word can be very different from what another person thinks when they hear it.

2.It can mean too few things. I operate mostly out of a paradigm of “multiple intelligences”. When people call me smart, it frustrates me, in part, because I feel like they’ve artificially elevated one type of intelligence. Usually, I think people are talking about something to do with academics. They seem to be saying, You know things I don’t know. You remember things way better than I do. You think about things in ways I can’t even think to think about. You use big words.Those things relate to only one type of smart. But, when you call me smart, sometimes it feels like by your acknowledging whatever it is that you see as smart in that moment, you are from that point on, expecting me to be forever smart in every way. Which leads to my next point:

3.It is loaded with assumptions. I hate being called smart, not because I can’t receive a compliment (which is what many people assume when I don’t know how to respond to being told I’m smart), but because I’ve been burned too many times by the paradox of people who go on and on about how smart I am, until I do something that seems stupid to them, and then they ask, “What WERE you thinking?” Or, worse yet statements like, “Just Think about it.” If you call me smart, it feels like there are assumptions and expectations about how I should always behave and think, and a lot less tolerance for me to do or be “not smart” (whatever that is) at times. Some of the time, “not smart” really IS that I’m not too smart in a certain area. Some of the time, when you look at me or respond to me like I’m stupid, it seems like it is precisely because I don’t think exactly like you do that I now appear to be stupid or “not thinking”. Other times, it is hard because I’m not believed when I truly don’t understand something or can’t do something or can’t figure something out… “But you’re so smart.”

4.It is an isolating term. Often when I hear someone call me smart, I feel like a wide gulf has just been artificially laid down between me and them. You’re smart. You’re different. I admire how smart you are, but it’s obvious we can’t really relate, because you are so far “up there” with your thoughts and ideas.

5.It is a “big” adjective. When people see smart, sometimes it seems like they can’t see beneath, behind or below that. I don’t want you to see me as smart, if, in doing so, you can’t see the whole picture of me, of which my academic brain capabilities are only a part.

6.It is an adjective that carries a lot of weight. It seems to trump other adjectives. It is often used in a ranking way. For example, when someone is telling me I am smart, it often feels like they are putting me on a pedestal, and themselves lower, in comparison. (which ties into #4)

At the same time, I can’t seem to cut the word out of my life. As an adjective, it is helpful. I have friends who I like for a variety of reasons. Or perhaps, it’s more accurate to say, I have many friends who I like. Each of them has many fascinating, interesting and likable traits. Some of those friends have as one of their characteristic what I would describe as “smart”. I don’t want to have to deny or ignore that their being smart is part of the them that I like.It’s not so much that I like them because they are smart, but that I like them, and when I think of them, “smart” is one of the adjectives I would use to describe them.

This friend wears glasses. That friend is tall. One friend is an incredible seamstress. Another is extremely shy. And still another is, yes, smart. I’m not exactly complimenting my tall friend, nor am I putting down my shy friend when I use those adjectives. They just are those things. They aren’t only those things (And that is a very key point to my thinking). Each adjective paints just a tiny part of a description that is never adequate to describe a particular friend.

Such adjectives are descriptive and not prescriptive. If you are my friend, you could, in talking about me to another person, honestly say, “She is tall.” You could not accurately say, “She is tall and so she plays basketball very well.” If I played basketball (I don’t–I am tall and very clumsy), and was good at it, it would be true. But as soon as the adjective “tall” becomes categorically loaded with assumptions and expectations which may or may not be true about me, it is no longer a helpful description, but becomes most unhelpful.

I suppose part of what I’m trying to work my way through to is that, although adjectives carry meaning that are loaded with implication, adjectives which describe people aren’t really rankable. Meaning I don’t like one friend better because they are smarter than the rest. And I don’t like another friend better than the rest of my friends because she is stunningly beautiful and draws attention wherever we go (I don’t have any stunningly beautiful friends, according to the world’s description of “stunning beauty,” but I imagine if I did that that friend could find the adjective “beautiful” as frustrating as I find “smart”.) By describing a friend with a specific adjective, I am saying nothing about their likability. I’m only describing the person who I happen to like very much.

Still, I want to be able to admire a trait in a friend, without it seeming like I’m ranking them. I want to be able to admire smart when I see it in a friend, and not have them feel awkward or elevated up. I have a daughter who paints beautiful pictures. When I admire her paintings, I am not saying, “I’m a terrible painter.” I really AM a terrible painter. I’m even a terrible drawer. Shoot, I can’t even color very well. But, I’m not thinking of those things, when I admire her paintings and say, “You are an amazing painter.” All I’m doing is admiring a trait and gift that SHE has. My admiration and description of what I see in her says nothing about me.

In the same way, I want to be able to admire a friend who has just said something amazing or thought about things from an incredibly profound perspective and say, “Wow, you are so smart” and have them hear the admiration and be glad because of it, but (1) know that their being smart isn’t a demand or constant expectation on which our friendship hinges and (2)it’s not the only thing I like about them, and if they got a disease that diminished their brain capacities tomorrow, I’d still like them. They are smart, but they are not only smart.

So, you can see the bind I’m in. I don’t like people using the word “smart” to describe me for the reasons above, but I find it, at times, a useful word, much like words such as artistic, creative, intense, laid back or funny. I suppose in the previous two paragraphs, I’m trying to put into words assumptions I long for you to have, if you are going to call me “smart”.

Source:

http://eclexia.wordpress.com/2008/02/10/the-loneliness-of-smart/

You hit it nicely at the right spot, eclexia. Thank you for writing this. Now I shall continue wandering in the vast interwebs of random tweens' idle thoughts, knowledge that I don't already know and the occasional jackpot of new fresh ideas and knowledge. Stay tuned lovelies. Next I will share my findings of Al-Hadith close to my heart.

I Don't Know How You Feel About This But.......

I received this email from my dad. He emails me jokes and stories sometimes, just to pass time, and keep me in touch with what he's reading and thinking. But I find this one in particular as something for all.

Subject: Appreciation.... well worth passing on to our kids

Appreciation

This is a powerful message for our modern society. Many seem to have lost their bearing & sense of valuing parental sacrifices.

One young academically excellent person went to apply for a managerial position in a big company.

He passed the first interview; the director did the last interview.

The director discovered from the CV that the youth's academic achievements were excellent all the way, from the secondary school until the postgraduate research, never had a year when he did not score.

The director asked, "Did you obtain any scholarships in school?"

The youth answered "none".

The director asked, "Was it your father who paid for your school fees?"

The youth answered, "My father passed away when I was one year old, it was my mother who paid for my school fees ".

The director asked, "Where did your mother work?"

The youth answered, "My mother worked as laundry woman.

The director requested the youth to show his hands.

The youth showed a pair of hands that were smooth and perfect.

The director asked, "Have you ever helped your mother wash the clothes before ?"

The youth answered, "Never, my mother always wanted me to study and read more books. Furthermore, my mother can wash clothes faster than me.

The director said, "I have a request. “When you go back today, go and clean your mother's hands, and then see me tomorrow morning.”

The youth felt that his chance of landing the job was high. When he went back, he happily requested his mother to let him clean her hands.

His mother felt strange, happy but with mixed feelings, she showed her hands to the young man.

The youth cleaned his mother's hands slowly. His tear fell as he did that. It was the first time he noticed that his mother's hands were so wrinkled, and there were so many bruises in her hands. Some bruises were so painful that his mother shivered when they were cleaned with water.

This was the first time the youth realized that it was this pair of hands that washed the clothes everyday to enable him to pay the school fees. The bruises in the mother's hands were the price that the mother had to pay for his graduation, academic excellence and his future.

After finishing the cleaning of his mother’s hands, the youth quietly washed all the remaining clothes for his mother.

That night, mother and son talked for a very long time.

Next morning, the youth went to the director's office.

The Director noticed the tears in the youth's eyes, asked: "Can you tell me what have you done and learned yesterday in your house?"

The youth answered, "I cleaned my mother's hand, and also finished cleaning all the remaining clothes'

The Director asked, "Please tell me your feelings."

The youth said:

1. I know now what appreciation is. Without my mother, there would not have been the successful me today.

2. By working together and helping my mother, only I now realize how difficult and tough it is to get something done.

3. I have come to appreciate the importance and value of family relationships.

The director said, "This is what I am looking for to be my manager.

I want to recruit a person who can appreciate the help of others, a person who knows the sufferings of others to get things done, and a person who would not put money as his only goal in life. You are hired.

Later on, this young person worked very hard, and received the respect of his subordinates. Every employee worked diligently and as a team. The company's performance improved tremendously.

A child, who has been protected and habitually given whatever he wanted, would develop "entitlement mentality" and would always put him self first. He would be ignorant of his parent's efforts. When he starts work, he assumes that every person must listen to him, and when he becomes a manager, he would never know the sufferings of his employees and would always blame others. For this kind of a person, who may be good academically, may be successful for a while, but eventually would not feel sense of achievement. He will grumble and be full of hatred and fight for more. If we are this kind of protective parents, are we really showing love or are we destroying the children instead?*

You can let your children live in a big house, eat a good meal, learn piano, watch a big screen TV. But when you are cutting grass, please let them experience it. After a meal, let them wash their plates and bowls together with their brothers and sisters. It is not because you do not have money to hire a maid, you want them to understand, no matter how rich their parents are, one day their hair will grow grey, same as the mother of that young person. The most important thing is your children learn how to appreciate the effort and experience the difficulty and learn how to work with others to get things done.

To relate, I've never done hard physical work at home. I did once during the barbeque and I had my body aching the next day. I did my first events job and I had my body ache for a week. I'm not a very physical person but I tried, and I understood, life is tough, but our parents don't teach us that, the surroundings does that. My recent behaviour is intriguing, for some, but I know the haters and hypocrites can't keep themselves sitting comfortably on their seats thus they waltz around polluting my sight and my cool. But it's okay. This world is for everyone, the air is free and I'm not greedy. Give to the needy.

Let's Face It. Life Is Shit But You Have Everything In Your Hands To Change It

You will not regret and condemn yourself if you understand. God gives you grievances because He knows you can carry it. He is Most Merciful.

To Those Selected Readers

The old blog has been moved to http://captainsjournal08-10.blogspot.com

Happy Birthday Therapy Blog

I deleted everything I wrote in this blog. We move forward from now onwards!