MOTIVATION FROM WITHIN
by Denis Waitley

Motivation is a contraction of motive and action. An inner force that compels behavior, it comes from within, not from any external circumstance. You know where you’re going because you have a compelling image inside, not a travel poster on the wall, a financial statement with a big bonus, or a slogan in the hall. The performance of many externally motivated individuals begins declining as soon as they win contests of one sort or another. I’ve personally witnessed this among Super Bowl champions and World Cup teams that lost the incentive to maintain their excellence after winning the cup, the honors, and the cash.

If you’re really committed to peak performance and leadership, you must motivate yourself from within. Studies of achievers show that inner drives for excellence and independence are far more powerful than desire for wealth, status or recognition.

The Inner Drive
Behavioral scientists have found that independent desire for excellence is the most telling predictor of significant achievement.

In other words, the success of our efforts depends less on the efforts themselves than on our motives. The most successful companies, like the most successful men and women in almost all fields, have achieved their greatness out of a desire to express what they felt had to be expressed. Often it was a desire to use their skills to their utmost in order to solve a problem. This is not to say that many of them did not also earn a great deal of money and prestige. William Shakespeare, Thomas Edison, Estee Lauder, Walt Disney, Oprah Winfrey, Sam Walton and Bill Gates all became wealthy. But far more than thoughts of profit, the key to their success was inspiration and inner drive by creating or providing excellence in a product or a service. All were motivated by the desire to produce the very best that was in them.

Go for the Inner Applause
The late Ray Kroc, a former neighbor of mine who founded McDonald’s Corporation when he was in his fifties, stressed the importance of people working for the inner satisfaction, not just for the money. Ray said most people find it difficult to associate applause with their work when they can’t hear literal applause – but the important applause should come from within. It is the faster heartbeat, the pride and satisfaction of accomplishment.

Kroc told the University of Southern California’s Business School that the first thing a business executive needs is love of an idea.

If you don’t love your concept, drop it. If you prostitute yourself at an early age by taking a job where the money is, you’ll be working for money all your life. Loving their work is particularly important for younger people. If they lose that love early, they may never grow to anywhere near their potential for self-actualization.

Hire People Who Have Empowered Themselves
An inner drive for excellence motivates you always to be the best you possible can in whatever you do. Leaders and managers should take special note hear. They must be careful in their use of external motivators – money, perks, prestigious offices and titles – in trying to inspire their team members and employees. Enduring motivation must always come ultimately from within the individual.

That’s why empowerment and vision are so crucial to team performance and quality. Their power and their vision, not those of the leader must compel team members. Interviewing potential members, you should look for internally motivated individuals who hold their work important for its own sake, who love their field or their industry, who seek the exhilaration of testing their limits and contributing to the world. Be wary if they show more interest in your compensation package than in their contribution package.

Commit to achieving peak performance and leadership, by motivating yourself from within!

Four Essentials for Happiness
By: Brian Tracy

You may have a thousand different goals over the course of your lifetime, but they all will fall into one of four basic categories. Everything you do is an attempt to enhance the quality of your life in one or more of these areas.

The Key to Happiness
The first category is your desire for happy relationships. You want to love and be loved by others. You want to have a happy, harmonious home life. You want to get along well with the people around you, and you want to earn the respect of the people you respect. Your involvement in social and community affairs results from your desire to have happy interactions with others and to make a contribution to the society you live in.

Enjoy Your Work
The second category is your desire for interesting and challenging work. You want to make a good living, of course, but more than that, you want to really enjoy your occupation or profession. The very best times of your life are when you are completely absorbed in your work.

Become Financially Independent
The third category is your desire for financial independence. You want to be free from worries about money. You want to have enough money in the bank so that you can make decisions without counting your pennies. You want to achieve a certain financial state so that you can retire in comfort and never have to be concerned about whether or not you have enough money to support your lifestyle. Financial independence frees you from poverty and a need to depend upon others for your livelihood. If you save and invest regularly throughout your working life, you will eventually reach the point where you will never have to work again.

Enjoy Excellent Health
The fourth and final category is your desire for good health, to be free of pain and illness and to have a continuous flow of energy and feelings of well-being. In fact, your health is so central to your life that you take it for granted until something happens to disrupt it.

Peace of Mind is the Key
Peace of mind is essential for every one of these. The greater your peace of mind, the more relaxed and positive you are, the less stress you suffer, the better is your overall health.

The more peace of mind you have, the better are your relationships, the more optimistic, friendly and confident you are with everyone in your life. When you feel good about yourself on the inside, you do your work better and take more pride in it. You are a better boss and coworker. And the greater your overall peace of mind, the more likely you are to earn a good living, save regularly for the future and ultimately achieve financial independence.

Control Your Attention
Life is very much a study of attention. Whatever you dwell upon and think about grows and expands in your life. The more you pay attention to your relationships, the quality and quantity of your work, your finances and your health, the better they will become and the happier you will be.

Action Exercises
Here are three things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.

First, take time on a regular basis to think about what would make you really happy in each of the four areas.

Second, set specific, measurable goals for improvement in your relationships, your health, your work and your finances and write them down.

Third, resolve to do something every day to increase the quality of some area of your life - and then keep your resolution.

Menerapkan Performance Management Dashboard

sumber - http://strategimanajemen.net

Performance management dashboard pada dasarnya merupakan upaya untuk meng-otomatisasikan proses pengelolaan kinerja perusahaan melalui instalasi software yang didesain khusus untuk itu. Dinamakan dahsboard lantaran bentuk perangkat lunak yang diinstal biasanya mirip dengan "dashboard" mobil. Ibaratnya dengan hanya melihat dashboard itu kita langsung tahu kondisi mobil kita : apakah olinya sudah perlu diganti, berapa kecepatan laju mesin kita saat ini, berapa liter pemakaian bensin per 100 km, dst.

Performance dashboard persis ingin melakukan hal seperti itu : melalui aplikasi ini kita bisa melihat "denyut nadi" kinerja perusahaan kita dengan otomatis dan real time : berapa tingkat penjualan produk A di setiap region pada minggu ini, berapa jumlah transaksi per customers, berapa tingkat defect rate untuk produk B, berapa jumlah jam pelatihan per karyawan telah dilakukan, dst.

Proses otomatisasi tampaknya merupakan langkah lanjutan yang mesti diambil manakala perusahaan/kantor kita telah berhasil membangun pola pengelolaan kinerja berdasar key performance indicators (KPI-based performance management) atau juga melalui melalui pendekatan balanced scorecard (uraian mengenai balanced scorecard sudah pernah kita bahas DISINI ).

Penerapan performance management dashboard ini memiliki arti strategis setidaknya karena tiga alasan penting. Yang pertama, dari pengalama saya dalam proses pengembangan corporate performance management system, ternyata salah satu tahapan paling yang paling krusial adalah dalam aspek dokumentasi data pencapaian KPI (atau KPI data reporting). Sering kita sudah mendesain KPI sedemikian rupa dengan baik, namun kemudian proses pemantauan atau tracking-nya menjadi kedodoran lantara tidak didukung dengan sistem pelaporan yang baik dan sistematis. Dengan adanya sistem performance dashboard ini, kita akan sangat terbantu dalam proses monitoring data-data pencapaian kinerja ini.

Alasan yang kedua adalah ini : it’s a paperless era! Proses pengelolaan manajemen kinerja perusahaan tak jarang menenggelamkan kita dalam proses administratif yang penuh keribetan dengan tumpukan kertas yang bejibun. Bayangkan berapa lembar kertas yang kudu di-print ketika kita harus memantantau dan mengelola kinerja bulanan setiap divisi atau departemen (atau bahkan setiap karyawan) yang ada di perusahaan. Otomatisasi melalui performance dashboard akan men-streamline-kan semua keribetan itu. Proses kerja menjadi jauh lebih efisien, dan kita bisa bilang sayonara dengan tumpukan kertas yang acap menyergap setiap sudut meja kita.

Alasan yang terakhir dan paling penting adalah : performance management dashboard ini akan sangat membantu CEO dan top manajemen dalam proses pengambilan keputusan secara cepat dan akurat. Dengan hanya screen yang ada di depan mejanya dan beberapa klik, sang CEO dengan mudah dan real time bisa memantau semua aspek kinerja setiap divisi yang ada di perusahaan – mulai dari aspek finansial, aspek pelanggan, aspek proses bisnis dan aspek pengembangan SDM-nya. Didukung dengan kemampuan analitis yang ada dalam software tersebut, sang CEO juga dengan segera bisa melakukan analisa mengenai korelasi beragam variabel kinerja dan juga perkembangan tren-nya, apakah naik atau menurun.

Di tanah air sendiri, terdapat sejumlah perusahaan IT yang menawarkan solusi performance dashboard ini, antara lain adalah Microsoft Dynamics dan juga SAP (salah satu perusahaan penyedia software manajemen dan enterprise planning terbesar di dunia).  Harga yang ditawarkan oleh sejumlah vendor ini cukup variatif, mulai dari Rp 100 jutaan untuk 5 users license hingga Rp 1 milyar untuk 200 users. Masing-masing vendor menawarkan fitur yang beragam dan dapat disesuaikan dengan sistem manajemen kinerja yang telah diterapkan oleh perusahaan/kantor kita .

Mengelola kinerja perusahaan/organisasi dan juga kinerja SDM secara sistematis, terukur dan cerdas rasanya merupakan salah satu elemen penting untuk merajut keunggulan bisnis nan kompetitif. Dan penerapan performance management dashboard ini akan membawa langkah kita lebih dekat dalam perjalanan meraih keunggulan itu.

visit http://strategimanajemen.net  - sebuah blog inspiratif tentang human capital & business strategy

7 Prinsip Manajemen Waktu yang Kreatif

1. Selalulah aktif, bukan reaktif
Buatlah keputusan-keputusan aktif tentang bagaimana Anda
menghabiskan waktu Anda daripada reaktif terhadap setiap tuntutan
yang Anda temui. Tentukan apa saja yang penting bagi Anda, dan
katakan "tidak" terhadap segala sesuatu yang bertentangan.

2. Tentukan sasaran
Dengan menentukan sasaran, Anda tahu tujuan Anda. Tanpa sasaran,
Anda akan kehilangan arah dan bereaksi terhadap kesempatan2 dan
persoalan2 yang tidak pasti, dengan pandangan sempit atas akibat
yang mungkin timbul dalam kehidupan pribadi dan profesional Anda.

3.Tentukan prioritas dalam tindakan Anda
Begitu Anda telah menentukan sasaran, Anda perlu menentukan
prioritas tindakan guna mencapai sasaran2 itu. Kunci dalam
menentukan prioritas adalah dengan mengidentifikasikan apa yang
penting dari aktivitas Anda secara tepat dan menentukannya sebagai
prioritas.

4. Pertahankan fokus Anda
Maksimalkan produktivitas Anda dengan berkonsentrasi pada satu
proyek yang utama satu per satu. Setelah menentukan sasaran dan
prioritas tindakan Anda, pantaulah perkembangannya hingga proyek
itu selesai. Apa pun yang Anda lakukan, lakukanlah dengan seluruh
kemampuan Anda.

5. Ciptakan tenggat waktu yang realistis
Tenggat waktu yang realistis dapat membantu Anda tetap fokus pada
sasaran jangka panjang dan terutapa pada prioritas jangka pendek.

6.Lakukan sekarang (DO IT NOW)
D = Divide. Bagi menjadi tugas yang lebih kecil.
O = Organize. Aturlah bagaimana melakukannya.
I = Ignore. Abaikan gangguan yang mengalihkan perhatian.
T = Take. Ambil kesempatan mengetahui bagaimana melakukannya
sendiri.
N = Now. Sekarang.
O = Opportunity. Ambil keuntungan dari kesempatan yang
menguntungkan Anda.
W = Watch out. Waspada pada pemborosan waktu.

7. Seimbangkan hidup Anda.
Untuk menerapkan prinsip2 manajemen waktu yang kreatif ini tidak
hanya dalam pekerjaan, tetapi juga dalam gergaul dan beraktivitas
mengisi waktu luang. Jadi seimbangkanlah hidup Anda seperti
menciptakan waktu bagi diri sendiri, sahabat, saudara, dan yang
lainnya.

Meng-Update 9 Skill Manajemen HR

Ketika mewawancarai calon karyawan, seorang staf HR harus mengikuti sejumlah prosedur baku untuk menguji kandidat tersebut. Antara lain dengan mencocokkan keahlian-keahlian yang dimiliki oleh kandidat berikut karakteristik personalnya dengan persyaratan yang dibutuhkan untuk posisi pekerjaan yang akan ditempatinya.

Menguji untuk mendapatkan orang yang paling tepat untuk mengisi jabatan tertentu hanyalah salah satu dari keterampilan yang harus dimiliki oleh seorang profesional di departemen HR. Pada dasarnya ada 9 keterampilan yang harus selalu di-up date oleh orang HR agar senantiasa siap menjalankan peran dan fungsinya sebagai mitra strategis bagi bisnis dalam mengelola karyawan.

1. Organization

Manajemen HR memerlukan langkah-langkah pendekatan. Data-data yang rapi, kemampuan mengelola waktu dengan baik, efisiensi personal merupakan hal-hal yang mendasar dalam fungsi HR. Sebagai pimpinan atau pun staf HR, Anda berurusan dengan kelangsungan hidup dan karir banyak orang. Ketika seorang manajer lini meminta data personal seorang karyawan atau meminta rekomendasi mengenai kompensasi yang sesuai dengan organsasi maupun industrinya, Anda tak bisa dengan enaknya mengatakan, "Tunggu ya, aku lihat dulu ada apa enggak."

2. Multitasking

Menjadi orang HR harus punya banyak "tangan". Pada menit ini Anda menghadapi karyawan yang sedang "curhat" tentang masalah pribadinya, menit berikutnya membereskan klaim biaya meeting yang diajukan karyawan lain, dan pada menit yang lain lagi memikirkan strategi rekrutmen yang tepat untuk situasi sekarang. Berbagai prioritas dan kebutuhan bisnis bergerak dan berubah dengan cepat. Klien A tidak mungkin menunggu dengan alasan bahwa Anda sedang sibuk dengan kolega B. Anda harus bisa meng-hadle semua.

3. Discretion and Business Ethics

Profesional HR adalah hari nurani perusahaan, di samping juga penjaga kerahasiaan informasi. Seiring Anda melayani top management, Anda juga harus memastikan bahwa karyawan juga tetap berhak memiliki privasi yang terjaga.

4. Dual Focus

Profesional HR harus mampu berdiri di tengah-tengah antara kepentingan dan kebutuhan karyawan dan manajemen. Ada saat ketika Anda harus mengabil keputusan untuk melindungi karyawan, dan pada saat yang lain Anda akan dihadapkan pada panggilan untuk melindungi organisasi, budaya dan nilai-nilainya. Dengan posisi ini, Anda akan mudah disalahpahami, dan kuncinya ada pada komunikasi.

5. Employee Trust

Karyawan berharap pada orang HR untuk membela kepentingan mereka, tapi Anda juga dituntut untuk mendukung setiap kebijakan dari top management. Dengan menyeimbangkan antara dua kutub yang sama-sama menarik tangan Anda itu, maka Anda akan mendapatkan kepercayaan.

6. Fairness

Komunikasi yang jelas, saluran aspirasi yang tersedia, adanya kesempatan bagi semua orang untuk mengemukakan pendapatnya, aturan yang ditegakkan dengan konsisten, mengembangkan sikap saling menghargai…itulah hal-hal yang harus dijaga untuk menciptakan suasana keterbukaan di kantor.

7. Dedication to Continuous Improvement

Profesional HR harus selalu siap membantu manajer mendampingi dan mengembangkan karyawan di lini masing-masing. Dengan begitu, kemajuan dan inovasi bisa berkelanjutan, dan jika perlu dibarengi dengan pemanfaatan teknologi untuk meningkatkan fungsi HR sendiri.

8. Strategic Orientation

Berpikir ke depan adalah bagian dari peran kepemimpinan dan strategi manajemen yang dimiliki orang HR. Mengisi kebutuhan perusahaan akan tenaga kerja berkualitas, merancang skema penggajian yang baik, memberi pelatihan kepada karyawan untuk mendukung pertumbuhan bisnis merupakan perwujudan dari ungkapan yang sudah sering Anda katakan di mana-mana bahwa, "Karyawan adalah aset terpenting."

9. Team Orientation

Dalam dunia bisnis saat ini, tim adalah raja. Manajer HR harus senantiasa memahami dinamika tim yang ada, dan melakukan upaya untuk menjaga semangat kebersamaan dan membuat tim bekerja dengan baik.

Keeping Yourself Positive
By: Brian Tracy

The most important thing you do for your success is to take control of the suggestive elements in your environment. Be sure that what you are seeing and listening to is consistent with the goals you want to achieve.

Listen Your Way to Success
Listen to educational audio programs in your car. The average person drives 12,000 to 25,000 miles per year which works out to between 500 and 1,000 hours per year that the average person spends in his or her car. You can become an expert in your field by simply listening to educational audio programs as you drive from place to place.

Take Courses in Your Field
Attend seminars given by experts in your field. Take additional courses and learn everything you possibly can. Learn from the experts. Ask them questions, write them letters, read their books, read their articles and listen to people with proven track records in the area in which you want to be successful.

Get Around the Right People
Associate only with positive, success-oriented people. Get around winners. As we say, fly with the eagles. You can’t fly with the eagles if you keep scratching with the turkeys. Get away from the go-nowhere types and above all, get away from negative people. Get away from negative coworkers. If you’ve got a negative boss, seriously consider changing jobs. Associating on a regular basis with negative people is enough in itself to condemn you to a life of underachievement, frustration and failure. Associate only with positive people. Get around winners.

Visualize Your Goals
The last thing before you sleep and the first thing in the morning, think about and visualize your goals as realities. See your goal as though it already existed. Your subconscious mind is only activated by affirmations and pictures that are received in the present tense. See your goal vividly just before you go to sleep. See yourself performing at your best. See the situations that you’re facing working out exactly the way you want them to.

Feed Yourself Mental Pictures
See yourself living the kind of life that you want to live. See yourself with the kind of relationships, the kind of health, the kind of car, the kind of home you really want. Visualize just before you fall asleep at night. The first thing you do when you get up in the morning is to feed yourself mental pictures. Those are the two times of the day when your subconscious mind is most receptive to new programming, when you fall asleep and when you wake up.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do, all day long, to keep your mind and emotions focused on your goals and financial success:

First, listen to audio programs in your car and when you travel around. Continue feeding your mind with a stream of high-quality, educational, motivational material that moves you toward your goal.

Second, resolve to associate with positive, optimistic people most of the time. Get around winners and get away from negative people who criticize, condemn and complain. This can change your life as much as any other factor.

Unlocking Your Creativity
By: Brian Tracy

Creative thinking can be stimulated by two things; intensely desired goals and pressing problems. Your creative capacities need something to hone in on and your job is to provide it.

A Continual Stimulus for Ideas
Intensely desired goals, clearly defined with detailed plans for their accomplishment act as a continual stimulus for ideas to achieve them.

Visualize Your Goals
To trigger your imagination, write out a clear description of your ideal end result or goal. Be clear about the goal, be flexible about the process. Think about it, visualize it as realized over and over. Project your mind forward to the picture of the realized goal and then look back to the present.

Define Your Goals Clearly
Think on paper. Make a plan and then work on the plan, updating it, changing it, adding to it as you think of new ways to work toward the goal. The more clearly defined and keenly desired your goals, the more of your natural creativity will be released for goal attainment.

The Proper Approach to Problems
The second stimulant to creativity is pressing problems. The key to idea generation when you face a problem is to approach the problem confidently, expectantly, with the attitude that there exists a logical, practical solution just waiting to be found.

The most creative people have a relaxed attitude of confident expectancy that causes their minds to function in original and imaginative ways.

Diagnose Your Problems Accurately
Define your problems clearly in writing. Accurate diagnosis is half the cure. Sometimes you will find that you are dealing with a "cluster problem," one that is made up of several smaller problems. Your job is to sort them out and then go to work on each one separately.

Break Up the Clusters
In many cluster problems, there is a core issue surrounded by a lot of symptoms. Creative thinking requires that you separate the core issue, and then focus on resolving that before worrying about the smaller problems.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do to stimulate your creativity.

First, be absolutely clear about your goal. Write it down and make a plan to achieve it. Think of different ways you could accomplish it.

Second, define your problems clearly and then make a list of all the possible solutions to your problem. Take action on at least one idea immediately.