Wilson Ng started helping the family business since 9 years old. Since then, he had dreamt to be a successful entrepreneur, one who starts great businesses  ( he has started 7) from scratch with insight, guts and initiative. He keeps his focus on growing the business by creating value-- not on politics, or wasteful distractions. He brings the same focus to community service, teaching, life and family.

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	Wednesday, October 27, 2004

Its Always Been the Way We do Things Here   ( on business) There are two schools to managing a business.  One school espouses the establishment of clear business processes so that your business will be 'predictable.' This is embodied by for instance, the way McDonalds do the business.  Whether you are in New York, Beijing, or Hong Kong, you expect the same efficiency, quality, and cleanliness that you have come to expect.  In some other industries, however, notably in technology, the emphasis is not to automatically do things, or let established business process hamper the employee.  Both schools I guess have arguments going for and against, and at the end, you as a manager is the ultimate judge on what works for you.  Two anecdotes here highlights what happens when people start to let processes take over, and do things without thinking. " A patient goes to his doctor and complains, "I've got trouble in my throat." The doctor automatically told him, "Go to the other room, and remove your clothes. I'll be with you in a minute." The patient says: "But doctor, it's just my throat!" . The doctor shrugged his shoulders and said, "Get in the other room, and disrobe and I'll examine you." So the patient went in and removed all his clothes.  As he was sitting there in his birthday suit, he looked around. Next to him was another guy, also naked, with a package in his hands. He started to complain to the guy, "Hey, can you imagine this doctor.  I've got trouble with my throat and he tells me to remove my clothes!" The other man said, "What are you complaining about?  I only came in here to deliver the pizza!" Indeed, process is there to help us, but sometimes it is important to think that what worked for us before may not work for us today.  Here is a one liner from Jay Leno that I heard years ago, and still remember today.  This is about McDonald's well known strategy process to upsell other products to the customer when he goes in the store. "Yesterday, I went to McDonald's and ordered french fries, and the lady in the counter asked me, "you want fries with that?" When you need to do something different, is the culture of "its always been the way things are done around here?" becoming your enemy?   9:28:39 AM     comment []   trackback []

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