fabiochiu/medium-articles huggingface dataset:
Your definition of customer experience is wrong
Tags: Cx, Customerexperience, Outsidein

Your definition of customer experience is wrong, and here’s why, right, there’s lots of different definitions of what Customer experience is, and if we put them together, we might end up with something like this, the sum of the interactions, perceptions and feelings a customer has with your company.

Frustrated woman having problem …..

You might think that’s a pretty decent definition, James, but you’d be wrong. Most of the definitions you find are going to run along the same theme. Okay, the problem is that theme is completely inside-out. These definitions take a company view of customer experience, not a customer view of customer experience. Go figure. Let’s say that we’re an airline…..

Watch the video and get the full transcript from here

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Step #1 — Get The Book:

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Accredited Customer Experience Master® | https://bit.ly/ACXM2021

Step #3 — Get the Software:

The Experience Manager | https://bit.ly/TEM2021

Step #4 — Connect With The Community:

LinkedIn | https://bit.ly/Steve2021

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How to level up the Customer Journey for new consumers?
By: Iasmina Craciun
Tags: Customer Marketing, Marketing, Customer Success, Customer Engagement, Customer Experience

Customer Experience is so much more than one engagement.

Represented by the interactions, memories and emotions a consumer gathers throughout the entire process, from the very beginning to the phase of becoming an advocate.

Nowadays customers have high expectations when it comes to products or services — they seek personalised experiences that could possibly create new connections. Consumers feel the need to interact with the company, whether it’s through a chatbot or a community platform.

As such, in order to better the customer experience along the journey, it is important to understand that your actions should be centered around the consumer.

So, then the question is — what do new consumers want?

· New consumers want to feel valued by the company, but not feel pestered with information. Companies should look for ways to distribute this effectively because the connection economy is looking for ways to reduce the stress on the consumer, not make it worse.

· There is a need to streamline communications to stay present, but not overwhelm the consumer. If it’s too much information, it gets lost in the process and the consumer will not only feel overwhelmed, but it could create confusion.

· Create a personalized customer experience — this should go hand in hand with investing in customer segmentation and introducing a feedback loop to ensure effective communications. Tracking down a customer’s preferences can help towards tailoring the strategy and adding personalized messages that aid towards relationship building. Moreover, seeking feedback is a must that ensures constant monitoring and allowing room for improvements.

· Customer Journey — each customer has a unique pathway that should be recorded in its entirety in order to keep track and further drive engagement.
“另類文化大革命” － 第26集 "全民造星III"有感
By: Shirley Leung
Tags: Teama, Teamwork, Buber, 全民造星, 全民造星iii

Writing is a therapy to myself. It would be a bonus if I inspired you to read a little more, watch a little more, ponder a little more;寫作是我的“自我療癒”。若能助人自助，是我的福氣。
Pillars of SCRO
By: Aditya Choudhury
Tags: Management, Motivation, Organizational Culture, Teamwork, HR

Image Source: shorturl.at/pHPRZ

One of the primary backbones of a team’s versatile and adaptive approach to new problems is the manner in which its members, or sub-domains, let the informational and task workflow process amongst themselves — how responsive they are, and how aware and aligned everyone else is with the general direction in which encapsulated tasks, as well as the larger driving purpose throughout them, is going. And this does not necessarily entail that there has to be some bifurcation in terms of hierarchical access to the overall picture, since it is all-the-more critical and pivotal to a team’s long-term success as well as how it projects its strategic mission goals into the future.

“T eamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.” — Andrew Carnegie

As we traverse further, we’ll look briefly at the various ways in which the team operates and informally falls back on more often than not. There is a grassroots system in which work is executed within the team, and that’s done through active participation and mindful and systematic laid out involvement from the various branches and subdivisions of the team. How SCRO works intrinsically as a single entity while having within its folds lots of domains and interrelated members coordinating and parallel-processing various tasks, there is a certain dictated modicum of understood work ethic we all seem to share.

Let us delve into a few fragmented abstractions of the same.
Importance of Teamwork and a Teamplayer
Tags: Teamplayer, Teamwork, Hardwork, Storytelling, Team

Importance of Teamwork and a Teamplayer

Wonderful story on the Importance of Teamwork & a Team player

A mouse living on a farm saw the farmer brought a mousetrap. He ran to farmyard warning everyone about it.

The chicken said, "Mr Mouse, this trap is a grave concern to you, but it has no consequence to me".

The mouse turned to the pig "the trap is no concern of mine either."

The mouse then turned to the bull, and the same reply.

The mouse returned to the house, dejected that no one would help him.

That night the sound of a trap catching its prey was heard, so farmer's wife rushed to see. In the darkness, she could not see a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught, and it bit the farmer's wife.

The wife caught the fever and the farmer knew the best way to treat it was with chicken soup. The farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard to get the soup's main ingredient.

The wife got sicker and neighbours & relatives came by to take turns sitting with her. The farmer knew he had to feed them, so it was the pig first and then the bull, to feed all of them.
Use Clariti Threads to boost your productivity
Tags: Collaboration, Communication, Teamwork, Business, Work

What takes a toll on productivity?

According to the 2019 Global Intelligent Information Management Benchmark Report 82% of the respondents have said that their productivity is hurt by poor information management. They waste time by having to navigate multiple systems to find what they need. These data silos affect employee productivity and morale.

How do productivity tools like Clariti help?

Many businesses still store their digital information in disparate unintegrated systems. Given the level of information being generated on a daily basis, this is highly inefficient. A modern intelligent information management system like Clariti uses the concept of “threads” to store all the related information in one place based on some context. This information can be easily retrieved and acted upon when needed. So, with Clariti Threads, organizing and finding data becomes much easier and less complicated.

Best Microsoft Team’s alternative | Clariti is free!

How can information be organized to improve efficiency?

Improper organization of data is the main reason for productivity loss.

91% of the respondents to the survey have said that their job would be much easier if they didn’t have to worry about where the information resides.

Improper or incorrect labeling of documents affects productivity by 42%.

Another 41% stated the information they were looking for was stored in the incorrect folder or system.

Another 29% admitted the information was misplaced or lost.

So, it is clear that if all the information is stored in one place and if everyone knows where it is, then the poor information problem can be solved. That is why Clariti uses a concept called Threads, where all the related information including email, chat, cloud documents, and social feeds is stored automatically linked by context. With Clariti, there are no information silos, and there is no need to search.

Best messaging app for smart teams | Sign up for free

How does information organized in Clariti Threads improve productivity?
Teamwork and other benefits from Coding
Tags: Edtech, Teamwork, Benefits Of Coding, Education, Coding

No matter which career path you choose, the ability to work efficiently in teams is a necessary skill to have. The collective and collaborative efforts of members of a team not only helps in solving complex problems easily but also makes room for innovative ideas from the different perspectives.

There are a lot of ways to inculcate this skill into children right from a younger age and coding is one of them. Here’s how -

When approaching a problem, the child needs to use logical reasoning to come to a solution. They analyze the problem, identify the errors and then come to a solution. When working in a team, they learn to do this together.

Coming together in teams can allow them to acknowledge different perspectives and help them develop the skill set of an excellent problem-solver. This also opens the gateway of innovative ideas and the ability to work even in conditions of conflict.

At the same time, it teaches kids to be more resilient. It gives a chance for them to bring their creativity to life. However, the process right from the ideation to the execution takes time and patience. During this process, the kid is exposed to various steps of logical reasoning and decision making. This helps them develop a logical thought process.

When working on projects together, kids develop their skills in a collaborative way. Peer-learning and interaction help them to open up and express their ideas. At the same time, it allows them to approach problems from a different perspective.

Designing new games or special effects also help kids to learn the foundational concepts of math's and science in a fun way. It can also help foster the inquisitiveness in the kids to make their projects more interesting, life-like and personalized.

Soon enough, the kid moves from playing a game or using a feature to building one. The learning process is authentic as the kid applies the knowledge and executes the idea from its inception to the final presentation.

They also get a chance to articulate their thoughts better when explaining their projects to others. Working on such projects in teams help them meet like-minded individuals in this virtual world.

Want to know more about how kids can benefit from coding? Visit www.codeyoung.com today!
How Machine Learning teams look like
By: Dr. Jahed Naghipoor
Tags: Teamwork, Deep Learning, Team Building, Machine Learning

In this post, I would like to answer the following questions:

What are the different roles inside a Machine Learning team?

What skills are needed for each of them?

The Machine Learning Product Manager (ML PM) is someone who works with the Machine Learning team, as well as other business functions and the end-users.

This person designs documents, creates wireframes, comes up with the plan to prioritize and execute Machine Learning projects.

The role is just like a traditional Product Manager, but with a deep knowledge of the Machine Learning development process and mindset.

2. The ML DevOps is someone who deploys and monitors production systems.

This person handles the infrastructure that runs the deployed Machine Learning product.

This role is primarily a software engineering role, which often comes from a standard software engineering pipeline.

3. The Data Engineer is someone who builds data pipelines, aggregates, and collects from data storage, monitors data behavior.

This person works with distributed systems such as Hadoop, Kafka, Airflow.

This person belongs to the software engineering team that works actively with Machine Learning teams.

4. The ML Engineer is someone who trains and deploys prediction models.

This person uses tools like TensorFlow and Docker to work with prediction systems running on real data in production.

This person is either an engineer with significant self-teaching OR a science/engineering Ph.D. who works as a traditional software engineer after graduate school.

5. The ML Researcher is someone who trains prediction models, but often forward-looking or not production-critical.

This person uses TensorFlow / PyTorch / Jupiter to build models and reports describing their experiments.

This person is a Machine Learning expert who usually has an MS or Ph.D. degree in Computer Science or Statistics or finishes an industrial fellowship program.

6. The Data Scientist is actually a blanket term used to describe all of the roles above.
How Can You Determine Your Team’s Values?
By: Robert Trajkovski
Tags: Leadership, Teamwork, Self Improvement, Success, Self-awareness

How Can You Determine Your Team’s Values?

Photo by Deniz Altindas on Unsplash

Goal: companies don’t have values but employees do.

Who Creates Company’s Core Values?

As we discussed in yesterday’s post (12/22/20) a lot of companies create core value(s) statements. Unfortunately they are just “nice” words that most if not all people working for the company do not remember.

I even described a way to embed the value into the company way. BUT that does not make them the ones that the people truly live.

So what? How do we fix this?

Imagine a typical household. The two partners each has their personal values. Let’s say that partner A has values A,B, and C. Partner B has values B,C, and D.

What are the values of the household?

It is the overlap values of B and C. Both partners value those and most likely act that way. Notice that A and D are not shared. They are individual values but not household values.

There is a belief that a boss should not have more than 7 direct reports so let’s use that as a basis. Now imagine a team of 7 people.

Let us limit those 7 people to 10 values each that they truly live. That is 70 values that make up the team value set. How much is the overlap? My guess is that most likely 3–4 values.

How do we determine those?

Well you have to sit the team down and give them 15 minutes to write down their 10 values. Values that they actually do and that if you ask any one of the team members they would vouch that they have observed that value in action.

Now that you have those 70 values written down,

sort them so that you eliminate repeat values and to see the frequency with which they occur Write those down on a board or large paper in order of frequency Put that paper on a wall . Give everyone 5 stickers Ask them to put stickers on five values that they really believe and do.

What I believe you will find is that there are 3–4 values which have most energy in the group. Not everyone will share them. Majority will share them and act on them.

Are the values the team has identified ones that you believe will lead to success of the team? If they are not, stop and discuss and rework until everyone is committed.

Now that you have the team core values you have to go to the embedding part by making it real and actionable every month with the words you use and actions you take during the month.

And lastly, communicating those with your customers. They need to know what your teams’ values and actions are.

My seven cents….(this is what I earned from Medium.com for Nov. 2020)

I got to go…my future self alarm went off

Robert Trajkovski is professional with experience in leading people and projects in Steel/ Power, Refining, Chemicals, Industrial Gasses, Software, Consulting and Academia. He has worked for both owners and engineering companies. In addition, he has instructed 73+ courses at several institutions and often offers his courses for free on LinkedIn.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/roberttrajkovski/
Flexible conversations in Clariti
Tags: Collaboration, Communication, Teamwork, Business, Work

The Advent of Chat Channels

The latest trend in business productivity is to give up emails for internal communications and replace them with chat software. Slack is a leader in this space which advocates the use of “chat channels” for conversations. Channels are usually set up by an administrator or a top-level contact who then invites a group of individuals to participate in the conversations. Unfortunately, all the conversations in the channel are visible to all the invited participants. This creates unintended consequences.

Clariti is powered by Artificial Intelligence | Try now, It’s free!

Unintended Consequences of Chat Channels

Imagine a sales manager invites a team of his account executives and a technical manager to a meeting via chat. The intent of the meeting is to discuss the status of a new software product the company is developing. During the group chat the technical manager shares screenshots of the software. She provides an update on the development progress. She also gets excited and mentions that the new release will be available within four weeks. Hearing this, the account executives also get excited and start discussing plans on approaching their prospects to introduce the software.

The sales manager wants to caution the technical manager to properly set his team’s expectations. But he has no opportunity to privately share his concerns in the team channel. He can separately chat with the technical manager in a direct chat between the two. However, when he does that, this direct conversation is no longer linked to the ongoing chat between the team. Such separate unlinked conversation threads can mushroom and cause stress since everyone has to rely on their memory to recall what was said when and in which context.

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Need for Fluid Conversations in Chat Tools

Chat software has increased productivity by providing an instant connection between all the team members. However, it has also increased stress due to the rigidity of having to deal with fixed participants in all team conversations. Most conversations in real life are fluid, and the chat software needs to reflect how people behave naturally.

Clariti Facilitates Dynamic Participation

Clariti allows conversations to flow naturally by facilitating the dynamic addition & removal of participants from the conversation based on need. This provides newly invited people with context when suddenly roped into an ongoing discussion. It also provides confidentiality when discussing the same topic with a different set of participants who need not know about the prior conversation with others.
5 astuces simples pour préparer son équipe à 2021
By: Rémi Patay
Tags: Teamwork, 2021, Preparation, Equipe

Learn more. Medium is an open platform where 170 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Learn more

Make Medium yours. Follow the writers, publications, and topics that matter to you, and you’ll see them on your homepage and in your inbox. Explore
Rescuing Santa — Virtual Escape Room in Slack
Tags: Santa Claus, Christmas, Teamwork, Escape Room, Slack

Shinny Upatree

The leader. The noblest. The most trusted.

You lead all the Elves, and are Santa’s oldest, closest friend. Naturally, you are affected by what’s happening, are willing to lead the Elves on this rescue mission.

Santa trusts you so much that you are the only one with a spare key to his workshop. You seem to have misplaced it at Krampus’ dinner party recently, but oh well….that’s probably not a big deal.

Alabaster Snowball

The genius. The savant. The analyst.

For anyone who says operations is an easy job, you prove them wrong. Your computers and algorithms are what keep the North Pole running, and you power the gingerbread cookie factories of the world. You have to crunch the numbers (and the occasional cookie) and crack the codes to help your team rescue Santa.

Bushy Evergreen

The maker. The factory. The engineer.

Some call you Elon Musk but you are not really fond of the nickname. You are much more — you can sculpt castles out of driftwood, and your supply chain can handle way more than 100,000 cars. You are stockpiling toy cars and trains, and without Santa to help with distributing them to kids, you are running out of storage. Real estate prices at the North Pole are no joke!

Pepper Minstix

The Enigma. The protector. The Keeper of Keys and Grounds.

You persuaded Santa to change his password from ‘TheBossClaus123’, and installed Ring outside Santa’s doors to prevent intruders from barging in. The current situation is not looking good for your career, and what with the job market tanking, now is not the time to go fishing for a new job.

You need to break Santa out and regain your reputation for being ‘a better password generator than Apple’s Keychain’ as Forbes reported last year.

Sugarplum Mary

The sweetest. The Masterchef. The chocolatier.

You are convinced that the song is actually ‘We wish you a Mary Christmas’, but you are too sweet to push back. Some say that your geniality and mellow temperament is a reflection of the sweet treats you bake. You know that everything about the current situation is leaving a bad taste in your fellow Elves’ mouths, and that is simply not acceptable to you.

It’s time for you to turn up the heat and whip up some delicious revenge against Krampus.

Wunorse Openslae

The dreamer. The visionary. The Jony Ive.

You invented the magic sleigh which made it so much easier for Santa after he couldn’t fly commercial because of the pandemic. What’s the point of a magic sleigh when Santa is locked up in his workshop, though?

Your teammates may be capable of creating millions of toys and baking billions of cookies, but they cannot dream up designs and solutions like you can. They need you to break Santa out.
Riding into 2021…in Style!
By: Shopee Design
Tags: Team Building, Teamwork, Behind The Scenes, Team, Shopee

Last weekend, the Shopee Designers bonded over an intensive session of rhythm cycling—or more familiarly known as spinning to some—at Absolute Cycle Singapore. The activity was split into 2 sessions of about 20 riders, in accordance with current social distancing measures.

With the myriad of virtual meetings this year, physical activity was precisely the remedy we needed to combat “Zoom fatigue”. Additionally, a good sweat can also heighten mental focus and clarity, thus making spinning the perfect activity to kick designer blocks in the butt while moving to the beats of great music.

The hour-long session consisted of a 15-minute bike setup and safety briefing, and subsequently, a 45-minute intensive ride. Upon entering the studio, we were greeted by psychedelic surrounding lights that resembled the atmosphere of a sophisticated night club, and carefully curated music meant to send our energy levels through the roof. As our instructor’s energy skyrockets, coupled with some highly challenging choreography on the bikes (hello, legs!), we found ourselves in a little dancing, headbanging situation.
Stop trying to be the hero…
By: August Gruneisen
Tags: Collaboration, Teamwork, Today I Learned, Transparency, Etiquette

Stop trying to be the hero…

Somewhere off a random highway

I come from a “do everything myself” background. There used to be nobody to get things done if I couldn’t. Thus, the feeling of personal satisfaction from fixing something “all by myself” has been unchallenged this far in my career.

However, as part of a team I have to rethink what I value more — individual accomplishment, or harmony among my coworkers. If I choose the latter, “I did it” must become “we did it together”. This is a super non-intuitive thing for me, but today’s lesson was a good start.

Scenario: I noticed a bug in my teammate’s code.

I instinctually said nothing, stayed up all night on a solution, and then sent it back to them in the morning along with “Hey I found a bug, thought you might like to see my awesome fix!”

Turns out my eagerness to be the hero actually caused my teammate to feel sidestepped. Furthermore, when they didn’t apply my suggestion, I felt betrayed — leaving us both unhappy. I didn’t notice this until empathy came into the picture: It doesn’t feel good to work hard on something and have someone else try to steal the applause.

How could I have handled this to promote inclusion?

Scenario: I noticed a bug in my teammate’s code.

I instinctually ping them and reveal the bug. The doors to collaboration, cohesion, teamwork, and ultimately harmony are suddenly wide open…

In the end, it’s not about the bug. It’s about honesty and transparency, and being forthright rather than sneaky. Do I have to be the hero, or can I be on a team of heroes?
A Culture of Innovation: Why Every Company Needs Psychological Safety to Succeed
By: Max Burwick
Tags: Innovation, Teamwork, Growth, Relationships

Innovation isn’t about technology; it is about exploring new ways to solve problems. It doesn’t have to be complicated.

Often times innovation is about simplifying and making life easier. Every company, regardless of the industry, is in the business of innovation, developing new ways to add value to its customers, but what does it take to build a culture of innovation? The answer may surprise you and revolutionize the way you do business.

According to The Deloitte Innovation Survey 2015, 66% of respondents stated that innovation is vital for growth. Innovative companies delight their customers and open new markets by meeting unmet needs. To develop new products, business teams need a diversity of perspectives; they need to see the world through the eyes of the customers. Consequently, when people don’t feel comfortable sharing their ideas, the team suffers, and the next great idea never becomes a reality.

But innovation is about more than new products or services, it is about people, especially talented people. Nobody wants to work for a company where their ideas aren’t appreciated or considered. As people, we have a deep need to express ourselves and to solve problems. When we miss the opportunity to contribute through the expression of our ideas, we lose out on meeting a fundamental need.

Too often, companies lose their most talented employees to competitors that provide the opportunity to solve problems. At the heart of innovation is a culture of psychological safety. Psychological safety is defined as a shared perspective among team members as to whether it is safe to engage in interpersonal risk-taking behaviors in the workplace. Examples of psychological safety are disagreeing with others, sharing perspectives, challenging conventional ideas, speaking up, and encouraging other people to speak up.

Building a culture of psychological safety is not merely a top-down approach. Instead, it is about the team. Yes, leadership is critical for developing psychological safety, but developing team trust and an open dialogue is equally important. In many ways, it is the responsibility of everyone in the organization.

The lessons gained in building a culture of innovation stretch beyond the workday. They are essential in building relationships and improving family dynamics. The truth is that we want everyone to feel comfortable exploring their ideas.

When we fail to encourage innovation, we lose the opportunity to live in a society vibrant with new ideas, leading to isolation and intellectual poverty.

It is easy to see that building a culture of innovation is more than just a recipe for business success; it may be the foundation of a full life.
Back to the future
By: Best Chișinău
Tags: Best Chisinau, Teamwork, Volunteering

BEST, Board of European Students of Technology is a constantly growing non-profit and non-political organization, present in 33 European countries.
Are they EVIL?
Tags: Humanity, Teamwork, Covid 19, Remote Working, Help

He’s definitely evil

Years ago I was working in a team, and like in all organisations we had to deal with self absorbed sociopaths screwing things up. The problem was that well meaning incompetents also had the same effect. For us it meant that we would lose our shit with both types of instigators, when the well meaning ones probably needed a bit of help. Although some of them were so incompetent, and caused so much of a mess it was tough to be cool with them.

Anyway when dealing with these situations we ended up asking ourselves. “Are they evil?”. Of course it’s all about context etc, but what we were actually asking was:

“Is this person acting in their own self interest and not considering the impact on others?”

“Does this person care about the impact on others?”

“Is there any merit in what this person is doing?”

What I’ve now learnt about is a thing called Fundamental Attribution Error. Which is, in very simple terms…

The tendency to attribute behaviour to a persons personality rather than the situation.

I feel like this is a really important thing to be aware of. Particularly now when so many of us are working remotely. We don’t have the ability to talk about things over a coffee. We can’t easily read the signals we give when interacting. It’s trickier to understand tone or inference….

These can lead to pretty harsh conclusions..such as “That guy’s a dick”.

When that guy might be really stressed. There’s a ton of reasons why. The type of chats, the ones that we would normally have over a coffee aren’t happening at the moment due to the ongoing zombie apocalypse. Obviously Covid related stresses aside, that guy might be dick. They could very well be a malevolent narcissist.

But they’re probably not. It’s totally possible that they’re stressed, or even that they’re not aware of the behaviour they’re exhibiting.

So maybe take time to ask them how they’re doing. Talk about stuff that’s not work related. Let them talk about themselves.

If they really are dick, you’ll find out. You’ll also find out fairly quickly if they’re incompetent.

But more importantly, if they’re neither of those things, and actually just a human who’s finding this whole situation a bit difficult, then you might have made it a little less difficult.

And that means you’re not a dick ;-)
The True Satisfaction…
By: Saurabh Bhukania
Tags: Teamwork, Entrepreneurship, Employee Engagement, Business, Team Management

I gave a phone call to my employee at morning 9 am for some urgent work. His daughter received the call. I asked her to hand over the phone to her father as it is an emergency. I went completely melt by her reply. Her words went through my mind, transferred an emotional signal to my nerves & went deep inside my heart to punched me tightly from within. She replied humbly — “ I am giving an online exam from my father’s cell phone, the exam will continue for 30 minutes. Can you please provide me 30 minutes?”

This incident changed my observation to look at the world. Two days back, due to some tension and unwanted circumstances in business, I threw my phone so hard on the floor, that the RC circuit and screen pieces are more than four meters apart. My mind suddenly started correlating both the incidences. Two days back, I broke my phone, and today someone’s entire career is dependent on a phone. I felt restlessness with my heart melting down from multiple thoughts. I prayed and asked forgiveness to God and myself.

I am sure and could relate, how many multiple calls her daughter might have received while giving the exams and faced so much disturbance in between the examinations. Her father (our employee) had to take leave that day to sacrifice his work and cell phone for her daughter. He sat next to his daughter for the entire time so that she performs well in the examination. This devotion of a father is priceless. No one can measure this infinite love and emotion.

I immediately decide to collect old phones from my family and friends and extend our helping hands to people in a similar situation as a Christmas gift. The satisfaction and gratitude received with eyes filled with tears from my employee cannot be earned with money. The satisfaction feels by your heart and soul, no money and lifestyle can provide you. It is pure, materialistic, and as precious as a diamond.

Two lessons learned from the above incidences. First is “love” which reflects from the father-daughter relationship. Second is “Sacrifice” and how these people manage their family and go through so much difficulty to fulfill their needs.
Are you raising kids or adults?
By: Phil Wall
Tags: Responsibility, Parenting, Teamwork, Kids, Family

PARENTING

Are you raising kids or adults?

Clean up your mess — you made it, clean it up.

The author and his daughter

Raising kids is not easy. It takes a lot of effort and a massive responsibility.

I’m not about to tell you how to raise your kids, so don’t tune out just yet.

Every parent is different, and every kid is different. Personalities, environment, country, health, schools, family dynamics, friends, there are so many different situations and not one box to fit in.

You do you.

I’m busy. Whatever that means. Everybody is busy. But I make time to be a dad. I intentionally raise my kids.

I raise my kids to be adults—productive, flourishing citizens.

As of this writing, I have an 11-year-old girl and a 6-year-old boy. I treat them like they are responsible adults.

I’ve never talked to our kids like babies. No “goo-goo -gaga” high pitched voices in our house.

We speak English. We sit at the table every meal, and we give thanks.

Chores — My kids have chores; they don’t get paid to do them. They also have responsibilities.

Everything is age appropriate, according to our team.

My kids are part of the team. Players on our team play the family game. Chores range from doing the dishes, taking out the compost, to splitting the wood with me. They stack it.

Responsibilities — are different. Make your own bed, tidy your room, and do it before you come down in the morning.

Clean up your mess — you made it, clean it up.

My daughter has a rabbit. She wanted him; she has to come up with the money (most of the time) to care for him. (That furball eats a lot of hay, and it’s expensive). She also has to clean his cage, brush him, and spend time with little Sammy daily.

Fun — my kids have a ton of fun, too. Today, they were outside for a couple of hours building their own “houses” down by the beach. Manaia’s is big, has a kitchen, a room, and a bed for her rabbit. Urijah (that’s my boy) has an open concept house.

I was in town tonight, getting a few groceries. I get home; my crazy kids come running out into the cold night to greet me.

Giving my kids responsibilities doesn’t make them hate me. It builds character.

My boy is super loud pretty much all the time, always joking around. Catherine tells me tonight, the two of them were impersonating me, laughing, poking fun at me. They crack me up.

My girl is a thinker. She just finished writing a 5000-word book about a bear and his friends saving New York City from Robot girl. She’s working towards publishing it, with all her own illustrations.

She started a sequel to this book a few days ago and is at 5000 words already.

We let our kids be kids. BUT I never forget we are raising adults.

If we were to raise kids, the end result would be adult kids. The world doesn’t need anymore adult kids

The world needs responsible, respectful, courageous adults.

It’s my responsibility to be that example for my kids.

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The Last Dance
Tags: Teamwork, Basketball, Winning Tips, Project Management, Mindset

The Last Dance on ESPN / Netflix is a docu-series very relevant to project professionals. There are so many lessons we can learn from it about leadership and teamwork.

🏀 empathy is at the heart of leadership; leaders have to genuinely care

🏀 organisations don’t win championships, your players and coaches do — look after them

🏀 communicate! communicate! communicate!

🏀 you won’t get far without trust

🏀 every player has a key role to play

🏀 hold people accountable if they’re not pulling their weight

🏀 winning mindset — everyone should come ready to play

🏀 it’s OK to have a bad day; share what you’re going through with your team

🏀 every player requires appropriate remuneration for what they bring to the table

🏀 it’s OK to disagree — talk it out and move on

🏀 motivate each other and bring out the best in one another

#thelastdance #mindsetmatters #teamwork #michaeljordan #projectmanagement #leadership
SOFT SKILLS
By: Anuvinda Krishnan
Tags: Soft Skills, Communication, Teamwork, Problem Solving, Jobs

Soft skills can be defined as character traits or interpersonal aptitudes that affect your ability to work and interact with others. They can’t be taught in a classroom or measured quantitatively. Today’s job market gives immense importance to soft skills since these are the parameters that decide a candidate’s ability to work in a team and fit into the system. A survey presented by SMB World found that nearly 72% of CEOs believe that soft skills are more important to the success of their business than hard skills.

So here are a few of the soft skills that I found relevant and those which the hiring managers would vote for.

Communication (written and oral) Teamwork Problem-solving Work ethics Interpersonal skills

Do feel free to put in your comments regarding this topic :)
#JustStart working on your SMART Goals: Teamwork
By: Sana Iftikhar
Tags: Teamwork, Amal Academy, Smart Goals, Juststart Project

I have always struggled with working in a team and being comfortable in my role.

Either I care about the result too much that I end up taking charge and doing others’ share of the work or I just lag behind confident team members doing whatever is asked of me.

Therefore, for my first SMART Goal, I chose the weakness that I had been meaning to improve even before I joined Amal: Teamwork.

Why do I want to work on Teamwork?

1. I have yet to find balance in how to productively work in a team. 2. I have trouble integrating with new people. 3. I absolutely hate conflict and confrontation because I easily get caught up in it.

What challenges have I faced in the past towards achieving this?

1. I have trouble saying no to friends and I do everything to avoid conflict even if it means doing someone else’s share of the work. 2. I am a perfectionist and I like doing things my way which doesn't make me a good team player. 3. I’m an introvert and prefer to work alone rather than socialize and talk about ideas.

What is the project/goal that you have worked on in your #JustStart project?

For this week, I chose the following step: 1. Comment on fellows’ posts/comments or interact with fellows on the group.

It may not sound as much but this week I tried to actively interact with my fellow’s work and comments and participate in my group.

Group Activity

What was your experience completing these tasks during the week?

It was a good experience and I hope I can keep up my progress.

What were the challenges that you faced this time?

I started small but still I had to overcome some of my awkwardness to comment on my fellows’ work.

What did you learn from this experience?

That I will continue on until I can learn to be better.

What are the next steps?

The next steps are: 2. Take initiative in Learning Group Activities and take steps to ensure you are a good team player. 3. Make 2 friends in the fellowship and try to do the course work along with them.
Working with a Team
By: Crab T
Tags: Teamwork, Uvu, Professionalism

White boarding, brainstorming, wire-framing, and designing are all collaborative efforts, and they’re my favorite parts of projects.

Being able to build and not just trust your own eye through a whole design is a great anxiety relief. I was lucky to have a great team around me for a recent project.

I was part of a team tasked with redesigning UVU’s College of Engineering and Technology website. Something that took a great amount of time management and communication.

My group was called the Fantastic Four, and we started off a little wary of each other as we are all very different people. Ysabel the R&B girl, Henry the older married guy, and me the basketball geek. We started off nicely and went through our research phase mostly separately, just bringing findings to the group.

Soon the project ramped up in time needed and difficulty. With all of us having different schedules we made times we’d all work on our part of the project, and have at least on day of the week we’d meet on Teams and discuss upcoming assignments, no matter how late we had to stay up. It was here where we really started to mesh.

We all know our minds drift when we get tired, so half of our meetings were productive, the other half we started making jokes and feeling the other members personalities. We also learned pretty quickly what role everyone fell into. Ysabel enjoyed being able to direct the group, having assignments split up between us all, and setting up meeting times. Henry liked to make big designs decisions about layouts and have the group critique them. I liked just having something to do, I’d let the group pick their parts and I’d do the small things we needed to get done like compiling data and doing consistency checks on designs. Henry and I presented every time we needed and Ysabel would work on the actual presentation layouts and content structure.

Needless to say, once we figured this out the entire project went smoothly for us. We came up with great features that our stake holders were excited to see implemented and designs we were all happy with.

I really enjoyed working with this team, and I’ve found, not just through this project, that a great way to get people to open up about how they want to work professionally is to be friendly and have some time to get to know each other outside of the professional environment.
How To Split Money With Friends?
Tags: Manage Money, Friendship, Expense Management, Banking, Split Bills

Be it an awesome Friday night dinner or weekend bar hopping or an unplanned crazy getaway trip, post your fun-tastic outing, we all dread the the cumbersome task of splitting the incurred bill among friends. Since it often involves too many complexities in the calculation, people tend to shy away from doing it. SplitEase solves this problem with the ease of a single click.
Journey of Ram Funders — your funding partner
By: Shriram Kumar
Tags: Business Funding, Finance, Project Report, Banking, Financial Projections

A highly accomplished finance professional with a diverse experience of 14 years in the banking, auditing and manufacturing sectors. Currently the head at Ram Funders, a financial consultancy that assists companies with their funding requirements and financial projections. Open for new opportunities in the finance, banking and accounting sectors.
Why Bitcoin outperform Visa
By: Lukas Wiesflecker
Tags: Finance, Decentralization, Banking, Economics, Bitcoin

With a new record high of over US$25,000, Bitcoin’s market capitalization is now larger than Visa’s.

On December 25, Bitcoin (BTC) climbed above the US$25,000 mark on crypto exchange Bitstamp, setting (yet another) new record high. At the same time, the market-leading cryptocurrency thus reaches a larger market capitalization than payment giant Visa.

According to Yahoo Finance, the leading payments group Visa has a market value of $460.06 billion as of today, Dec. 26, whereas Bitcoin now stands at more than $462 billion.

Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer (P2P) based blockchain protocol, while Visa is a for-profit commercial enterprise. This might lead the reader to conclude that a comparison between the two is not valid.

Nevertheless, the comparison of the two “payment systems” has a symbolic value, as the current market capitalization makes Bitcoin currently the thirteenth-largest company in the world (see above).

Institutional investor interest in Bitcoin has received a significant boost in 2020. Demand from large investors is now growing exponentially, and with the cryptocurrency now outpacing another major “competitor” in the form of Visa, institutional investor confidence could be further boosted.

More and more institutions and large investors are entering the crypto market through Grayscale, a large asset management firm, and the bitcoin futures of CME Group’s options exchange. Grayscale’s assets under management are now already close to $17 billion, while the CME bitcoin futures’ open interest is consistently above $1 billion.

Ironically, Visa has shown increasing interest in the crypto market in recent months, after two major payment service providers and competitors, Paypal and Square, also started betting on Bitcoin.

For example, Wirex, a company that issues Visa debit cards for cryptocurrencies, has been named a strategic partner of Visa Europe. Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s senior director of cryptocurrencies, says in this regard:

“Digital currencies have the potential to extend the value of digital payments to even more people and regions. We’re excited to partner with innovative fintech companies like Wirex, which enables their customers to pay with digital currencies at more than 61 million retailers in the Visa network.”

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Yes Bank joins with VISA to launch a new set of E-series debit cards
Tags: Yes Bank, Debit Card, E Series Debit Cards, Banking, Visa

Yes Bank has announced a partnership with VISA to enhance payments efficiency to salaried and Yes First account holders. The customers can get VISA-branded debit cards with the new launch.

Yes Bank debit cards have existed on RuPay and Mastercard platforms. Under the E-series across Mastercard and VISA cards Yes Bank has also introduced a new line of vertical Debit cards. The E-series debit cards will provide a more consistent and seamless experience to consumers. The aim of the new move is responding to customer behaviour wherein cards are inserted lengthwise into POS terminals, ATMs for the contactless payments.

The card will have the CVV details and the card number discreetly placed at the back with the new design. The new design improves the security in ATMs or POS terminals by making it less easy to capture the details. Customers can choose Element, Engage or Explore cards depending on their banking preferences when they first come on board. They can later upgrade it to Enhance or Elevate and slowly moving it up to the coveted Emerge or Eclectic cards series. The E-series encourages card users to engage more with the bank to get privileged banking offerings without applying for the same.

The elementary benefits bundled with each card range from reward points for minimum spends and airport lounge access-to the exclusive benefits such as emergency card-blocking option with an SMS or single phone call and golfing access. Currently, some of these features are provided to members of Yes Bank’s banking programs Yes First and Yes Premia. The consumers have a choice to become eligible for a higher card variant for a fee.

The Chief Operating Officer, Yes Bank, Anita Pai stated that the bank is very happy to partner with VISA for enhancing customer experience. The new move is a part of the Bank’s vision to offer the customers the world’s best payments experience. They also see the move as a step towards India’s cashless transformation. The E-series by Yes Bank is another endeavour to provide wider access to secure and convenient payment services.