Asian Tiger

Today’s corporations are continuously measuring their employees on their performance and contribution to the overall organisations growth. Going are the days where apple polishing your superiors would ensure a good appraisal for that year. Nowadays, everything is about numbers — more specifically, measurable numbers that can be translated into the organisation’s goals.

As managers, the challenge is to set appropriate numbers for our team members to ensure that:

1. The organisation’s goals and objectives are reflected in the KPIs
2. These KPIs can be easily measured
3. These KPIs are logically achievable
4. Team members are able to excel if they put in efforts

One of the considerations I make whenever I set a new KPI is to take into account the above as well as setting the target low so as to let my team members know that these KPIs are achievable. 6 months into the measurement, I will then raise the bar so that my team members will not develop the lackadaisical attitude towards the new KPI but rather to push them to better their performance.

Apart from the above, one good practice when setting KPIs is to measure ratios instead of absolute numbers; e.g. profit margin versus profit; growth % versus revenue increase. Ratios are more meaningful compared to absolute numbers and takes into account of relativity.

I have always have had this dilemma. When is the right time for me to send my kids to swimming lessons? At what age should they start to learn how to swim? Asian parents generally are very protective of their offspring and like many, my wife would say a 7 year old is still too young to swim. What if they drank the pool water? What if water entered their nose? Worse still, what if the water entered their lungs? I know, paranoia.

My English friend, John, on the other hand, started her daughter’s swimming lessons when she was a few months old! I repeat, few months old! When John came a visiting us, we would hit off to the swimming pool on weekends. John will just throw is baby into the pool and to see the baby squirming underwater made a lump in my throat. A few seconds later, John will pick up the kids and they both laughed at each other. He does this every time we went swimming and does it countless of times. I will never do that to my kids - the fear of uncertainty is too intense for me.

John told me not to worry as babies and swimming are like ducks taking it to the water. I don’t know about ducks and I don’t think I will ever put my kids underwater; after all, I only started learning how to swim when I was 9.

Whenever I travel, I am extremely reluctant to use the hotel’s computers - you know, the ones that they allow you to use free at the hotel lobby; even those located in business centers. All because I fear a keylogger that may be planted in the machine.

Keyloggers come in 2 forms; software or hardware. A software-based keylogger, as the term suggests, is a program that logs every keystroke of the keyboard. Some software periodically captures the screen instead of logging keystrokes. A hardware-based keylogger on the other hand is a device that is attached between the keyboard and the computer (like a dongle) to again capture all the keystrokes the unsuspecting victim enters. Alternative to the dongle method are micro-chips that are embedded directly into the keyboard itself to record activities.

Generally, keyloggers are used for malicious intents. Mainly to capture passwords and codes of victims; bank accounts, credit card information, passwords to sensitive information, etc. I’m pretty sure you know how the information thieves are going to use the captured information.

There are those who put keyloggers to good use (using screen capturing keylogger tools). Such are the examples of employers who wants to keep a tab on their employees; to ensure that their workers are not spending too much time being unproductive. Even so, there is an ethical consideration for employee privacy. This tool will also be very useful for parents to keep an eye on their children especially those spending much time online. Of late, with so many news of sex fiends preying online, I won’t be surprised if parents rush to get this tool installed.

This blog post’s last words; it pays to be on the side of caution.