Edward de Bono is a well renowned author in the field of creative thinking and is the best selling author of Lateral Thinking and Six Thinking Hats. I have attended a Six Thinking Hats course and found it to be very intriging and interesting. So when I saw this book on sale, I bought it without any hestitation.
In this book, Edward de Bono aims to create a culture in the world to have positive thinking and to do good deeds. H+ stands for Human, Happiness, Humour, Help, Hope and Health. In each section, these 6 elements are elaborated.
It is emphasized that most religions focus on the negative aspects, ie avoiding sins and what we should not do. In H+, the emphasis is entirely on the positive actions. It is a way of life and he termed it as "woligion" to cover "a way of life religion". He also coins the term "pons" which are positive actions.
He has set up a "HQ" on this project and hopes to have similar like-minded people forming groups to help others and have a positive impact to the world. He has also set up helpdesks, recommending fines for those who do not do enough pons, signals which indicate that you are within this H+ community.
This book is one of the easiest book to read. Only 93 pages and each page has only about 100words. Edward de Bono goes straight to the point and his intention is really good for the world. The only minor concern I see is that some people will feel that he is indeed trying to form some sort of a cult globally through this book. Overall, I feel good reading this book.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Improving Your Management Skills by Rodney Overton
The author has many case studies and famous leaders' management styles in this book which makes this book as good as reading the biographies of those leaders. With only 153 pages and easily read fonts, this book is a easy read.
The 3 main skills are Management Skills, Human Resource Skills and Marketing Skills. In management skills, it started off with a good definition of what is a good manager and the leadership qualities of a leader. Today, many businesses have to make radical changes to the way they manage to survive. The steps to implement changes, the risk to manage, the strategies involving human resource, service and lastly on benchmarking are elaborated under management skills chapter.
Human Resource Skills talks about the manager's personality. What personalities are good or bad? Then, it went on about retaining talents, communication and learning, coaching, managing stress and how fitness of staff can increase productivity and morale in the company.
Marketing Skills are the skills needed to market a product or service. The chapter shows the factors influencing the consumer and the marketing basics for a business.
The last chapter is all about case studies, which includes Jack Welch of GE.
This is a good read which is suitable for beginner in the junior management level.
The 3 main skills are Management Skills, Human Resource Skills and Marketing Skills. In management skills, it started off with a good definition of what is a good manager and the leadership qualities of a leader. Today, many businesses have to make radical changes to the way they manage to survive. The steps to implement changes, the risk to manage, the strategies involving human resource, service and lastly on benchmarking are elaborated under management skills chapter.
Human Resource Skills talks about the manager's personality. What personalities are good or bad? Then, it went on about retaining talents, communication and learning, coaching, managing stress and how fitness of staff can increase productivity and morale in the company.
Marketing Skills are the skills needed to market a product or service. The chapter shows the factors influencing the consumer and the marketing basics for a business.
The last chapter is all about case studies, which includes Jack Welch of GE.
This is a good read which is suitable for beginner in the junior management level.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Managing Quality - Ned Hamson and Amy Zuckerman
As I am tasked to ensure the quality standards in my department are in compliance with the ISO, I have always wanted to read some literature so that I can find ideas on how to improve the department's quality. But never did as the "quality" books are so thick and difficult to read. When i saw this book, I immediate bought it. Primarily, it's a small book and is only 130 pages. Makes it handy to carry and easy to read between travels.
This book is good for one who just started out in the quality field. It explains what is quality, how quality was "borned", how and why the ISO standards started and evloved and the 3 main people who started the quality movement; Philip B. Crosby, W. Edward Deming and Joseph M. Juran. It gives a brief history on ISO 9000 and the adaptation of it by the Americans so as to match the sales of the Japanese automotive industry.
The authors gives some pointers as to evaluate if a company is serious in going for the ISO certification. It ended with some basic steps on starting a ISO quality system. There is a chapter with 4 case studies, which I found more interesting. The 3rd case study which described Solectron was inspiring. As Lucent Technologies, Solectron's customer was not satisfied with the no. of defects, the team used the Kaizen process for a week and the results are 1) 46% productivity improvement, 2) 33% reduction in amount of floor space needed for the activity and 50% reduction in the incident of rejects. All these were acheived in a week!
Overall, this book is good for a beginner in qualtiy.
This book is good for one who just started out in the quality field. It explains what is quality, how quality was "borned", how and why the ISO standards started and evloved and the 3 main people who started the quality movement; Philip B. Crosby, W. Edward Deming and Joseph M. Juran. It gives a brief history on ISO 9000 and the adaptation of it by the Americans so as to match the sales of the Japanese automotive industry.
The authors gives some pointers as to evaluate if a company is serious in going for the ISO certification. It ended with some basic steps on starting a ISO quality system. There is a chapter with 4 case studies, which I found more interesting. The 3rd case study which described Solectron was inspiring. As Lucent Technologies, Solectron's customer was not satisfied with the no. of defects, the team used the Kaizen process for a week and the results are 1) 46% productivity improvement, 2) 33% reduction in amount of floor space needed for the activity and 50% reduction in the incident of rejects. All these were acheived in a week!
Overall, this book is good for a beginner in qualtiy.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Secrets of the Millionaire Mind - T. Harv Eker
This has to be one of the best self help / investment books I have read. At just about 200 pages, it is structured in a systematic manner in explaining how the rich and poor differ, either in their thinking or their actions.
Everyone has a money blueprint and it determines if you are going to be rich. Your money blueprint was influenced by 1) Verbal Programming, 2) Modeling and 3) Specific Incidents.
The author then went on to spell out the 17 wealth files which are the differences between the rich and the poor.
There are many lessons I have learnt from this book and the 2 most important ones are:
a) Action speaks louder than words and one must act to succeed.
b) Think positively and big
There are many wealth principles in this book that are strike-on on why the poor remains poor and of course why the rich get richer.
Friday, September 14, 2007
Seven Years to Seven Figures - Michael Matterson
It has been more than 2 months since i wrote in this reading blog. It's frustrating as I have been jumping from book to book without finishing any of them. The reason is that I keep finding good books and once I started, I tend to lose interest in the current book that I was reading.
Coming back to this book, this is the second book i have read by Michael Matterson. The first was Automatic Wealth. I was surprised to find out I did not write a review/summary of that book. This book sells the idea of being able to generate 7 figure income within 7 years.
The book started with goal setting principles, investments methods and then went on to describe how8 persons did acheive 7 figures within 7 years. I was not really interested in the life stories of the 8 people. I feel that it emphasize too much on copywriting. Though copywriting may be a very lucrative job in the USA, I don't think it is so here in Singapore. And as you can see from my current blog/s, my writing skills are not exactly suitable for this type of work :).
OK. I will be just going through some of the methods/theories which I think is beneficial to me, at least. First was Dale Carnegie's 14 week course. The steps are to 1) Identify 10 top goals, 2) Narrow them to 5, 3) Narrow to 3, 4) Pick one as primary goal. Most people don't succeed because they don't have clearly defined goals. Some people fail to make progress because they have too many goals. The 4 categories when setting goals are Health, Wealth, Social Life and Personal Life. Do the most important task first and each lesser thing in order of its priority.
The recommended savings is 20% if you are earning $30-50k and 25% if earning $50-150k. If your Return of Investment(ROI) is 10-20%, your portfolio should be mostly in stocks. For a 20-35% ROI, you will have to include real estates and if your ROI is 35-50%, small business has to be included as well.
A common way to valuate a business is to take an average of 3 years' earnings and multiply by 4.
There are quite a few methodologies and ways of making big bucks. The businesses to get in are copywriting, real estate and publishing. Knowing your networth is important.
Overall, I feel that though this book is relatively an easy read, it drags too much on other people's examples. The first couple of chapters are fine but it became a bit dull when it went into people's stories, especially when I cannot relate much to copywriting.
Coming back to this book, this is the second book i have read by Michael Matterson. The first was Automatic Wealth. I was surprised to find out I did not write a review/summary of that book. This book sells the idea of being able to generate 7 figure income within 7 years.
The book started with goal setting principles, investments methods and then went on to describe how8 persons did acheive 7 figures within 7 years. I was not really interested in the life stories of the 8 people. I feel that it emphasize too much on copywriting. Though copywriting may be a very lucrative job in the USA, I don't think it is so here in Singapore. And as you can see from my current blog/s, my writing skills are not exactly suitable for this type of work :).
OK. I will be just going through some of the methods/theories which I think is beneficial to me, at least. First was Dale Carnegie's 14 week course. The steps are to 1) Identify 10 top goals, 2) Narrow them to 5, 3) Narrow to 3, 4) Pick one as primary goal. Most people don't succeed because they don't have clearly defined goals. Some people fail to make progress because they have too many goals. The 4 categories when setting goals are Health, Wealth, Social Life and Personal Life. Do the most important task first and each lesser thing in order of its priority.
The recommended savings is 20% if you are earning $30-50k and 25% if earning $50-150k. If your Return of Investment(ROI) is 10-20%, your portfolio should be mostly in stocks. For a 20-35% ROI, you will have to include real estates and if your ROI is 35-50%, small business has to be included as well.
A common way to valuate a business is to take an average of 3 years' earnings and multiply by 4.
There are quite a few methodologies and ways of making big bucks. The businesses to get in are copywriting, real estate and publishing. Knowing your networth is important.
Overall, I feel that though this book is relatively an easy read, it drags too much on other people's examples. The first couple of chapters are fine but it became a bit dull when it went into people's stories, especially when I cannot relate much to copywriting.
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
The Bull Hunter By Dan Denning
I knew the author as I subscribe to the newsletter "Early To Rise" in the Agora group. I believe he is one of the editors, for one of the investment newsletter, if I'm not wrong. They were recommending this book 1-2 years ago. Anyway, I was surprised to see it in the library, so I borrowed it.
The book is about how one can benefit from sniffing out good stocks. It should not be limited to a particular country, a sector or industry. A bull hunter is one who knows where the world's market is shifting. This book only looks at the macro view of the world's market and how the big countries, such as America, China, India, United Kingdom has or will rise and/or fall.
The author has a strong stand in buying ETFs. He believes ETFs will outperform any portfolio which contains purely individual company stocks. He gives comparisons between ETFs and individual stocks. I do agree with him on most cases that ETFs are a very good investment for the long haul. If you look at any matured markets in the world for the last 20 years, you will see that the respective stock market index rise at least 5-10% pa. I believe the rate for the STI is about 8% and its about 11% for the US market.
He also described what he saw and heard when he went to China and India. Both these 2 countries will flourish in coming years. As this book was written in end 2004 and now is mid 2007, what he has predicted is true.
A few stock/companies were mentioned and recommended. As the recommendation was at least 2 years ago, you can do your research if you are interested and believe in Dan.
Overall, I would say that this book does give a big helicopter view of the money market of the world, in terms of how UK became strong and waned, how USA overtook UK, how USA is having major money problems, and how the emerging countries are borned.
Only 200+ pages.
The book is about how one can benefit from sniffing out good stocks. It should not be limited to a particular country, a sector or industry. A bull hunter is one who knows where the world's market is shifting. This book only looks at the macro view of the world's market and how the big countries, such as America, China, India, United Kingdom has or will rise and/or fall.
The author has a strong stand in buying ETFs. He believes ETFs will outperform any portfolio which contains purely individual company stocks. He gives comparisons between ETFs and individual stocks. I do agree with him on most cases that ETFs are a very good investment for the long haul. If you look at any matured markets in the world for the last 20 years, you will see that the respective stock market index rise at least 5-10% pa. I believe the rate for the STI is about 8% and its about 11% for the US market.
He also described what he saw and heard when he went to China and India. Both these 2 countries will flourish in coming years. As this book was written in end 2004 and now is mid 2007, what he has predicted is true.
A few stock/companies were mentioned and recommended. As the recommendation was at least 2 years ago, you can do your research if you are interested and believe in Dan.
Overall, I would say that this book does give a big helicopter view of the money market of the world, in terms of how UK became strong and waned, how USA overtook UK, how USA is having major money problems, and how the emerging countries are borned.
Only 200+ pages.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
The Automatic Millionaire
The author is David Bach. He gives straight forward strategies without going round the bush in how to become a millionaire. A easy read with about 230 pages and 8 chapters.
The book starts with a meeting many year back between David and a middle aged couple who wanted to retire. David, a financial advisor then, was suspicious as the couple were in their early 50s and has an annual income of $53,946. But when the couple revealed their assets, David was awed as the couple had a net worth approaching $2 million. The couple then shared their story on how they were able to accumulate the money. The most important secret is that you do not need will power or discipline.
Chapter 2 is about the Latte Factor. It is about how you can cut down your daily unnecessary expenses and save the small amount. To see the effect, the author used a cup of latte and a muffin which cost $5. If you save $5 in a 10%pa return account, you will have $1,885 after the 1st year, $30,727 after the 10th year, $339,073 after the 30th year and $948,611 after the 40th year. This shows how a miserable $5 can become nearly $1 million.
Paying yourself first is perhaps the most important chapter in this book. This method is pretty simple. Have you done any budgeting before on how much you "would try to save"? Most of us would look at all our loans, bills, meals and transport expenses and after all that, we would then determine how much is left. There usually isn't much left and to make things worse, we have some impulse buys and this small amount usually became zero in no time. In paying yourself first, you should put aside your savings(transfer the amount out of your "salary" account first. It is recommended to save at least 10% of your salary. And to take the discipline out of your own hands, arrange with the bank to transfer this amount automatically every month. Another way of looking at the $5 is the number of hours you work for yourself. If you earn $3000 per month, it means you earn $100/day and $10/hr(assuming you work 30 days and 10 hours for simple calculation sake). By saving this $5, it means you are working for yourself for 1/2hours each day.
This book is catered for the US citizens where there are the 401k and 403b retirement plans. I guess that it is still applicable as in Singapore, we have the CPF. One for the ways is to transfer the maximum amount possible into the CPF account every year to enjoy the interest return. And all these transfers can be made automatic. As the CPF account only give 2.5% interest, you should invest this money in the unit trusts.
Next is to build your emergency fund. This ranges from 1 month to 36 months, depending on your needs. The method of paying your housing debt is a very simple one. Right now, most of us are paying your installments on a monthly basis. The method is just to pay half your installments on a fortnightly basis. Though this might seemed the same, let me explain by an example. If you are paying $1000/mth for 30 years, you are paying $12000 in a year and in total $360,000. If you pay $500(half of $1000) every 2 weeks, you will be paying $13000 in a year. Why? Because there are 52 weeks in a year and since you are paying every 2 weeks, you will be paying 26 times and 26 times $500 is $13000. So by paying every 2 weeks, you will be paying $1000 more. And do you know that by doing so, you would have paid your loan in 23 years instead of the original 30 years?
The author then talks about how to reduce your debts, mostly on credit card debts. Lastly, it about giving to charities.
Overall, this book has very good methods on how to grow your wealth and it does not really need you to research on investments(business, trading etc), except what unit trust to put your CPF money in. I strongly recommends this book. One of the very few books which I find useful in accumulating wealth.
The book starts with a meeting many year back between David and a middle aged couple who wanted to retire. David, a financial advisor then, was suspicious as the couple were in their early 50s and has an annual income of $53,946. But when the couple revealed their assets, David was awed as the couple had a net worth approaching $2 million. The couple then shared their story on how they were able to accumulate the money. The most important secret is that you do not need will power or discipline.
Chapter 2 is about the Latte Factor. It is about how you can cut down your daily unnecessary expenses and save the small amount. To see the effect, the author used a cup of latte and a muffin which cost $5. If you save $5 in a 10%pa return account, you will have $1,885 after the 1st year, $30,727 after the 10th year, $339,073 after the 30th year and $948,611 after the 40th year. This shows how a miserable $5 can become nearly $1 million.
Paying yourself first is perhaps the most important chapter in this book. This method is pretty simple. Have you done any budgeting before on how much you "would try to save"? Most of us would look at all our loans, bills, meals and transport expenses and after all that, we would then determine how much is left. There usually isn't much left and to make things worse, we have some impulse buys and this small amount usually became zero in no time. In paying yourself first, you should put aside your savings(transfer the amount out of your "salary" account first. It is recommended to save at least 10% of your salary. And to take the discipline out of your own hands, arrange with the bank to transfer this amount automatically every month. Another way of looking at the $5 is the number of hours you work for yourself. If you earn $3000 per month, it means you earn $100/day and $10/hr(assuming you work 30 days and 10 hours for simple calculation sake). By saving this $5, it means you are working for yourself for 1/2hours each day.
This book is catered for the US citizens where there are the 401k and 403b retirement plans. I guess that it is still applicable as in Singapore, we have the CPF. One for the ways is to transfer the maximum amount possible into the CPF account every year to enjoy the interest return. And all these transfers can be made automatic. As the CPF account only give 2.5% interest, you should invest this money in the unit trusts.
Next is to build your emergency fund. This ranges from 1 month to 36 months, depending on your needs. The method of paying your housing debt is a very simple one. Right now, most of us are paying your installments on a monthly basis. The method is just to pay half your installments on a fortnightly basis. Though this might seemed the same, let me explain by an example. If you are paying $1000/mth for 30 years, you are paying $12000 in a year and in total $360,000. If you pay $500(half of $1000) every 2 weeks, you will be paying $13000 in a year. Why? Because there are 52 weeks in a year and since you are paying every 2 weeks, you will be paying 26 times and 26 times $500 is $13000. So by paying every 2 weeks, you will be paying $1000 more. And do you know that by doing so, you would have paid your loan in 23 years instead of the original 30 years?
The author then talks about how to reduce your debts, mostly on credit card debts. Lastly, it about giving to charities.
Overall, this book has very good methods on how to grow your wealth and it does not really need you to research on investments(business, trading etc), except what unit trust to put your CPF money in. I strongly recommends this book. One of the very few books which I find useful in accumulating wealth.
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