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Thứ Bảy, 5 tháng 1, 2013

America's Happiest Employee

[UPDATED] When I wrote this article I hadn’t noticed that the employee I featured, Roz Searcy at Zappos, had a Twitter handle. I just read her Twitter profile. The first sentence reads, “7+ years for the greatest company in the world!” Is there any doubt she is the happiest employee in America?
“You name it. I make it happen.” That’s what Rosalind (Roz) Searcy said when I asked her what she did for her employer, Zappos.com. I’ve met thousands of employees. I speak at their companies, conferences, or interview them for my columns and books. Most employees like their jobs and they’re grateful to have a job at a time when millions of people do not. In rare cases I meet employees like Roz, who are passionate, happy, enthusiastic, and inspired day after day and year after year. In my opinion Roz Searcy is America’s happiest employee.
I met Roz two years ago when I visited Las Vegas and requested a tour of Zappos.com headquarters in Henderson, Nevada. Zappos.com is consistently rated as one of the best places to work in the country and has built a reputation as the gold standard in customer service. I wanted to learn why so I could share the lessons with my readers. Roz showed up in a shuttle to pick me up from my hotel on the Vegas strip. I was the only one on the shuttle and Roz had no idea that I was writing a book. I soon learned that Roz picked up anyone who wanted to visit Zappos—vendors, journalists or customers.
“Why did you pick me up? I could have taken a cab,” I said. “Don’t be silly. We treat our customers like family,” Roz responded. “If you had a family member in town, wouldn’t you pick them up from the airport or hotel?” I thought Roz was the happiest shuttle bus driver I had ever seen. It’s what happened next that really surprised me. Roz parked the shuttle, walked inside the building, and took her position behind the front desk. Roz was the receptionist, yet she gladly volunteers to pick up guests as well. “From the first day I walked in the door [February 22, 2005] I knew it was the place I was going to work for the rest of my life,” Roz told me.
Two years later, December 2012, Roz is still working at Zappos, happier and more passionate than ever. One of her colleagues told me, “I’ve never seen Roz in a bad mood. As a matter of fact, the day I came to Zappos for my first interview, Roz was in her previous role as the front desk receptionist and she not only made me feel welcome, she made me feel like I was the most important visitor to the office that day—which I can guarantee you I wasn’t.”
Zappos.com is an independently run subsidiary of Amazon with nearly 1,300 employees. In September 2013, Zappos will relocate to its new headquarters in downtown Las Vegas. Roz has a new role that fits her perfectly—as a member of the downtown community team her primary function is to get to know every business owner downtown and to build relationships between Zappos and those businesses.
In Pictures: The 20 Happiest Jobs In America
Here are five reasons why Zappos inspires Roz and hundreds of happy employees.

Hire for cultural fit. Everyone I met at Zappos had a friendly, outgoing personality. From Roz to my tour guide, everyone exuded passion and enthusiasm (see the video below that I recorded with my smartphone).
Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh told me that the company hires for cultural fit. For example, one of Zappos’ core values is to “create fun and a little weirdness.” Zappos managers ask potential employees, “On a scale of one to ten, how weird are you?” The number is not as important as how people react to it. Zappos looks for people who have fun, have passion and personality, and are committed to customer service.
“At Zappos, I’m allowed to be myself,” Roz told me. “I have a strong, bubbly personality. Zappos supports me and encourages me to be me all the time. At the company I worked at before, I couldn’t be as open and personable as I am today. At Zappos I stay at a level nine or ten all day long!”
Commit to transparency. Zappos shares everything with employees, partners, and vendors—the good and the bad. True partners don’t mask results and Zappos goes the extra mile to demonstrate transparency. Daily briefings and call statistics are posted on a whiteboard for everyone to see—employees and guests. Even its all-hands company meetings are publicly available. Here’s a link to the company meeting held in November 2012. If you have three hours, you can watch everything they discussed. It’s all there.
Everything is transparent at Zappos, even the CEO’s condo. Roz told me that as part of her new tour, she takes people to Tony Hsieh’s condo to see the view of downtown. The next time you think you’re a “transparent leader,” ask yourself if you’re willing to open up your home to anyone who asks for a free tour. Hsieh walks the walk.
Help employees grow. When I met Roz two years ago, she was a receptionist. Today she is building relationships as part of the company’s move to its new headquarters. Everyone is given the opportunity to grow at Zappos.com. I even met a “goal coach” whose job was to help employees meet their personal goals. “What does that have to do with selling shoes online?” I asked. “It has everything to do with Zappos,” the coach said. The formula is remarkably simple. If leaders help people achieve their dreams, it makes them happy. Happy employees offer better service.
In Pictures: The 20 Happiest Jobs In America
Empower staff to do what’s right. Customers who call Zappos.com to order shoes or clothes will not feel pressured to get off the phone. There are no scripts or time limits for call-center employees. Hsieh once told me that an employee had spent a couple of hours on the phone with a customer. Hsieh did not ask the employee why she spent so much time with one person. Instead he asked, “Was the customer happy?” Brands that have best-in-class customer service empower their employees to do what’s in the best interest of the customer. Zappos.com views its call center employees as an extension of its marketing arm. Every unscripted conversation can help earn customer loyalty. Employees can even write personal thank you notes after a call. These simple notes make yet another emotional connection with Zappos customers.
Deliver happiness, not products. When I asked Tony Hsieh to describe Zappos.com he didn’t say “We sell shoes online.” Instead he said, “We deliver happiness.” Big difference. Hsieh is a student of happiness, literally. He quotes research into the science of happiness. He’s focused on the happiness of his employees and his customers. Leaders cannot expect their teams to deliver an exceptional customer service if they fail to understand happiness. Once you do, employees will speak about you the way Roz does of Hsieh: “Tony is an open book. He is still the same person I met eight years ago. He is very, very regular guy, funny and little weird, passionate, friendly, open and honest, inspiring and an incredible visionary.”
I talked to Roz recently and asked her if she was comfortable with the label, America’s happiest employee. “That’s interesting. In my previous role we chose nicknames for ourselves. Mine was Makena,” she said.
“Makena?” I asked.
“Yes. It means the happy one.”

Why You Should Be On Google Plus (Even Though No One Else Is)

Do you ever get the impression no one is on Google Plus? That it’s utterly devoid of the vast audience that makes Facebook so powerful? That’s exactly why you should get involved now, says consultant Linda Sherman, who is also the past CEO of ClubMed Japan. “People who are ignoring it are falling behind,” she told me in a recent interview. “You can leap ahead” by engaging, just as early Twitter adopters won huge audiences as more people discovered the service.
But what if Google Plus is just a fad – the next Friendster instead of the next Twitter? Sherman argues it has two killer apps that will eventually draw the public in. The first is Google Plus’ Communities feature, which allows groups to form around particular interests. “Three weeks ago, I wouldn’t have said Google Plus was an easy place to meet people,” says Sherman, “but now it’s amazingly different. You can even join the community as a brand, which you cannot do on Facebook, and you can interact with your potential customers, influencers, and people of interest.” Indeed, she points out, “there are a ton of influencers who are concentrating on Google Plus these days.” And as she wrote in a recent blog post, “GooglePlus can give you access to influencers who might not notice you elsewhere…There is a nice spirit of camaraderie that people seldom feel with well-established platforms.”
At this point, it also skews heavily male. “If you have a product that appeals to men,” she says, “that’s 100x more reason to devote time to Google Plus.” She’s also bullish on its business-to-business prospects. “People don’t think of Google Plus for B2B,” she says. “They think of LinkedIn, and that’s great for finding a job, but it’s a hard platform to market on. Google Plus allows for long conversations and you can build relationships.”
The second major Google Plus feature that Sherman praises is Hangouts, which enables group meetings, discussions, or demonstrations. “It’s completely unique to Google Plus,” she says. “Facebook and Twitter don’t have that.” So how can companies make use of it? You can organize a panel discussion explaining to potential customers how to use your latest software, says Sherman, and then archive it and upload it to YouTube seamlessly. Whether you’re teaching a recipe, organizing a chat with thought leaders, or doing a live product demonstration, “It looks very professional but doesn’t take much effort.”
To get started and build a solid reputation on Google Plus, says Sherman, the first step is creating differentiated content – preferably that plays to the service’s strengths by using Communities or Hangouts. “What you don’t want to do is post the same thing everywhere,” she says. “That’s really boring and spammy. I know it takes effort, but shift the timing, shift the slant, and do something different; don’t just repost Facebook and Twitter items onto Google Plus because a significant number of followers will be the same, and it makes you look like someone who’s not a thought leader and not interesting. Why would they bother commenting?”
How are you using Google Plus (or not)?

The Disappeared

Even the Soviet Union eventually acknowledged Stalin's Great Famine. Why does China still hide evidence of its own mass starvation under Mao?

BY FRANK DIKÖTTER | JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2013

For decades, the Soviet Union hid its horrors behind the Iron Curtain. The worst of them was Joseph Stalin's man-made famine in Ukraine and southern Russia, the result of his program of forced rural collectivization that claimed the lives of 7 to 10 million people in 1932 and 1933. Land, property, livestock, even houses were requisitioned as farmers became state employees forced to deliver ever higher grain quotas. Those who resisted or tried to hide food were deported to the Gulag or executed. Whole parts of the Ukrainian countryside turned into death zones. Millions perished, yet Stalin managed to silence all talk of the famine, sending those who breathed a word of it to labor camps in far-off Siberia. The census data, which would have shown a huge spike in mortality rates, were locked away for half a century.
But even before the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union, Communist Party leaders in Ukraine started investigating the famine in their own party archives. They found a wealth of gruesome documentation. Some of the most shocking evidence came from photographs of starving children with skeletal heads, ribs poking through their skin, begging for a scrap of food on the pavement in Kharkov, Ukraine's capital at the time of the famine. One picture showed emaciated corpses piled onto a cart, drumstick limbs akimbo amid a tumble of bodies. These were not a few isolated snapshots -- there were hundreds of images. Leonid Kravchuk, who would later become Ukraine's first democratically elected president, was one of the first to see this evidence. He was so haunted by the faces of the children killed by the famine that he persuaded Vladimir Ivashko, then the first secretary of Ukraine's Communist Party, to approve the reproduction of 350 photographs in a book released to the public in 1990. Today, the famine is officially and universally remembered across Ukraine as the Holodomor, literally "death by hunger."

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Propaganda posters from China's Great Famine

A man-made disaster of even greater magnitude shook China in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In a campaign he called the Great Leap Forward, Chairman Mao Zedong herded the countryside into giant collective farms in 1958, believing that they would catapult his country into a utopia of plenty for all. As in Ukraine, everything was collectivized: Villagers were robbed of their work, homes, land, belongings, and livelihood. The experiment ended in the greatest catastrophe the country had ever known; at least 45 million people died of starvation over four years, as I found out when I was given unprecedented access to recently opened Communist Party archives in China.
I read through thousands of documents: secret reports from the Public Security Bureaus, detailed minutes of top party meetings, investigations into cases of mass murder, inquiries compiled by special teams tasked with determining the extent of the catastrophe, secret opinion surveys, and letters of complaint written by ordinary citizens. Some were neatly written in longhand, others typed out on flimsy, yellowing paper. Some were excruciating to read, for instance, a report written by an investigation team noting the case of a boy in a Hunan village who had been caught stealing a handful of grain. A local Communist Party cadre forced his father to bury the boy alive. The father died of grief a few days later.
Other documents presented the famine's horror in the sterile language typical of communist bureaucracy. A police report I discovered in one provincial archive listed some 50 cases of cannibalism, all in a city in Gansu, a province in northwestern China:

Date: 25 February 1960. Location: Hongtai Commune, Yaohejia Village. Name of Culprit: Yang Zhongsheng. Status: Poor Farmer. Number of People Involved: 1. Name of Victim: Yang Ershun. Relationship with Culprit: Younger Brother. Number of People Involved: 1. Manner of Crime: Killed and Eaten. Reason: Livelihood Issues.

But despite months of patient work sifting through mountains of yellowing folders, I never came across a single photograph of the catastrophe in those archives.
Historians in Beijing explained away the lack of photographic evidence by telling me that party cadres at the time did not have any cameras, as China was still a poor country. It's not a convincing explanation: The archives are replete with criminal investigations that contain exhaustive photographic evidence from the 1950s and 1960s -- mug shots of criminals, photos of crime scenes, even rolls of film documenting land disputes between collective farms. Certainly the state propaganda machine never lacked for photographic equipment. Today, it's easy to find online black-and-white photos from 1958 to 1962 showing peasants cheerfully driving the latest tractor model through the fields; rosy-cheeked children gathering around tables laden with fresh fruit, vegetables, and meat in collective canteens; and Chairman Mao plodding through the fields in a straw hat and cotton shoes, or marveling at a bumper harvest. There are even photos of Mao's nemesis, head of state Liu Shaoqi, investigating the famine in his home district in Hunan province in 1961.

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What do Weibots think about China's Great Famine?

So what happened to the visual evidence of one of the world's most horrifying atrocities?
The Red Guards, Mao's armed revolutionaries during the Cultural Revolution, probably destroyed it. Mao launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966, in part to eliminate senior officials who criticized his reckless economic experiments that had led to the famine. As Red Guards started seizing state institutions by force in 1967, government servants destroyed records and any visual material en masse -- anything that could have discredited Mao's Great Leap Forward. Individuals with photos of the brutal starvation acted with the same impulse. Rae Yang, the daughter of a family of diplomats who had served abroad, saw her parents burn all the letters they had kept, as well as some old photographs, flushing the ash down the toilet.
But not all the evidence was reduced to ashes. It's a pretty good guess that photographs of the famine are still locked away deep inside party vaults. After all, some of the most sensitive material on the Great Leap Forward remains classified. Entire collections -- most of the central archives in Beijing, for instance -- remain beyond the reach of even highly accredited party historians. In their acclaimed biography of the chairman, Mao: The Unknown Story, Jung Chang and Jon Halliday report that during the Cultural Revolution, when senior officials like Liu were tortured to death, security personnel took photographs and sent them to Mao and Premier Zhou Enlai. These, too, are probably filed away in some secret gallery of horrors.
For four years, I studied Mao's famine, and only once have I seen a visual illustration of its awfulness. In 2009, I visited a historian in a drab concrete building in the suburbs of Beijing. He, too, had been working on the history of the Great Leap Forward, burrowing in archives for more than a decade and obsessively documenting the starvation that had decimated the region of his birth, a county barely 100 miles north of Mao's hometown in Hunan. Stacks of photocopied archival material bulged out of filing cabinets in his sparse office. I asked him whether he had ever seen a photograph of the famine. He frowned and reluctantly pulled out a folder with a reproduction of the only picture he had discovered. It came from the files of the party committee in his home county and was from a police investigation into a case of cannibalism. The small, fading picture showed a young man standing against a brick wall, peering straight into the camera, seemingly emotionless. By his feet stood a large pot containing the parts of a young boy, his head and limbs severed from his body.

It's 2013, And That May Actually Be A Lucky Thing

The Number 13 has a long history of being blamed for bad luck. But some spiritual and superstitious folk in South America have a good feeling about the coming year.

BUENOS AIRES - As the ghost of the Mayan apocalypse fades into the past, the spectre of a number famous for bad luck has arrived on our calendars. But some traditions actually consider 13 a lucky number.

As 2013 begins, precautions against the feared bad luck have already started. Where does this bad reputation come from? Did we survive the end of the world only to enter a year fit only for the brave?

The campaign against the number 13 has a long history. Neither Hamurabbi’s Code nor the Babylonia Civilization’s set of laws had a number 13. In Nordic mythology, the evil god Loki who betrays his father Odin, is the god number 13.

Thirteen is also related to the months of the year. The Romano-Christian Gregorian calendar has twelve months, while the lunar calendars present in many other cultures, such as the Chinese, Mayan and Celtic traditions, had 13 months with 28 days each. In the early days of the Christianity, it was common to demonize everything that was not Christian by saying that it was bad luck as a way to lure people away from paganism.

“The number 13 has a bad reputation because there were 13 apostles at the Last Supper, and one of the 13 was killed,” explains Victoria Arderius, a tarot instructor. “But if we look at it from a spiritual perspective, 13 is the number of Jesus, the brightest of men, the son of God.”

Vital Energy

To further expand on that idea, Victoria said that people who are born on the 13th day of the month are not plagued by bad luck any more than everyone else. Instead, they are “cosmic radiators,” whose emotions are contagious and can make those around them feel sad or happy. She says that this vital energy can make them beacons of hope and light for those around them.

From this esoteric perspective, people born on the 13th of the month are old souls who have had many important experiences and have developed many skills, and are able to transform the present moment. That’s what Tarot says about the number 13: the death of the old and transformation.

Victoria explained that in Tarot, the famous Nameless Arcana, which represents death, is the great equalizer, because he can come to the prince and the beggar.
"It’s a card that indicates major changes, with tears. But at the base of the card we can see that once you have crossed through pain and loss, there will be a new sunrise. It’s like we see in nature: nothing is lost, everything is transformed,” she said. “It’s likely that a year that ends with the number 13 will bring major changes that will have consequences for years to come.”

Deep meaning

At the same time, Javier Wolcoff, the president of Applied Kabbalah, goes even further from human perspectives and into the mystic. Kabbalah is the mystical tradition of Judaism that studies metaphysical causes and their consequences on the physical world.

“The first thing we have to examine is the idea of good or bad luck,” says Wolcoff. “According to Kabbalah, there is no such thing as luck. But there is an ability of humans to create his or her own reality through thoughts, and that is the danger of thinking something is bad luck. People who are saying that 2013 will be a hard year because of the number are decreeing the year to be bad, and it surely will be for them.”

In Kabbalah, the number 13 actually has many positive connotations. First of all, it is considered the number of spiritual people, because there are only 12 Zodiac signs and spiritual people are above astral influence, thus they have the 13th sign. In addition, the number 13 symbolizes creation itself, and the restoration of unity between man and God.

In short, 2013 could be a fantastic year, where we resolve old conflicts and transform for the better, as long as we are conscientious of the power our thoughts have, and don’t get too hung up on ancient ideas of bad luck.

Read the article in the original language.
Photo by - Jcdubya
All rights reserved ©Worldcrunch - in partnership with CLARIN

Thứ Sáu, 14 tháng 12, 2012

No Greater Love

A little Vietnamese orphan, a tragic mortar attack and an act of love and bravery combine to make this story. I don't know how much of it is true—all, part of none—but it was told to me as fact. And it might be all true—stranger things have happened in war. Besides, this story makes my heart feel good, and if the truth be known, it still brings tears to my eyes after all these years.
The mortar rounds had landed in the small village. Whatever their planned target had been is lost in the agony of the Vietnam war, but they had landed in a small orphanage run by an unnamed missionary group. The missionaries and one or two children had been killed outright and several children had been wounded, including one young girl, about eight years old. Since the missionaries were no longer able to tend to their young charges, people from the village helped as much as they could, but it was a couple of hours before medical help arrived in response to a runner who had been sent to a neighboring town that had radio contact with the American Forces.
The medical help was a young American Navy doctor, and an equally young Navy nurse, who arrived in a jeep with only their medical kits. A quick survey of the injured quickly established the young girl as the most critically injured and it was clear that without immediate action she would die from loss of blood and shock. A blood transfusion was imperative, but their limited supplies did not include plasma, so a matching blood type was required. A quick test showed that neither American had the correct blood type but several of the uninjured children did.
The Navy doctor spoke a little "pidgin" Vietnamese, and the Navy nurse spoke a little high school French, while the children spoke no English and some French. Using a combination of what little common language they could find, together with much impromptu sign language, they tried to explain to their frightened audience that unless they could replace some of their little friend's lost blood, she would certainly die. They then asked if any one would be willing to give some of their blood to help.
Their request was met with wide-eyed silence. Their little patient's life hung in the balance. Without the life-giving blood, she would surely die, yet they could only get the blood if one of these frightened children volunteered. After several long moments, a little hand slowly and waveringly went up, dropped back down, and went up again.
"Oh, thank you!" the nurse exclaimed in French. "What is your name?"
"Heng," came the mumbled reply.
Heng was quickly laid on a pallet, his arm swabbed with alcohol and the needle inserted in his vein. Through this ordeal Heng lay stiff, silent, and wide-eyed. After a moment, he let out a shuddering sob, quickly covering his face with his free hand.
"Is it hurting, Heng?" the doctor asked.
Heng shook his head silently, but after a few moments another sob escaped and once more he tried to cover up his crying. Again the doctor asked him if the needle in his arm was hurting him and again Heng shook his head. But now his occasional sob gave way to a steady silent crying, his eyes screwed tightly shut, his fist in his mouth trying to stifle his sobs.
The medical team was very concerned because the needle should not have been hurting their tiny patient, yet something was obviously very wrong. At this point, a Vietnamese nurse arrived to help. Seeing the little boy's distress, she spoke rapidly in Vietnamese, listened to his reply, and quickly answered him again in her soothing, reassuring voice, while stroking his forehead as she talked. After a moment, the tiny little patient stopped crying, opened his eyes, and looked questioningly at the Vietnamese nurse and when she nodded, a look of great relief spread over his face.
Looking up, the Vietnamese nurse said quietly to the Americans, "He thought he was dying. He misunderstood you. He thought you had asked him to give all his blood so the little girl could live."
"But why would he be willing to do that?" asked the Navy nurse.
The Vietnamese nurse repeated the question to the little boy who answered simply, "She's my friend."
Jesus said, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13).
—Col. John W. Mansur, Used by permission.

Thứ Hai, 10 tháng 12, 2012

3 Ways We Failed Our Way to Happiness

I. Rejected from Seven Universities

When I was 18, I wanted to be a computer scientist. So I applied to seven U.S. universities known for computer science. MIT, Cal Berkley, Georgia Tech, etc. But I got rejected by all of them.
Soon thereafter, a high school guidance counselor told me to apply to The University of Central Florida in Orlando, which had a rapidly growing computer science and engineering program. Out of desperation, I did. And I got accepted and received a scholarship.
And when I settled on Orlando, the move changed my life.
I met Angel there – my wife and the love of my life. And I met a professor, Dr. Eaglan, who convinced me to switch from the school of computer science to the school of computer engineering, with a strong focus in web design and technical writing – two skills I use today to run the blog you are reading now (a website that makes me happy and financially supports my family).
If I hadn’t been rejected by those seven computer science schools, neither of these priceless encounters would have taken place.

II. Your Writing is Not Good Enough

While in school, I began to enjoy my technical writing classes so much that I decided to take a few creative writing electives too. I absolutely fell in love with writing inspiring stories and expressing myself in prose.
So I applied for a part-time editorial position at the school newspaper. I sent them five articles I had written along with my application. Two days later I received an email which cordially explained that my writing was not good enough.
That afternoon, I went home with a bruised ego and told Angel what had happened. She hugged me and said, “Regardless of what anyone says, if writing makes you happy, you should keep writing. Because that’s what happy writers do. They write.”
And after a bit more discussion, she added, “I like writing too. We should start our own little writing club and write together.” A few minutes later, Angel and I turned on my computer and registered the domain name marcandangel.com, and our blogging days began.
In other words, if my five articles hadn’t been rejected by the school newspaper, the article you’re reading right now would never have been written.

III. Fired for Doing the Right Thing

After college Angel used her business degree to land a head store manager position at a major retailer. She was in her twenties and she was running a $40,000,000 store all by herself. Although some of the regional executives thought she was too young, she was doing far too well for them to do anything about it.
Until one day in 2009, when one of her floor managers got a DUI on a Friday evening and went to jail. He didn’t have enough money to post a $600 bail, so he called Angel to let her know that he would not be able to make it to work the next day. Angel decided to lend him the $600 he needed. The regional executives found out about this and fired Angel the next morning without a valid explanation.
Suddenly Angel had a lot of free time on her hands. While she looked around for another job, she spent her afternoons marketing our blog. She learned all about social media marketing, and opened accounts for us on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites – the primary source of traffic to our blog today.
We didn’t know it then, but the traffic was going to grow exponentially over the next three years, and by January 2012 our blog would be making enough money to completely replace Angel’s lost salary, allowing her to work on it full time and get paid for being happily passionate.
If Angel hadn’t been fired, none of this would have happened.

Failures Along the Road to Happiness

As our friend Steve Jobs once said, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
The truth is, it happens just like that. What seems like the end of the road may just be a cul de sac. It feels like rejection. It feels like failure. But it isn’t.
You simply ran out of road on that route. Time to back up, turn around, and look for a new route to get where you want to go. And as long as you keep smiling and moving forward, the road ahead is going to be far better than you can imagine. Because eventually, through all its twists and turns, it leads to happiness.
So if you’re currently struggling, hang in there. Remember, sometimes the best thing that can possibly happen to you in the long run is not getting exactly what you want right now.

20 Good Habits to Start in Your 20s

Now well into my 30s, there are several good habits I’m thankful I started in my 20s, and several more I wish I had started a decade ago. If you’re still in your 20s, or even if you’re not, I challenge you to implement the habits below into your daily routine, one at a time, starting today. A year from now, I guarantee you’ll appreciate the results.

Focus on the activities and people that make you happy. – Sometimes we make things complicated when they are really quite simple: Find what it is that makes you happy and spend more time doing it. Find who it is that makes you smile and spend more time with them. Living your dream is really just a state of mind. It’s feeling comfortable in your own skin, and realizing that where you are at any given moment is exactly where you want to be. Thus, happiness and success in life is simply the gratifying combination liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking who you do it with. Read Stumbling on Happiness.
Trust your instincts on new opportunities. – Life is too short to wait. Every new day is another chance to change your life. Every great accomplishment starts with the decision to try. Trust that little voice inside your head that says, “What if…” and then GO DO IT. You would be surprised how often “what if” works. And no, you’re not obligated to win every time. You’re obligated to keep trying – to do the best you can do every day – to be better than you were yesterday.
Build the courage to face your fears. – Everything you want is on the other side of fear. Don’t ever hesitate to give yourself a chance to be everything you are capable of being. It’s better to cross the line and suffer the consequences of a lesson learned, than to just stare at that line for the rest of your life and always wonder. And remember, courage doesn’t mean you don’t get afraid; courage means you don’t let your fear stop you.
Focus on the resources you do have access to. – It all begins and ends in your mind. What you give power to has power over you, if you allow it. Too many of us are hung up on what we don’t have, can’t have, or won’t ever have. We spend too much energy being down, when we could use that same energy – if not less of it – doing, or at least trying to do, some of the things we really want to do. So focus on the opportunities you DO have, and exploit the resources you DO have access to.
Be less busy, and more productive. – Incessant busyness is often a sign of ineffectiveness and laziness. Because it’s easy to be busy – just partake in a bunch of random activities that drains all your time. Doing so justifies never having enough time to clean, cook for yourself, go out with friends, meet new people, etc. Right? Wrong. Don’t just get things done; get the right things done. Results are always more important than the time it takes to achieve them. Read Getting Things Done.
Make your goals a priority. – Never put off or give up on a goal that’s important to you. Not because you still have tomorrow to start or try again, but because you may not have tomorrow at all. Life is shorter than it sometimes seems. Make today count.
Accept your humanness. – You can stop pretending. It feels good to own up to stuff… to admit that you’re human – a work in progress – a beautiful mess. You’re fine. Having a little anxiety is fine. Being a little fearful is fine. Your secrets are fine. You’re a good person. You’re intelligent. You’re blowing things out of proportion. You’re fine just the way you are.
Seek less approval from others. – Your ideas and choices don’t have to be on everyone’s ‘approved’ list. Regardless of the opinions of others, at the end of the day the only reflection staring back at you in the mirror is your own. Make sure you’re proud of who that person is. Approach others with the belief that you’re a good person, whether they respond positively or not. It’s normal to want the people around you to like you, but it becomes a self-imposed burden when too much of your behavior is explicitly designed to constantly reassure you of their approval.
Ignore society’s comparisons. – Constantly checking your life against one of society’s prewritten stories of how things ‘should’ be is a phony way of living. It’s sort of like renting your identity. Just be you. You are far more nuanced than anyone else’s narrative you try to fit yourself into, and more complex than society’s story of what ‘should’ be happening.
Believe in your ability to succeed. – You control the ultimate result of where you will end up, what you may become, and how successful you can be. No matter what your current circumstances are, always maintain a strong belief in your ability to succeed, and then put your beliefs to work. Do so, and in time you will amaze yourself.
Manage your money before it starts to manage you. – Too many people buy things they don’t need with money they don’t have to impress people they don’t know. Don’t be one of them. Bottom line: It’s easier to find long-term wealth by needing and spending less, instead of making more. So spend less than you earn, and always go without until you have the cash in hand. Keep six months of your salary in an emergency savings account just in case you lose your job or have an emergency that prevents you from working for a prolonged period of time. And keep a few extra hundred dollars on hand for unexpected expenses, such as car and home repair. Read I Will Teach You To Be Rich.
Let the wrong people go. – You can try your hardest, you can do everything and say everything, but sometimes people just aren’t worth trying over anymore, and they aren’t worth worrying about. It’s important to know when to let go of someone who only brings you down. The moment someone tells you that you’re not good enough is the moment you know you’re better off than they are, and better off without them.
Appreciate your true friends, and return the favor. – A friend who understands your tears and troubles is far more valuable than a hundred friends who only show up for your smiles and joys. Because a true friend accepts who you truly are, and also helps you become who you are capable of being. Friendships like this require more than just finding the right person, they also require you to be the right person. When someone believes in you enough to lift you up, try not to let them down. True friendship is a sweet responsibility to be nurtured, not an opportunity to be exploited.
Do everything with a touch of kindness. – Whatever can be done, can be done more effectively when you add kindness. Whatever words are spoken, will always be more compelling when expressed with kindness. The kind deeds you exert in just one moment can have a positive impact that lasts a lifetime. Your days will be brighter and your years fuller when you add kindness to your purpose. Choose to be kind every day, and you’re truly choosing to live in a better world.
Choose happiness. – If you can find joy in doing nothing, you can find it in everything. Learn to experience happiness without a reason and you can create happiness for any reason. Realize that happiness and joy are not always the result of good things, oftentimes they are the cause of good things. There is nothing you need in order to be happy other than the choice to be. So let go of the worries you have for what may or may not come your way. Focus instead on the good things that you can give, create, inspire and choose to experience, right here, right now. Don’t allow the world to pull you down with its negativity. Choose to transform the world around you with your own positivity.
Learn to cope with anger effectively. – When you’re infuriated with someone else, take a few deep breaths, sit quietly, and think for a moment. Acknowledge the true source of your anger. Anger bleeds from the inside out. Remember that we need to fix ourselves first before we attempt to fix or influence others. Trying to change others is a common recipe for prolonging the suffering. Taking responsibility for changing yourself, and how you deal with the actions of others, is a recipe for growth, freedom, and happiness.
Accept some responsibility for the way others treat you. – Yes, on occasion you will run into someone who is downright wicked, but for the most part, others will look to you for direction on how you want to be treated. They will test you to see what is acceptable, and then treat you the way you let them treat you. Remember, you can’t control them, but you can control what you tolerate.
Work on your inner beauty too. – Our outward acts are a manifestation of who we are on the inside. Let’s remind ourselves to love who we are from the inside out – to be pretty happy, handsomely kind, pretty smart, handsomely unique, pretty loving, handsomely lovable, pretty quirky, handsomely funny, pretty cool – and not just pretty and handsome. Read A New Earth.
Introduce a little variety into your routine. – Remember that the way you’ve always done it isn’t the only way. It’s unlikely that one of the things you’ll regret when you’re 70 is not having consumed enough beer in your 20s, or not having bought enough $6 lattes from Starbucks, or not having frequented the same night club for years. But the regret of missing out on opportunities is a real, toxic feeling. You’ve figured out drinking and going out. You’ve had enough lattes. It’s time to figure something else out. Every corner you turn or street you walk down has a new experience waiting for you. You just have to see the opportunity and be adventurous enough to run with it.
Always keep in mind that life is somewhat unpredictable. – Some of the great moments in your life won’t necessarily be the things you do; they’ll be things that happen to you. That doesn’t mean you can’t take action to affect the outcome of your life. You have to take action, and you will. But don’t forget that on any day, you can step out the front door and your whole life can change in an instant – for better or worse. To an extent, the universe has a plan that’s always in motion. A butterfly flaps its wings and it starts to rain – it’s a scary thought, but it’s part of life’s cycle. All these little parts of the machine, constantly working – sometimes forcing you to struggle, and sometimes making sure you end up exactly in the right place at the right time.

Chủ Nhật, 2 tháng 12, 2012

Vietnam's banking problems reflect turbulence in the economy

Scale of debt in banking sector and bloated state firms lays bare pernicious influences of cronyism in Asian tiger economy

Vietnamese youths display the communist emblem during a parade in Ho Chi Minh City

Vietnamese youths on parade. The ruling Communist party recently censured its own politburo over the economy. Photograph: Desmond Boylan/Reuters

Vietnam's stuttering economy, once a darling of the World Bank and a rising tiger of south-east Asia, received a further blow this week with the bailout of the crisis-struck state-owned Sacombank.
The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) announced it was preparing to inject 28 trillion Vietnamese dong ($1.4bn) into Sacombank following the resignation of the latter's chairman, Dang Van Thanh. This is the second time in recent months the central bank has found itself shoring up its ailing client banks. In August, it took the unprecedented step of publicly assuring depositors their money would be safe following the arrest of the tycoon Nguyen Duc Kien, co-founder of Vietnam's fourth-most valuable bank, Asia Commercial Joint Stock Bank.
However, Vietnam's troubles run wider than its banking sector. In 2009, in a bid to stave off the worst of the global economic downturn, the government made a huge tranche of cheap credit available to its giant state-owned enterprises (SOEs), which dominate key sectors of the Vietnamese economy. Many of these SOEs used this credit to diversify into industries in which they had little or no experience. PetroVietnam has significant concerns in hotels, securities, real estate, insurance and even taxis. Vietnam Electricity (EVN) has holdings in telecommunications and education, and shipbuilding giant Vinashin in catering, distilling and insurance.
For Vinashin, matters reached critical mass in August when it found itself pleading with creditors for a stay of execution on loan repayments. Vinashin has declared debts of 639bn VND. Other state giants are faring no better. PetroVietnam has debts of 72.3tr VND, EVN 62.8tr VND, and mining giant Vinacomin 19.6tr VND. Of the total owed by the SOEs, 200tr VND is considered bad debt.
The current difficulties come against a backdrop of Vietnam's dramatic economic rise. In two decades it has catapulted itself from one of the world's poorest countries into the World Bank's lower middle-income bracket. In real terms, per capita incomes have grown to $1,260 in 2009, from $110 20 years earlier. The party hasn't been slow to share the benefits of that rise. In 1993, 58% of the country was thought to be living below the poverty line, compared with 12% last year.
In many ways, Vietnam is a victim of its own success. Dominic Mellor, country economist at the Asian Development Bank, says concern over the country's banking system began two years ago. "While the real sector has raced ahead, growth within the financial sector has lagged significantly behind," he said. As the wider economy has blossomed, the central bank's ability to regulate and monitor that activity has stalled. Credit growth has been startling, yet there has been "little facility to assess risk and no central control over where that credit is going", according to Mellor.
In July, the central bank said bad loans comprised 8.6% of loans in the banking system; around double its previous estimate and the highest in south-east Asia.
Resentment is growing at the close – often familial – links between the key players among Vietnam's elite. Prime minister Nguyen Tan Dung's daughter, Nguyen Thanh Phuong, is rumoured to be one of the country's richest people, running Viet Capital Asset Management and a brokerage firm, Viet Capital Securities. Her brother is Vietnam's deputy construction minister. Sacombank's outgoing chairman appointed his son, Dang Hong Anh, vice-chairman. In April, To Linh Huong, the 24-year-old daughter of leading politburo member To Huy Rua, was appointed chair and chief executive of state construction company Vinaconex.
In the blogosphere, questions are being asked as to how long the situation can continue. Certainly, the ruling Communist party seems committed to reform. Two weeks ago it took the unprecedented step of publicly censuring its own ruling politburo over handling of the economy. However, earlier reforms have led to the growth of highly influential vested interests that are now working to determine exactly how far this latest set of economic changes can go.
Vietnam still boasts a stable political climate and a low-wage economy. Its burgeoning manufacturing base remains attractive to international investors. However, five years ago, multinational companies seeking to spread their bets would look to Vietnam as a natural complement to operations in China. Now that is not so certain, according to Mellor: "The perception has changed. Now people are talking about Indonesia, Myanmar [Burma] and the Philippines. Vietnam is going to have to work hard to maintain its edge."
Vietnam must now face up to reforming its state-owned enterprises. As long as they continue to leach credit from the wider economy, fundamental economic changes – including in the banking sector – will prove near impossible. Moreover, with continued foreign investment dependent upon successful reform within an increasingly competitive regional market, its importance has never been so great. Whatever happens in the wider economy, Vietnam looks set for a long and troublesome passage through its difficulties.

Vietnam Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung urged to resign

A member of the Communist-dominated parliament in Vietnam has in a rare show of dissent told PM Nguyen Tan Dung that he should resign for his mistakes in handling the economy.

Duong Trung Quoc said that it was time for the prime minister to take responsibility, not just apologise.
He urged Mr Dung to lead what he called a resignation culture.
Mr Dung responded to the attack by saying the Communist party had appointed him the top job.
"The party assigned me to continue to be the prime minister," he said.
"I did not lobby, I did not ask for, nor refuse, any assignment given by the party and state."
Mr Dung has been grappling with Vietnam's stagnating economy and a string of scandals.
Correspondents say that the attack on the prime minister on Wednesday was so unusual because it was made in front of TV cameras in parliament.
A second lawmaker, Nguyen Ba Thuyen, was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying that Mr Dung's failure to set out a plan to deal with Vietnam's economic woes had damaged public trust in the Communist leadership.
Vietnam is currently battling slow economic growth, high inflation, falling foreign direct investment and rising concern over the high level of debt in its fragile banking system.
Mr Dung, 62, was spared disciplinary action at a key Communist party meeting last month over a series of scandals that have tainted the country's leadership.
His government is accused of overseeing a culture of corruption at state-owned enterprises like Vietnam Shipbuilding Industry Group (Vinashin) and Vietnam National Shipping Lines (Vinalines).
In March, nine top officials were jailed for their roles in the near-bankruptcy of Vinashin.
In September, the former chairman of Vinalines was arrested abroad and extradited for ''alleged economic crimes''.
Mr Dung has been prime minister since 2006 and came into office amid expectations that he would continue economic and political reforms in the country.
However, a global financial crisis two years later saw Vietnam's economy slump after decades of high growth.

Vietnam will focus on reform

Posted By Ian Bremmer Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - 5:23 AM Share

By Roberto Herrera-Lim
It's easy to disparage Vietnam, whose reputation as the poster child for the economic potential of frontier market countries has taken a beating in recent years. Inflation is a persistent threat, growth is slowing, and the country's banks and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are struggling with a potentially destabilizing level of bad debts. And to top it all off, Vietnam's political leaders are fighting among themselves when the situation calls for firm action. As a result, foreign investors are left scratching their heads and wondering if Vietnam will be able to build the institutions and capabilities needed to move into the ranks of the emerging market nations.
Vietnam's institutions were not prepared for strong growth. That much is clear from the crisis that has played out over the past few years during which Vietnam's institutions and leaders mismanaged capital inflows, resulting in inflation, bad investment decisions, and near-rogue banks and SOEs. All this occurred on Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung's watch, and while he has survived at least two challenges to his leadership, he is weakened and chastened. As a result, consensus decision-making will play a greater role in coming years, while Dung's competitors (including President Truong Tan Sang) reduce his control over policymaking and tighten oversight. The near-term consequence of this dynamic will be a greater likelihood that factional competition will result in uneven policies and conflicting signals.
But don't count Vietnam out of the game yet. Historically, crises have been effective at forcing effective policy choices from the government (such as the 2001 ouster of the party's then general secretary Le Kha Phiu). The current situation is unlikely to result in Dung's exit, but it will spur a serious reexamination of economic policy, especially when it comes to better allocating investment. There is, after all, still a broad consensus among Vietnam's elites that previous reforms should remain in place and that long-term growth and sustained, equitable improvements in the quality of life are needed to ensure the survival of the communist party. The country's economy could also benefit from structural factors that are encouraging investors to consider manufacturing locations other than China.
It may be tempting for manufacturers to look to other countries in Asia, but they should not discount Vietnam's reemergence as a viable investment destination. The country's leaders may be squabbling, but they understand that failure to reform is a larger threat to their primacy than the uncertainty that comes with change.
Roberto Herrera Lim is a Director in Eurasia Group's Asia practice.