Hey Sun Tzu,
As a manager of my establishment, i manage a bunch of people. And yesterday, one of my staff from a foreign land, who joined us recently because he married a local person, just happened to forget to complete a task i had ask him to. It happened he was busy doing all the other things i had asked him to do. When i scolded him, he was looking away - i kept telling him to look at me when i was talking to him.. and i kept on and on and on, raising my voice.. until i told him that i don't think he was interested to work there. He wanted to resign immediately and said, here you go, my resignation. Immediately, i realised the monster in me. He opened up about how i treated him differently and others differently. I never was like that... how could i be?? i apologised to him immediately. Resolved the problem immediately. I realised deep within myself the pressures of the job had been bottling up and i had to let it go... but i should not have done it like that.
I read in the papers the next day, an article that mentioned that gone are the days of being authoritative and loud. People don't need that anymore. Respect is earned and not demanded. We all make mistakes. I realised myself more now. For the next few days, i got to know my staff, especially the one i shouted at, more and now i am getting more work out of him because when you respect the staff, they respect you back in return.
In the book, ice cream maker, i learnt that our most important customers are our staff. Treat them well, they will treat the outside customers well.. I am learning ...
i have been able to manage professionals before and its not very difficult...but managing the non professionals.. is really more challenging. Mindset, patience, training, etc now become important in all this..
The art of war has to be changed to the art of love in management...
lesson 1 of my entrepreneurial days...
signing off..
mystical mo
our cat... We found her in our backyard when we moved into our house and then she never wanted to leave the backyard. We could not feed her proper food as we are vegetarians. But she still loved the bread mixed with milk we used to give her every day... When she grew, the tom cats were infactuated by her beauty and then she used to keep coming back to deliver her litters.... one of the little ones which we loved we called kit kat.. 
