*+_Praise † Grace_+*

It's been 2 months away from home since I decided to begin my career in Penang. Before I left, I could still remember my grandma pleading me not to leave. I left anyway. A great change is coming to my family. I guess these changes can be good, but nonetheless, it is inconvenient. GRAMDMA IS DOWN WITH STROKE It was on a Saturday morning that I get this news. It was difficult to swallow, but it didn't take me long to accept what happened. Grandma had always been an active person: Waking up before the sun is up to send my cousins to school, then go to the market for her daily shopping, followed by her coffee chit-chat routine at the coffee shop before heading to my aunt's saloon to help. After her nap, she would head back home to clean the house and prepare dinner for about 15 persons. All this is about to change. With her partial paralysis, she would lose all ability to perform even the most routine task. That would mean all the different families that she had ...

I finally kick-started a new improvement project in my company. The project will serve to improve the current processes in my company and to complete my Lean Six Sigma certification. The project calls on process owners such as managers, team leaders, supervisors and etc. They are all experts in their own areas: they know how things can be made simpler and easier. One of the deadliest mistake in the early stage of an improvement project as such, is to immediately rush into implementing solutions without properly understanding the real underlying problem. As experts of their respective areas, the team is often tempted to quickly throw out solutions they think would make their work easier. It is not long before all the meeting quickly escalated into a heated discussion where everyone is trying to make their opinions heard. Each one of us is too quick to speak, yet unwilling to listen to what others have to say. As a project coordinator (particularly younger than ALL of them), I strugg...