The Bus Stops Here

One day I walked in the cafeteria at work and found myself the prey of a work force virus. It was one of those people always trying to find something wrong with everyone and everything. He made a comment about one of the employees in my department. 

“You are having a lot of turnover, all these people getting out of your department, and it will look bad on you,” he said.

It wasn’t normal turnover he was referring to. It wasn’t people fed up with their horrible job or crazy boss (me). This guy who worked in my department had wanted to get into another department to do a more technical job, which paid a little more than his current pay.  This is not the first person from my department to make such a move.

It was that biting little comment, however, that made me think of how most managers have lost touch with the real world.  To think about it, most of them are not even realizing what is happening.

Advancement in technology has made people to be extremely individualistic.  No one wants to ask for help any more. You can find anything you want on the internet with an anonymous click of the mouse.  No awkward phone calls or asking strangers questions. My own wife will bitterly circle the drug store for ten minutes before asking a clerk where the Pepto Bismol is.

Even if you need money credit cards are readily available. There’s not as much asking your cousin Jackie for a loan to pay for braces for your twelve year old.  No one wants to depend on anyone any more, and this attitude is flowing into the work place too.

One thing that I believe in is that everyone who works for me should keep on progressing in their careers, and I make an effort to mentor them to make it happen.  Whether it means encouraging them to further their education or teaching them leadership skills needed to move to the next step.

Some managers behave like bus drivers who are driving passengers to a particular destination and then decide to stop and take a long nap. It also seems that employees behave like passengers. They want the driver to drive as fast as possible, but at the same time want to enjoy the scenery on the way to their destination.

I think this behavior is not as Type-A- get-from-point-A-to- point-B as people think. I think that both managers and employees simply tend to fall into a category of achievement rather than acceleration. They feel good about getting today’s work done but do not understand that when we partner together, there is so much more that can be accomplished.

 I believe people want to know that there is life after tomorrow.  That’s what keeps us going.  If a manager goes to work just to get his job done, he has no idea how motivated his people could be. If only he can have high hope for them, he can use his resources to help his employees achieve their career goal.

So when this person thought that my people moving to another department made me look bad, all I said is, “I like it when people from my department succeed, that’s the route I have designed for my people to take.”

Deal or No Deal?

Isn’t it confusing that when you listen to all the automobile ads on TV, they all seem to sound the same? They all go like this, “Our car was ranked the best sedan by this and that, best motor trend car of the year, best breaking system,” bla bla bla.

At the end of the day I think consumers should take some time and do some research before purchasing a vehicle.  You have to ask yourself, what is it that I really want in a car? Do you want quality? Reliability? High resale value?

 A lot of car manufactures have come a long way in their quality and reliability.   I remember a friend of mine in the late 90s whom had bought a Hyundai, and within a year that vehicle was missing door handles, light fixtures and could have won an award for most mechanic visits.  Today I don’t think Hyundai is anything close to that image. Their cars are amongst the top competing brands on the market.

 Another important consideration to look into when buying a car is its resale value.  When financing comes into play, it is easy to buy a car and two years down the road find yourself with a car that is worth half the amount being owned to the lender.  Every car sales person will tell you that their cars have a higher resale value than competitors.  Of course, I have waited a long time to meet an honest car sales person.

If resale value is important to you when considering purchasing a car, here are some of the things you might want to look at before making the final decision.

Supply and demand is one factor.  A lot of automakers have a tendency to produce more cars than what the market can consume.  When a certain model has been overproduced, the manufacturer tends to push most of the vehicles into fleet. In most cases they will not be making money and hence the value is watered down.  This does not necessarily mean that automakers are not supposed to overproduce.  As long as there is an individual demand for that particular model; overproduction could in turn be a good thing.

Resale value also orbits around consumer perception for a certain brand.  Any brand that has a good fan base will tend to hold a higher resale value better than those that don’t have as much.  One such brand that has a good fan base is Toyota.  After last year’s mass recall on its Prius, Toyota has had to invest enormous amounts of money just to protect the image and reliability of their products.

The number of vehicles sold to commercial or rental fleet will also determine the resale value for that particular vehicle.  This is a double edged sword for automakers. Rental companies do move the inventory, hence boosting sales, but at the end of the day these cars will end up in the auction. If the auction has a lot of these vehicles, consequently the sales prices lowers, affecting the overall resale value for that particular model.

Those cash rebates offered on a new car are so appetizing when buying a car, but if a particular model offer a lot of cash rebates all it means is that the higher the incentive to spend on a new vehicle, the lower the residual value of a recent model-year used version of that model.  Most of the time there is a reason for offering high rebates, and in most cases the reasons are not good.

As a car consumer, trust yourself to find the right information. As with all things in life, if it looks too good to be true, it might be. A wise man once said, “Don’t marry a woman if you won’t still love her with a few more pounds and short hair.” Make sure you see the future ramifications before you buy that sweet ride.

~Steven Phiri

Dude, Where is My GPS?

We’ve grown used to empty homes and closed businesses in our neighborhoods the last couple of years. Most people, however, can’t wrap their minds around the idea of giants Nokia and Yahoo administering mass layoffs.

I was not surprised that Nokia had reached this point; in fact I sounded off when IPhone4 was unveiled, predicting that Nokia sooner or later would break under the competition due to their lack of creativity in an innovation saturated market.

Yahoo, I admit, was kind of a surprise. I decided to turn the accusing eye toward Google and determine to find out how they were managing to beat up their older brother.

Fortunately I managed to save myself some researching time.  I happened upon the answer when on my way to visit family friends. Since it was our first time to their new house, I had planned to use the GPS but forgot it at home. We normally leave the GPS at home in case we need to use it in either vehicle.

Then I thought to myself, why don’t I try to use my HTC G1 android phone to navigate us to this place.  Lucky enough I found the Google map app, I punched in the address and my phone was aided by Google map to take us to this place just like the Garmin that we forgot to bring along.

Now I thought to myself, no wonder Google is killing most of these companies. Google is constantly diversifying, including next generation automobiles, cell phones and other things.

With the right cell phone, a person can find a million functions. It’s as if we have the modern invention of a magic wand. If I knew this three years ago, I would have listened to my wife and never spent my hard earned $200 on buying a Garmin.  That means, on the go GPS systems are basically dinosaurs at only a toddlers’ age.

While GPS systems were the next big thing, just a few years ago, we are moving at breakneck speed and unless these companies can manage to invent the next-next big thing, they will go out of business at the mercy of ever evolving smart phones.

So far Garmin seems to have a good game plan. They have a lot of other services that can keep them in business for the next five years.

On the other hand TomTom and Magellan must find a way to make the GPS pony do a new trick or they will unfortunately be assigned to obscurity with the cassette and Video tapes of the 80’s.

~Steven Phiri