It has been close to 14 years since I started my MBA!

 Time flies!

Looking back, it has been amazing how time has flown since my MBA program.

What did I learn since then. 

One thing for sure is my career has been lots different from the image I had right after graduating from my MBA program.

But one important lesson I have learned from MBA has not been changed at all

Learning new things on a daily basis.

Given, I will start simplify one thing I learn on a daily basis, starting from today.

So today, what I have learned is the complication of making decision on long-term investment.  I have just finished reading a novel, called " Teinen Gozila", where retired guys, who bought houses close to 40 years ago, started feel it odd to live there after retirement because of the boredom and quietness of the living neighborhood, which used to be very attractive when they had lived together with their kids, far away from the center of Tokyo, 2 hours by train with a lot of natural beauty and quietness.

Everything must have been looking good at that time when they had bought houses, but now given the location, situation, lifestyle etc, things always become stale, and continue to be updated. Thus, do we really need to buy somethings as if you would use them for more than 10 years? How can we predict what it would be in 10 years all the time? 

The lesson from that reading is, expense L-T things as L-T thing will always become stale and useless in the long term.

Facilitating and questioning

Yesterday I had another long meeting (from 14 - 22).

Lots of presentation and discussion.

One thing I relearned from this was the importance of directing, facilitating and questioning.

Directing in this context is setting the initial tone.

In the initial presentation, the director clarified the objectives and purposes in a succinct manner.

What was good was he passionately showed how serious he was to have strong participation from

everyone and see the qualification of each. He is always regarded as a calm, gentle, and smart guy.

But this time he made himself very strict, helping set the tone for the meeting going forward.

It worked very well and I would like to apply it in the next occasion.

Facilitating is for time management, recording key concepts, direction management.

This time facilitation was done by a person who is in a different department.

This way objectivity is guaranteed and easy for the other to follow.

Lastly questioning. Running through lots of questions, I found out good questions are those with

more than three dimension or checking multiple points at one shot. Identifying structure behind

his or her saying, checking consistency or clarity, and making sure what we can get in the end.

Good o experience the importance of those above.

Productivity

Yesterday was a long day. QTR review meeting from 10 to 17, pricing meeting, inventory meeting, and incentive meeting till 21. Too much? No more? Excited? Output over time spent is my measurement for productivity. I believe thinking ways to improve productivity of meeting is very important because meetings take our time everyday and our productivity hinges on it. However the problem is it is not regarded as such that there seems not many people who think they are significant. This is the part that I would like to take leadership and make a change in people around me.

3 days off

3 days off helped me understand how stressed I would become without studying. Studying makes me tired, but not studying and wasting my time makes me stressed.

Belief

Holding strong belief which won't become stale gives people stability in my opinion.
Whenever I feel not exited about my life, I always get back to my belief that all I can do is to enjoy ever single second before me with best energy, best curiosity, best concentration, best knowledge and experience in a balanced manner to make it count. This belief always helps me go forward.

One moment changed my mind

Today very interesting thing happened to me.
Recently I had not been in good mood. Not bad, but not as usual.
I slept well, ate well, exercised well, but not in good mood.
I didn't know what was lacking, but tonight right before I went home,
one thing happened, which must sound to you nothing special, but was special for me.

My co-worker, a senior, did the job I was supposed to do, knowing
I was busy with other things. This enabled me notice what was lacking.
That was to feel Kindness. Going back to my recent,
I did things that I was not supposed to do in my role, but did them purely for the betterment of the business.
My desire to continue those tasks with the expectation that somebody would give me hand in the future must have been rotten because I felt nobody would help anyway. But I didn't want to stop because of my feeling, pushing me hard to eradicate that hope out of my mind. That turned out to be the stress, which had got me stranded in "not a good mood".