PMI members can enjoy a free download of the PMBOK in pdf format! Alternatively, you can purchase the PMBOK book off the PMI website or request your training provider for one.

During the course: I read PMBOK cover to cover once and marked areas which I felt were important. I read about 2-3 chapters prior to each of the 5 training days of the PMP Exam preparatory course. As this was my first read of PMBOK which coincided with cricket matches, my attention was diverted. I didn’t mind this as my initial objective of PMBOK reading was simply to get a feel of what the chapters were trying to say and put that in context when the instructor delivered the subject. Needless to say, experienced professionals who have worked or have had visibility across all project management areas would have no difficulty in grasping the concepts quickly. You may find few areas of struggle perhaps due to minimal experience / exposure but do not worry; you’ll get over that hurdle.

I was fortunate to have worked across all project management areas which made majority portions of the PMBOK book easy to follow. I was introduced to few new terminologies and techniques that made it interesting and even worth contemplating in my present job. Many of you may find Earned Value Management (EVM) a tricky subject. This presentation titled Earned Value Management by Obsideo Training & Consultancy explains EVM in simplistic language with examples. I highly recommend going through their document if you aren’t familiar with this facet of Project Management. Needless to say, the concept of EVM is important from the exam’s perspective.

Note: You’ll hear comments that PMBOK is a boring read and that it will put to you sleep. Well, I can only say that if a person is focused & motivated – these things shouldn’t happen. PMBOK alone sufficed for me. Being a seasoned Project Manager, I didn’t find the need to read any other book. If you aren’t confident, then you may need to look for alternate sources. What are they? My reliable friends tell that Andy Crowe’s book is good due to its simple way of articulating PMBOK content (so, people who fall asleep reading PMBOK may want to contemplate this). Another recommended book is Rita’s exam preparation book.

After the course – Week 1: Immediately after the course, I did around 3 casual tests (200 questions each) via Rita’s PM FASTrack v6 and scored between 65% & 75%. PM FASTrack v6 is considered hard. As I had done these casually and had not done any preparation, getting these scores made me believe that the exam isn’t tough and that I needn’t require months of preparation. If you wondering what the passing mark for PMI is then let me surprise you – PMI doesn’t explicitly state one!

After the course – Week 2: I went through the PMP application process. Caution: This can wear you down. It is tad tedious. It can take longer than the actual examination time itself! Fortunately, you can stop midway and resume the application process. Make sure you have your resume next to you to assist you. Upon finishing and receiving the confirmation, I scheduled my exam for a date after 17 days.

After the course – Week 3: With my exam less than three weeks away, I now had to start my exam preparation. I used my weekend – two full days of dedicated preparation. I had all my meals in the study area. So yes, this was two full intense days of quality time on exam preparation. I used the weekend to do the following:

• I prepared a spreadsheet listing all process groups, project management areas along with their individual inputs, outputs & tools techniques (ITTOs). Feel free to use this document; however I’d strongly suggest you do it yourself as it’s a way how you’ll remember these things as you proceed further.
• I read PMBOK cover to cover with some attention this time. In parallel, I began documenting PMP study notes. All the areas that I had marked in the PMBOK book during the training course were now typed in my study notes. At this stage it looked like a cut down version of the PMBOK. Again, feel free to use this document – but I’d once again suggest you do it yourself as you’ll have a higher chance of grasping the concepts & recalling it when it matters.
• I went over the presentation slides of my training provider and added bits of content that were not covered in my study notes.
• Areas where I felt that I had difficulty understanding the concept or felt areas where PMBOK hasn’t elaborated much – I leaned to my trusted friend, Google, and updated my study plan notes.
• After completion of the PMBOK, I managed to do sample questions from Initiation & Planning phases off Rita’s FASTrack v7 scoring over 75%.
• Reflection: I was impressed that I was able to accomplish all of the above in two days while I thought it would take much longer. I rescheduled my PMP exam to an earlier date as I believed that I was ready and there was no point in prolonging it.

After the course – Week 4: We had a long weekend (courtesy public holiday). I once again used these three full days to my advantage. I am not listing my efforts spent during weekdays as they were negligible. I split my long weekend of three days into two sessions each, day and evening, making it a total of six sessions. In each session I did the following:

• Went over my study notes thoroughly. As and when doubts surfaced, I went to my trusted friend again – i.e. Google
• Sample Exam (full length 200 questions)
• Reviewed me exam results.

3 days, six sessions equated to six sample exams. The exams were comfortably completed within 4 hours with scores generally between 70% and 90%. The exams that I attempted were:

• PM Study (200 questions – online)
• SimpliLearn (200 questions – online)
• ExamCentral (200 questions – online)
• HeadFirstLabs (200 questions – pdf)
• Oliver Leahmann (175 questions – pdf)
• Techfaq360 (200 questions – online)

Following a good night’s sleep, I reached the venue for the examination 20 minutes prior with the intent of skimming over the study notes for one last time!

Tips:

• If you are not used to attempting four hour long multiple choice question style of exams, then midway through the examination will bring about some form of fatigue in you. This will cause you to rush through the remaining questions. So, keep practicing until you overcome the fatigue factor. You need to achieve a state wherein you are relaxed & focused for the entire duration of the exam.
• Try to do as many sample tests as you can, ideally from different sources. Keep to a minimum of 10 sample tests.
• As you do your sample tests, it is extremely important to assess where you scored wrong and reflect those back into your study notes.
• Get a good night’s sleep before your exam
• Know the ITTOs for each of the 42 processes. I used this resource which helped to some extent – http://pmzilla.com/memorizing-inputs-tools-and-outputs-pmp. People may say that memorization isn’t critical. Subjective comment, but as you do more and more sample exams – you’ll get an idea on which ITTOs to focus on.
• The examination may have multiple questions having the same answer. This may influence you to doubt your previous answers, so know your content well and be confident.
• Don’t give up once you are faced with difficult or tricky questions up front. This only means that the remaining three quarters is going to be easy. So, don’t get bogged down. Remember – you have to be relaxed and focused throughout the exam duration!
• Feel free to mark numerical questions for second review at the end of the exam as they are easy scoring opportunities.
• After reading the question once, make sure you read it once again to look for words that we can easily miss in our first read such as “is not” / “cannot” / etc… as these missed words could change the answers easily. Again, you need to do these for all 200 questions, so remain focused and alert for the entire exam duration.
• In addition to the previous point, read the question again with the intent of identifying if the requested answer is an input, output, tool technique or process. The question could be worded in a way to trick us into choosing the wrong answer. So, relax yourself – read the question carefully with the intent of finding what answer is being requested.
• Feel free to note down the formulae and/or your weak area processes with their ITTOs in the paper that the center provides. This would help you should you get bogged down midway with certain questions.
• Make sure you are comfortable and confident with most parts of the project management areas, if not all.
• Don’t be dejected if your scoring pattern lowers from test to test. As long as you are consistently over 65% and confident of the PMBOK content, you should do well to clear in your first attempt.

Summary: Following the mandatory 35 hours of formal Project Management training, I cleared the PMP exam over five days of exam preparation. Hopefully this will motivate those who think that this takes a lot of time or that it is too difficult. The study material attached above shouldn’t be seen as a winning formula for everyone to pass. You will come across individuals who have taken over 8 months to prepare and also people who have taken few weeks or even days. This shouldn’t be always seen as a measure of preparation time as individuals could have been occupied with other things. It depends on your confidence, ability, experience & grasping levels. If you are ready, just go for it!

To end this post, the “study approach” listed above is not rocket science and can easily be applied to other certifications / initiatives. Hope this post helps aspiring individuals to achieve excellence in whatever they strive for. Feel free to contact me if I can assist you any further and good luck!

October 18^th, 2011: My friend, Paresh Nagar whom I hadn’t heard from in several months sends me an email regarding his interest in registering for a PMP Exam preparation course running between October 29^th 2011 and December 10^th 2011. I immediately contacted Paresh wishing him luck and he asked me if I wanted to join him for the course. I unfortunately had to turn it down primarily due to my intended travel plans that coincided with major portions of the course.

October 27^th, 2011: The 1% probability that my travel plan would get cancelled due to an external event occurred leaving me dejected. Well, destiny has its games! My wife calls and informs me that our friends, Paresh Nagar and Lupita Arrese, who also happen to be her work colleagues, had just received their copy of PMBOK 4^th edition delivered to their office. I was like “WOW – that service coming from a training provider is something that I haven’t heard in a long time”. What next? She continues that I should use our travel cancellation as an excuse or reason or hint to enroll myself for the course too. Here we go again; I started the debate with my loving wife on “Is PMP certification really worth it?”

I took her viewpoints seriously and spoke to the training vendor Platinum CPD situated in Knowledge Village, Dubai, UAE. I was personally attended by the Managing Partner of the institute, Anas Abu-Hamam, who impressed me with his professionalism. He answered my queries and put me at ease despite being a last minute entrant.

October 29^th, 2011: Attended the 1^st of the 5 full day classes. I was pleasantly surprised that the instructor, Omran Zbeida, was one of the contributors to the PMBOK 4^th edition. His name was on the book too. As with any instructor and with all due respect to all, I initially had reservations about this instructor too – not from a knowledge perspective, but from a communication perspective. Within the first few minutes, I knew that I had nothing to worry about. The instructor demonstrated fluency in his presentation & communication skills that would keep me awake for the full day. Yes, this is extremely important as you wouldn’t want to be in a situation where you cannot follow the class due to reasons ranging from language, accent, pitch, tone, pauses, content delivery, etc… Omran was right up there!

Mid-November, 2011: My friend, Karthik Chamy, contacted me in regards to my blog post and we continued discussions on the same subject. Yes, we did take it positively and reached consensus! He later told me that he had just cleared his PMP examination. Needless to say, he was extremely excited with a sense of achievement all over him that was very much evident during our talk. Once again – congratulations mate!

December 10^th, 2011: My 5^th and final day of the course. You might be wondering, how can a 5 day course stretch so far, well – it was conducted on Saturdays with two Saturdays skipped in between due to public holidays. In hindsight, such breaks are not ideal – at least for me.

December 12^th, 2011: I became a member of PMI (Project Management Institute)

December 14^th, 2011: Application for PMP submitted

December 19^th, 2011: PMP Eligibility received. My wife was asking me when I intended to write the exam – I told her at the earliest. She reminded me that I should factor in exam preparation timelines along with personal family commitments.

December 20^th, 2011: PMP Test scheduled for 5^th January 2012 @ 07.30am. Why am I in a hurry? Well, I like to work with deadlines and plan my work around it. Yes, despite the personal commitments including wedding anniversary, attending to guests living with us and in midst of the festive atmosphere, I selected this date. Why 07.30am? Well, I prefer early mornings and the other choice of 12.30pm doesn’t sit well with me.

December 27^th, 2011: PMP Test rescheduled for 2^nd January 2012. Are you thinking that I’m insane? As if 5^th January wasn’t too far and that I’ve rescheduled to 2^nd January 2012? My wife despite being confident of my abilities was visibly concerned and asks me again if I did the right thing to reschedule the exam to an even earlier date. I smiled and she got her answer.

December 31^st, 2011 & January 1^st, 2012: Nothing related to the PMP journey, but I had a nice long walk with my wife to watch the fireworks off Burj Khalifa (the tallest man made structure in the world at 829.84m). Just using this space to tell the visitors to never forget spending quality time with your family even if it means to forgo something important! Know your priorities and manage your work around it.

January 2^nd, 2012: I had my exam scheduled at the Prometric centre in Knowledge Village, Dubai, UAE at 7.30am. As indicated before, I like early mornings so found this time to be my best to take a go at the test. Fast forward four hours and the computer screen displays: “PASS – Congratulations”. Don’t quote me on the exact wordings as I didn’t store that in my memory cells

That was my journey and I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone mentioned on this post and others who were part of this journey. I’ve been introduced to few new concepts during this journey which will certainly benefit me in the longer run. And yes, I still stick with my viewpoints mentioned in my previous post even after being certified. For those who are interested in the details on my study plan, resources used, tips, pointers, etc… please be patient as I work towards compiling a comprehensive subsequent post.

A typical home insurance product would see their claim process as follows:
Customer Raises Claim > Verification & Claim Lodgment > Damage Assessment > Claim Approval / Rejection > Inform Customer

Typically, the above would be structured in an organization with various departments such as Customer Service, Claims, and Assessment. As we all know that the devil is in the detail! As we dig deeper into the process details, we will identify other important stakeholders such as Finance. What is the responsibility for these department managers? Primarily to work towards their objectives (KPI) by ensuring their team executes their tasks. The managers periodically monitor the metrics and performance of their team with a view to improve their area of responsibility. For example, a sample KPI for a Sales team could be number of insurances contracts signed while a sample KPI for the Assessment team could be the number of assessments done.

All too familiar so what’s next? A strategic decision comes forth to deploy a smarter process to streamline the claims process and enrich the customer experience. Why? Well, the reasons could be that the company is finding it difficult to scale, ineffective processes, rise in customer complaints, competition, amongst many others. Yep, I’m sure you can relate this in your organization too.

So, a project is born to weed out the problems (including root cause) and to bring about an improvement. Hopefully the project would cover the entire end to end process. Let’s not get to the infamous talk on scope creep and change requests in this post

In most cases, the project would have had

• non-value added steps eliminated,
• handover points between departments streamlined,
• automate steps where possible, and
• improved customer experience for claim lodging and follow up via multiple channels, and

Few companies would even develop applications supporting the latest gadgets such as tablets & smartphones across all leading manufacturers such as RIM, Google, Apple, Samsung, Nokia, etc… Companies may have considered a market research whether these would be well received by their customers too (very common in the Banking industry). Regardless, the project goes live and most likely customers embrace & appreciate the change as they are now able to track their claim process in real time via multiple channels.

Many of the organizations and individuals would be content with the above; however this is where professionals like me step in to leverage Outside-In & other techniques for an even superior Customer Experience. We like to exploit even further reduction in our internal operating costs.

A simple solution in this case was to look beyond the boundaries of a typical management made hierarchy of claims process which was supposed to be initiated by the customer contacting the company. You may say, ok – but where is the solution? Well, A dedicated team was set up whose objective was to keep abreast on external factors on an ongoing basis that can result in property damage. For example: natural disasters, vandalism, theft, etc… This dedicated team was responsible to develop relationships with various entities including regulatory bodies to continually source information. The team would analyse the information from various facets and inform the customers in advance that are likely to be affected. Well, let’s go a step further and even give them preventative steps!

That’s all theory – give me a practice example! Well, this dedicated team can source vandalism / theft reports from the local police and identify trends. Use this information to convey to your customers living in that vicinity about the recent attacks and for them to be vigilant. Also supply them with detailed preventative steps to take before getting into and out of their property. From a Customer Experience standpoint, this is exceptional as they are now being informed even before a potential event takes place. They are supplied with supporting documentation that could help them take preventative steps to protect their homes. From the insurance company standpoint, there can also be a business model incorporated into this area but that is not the focus of this post. The company with which this solution was deployed saw their number of claims dropped by a significant percent and tremendous increase in customer retention and satisfaction.

Sounds simple isn’t? Exactly, it’s all common sense! Stay tuned to my blog as I unleash several concepts to help you achieve excellence!

I’ve been managing projects for several years and my employers till date didn’t really push or required me to get certified. However, their new vacancies would always mention the requirement or preference of PM certified professionals. I must confess that I did and still at times ponder over getting PM certified. Managing multiple personal and professional projects at a time didn’t help my cause to move the PM certification process up my priority list. Some colleagues complain that majority of the certifications only demonstrate test-taking skills. The others complain that it’s hard to get stakeholders to agree to best practices when so many people are self-taught.

Based on my experience and interactions with PMs, I haven’t been able to see a notable difference in a certified PM being any better than an experienced non-certified PM. Having certain acronym (like PMP) against your name is a nice thing to have, but it does not really give an indication of how good a PM the individual would be. There is neither a distinction with a person who has passed with 61% to another with a passing score of 90%. In short, Real experience & its smart application is the key!

I was reading a blog from Brad Egeland, a seasoned non-certified PM professional who has received several awards for his PM work, wherein he applauds PM certification providers and also blogged on how PMI could triple their income using the scenario below:

• 91-100% correct answers = PMP Black Belt
• 81-90% correct answers = PMP Brown Belt
• 71-80% correct answers = PMP Green Belt
• 61-70% correct answers = PMP Yellow Belt

Imagine if an individual took the examination and got 90%, what would be the likelihood of him/her repeating the examination to get one more up to attain the Black Belt? Needless to say, employers would again rephrase their vacancy postings by advertising PMP Black Belt professionals are preferred to apply. This said I’d love to be the first to assess PMI’s profit levels & industry reaction if the above were to be implemented!

Irrespective if you are PMP or Prince 2 certified (I am not even getting into the debate of PMP v/s Prince 2) or even not certified, I’d just say that at the end of the day the organization wants the project delivered on time, within cost and expected quality with its agreed scope. Yes, we need to incorporate the different elements of Project Management to ensure we manage our stakeholders, expectations, risks, etc… but at the same time we should not give the impression that PM is about dozens of documentation based deliverables. We should evaluate each and every artifact on its merit for every single project.

There are many PM methodologies out there however based on my experience – these are best when tailored to fit for your needs. As a recent example with one of my past employers within the Media industry, we deployed a PM-lite methodology for the organization. The refined approach fit well with the organization and is being well received from their traditional PMP approach. I’m not saying that one is preferred over the other, but in reality the organization wants quick results and we shouldn’t let non value added activities and/or deliverables eat up project delivery time. With all due respect, whenever I’ve tried to inculcate or influence the above notion, many of the narrow minded and boxed PM professionals (certified or not) would create an issue and try to force those non value added documentation. Remember it’s not about “us” and “them”; it’s about “we”.

Summary

I hope I haven’t offended anyone. Once again, I’m not against PM certifications and hopefully one fine day it would make it up my priority list. I would classify a PM certification as a “nice to have” and definitely not a “must have” and definitely not as a criterion for organizations to screen candidates.

[pullquote]“Skills are more important than a piece of paper”.[/pullquote] Hopefully, organizations start deploying smarter screening mechanisms to shortlist potential candidates as opposed to blindly discarding individuals based on paper.

Figure: Cause and Effect Diagram

How to start?

Step 1: Identify the problem
Document the problem you face in detail (eg – who is involved, what the problem is, and when and where it occurs). Remember: be specific. From the “Fish bone” analogy perspective, outcome of step # 1 can be thought of as the head and spine of a fish. From the “Cause-and-Effect” analogy perspective, this is considered as the effect

Step 2: Identify categories
Identify all the factors that have a potential or may contribute to the problem. Personally, I note down all factors irrespective whether they contribute or not as it helps me validate it again during my brainstorming sessions. In other words, feel free to have as many possible factors as possible and don’t restrict yourself. Then categorise these factors into logical segments / blocks. There are recommended categories for the Manufacturing & Service industry. It is not necessary to restrict yourself to those, so feel free to maximise / leverage categories that suit your business. Typical common categories that I’ve encountered across different industries are as follows:

• Machine (Technology / Systems)
• Process
• Products & Services
• Policies & Rules
• Place
• Material (raw material, consumables etc.)
• People (Can be further categorised into internal, competitors, suppliers & customers – as appropriate)
• Management
• Skills
• Money
• Surroundings (Environment)

The categories resulting out of step # 2 can be thought of as the bones of a fish / primary causes that could lead directly to the effect. I hope my explanation is alluding the reason why this piece of analysis technique is also called as “Fish Bone” / “Cause and Effect”

Step 3: Brainstorm possible causes
For each of the categories that have been selected in step # 2, brainstorm possible causes that may contribute to the problem for each of the categories, one by one. The causes resulting out of step # 3 can be thought of as the smaller bones of a fish / secondary causes that could lead directly to the primary cause.

Step 4: Perform detailed analysis – Ask Why?
For each of the smaller bones – i.e. causes of problems within each category, reason “Why” multiple times to each cause & answer sequence until you come up with possible root causes. Depending on the complexity and importance of the problem, you may want to investigate the most likely causes further by carrying out surveys, setting up investigations, carrying out process measurements, etc. These may assist you in validating your work thus far and perhaps also answer few of the “Whys”. I tend to agree when fellow professionals recommend asking the question “Why” at least five times even to the silliest of causes. Whilst it may sound silly, but the result could prove in a vital information for the exercise sought for.

If we ponder on the above statement, our job profiles would probably also include the above. For example (from a Project Manager’s desk):
Once a project goes live, we are encouraged to have a lessons learned session. This session would at the very least consist of what went well, what did not go well and what we should do to improve for future. Subsequently, we may deploy several techniques – such as benchmarking, surveys, competitor analysis, etc… (depending on what the context is). This exercise as you may have realised incorporates a review/recap of what was done during the lifecycle of the project and may also extend to new learning.

It is very important for us to constantly learn about our environment, market, cultures, competitors, laws, regulations, policies, technology, etc.. (depending on your business) to at least sustain oneself. There are various ways of doing this and one of way is to subscribe to an active group / local chapter / magazine / related in a relevant area (if possible). Example: there are heaps of technology related websites, magazines, journals for one to know what is the latest in the market. Similarly, there are trade magazines that can give a new definition of how people are doing things today to increase productivity, profitability and/or also potential leads to identify opportunities that come along.

OK, we probably know all that has been said above; but the reality is that in many cases, we still end up attending several meetings for the silliest of items with no outcome yet important. In my last post , Mr. Imran had raised couple of interesting comments that inspired me to write this post. He initially disagreed on a statement made by me with regards qualification of a step as value add or not. During an offline discussion, we understood each other well and we found that there was no disagreement in the first place as we had clarified what we meant by few used key terms. I shall explain it with an example:

What is 7 + 5? An individual who understands all of the symbols used, its purpose, and how to process that information – would answer it as 12. The definition of “7″, “+”, and “5″ is consistent with Math tutors that help us all to have one common answer -i.e. “12″.

What has the above example got to do with achieving excellence? It’s quite simple actually. In our work area, we should ensure that our definitions are well communicated and understood by all parties. For instance, the definition of “Customer” would differ depending on whom you ask. ie – definition of “Customer” for HR department would most likely be different to the definition of “Customer” for a Salesman. How many times have we spent numerous meetings to clarify our understanding of certain terms that were not consistent with the other party. What do we do then? One of the options is that we go “Back to Basics” and refer to a document that lists the definition and/or we amend/doctor a definition that is agreeable to the meeting attendees. In almost all, if not all facets of life (be it buildings, education, personal relationships, businesses, etc…) we require a sound foundation.

I’ve intentionally coined the term “Back to Basics” as it reminds me of revisiting the foundation blocks that is core to all of this. This is also consistent with a saying (Unknown) that inculcating & executing the importance of early childhood education and care builds a firm foundation for lifelong learning.

This is exactly what Imran & I did. We went into our definition of “Customer” and upon clarifying we came to the conclusion that there was no disagreement. Fortunately, this was quick – but I’ve noticed weeks of open ended items with no conclusion as there is no agreement on the basic definition of a term.

To keep this short, this post has hinted about various aspects that can be inherited within your business/organisation. Few of them include:
1. Establish common definition / understanding for frequently used terms within your company.
2. Empower your employees to keep abreast with the latest happenings around them. Ensure that they have the necessary means and resources for the same.
3. Promote the idea of continuous learning.

Point # 3 reminds me of post-it exercises that I have done several times before which have always resulted in instant improvement opportunities. I’ll try to write about this in a future post.

Whenever you spot “Back to School” advertising banners, I hope you remember this post as a reminder to revisit foundation blocks, encourage continual learning and looking at ways to better do things.

Companies should be fast, flexible and responsive to customer needs. We’ve always focussed on “people”, but the reality is that, people are not the problem.

Many BPM specialists would agree that one can easily take 70% time out of the processes. It may sound very extreme, but we could easily share our experiences where this has been achieved across various industries & products. By making people work harder or do things faster does not cut process times drastically. Hence, in this post – I’d like to give an intro into one of the key ingredients of a process: “Time”.

We (Bankers in particular) have all heard “Customer is King”. Well, defaulters excluded? That’s for another time!!!
Prior to moving further, I’d like to credit few of my past colleagues for their efforts of building processes around customer satisfaction – Patrick Byrne, Kylie Dennis, Shakun Mohnani, Sean Burns, Satheesh Kumar, Vaheed KO, Ahmed Saeed Nasser Al Khuroosi & V P Abdullah.

The BPM community categorises a value added step if it meets the following three conditions
1. Customer considers it important
2. Physically changes the subject flowing through the process
3. If the step is performed right the first time

In another post, I’ll talk about techniques in detail to assist you in identifying if the step is value added or not. Once you’ve deployed an apt technique, you’ll notice that hardly 25% of process steps will qualify as value added steps! If this number scares you, read further- these would constitute less than 5% of the time that it spends in the entire process!!!

I don’t have to tell you about the possibilities / opportunities of improving the process, leave alone – shrinking the process time by 70%!

All of us would agree that in order to stay competitive in the market, we have to serve the customer better. I hope this post has helped you think a little differently and brings about a positive change. Think different! Think smarter!

Whilst a lot could be written on this topic, I’ve summarised it so as to raise some thinking prowess. Feel free to post comments in case you need more detail on any abovementioned content.

Speaking about school, my high school motto is based on a saying by Francis Bacon, Sr. “Knowledge is Power”. I’m a firm believer of this and also believe that knowledge is meant to be shared. People who know me have often heard me say “Sharing is Caring”. This website is an attempt to share and I hope it will help us all.

Individuals who are studying or intend to study (irrespective of your age and subject), I cannot stress the importance of understanding the subject’s concept he/she undertakes. The learning curve might be steep, but it will definitely bear its fruits! Don’t try to cram things for the sake of scoring good marks or earning certification. Eventually, you would need to maximize your knowledge and see how best it would suit you / your organization. By better utilizing your knowledge / skill set, you should be able to create a positive impression that should help in your career advancement.

There is a school of thought which is of the view that “One should not let out key information on how you do your job lest the company terminates you”. There is another school of thought which is of the opinion that “One of the ways to get promoted is to make yourself redundant”. An ex-colleague, Felice Marcuccilli, is an ardent follower of this. While there are several other opinions which would differ from the type of organization, culture, management style, etc…, my experiences from sharing knowledge and not withholding information has only helped me for the better, thereby agreeing with Felice’s view.

Organisations are also focusing their attention towards Knowledge Management. You may want to debate that this term is just another fad and if you ask my opinion, I would rather not enter the debate for the following reason. As indicated in this post, I prefer understanding the basic concept, its principles and take those into my daily routine to see how best I can maximize / add value to an organization or me as an individual. Now, whether I call this Knowledge Management, or any other term, or it sits as another task on my job description – what’s important for me is to see how the organization benefits in the long run and achieves Business Continuity with the least impact and resources.