5 Important Gadgets for Executives

Eying your next promotion? Wanting the pride of finally telling your in-laws you're a corporate bigwig? To get there, you need some gadgets. And these 5 gadgets are indispensable for any executives:

1. Blackberry


This is to confirm to your colleagues and superiors that you're so dedicated to your professional career, you refuse to leave all your work at your desk. You're demonstrating your commitment to the corporate world by having the ability to work even when you're having a loo.

2. Second, cheaper and simpler handphone


You don't want to mess around with your main handphone line, therefore a second line with a second phone is a must. This is important to elude the loan sharks, pay-day creditors, mortgage banks and other collection or repossession personnel from contacting you, since most of your loans are in their delinquent lists. You may blame your small wage increment, but wait till you hear about the allowance cut.

3. Toiletries Bag


You know that even you work your butt all day through all those e-mails, papers and slides, there's always more incoming waiting for you. Yes, when it's time for his tee-off, you being an @55 kisser (we understand, you have to) will take over and finish all his pending task for the day. Which, of course, extend to the night. You need to feel fresh for your midnight coffee outings, or even to start the next day without going back home. Lucky you, toiletries can fit in a bag. Lucky you, toilets are everywhere.


4. Monthly Pass for Bus/Rapid Transit


Forget about owning your own ride. It will only get you out of your neighborhood before massive traffic jams start making you realize your 24 hours are mostly spent banging your steering wheel and cursing the queue jumpers. Public transport is the pride of executives, after all, you still need your sleep there after coming back from the office in the wee morning yesterday.

5. Punching Bag


Come on..after those insults from your boss, the endless grapevine about your lack of taste in fashion, your ire with the mouth of department's secretary, and your uncooperative colleagues, you need something to unleash your fury. And you know your partner/spouse is much more irritated since you always miss your dinner, so the punching bag is a more likely option.


P/S: RSS readers are important too, since you can subscribe to my feed for more insights on the corporate career. Or you can also receive my writings through e-mails. No spam included.

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How To Promote Your (Useless) Product Using No Budget

It is a well-known fact that consultant's clients are not that clever in marketing their own stuff. Most probably they just woke up from bed one day and.....

Dumb@55: Hey.. let's invent something and make a fortune out of it!

Clever Friend: Wait a minute..how do you know they will sell?

Dumb@55: Don't worry..we hire a marketing consultant. They'll surely find a way!

Clever Friend: Gee..you're right! Let's get the R&D runnin'! (Started thinking on changing his name)

These people started to locate some VCs to fund their project, but of course, being a useless product, they'll never secure one.

VC: I don't think there's a demand whatsoever for the product you're inventing. You're wasting my time.

Dumb@55: I'll take that as an insult to my intelligence and 'positively' take that as a challenge.

Dumb@55 Friend (formerly known as Clever Guy): We'll fork out our savings to pursue our goals. There's no reward without risk. We're risk taker.

And so they went broke because the R&D cost more than what they expected (stupid inventions needs endless corrective modifications) and their remaining budget is only left for promoting the product.

Dumb@55: Ok, let's start promoting it. Any good marketing consultant you know?

Dumb@55 Friend: Gobloc Insulting is the best. I heard the guy running it is filthy rich. Must be very successful. (Considering changing back his name)

Fortunately, I'm notorious for guerrilla (read: cheap-skate) marketing, so we took the project.

Dumb@55: We borrowed 2mil from our relatives who sold off all their real estate properties to fund the marketing expenses for this product.

Me: I'm sorry, your budget is only sufficient for my profit margin. Therefore the product will have zero budget for actual promotion.

Clever Friend (previously Dumb@55 friend): But you still can promote it right?

Me: Depends on how far are you guys willing to go to promote...

Dumb@55: We've risk loosing our entire family tree for this project. Go figure.

Me: Good. Now...Your product, along with you, will get international exposures, endless discussions and eternal place in the history. And..did I mention we're promoting it on Television?

Dumb@55: You gotta be kiddin' man..With zero promotion budget?

Me: I'm THE Black Zedd. I'm dead serious. Now get me some plain T-shirts. Print your product name on them. Put 'em on and follow what these people are doing:

Me: In order to get the best return out of the zero sum you're spending, strive for comments like these:

Dumb@55: Got it! You're a genius! (considering changing his name)

Me: Good luck. And don't forget to subscribe to my feed for more brilliant marketing tactics. Or stumble and digg this advice to share with other sorry 'inventors' like you.

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What's Wrong With My Speech On Career Advice?

Last week I was invited to give a speech to a group of university students on "Career Advice: Progressing Through The Corporate Ladder". Being a highly successful corporate figure, I thought this is a great opportunity to share my 'career advice'.

But I was intrigued on why my speech was ill-received by the organizers.

Take a look at my speech. Go figure.

*****

"You have a recognized degree from the best institution. You have a formidable background as an active student. You got some experiences from the part-time job you took back then during your semester break. You have all the skills to attain success. You have everything it takes to succeed in the corporate world.

Almost.

You forgot the fact that you don't have the bottom-line.

THE REALITY.

You have a recognized degree

But those subjects you took never include "The principle of back-stabbing" or "Excuse Creation Methodology". The personal development courses you took didn't cover the topic of "How to kick your boss without actually doing it" And the list of textbook you have to buy (and read, if you actually read it) never mention my Book5hit- The True Definitions of Corporate Jargons.


You're an active student

But being an active employee is different from an active student. You will not be active if you fulfill your job description.

Active employee always wonder around departments, looking for new accomplice to spread the latest rumors about their archenemies (usually: bosses, recently promoted peers). If there's nothing to spread, then the time should be spent creating one.

Of course, alternate subjects to pass on to others include your daily whining of your co-workers, disgracing your neighbors and even talking about what 'improvements' you would make if you're the company CEO.

If you don't participate in this grapevine- you're a totally passive junk.

You got experiences from the part-time job

But, as long as it's on a part-time basis, YOU WILL NEVER GET THE REAL DEAL. Corporate career needs endurance. Think of it. You have to learn how to treat your office like your neighborhood. You WILL spend almost your entire week there. Including your sleep.

And why neighborhood? Because your 'house' is going to be your cubicle. And it's smaller than your drawer, so you'll consider having room to sit as the ultimate "HR BENEFIT".

Part-time jobs will never equip you with such endurance. Without endurance, you'll never survive.


You have all the skills to attain success.

But not to fake them. Do you think promotion is all about hard-work? It's about making your boss THINK that you work hard. You don't actually impress your boss. You cheat them. You don't earn your promotion. You steal them.

I'm here not because I'm smart.

I'm here because I'm devious. And, therefore, I AM SMART."

*****

(what's wrong with them?)

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How I Turn Blog Readers Into (More) Profit

I've read somewhere on the net that your blog traffic varies greatly between weekdays and weekends. Yes, weekends produce lackluster traffic figures. If you're experienced blogger, I guess you'll tend to agree with these facts (from problogger.net):

1. Readers were most active at the beginning and end of work weeks
2. Weekend reading was minimal

And if you have your common sense, you should know why this happens. During weekends, most readers are away on their holiday. They're enjoying their break from work. So they don't read blogs. Which brings me to my point.

"Most of blog readers are paid to read blogs."

..by their employer. They turn up in their office, power-up their computers, and begin blog-surfing.

They're not paid according to the number of comments they left, or how many millions of advertisements they suck in, but rather, their educational qualification and previous work experience.

I, as the owner of my company, see this trend as very promising indeed.

I therefore stripped all computers on my office from any internet connection except from our intranet (that I paid my personal friend hefty sum from the company to develop, which of course, some of them returns to me) and introduce a new (yes, another) HR policy for the sake of motivation.

Now, every employee who managed to achieve their weekly KPI (yes, I assigned them weekly because our HR consultant who is paid to do this is also my personal friend) will have their internet connection restored on the next Monday to read blogs, just for the single day of course.

The result? Brilliant. Productivity and profit soared as people are motivated from their needs of blogs.

Even I attributed the whole Monday for blog reading, I didn't loose anything at all since they just end up net-surfing and gossiping, and creating excuses for late turn-up during the day.

Blog reading is their carrots. Money is mine.

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Behind Those Employee Benefits

"Great!!"

That's how my recent interview candidate reacted when I told him about our company's benefits. Sure, we have tons of them. For our employees. For the love of "Motivation".

But what a naive these people are. Yes, we corporate companies give lots of benefits. But do you really think it's for your benefits? It's the other way around! Let's take a more enlightening close-up shall we?


Laptops

Do you really think it's for your convenience to work on the go? Nonsense. It's to nullify any probable excuse you might give to explain your failure to complete those ridiculously-timed tasks we give.

Now you can even work on your bed- halfway through your sleep! So please, no more "I don't have enought time" attitude.

BlackBerries

So it's a known hype nowadays that each aspiring CEO-to-be must have the portable e-mail device. So we give it free to our executives. Not to appreciate them, nor giving a boost for their convenience.

It's because we want them to answer all our annoying one-liner emails inquiring irrelevant questions that we can obviously find the answer ourselves had we take 1sec to think. So we, the top management, can always delegate everything to them, including thinking- whenever and wherever they are.

Company Cars

Our executives can kiss their weekend goodbye! With our company cars, they'll have no excuse whatsoever for those outstation run. Since everything is given to them, we need to only ask one authoritative question: "We've given everything you need for work FOC, so why don't you make them useful by doing this errant eh?"

Golf Club Membership

It's not for their leisure, it's for them to play golf with our clients. They will not find any time to play privately, as I will continuously slot every available time from their golfing schedule for my client's entertainment.

Panel Clinics and Doctors

We're providing free medical attention to our staffs, so they have the total peace of mind knowing they could not attempt to forge any Medical Leave certificate nor fool the doctors with any internal, impossible-to-detect sickness in exchange for a day-off from the office. Yes, our doctors are trained and motivated to reduce the number of medical leave to a possible zero.

Employee Benefits = More Work And No Play

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