Some essays, some thoughts

PIP-SLP

At Yung Kong, we recognize that human resource is among the most important assets of any business concern. The major resources available to a company can be divided into three categories, namely finance, machine and people. Working capital and finance are raise-able from the shareholders and loan-able form the financiers. Machines and immovable properties can be acquired, damaged machinery can be repaired. Human resources can be hired but unlike money and machines, they have a soul, feeling and a mind of their own. They are thus the most difficult asset to be managed. This essay unveils one of our ways of improving the standards of our people.

After managing and leading Yung Kong Holdings (YKH) for seven years since 2nd October 1989, I realize that my assistants (there are only four of them at the management level) the people who help me to achieve the objectives of the company entrusted to me as the Managing Director are very much lacking in general knowledge, in knowledge other than their work, in fact, they hardly read a book on their own accord! Following some deep thoughts and planning, I came out with the idea of a Personal Improvement Program (PIP) for all my people, this will run concurrently with our learning method which was launched a year before, the Spaced Learning Program (SLP). Hence we call our training exercise PIP-SLP.

The idea is to encourage and instill a love for reading and learning. The theory is simple, the more you read and learn, the wider will be your knowledge, the wider is your knowledge, the wiser will be your decision. Everyone here is making decision everyday, decisions concerning their work, business and others. Every decision we make, big or small, determines the outcome of our results, our bottom line, they all add up. Thus to achieve excellence, I require all my people to be able to make decision wisely.

We must widen our field of knowledge. We must convert our knowledge into wisdom . We must share what we learn. We must learn how to read, listen and communicate. These are the basic driving forces of our PIP. Starting from 1st October 1996, each one of us are required to read. Read about great people, read something interesting, something that will increase ones knowledge and wisdom. Every Monday at 5:15pm, one of us will give the rest a talk on the book , an article or a subject he or she had read and learnt. The speaker explains the subject and shares what he or she has learnt, giving plenty of real life examples, the rest listen intensely and participate by asking relevant questions so that knowledge is applied to our daily lives, in this way both the speaker and the listeners benefited. Apart from learning more, this process also improves our reading, talking, listening and communication skills at the same time. It improved our confidence too. To ensure that what we learn gets into our head permanently, each talk is accompanied by hand outs for future reference, it is also available on computer as an animated slide show, and for those who wish to read in depth on the subject, the book is available on loan from our library.

The talk is by rotation, each one of us will be required to learn something new so that one can give a talk on it. In this way, if we are able to put on a talk once a week, then we will be participating in 52 learning sessions over one year, not much but surely will greatly improve our general knowledge and widen our viewpoint. Of course everyone here understands that YKH is not a school, we have our jobs to do. PIP-SLP requires our extra efforts: read a story before we go to bed, look up in a dictionary to find the meaning of a word, spend one weekend afternoon preparing for the talk instead of going shopping, etc. By putting in extra efforts, we will be better prepared to make wise decisions, based on our wider knowledge and wiser wisdom. Our reward is knowledgeable team members, a well prepared and a superior team.

We are looking forward to the day when we can proclaim to ourselves we are ever ready to make decisions the best we could, because we have prepared ourselves by PIP-SLP.

- Ir Michael Hii, 1996

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