2013 has been an unforgettable year, especially me going through a personal development journey as well as witnessing a number of amazing changes. It’s indeed been a stretchy year after going through a few crazy shit stuff.
With that, here are 11 learning which I picked up this year.
- Stay true to your values
What separate oneself/a business from the others is sometimes the values that you truly believe in and hold onto. And how strong/willing for a business to stick to the beliefs and values of our business is the ultimate drive for the people in the organisation to see that bigger picture to make things happen. Believe me when I say customers can sense them. It’s definitely going to be tougher for us next year when everything goes up in prices. Staying true to our values of maintaining the prices for our customers will be the ultimate core to drive us to innovate on how we can manage our cost to make that happen. - Know your competitive advantage
Knowing what you are good at would also help you to accelerate your business and compete with competitors. Every business and every people has their own strengths and that’s what we should focus on instead of our weaknesses. Leverage on the strength of others and grow together. That’s how many long term businesses and successful individual has managed to grow successfully. - Respect Customers
Customers are king, respect them, treat them right. Nuff said. - Watch your Money
Probably the biggest learning of this year, especially with the upcoming price hike in 2014. Like they say, keeping money is hard, spending is easy. It takes a lot of foresight to manage what’s coming through as it’s really the bloodline of any business. - Have your People Surprise You
Trusting and allowing your colleagues to have their space to execute their task will really surprise you. Whether it’s a successful execution or not, that’s not the point. It’s to see them grow at the end of the day and put their development as the main focus ahead of yourself. It’s really amazing again to see all the Geeks at the Lab from operational to management to continue to blossom month after month, some slower than the others, but they will get there eventually. - Watch the Intention
Probably one of the strongest word learn this year – Intention. Watch your intention and really take notice of it. It might look as “this” at the surface level, but it could be that in a deeper level. Deep stuff, I know! If you are trying to lose weight, this is a good practice for you then. Be aware of every action you make, and you will go far. - Have friends from different age group
I think having this is a great joy to me to mingle around with people from all ages and to learn from each other. My oldest friend is probably uncle Jimmy, founder of Math Magic, great guy. And being around this young geeks at the Lab does make me feel young again. This is a good way to understand customer behavior of different era as well. 🙂 - Always learning
Be open, continue to learn. Fail fast to learn fast. Read books to learn more, not your ordinary Kotler book, but like Sheryl Sandberg, Howard Schultz and many more. - Stretch to see how far you can go
Yup, go as far as you can, cause you wouldn’t know where’s the limit. You will be surprise what you are capable of. I always say if you can clean the grease trap in restaurant, you can practically do anything in the kitchen. - You will never be ready
Always wondered when will you be ready for this or for that? Well you will never be ready, trust me. This is linked to No.9, if you are not stretching yourself, then you will never know when you will be ready. First of all is to take the first step, and to be honest, taking that first step is actually easier than most of you think. Hey, as they say YOLO right? So what the F***, go for it anyway. - Miracles do happen
Lastly, miracles do happen, ONLY if you try. Lots of crazy stunt we had to pull when we open our 2nd outlet at OUG. Only if we move, then we will see things happening.