When is your birthday, honey? I need to set a reminder.

A few days ago, I receive my 3rd email, from a close friend, to register my birthday in an online email alert website. How this website function is that, you send out to all your friends and ask them to register their birthday with the website. Once registered, you will receive an email when his/her birthday is approaching so that you prepare yourself by sending a greeting or buying a present.

Call me critical but I do not like this idea at all. It only goes to show that this friend just treat you as an acquaintance only and is insincere about this friendship. If I value ones friendship and I heard when his birthday is, I will make a mental note and will wish him or her a “Happy birthday” when the date is closed. Of course, sometimes I will forget but then I would wish him/her a belated Birthday if the birthday has not pass for a long time.

I did not respond to the previous two emails sent to me to register my birthday was because they were sent by two different acquaintances, and moreover I have told them when my birthday is. I responded to the 3rd email because like I said before, it was sent by my close friend, whose friendship I cherish a lot.

But for those of you who are in the ‘people’ business, for example sales and customer service personnel, please do not ask your customer to go to the website to register their birthday so that you can be reminded of them. It can leave an impression on other people, that you do not value these relationships and this can severely dampen your sales results. People like salesman who treat them with great importance, not contempt (I could not be bothered to make a mental note of his birthday.). If you are able to wish someone a “Happy Birthday” without him/her reminding you, it leaves an impression on the person that you value the relationship with him/her.

Imagine what would happen to a man when he asks her wife to register her birthday so that he can be reminded when her birthday is approaching. I can predict the result. The man would probably be sleeping in the living room for at least 1 week, assuming he got an understanding wife. (Hmmm… is there a paradox here? Haha)

What about your parents’ birthday? You cannot remember your parents’ birthday and you need a reminder for it? What would other people think of you?! Not filial, perhaps?

I feel it is okay to ask your friends when his/her birthday is and jot it down somewhere and later make a mental note, if you want. The birthday alert thing is the last thing I would use to remember my close friends’ birthday. Especially I am someone who values friendship a lot. To me, it gives me a sense of insincerity.

Of course, from another point of view is that, this friend values your friendship so much, he dares not forget your birthday each year, which is why he wants to be reminded. But I would ask this question to people who say that. “Which do you prefer? To put a reminder of your birthday for your friend so that he can wish you a “Happy birthday” or get you a present. Or be happy that your friend is able to wish you a “Happy Birthday” without him being reminded by you?

Friends who are reading this, if I am not able to wish you a happy birthday, it means two things; either you did not tell me when your birthday is or I do not value your friendship. Haha! But please give me a grace period, because I am growing older and my memory is starting to fail. Haha!

Cheers!

Life and work, Life or work?

Continuing from my previous blog, as the world become smaller and flatter, the skills that is needed most seems to be life skills now. What do I mean by life skills, besides financial planning skills that would ensure we have enough money throughout different stages in our life, what is needed most in working places would be communication and people skills.

Because the world is getting flatter and smaller, most of us would have a chance to mix and work with people from other countries. This makes communication skill a vital part in the working world. As the working culture from different countries could be very different, when a team of people brought together, the person who is leading this unique team is now faced with bridging the differences in the culture and working attitude. If the leader does not have good communication skills and sensitivities to all these cultures, the team would definitely be heading for disaster. Beside that, he should be able to detect the potential conflict that could occur in his team and promote communications between team members so that such cultures and sensitivities are brought to all members’ attention.

As we move higher up the corporate ladder, this chance of working with people from very diverse backgrounds would increase because companies would now do off-shoring, out-sourcing, and seeking talents from all places to boost their competitive position in this ruthless and dynamic business world. Flipped through the job ads, you would have notice that “being a team leader” is a condition that is found in most of them. So from here we can see that the life skills needed to mix and build relationship with people are more important than ever before.

Now come the critical part. Knowing that life skills like communication, financial planning, relationship building are more important now, is this provided in our tertiary education? Fortunately, there are signs to show that they have started to take notice, with financial planning module provided, sending students to exchange programs and making students to stay in hostel for at least a year, but I feel it is still inadequate and such movements should be hasten. Talk is easy, all these need a lot of money but I notice from a newspaper article that NUS is starting to raise more funds by selling bonds!

Government should get into the act and also provide more aids to students who want to go on exchange programs. Government should encourage banks to extend loans to students who wants to join these exchange programs but is not able to afford them due to family background. (These loans could act like tuition fees loan and allow students to pay them back when started working) Because the vast value-added of exchange programs, these could allow students from lower family income group to move up the social ladder, increasing social mobility.

Modules scoring criteria should include team projects so that undergrads learn more about what is needed to form a great team, brush up communication, leadership and follower skills and so on. What is important in these criteria is there should be peer assessment so that leaders and team members are assessed accurately.

Our future can be exciting or bleak. It depends on the decision you are going to make today.

Cheers!

Membership Card anyone?!

Recently I came across a recruitment exercise for a membership card that will offer holders certain discounts at certain stores. This set out a chain of thoughts in me again, since I am a thinker and a strategist.

I think there are quite a handful of such cards going around. I ask around my friends whether they hold such cards or not and most of their answers are negative, which is what I expected. So why do I say that?

Firstly, when I glanced through the discounts given by participating outlets, there does not seem to offer much. And there are a lot of conditions before one is give a discount. For example, one restaurant would offer discounts during off-peak periods. This is assuming that the demographics of the members would be those that have a lot of free time on hand. Do not think it would fit a lot of people unless the membership card is targeted at rich tai tais.

Since most of these discounts are not offered sincerely to benefit consumers, consumers would not pay attention to all these offers. Since they do not pay attention to them, they would not see the need to put the membership cards in their wallets, since their wallets are already burdened with a lot of credit cards that offer genuine discounts.

If consumers do not put these membership cards in the wallets, it is as good as giving the fatal blow to the membership scheme which is why most of these schemes are dying. Because if consumers do not see the need to bring out and use the cards, retail outlet would then not see the need to participate in the scheme at all since it does not provide them with any advertising or marketing, thus quitting the scheme. This becomes a vicious cycle leading to the death of the scheme.

What is most important for such a scheme to work is that the discounts offered must make consumers want to put the card in their wallets. If the benefits offered by the participating retail outlets are not enough to entice consumers to use the card often. It is bound to fail. Another thing is the company organizing such a scheme, must have an idea which part of the population they are targeting at.

For example, a membership discount for teenagers, could include discounts at clothing and accessories stores, music shops, café, movies rental, sports club and even a bookstore. Haha.

So you see, I believe such scheme can exist even if credit cards are also performing the same function of offering discounts. It really depends on how you position your card and also the discounts you are able to get.

Cheers!