It's been almost three weeks since the start of our sports fest. Between the weekly basketball and badminton games, the bowling night I was unable to attend, and chess and table tennis games to come, the current standing are as follows:
Volleyball Winners
Women's: Thermovar
Men's: Thermovar and Service 1
Basketball Standings
Sales/Admin: 2 - 1
Thermovar: 2 - 1
Service 1 : 1 - 2
Service 2 : 1 - 2
Badminton Standings
Sales/Admin: 1 - 1
Thermovar: 0 - 2
Service 1: 1 - 1
Service 2: 2 - 0
Bowling Rankings (3 games, 12 players)
1. Thermovar: 3153
2. Admin & Sales: 3139
3. Service 2: 2861
4. Service 1: 2649
Men's Bowling Individual Winners (3 games)
1. Rey Basa: 396
2. Greg Amista: 392
3. Gogo Espinosa: 351
Women's Bowling Individual Winners (3 games)
1. Lisa Pallarca: 308
2. Rachelle Corpuz: 280
3. Mena Guevarra: 268
As usual, people are still prepped for the upcoming games. Unfortunately, that also means some are getting too diligent with their practice, playing chess games during work time.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
A new HR in the Block
During the previous years in Amici, HR stuff had been wanting a home in our company. HR was not a single, orderly department, but several functions assigned among many hard-pressed multitasking people. Payroll was done before by admin, then marketing, then accounting. IDs and business cards are handled by IT or graphics design. Record keeping was not done at all till last year. Job screening and interviews were done by the operations manager. Government contributions were outsourced to an accounting company. And our company handbook, with the written code of discipline, was dreamed for so long, but never materializing.
But those are changing fast. Since last month, we finally have a dedicated HR department. With Ms Celna on board our team, we have high expectations. The past couple of weeks, we're already seeing solid policies for review and implementation. This week, we're back to the drawing board with job analyses. We're going back to the basics, laying once again foundations to our fast-growing company, not to alienate the traditions, but to augment and let our company spirit rise higher and more strongly.
It might sound odd to be doing this now, when one considers that we're past 13 years, the average life span of a company. But really, with all the changes we've gone through, especially the ups and downs of the past two years, we feel young. It's a brave new world.
But those are changing fast. Since last month, we finally have a dedicated HR department. With Ms Celna on board our team, we have high expectations. The past couple of weeks, we're already seeing solid policies for review and implementation. This week, we're back to the drawing board with job analyses. We're going back to the basics, laying once again foundations to our fast-growing company, not to alienate the traditions, but to augment and let our company spirit rise higher and more strongly.
It might sound odd to be doing this now, when one considers that we're past 13 years, the average life span of a company. But really, with all the changes we've gone through, especially the ups and downs of the past two years, we feel young. It's a brave new world.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Sportsfest Opened Early
Our 2011 sportsfest officially opened last March 25 at the Amoranto Sports Center in A. Roces Ave., Quezon City. The schedule was somewhat unexpected to mainly due to three things. First, it was held together with our quarterly General Assembly. Second, that it was held before April. And lastly, it was a whole day Friday event.
The event started with our 2nd GA of the year. Unlike our previous one held last January, this one was less workshop and more about recognizing our people and their distinctive achievements during the first quarter. These include major sales of A.O. Smith's residential and commercial heat pumps, a mall-sized chilled water air conditioning system, wave ball wave generator, swimming pool water treadmill, and diesel-run Aurora fire pump. The GA was short and, true to management's fears, a little overshadowed by the subsequent sports fest.
The festivities started ala-Olympics with Mr. Gogo Espinosa running around the gym and lighting the torch. After a brief confusion on what to do with the torch, Gogo lead the oath of sportsmanship. Then, it was the team and muse parades. Kelly represented Admin/Sales, and Glodys stood for Thermovar. Service 1 Team stole Len from the Admin group, while Service 2 had Otep's daughter.
The Thermovar group's fiercely competitive spirit was visible early on, with their classy Adidas yellow and black uniforms. Admin/Sales displayed a more fun-fun spirit, with their Amici Blue uniforms, along with dorky blue balloon hats and accessories made the previous day. They even got to share more balloon hats of different colors to the Service teams.
The sports fest games started with two fun games, courtesy of Jheng and Gay. The first game was a crazily tiring for a fun game. Five randomly selected players on each team played a sack relay race. The twist is that instead of switching players on each loop, the players already jumping had to fetch team members one by one. In effect, the first player had to go round 5 times, and the second player 4 times.
The second game was a best-of-3 eggplant and matchbox game. An eggplant was tied with a rope on the player's waist to hang so that it didn't touch the floor. The player's goal was to get the matchbox on the floor to reach a finish line by swinging the eggplant. Ryan handily won the first round, but Pando squeaked past Ryan the second round. On the last round, it looked like a close game, until Pando managed to move his matchbox in the opposite direction.
After the fun games, we had women's and men's volleyball game. The service groups refrained from joining the women's game. For the women's volleyball, Thermovar handily won the game. For the men's volleyball, Thermovar won 2 to 1 against the Admin/Sales team. Between the Service groups, Team 1 got the best of Team 2.
After the volleyball came the much anticipated opening basketball games. Game 1 was between Service Team 1 and Admin/Sales. During the first half, it was a close game despite Service Team 1 leading pretty much. However, the second half became a rally point for the Admin/Sales from which Service Team 1 just never recovered. Admin/Sales concentrated on tighter defense in the paint and on the point guard, which lead to steals, turnovers, better defensive rebounds, lots of fast breaks, and ultimately a blow out.
Game 2 was a fierce battle between Thermovar and Service Team 2. While Service Team 2 had the tallest players around, Thermovar had avid fans of NBA, which translated to high basketball IQ. The highly competitive Thermovar also had the loudest cheerers. (That had its own disadvantage: it made third parties cheer for the unsupported underdogs.) For most of the game, Service Team 2 struggled without a point guard. Thermovar, on the other hand, played consistently throughout the game.
The fourth quarter proved a different story. Service Team 2 gained momentum early fourth quarter to close in on the game and made for a tense last-2-minute seesaw game, and overtime. During overtime, Service Team 2 gained fresh legs when a personnel returned just in time from a service job. They went on to finally notch the back-from-behind win.
Admin/Sales: 1 - 0
Thermovar: 0 - 1
Service 1: 0 - 1
Service 2: 1 - 0
After basketball, Ms. Celna from HR announced the winners for best muse and costume. Glodys of Thermovar was the best muse, while the Admin/Sales team won best costume.
It was a whole day event. The first shots have been fired. We got back to our office at 5:30pm. But people are already looking forward to the succeeding games.
The event started with our 2nd GA of the year. Unlike our previous one held last January, this one was less workshop and more about recognizing our people and their distinctive achievements during the first quarter. These include major sales of A.O. Smith's residential and commercial heat pumps, a mall-sized chilled water air conditioning system, wave ball wave generator, swimming pool water treadmill, and diesel-run Aurora fire pump. The GA was short and, true to management's fears, a little overshadowed by the subsequent sports fest.
The festivities started ala-Olympics with Mr. Gogo Espinosa running around the gym and lighting the torch. After a brief confusion on what to do with the torch, Gogo lead the oath of sportsmanship. Then, it was the team and muse parades. Kelly represented Admin/Sales, and Glodys stood for Thermovar. Service 1 Team stole Len from the Admin group, while Service 2 had Otep's daughter.
The Thermovar group's fiercely competitive spirit was visible early on, with their classy Adidas yellow and black uniforms. Admin/Sales displayed a more fun-fun spirit, with their Amici Blue uniforms, along with dorky blue balloon hats and accessories made the previous day. They even got to share more balloon hats of different colors to the Service teams.
The sports fest games started with two fun games, courtesy of Jheng and Gay. The first game was a crazily tiring for a fun game. Five randomly selected players on each team played a sack relay race. The twist is that instead of switching players on each loop, the players already jumping had to fetch team members one by one. In effect, the first player had to go round 5 times, and the second player 4 times.
The second game was a best-of-3 eggplant and matchbox game. An eggplant was tied with a rope on the player's waist to hang so that it didn't touch the floor. The player's goal was to get the matchbox on the floor to reach a finish line by swinging the eggplant. Ryan handily won the first round, but Pando squeaked past Ryan the second round. On the last round, it looked like a close game, until Pando managed to move his matchbox in the opposite direction.
After the fun games, we had women's and men's volleyball game. The service groups refrained from joining the women's game. For the women's volleyball, Thermovar handily won the game. For the men's volleyball, Thermovar won 2 to 1 against the Admin/Sales team. Between the Service groups, Team 1 got the best of Team 2.
After the volleyball came the much anticipated opening basketball games. Game 1 was between Service Team 1 and Admin/Sales. During the first half, it was a close game despite Service Team 1 leading pretty much. However, the second half became a rally point for the Admin/Sales from which Service Team 1 just never recovered. Admin/Sales concentrated on tighter defense in the paint and on the point guard, which lead to steals, turnovers, better defensive rebounds, lots of fast breaks, and ultimately a blow out.
Game 2 was a fierce battle between Thermovar and Service Team 2. While Service Team 2 had the tallest players around, Thermovar had avid fans of NBA, which translated to high basketball IQ. The highly competitive Thermovar also had the loudest cheerers. (That had its own disadvantage: it made third parties cheer for the unsupported underdogs.) For most of the game, Service Team 2 struggled without a point guard. Thermovar, on the other hand, played consistently throughout the game.
The fourth quarter proved a different story. Service Team 2 gained momentum early fourth quarter to close in on the game and made for a tense last-2-minute seesaw game, and overtime. During overtime, Service Team 2 gained fresh legs when a personnel returned just in time from a service job. They went on to finally notch the back-from-behind win.
Admin/Sales: 1 - 0
Thermovar: 0 - 1
Service 1: 0 - 1
Service 2: 1 - 0
After basketball, Ms. Celna from HR announced the winners for best muse and costume. Glodys of Thermovar was the best muse, while the Admin/Sales team won best costume.
It was a whole day event. The first shots have been fired. We got back to our office at 5:30pm. But people are already looking forward to the succeeding games.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
April Sports Fest
April Summer is next month, and sports fest fever is catching on. At least for the boys. With this year's basketball league coming in a few weeks, the guys have been busy with building teams, practicing, and making uniforms. Meanwhile some of the women have started plotting some crazy parlor games to add some spice to the games.
Games expected to be held include badminton, basketball, billiards, bowling, chess, darts, table tennis, and volleyball.
Games expected to be held include badminton, basketball, billiards, bowling, chess, darts, table tennis, and volleyball.
Reflections on Trust
Last February 23, a few of us attended a forum entitled "Leading at the Speed of Trust" by Stephen M.R. Covey in Makati Shangri-la. (Stephen M.R. Covey is the eldest son of Stephen R. Covey, author of the immensely popular Seven Habits book.) It was a sort of synopsis to his book "The Speed of Trust". We were seated in a table right before the big projector screen at the right side of the Rizal Ballroom. While our seats left much to desire, everyone of us had something to take home from the forum, not just a bag, a book, and a deck of cards, but also insights, new ideas, and blooming plans. And breakfast was good.
Trust is normally thought an intangible relation between parties. It's in the spectrum of abstract values like love, care, faith, etc. It is so basic to life that we don't actually delve on it often or deeply.
One key realization that is at the core of Covey's book and forum is that when we really think about it, trust is an economic metric. As an economic metric, trust is given a very visible importance to businesses and leaders.
Lack of trust creates layers upon layers of bureaucracy and paperwork. It often leads to unnecessary checks, replication of work or even throwing work out. With loss of trust, decisions stall, business is hampered, and the world slows down. It's a tax.
When we build a good trust relation, we are able to streamline processes. We can work based on the spirit of good will and laws rather than follow everything to the letter and trust nobody. With trust, we are able to do our work much faster, build on the trusted works of others, and elevate our combined effectiveness.
There are apparently two aspects of trust: trust as an integrity concern, and trust as a competency concern. Gaining the speed of trust needs both.
When we say we trust a friend, we mean that we believe our friend to know and act in accordance to our common interest.
When we say we trust a report, we believe that the report is accurate or good enough for our needs. We trust that the output of the person who made the report was competently made.
Somewhat ironically, checks and balances are integral in creating high trust. Checks and balances work to build a baseline level of assurance, that either removes doubts or guaranties particular assumptions.
The value of trust is present perhaps in all relations a company may hold over its lifetime. Even a comprehensive system of checks and balances require trust in the system, for it to to work.
As a company determined to excel in and out, Amici must find a good balance in its evolving system of checks and balances, that can foster greater trust, and eventually accelerated growth. We look to improve relationships with customers and with vendors, as well as between employees.
Trust is normally thought an intangible relation between parties. It's in the spectrum of abstract values like love, care, faith, etc. It is so basic to life that we don't actually delve on it often or deeply.
One key realization that is at the core of Covey's book and forum is that when we really think about it, trust is an economic metric. As an economic metric, trust is given a very visible importance to businesses and leaders.
Lack of trust creates layers upon layers of bureaucracy and paperwork. It often leads to unnecessary checks, replication of work or even throwing work out. With loss of trust, decisions stall, business is hampered, and the world slows down. It's a tax.
When we build a good trust relation, we are able to streamline processes. We can work based on the spirit of good will and laws rather than follow everything to the letter and trust nobody. With trust, we are able to do our work much faster, build on the trusted works of others, and elevate our combined effectiveness.
There are apparently two aspects of trust: trust as an integrity concern, and trust as a competency concern. Gaining the speed of trust needs both.
When we say we trust a friend, we mean that we believe our friend to know and act in accordance to our common interest.
When we say we trust a report, we believe that the report is accurate or good enough for our needs. We trust that the output of the person who made the report was competently made.
Somewhat ironically, checks and balances are integral in creating high trust. Checks and balances work to build a baseline level of assurance, that either removes doubts or guaranties particular assumptions.
The value of trust is present perhaps in all relations a company may hold over its lifetime. Even a comprehensive system of checks and balances require trust in the system, for it to to work.
As a company determined to excel in and out, Amici must find a good balance in its evolving system of checks and balances, that can foster greater trust, and eventually accelerated growth. We look to improve relationships with customers and with vendors, as well as between employees.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
FB et al in the Office
It's more than a month now since we blocked facebook and youtube from our office network from 8:30 - 12 and 1:30 - 5:30. I wonder how people here have reacted over it.
It's actually been debated since early 2009, whether to do just that or not. The primary problem then was loss of productivity. Restaurant City and Farmville (along with Plants vs Zombies) were grave dangers to work time. Even before, non-stop chatting in YM was already an issue. It seems staying largely unseen by the boss was enough temptation for quite a few.
By large, I resisted having a permanent ban on FB along with some other sites. We want our people to choose the right thing, and be smart about stuff like this. FB and other sites can be good stress relievers after all.
2009 Team building helped some with that regard. After that, clear and blatant abuse were less common, although it was still much of a problem with people stationed in unwatched, far away places.
2010 however brought even more important reasons to do something about it. High bandwidth streaming sites like Youtube was hurting our VPN and email. Then sometimes, we find people fighting because of some status update commonly read wrong or hitting too close to the heart, or below the belt. People here are getting their fun in FB at the expense of others, methinks.
(There's something ironic when people fight because of something said in Facebook. It was supposed to help connect people. But on those times, it was virtually helping connect punches between otherwise good friends. People stopped talking straight. FB was replacing normal human interaction. Scary.)
One interim step I took was to temporarily disable web access to certain sites to specific computers that were found exceeding their "breaktime" quota. But that's unnecessarily Big Brother for me.
So we're now where we are. In the mean time, they're off-limits during work hours. Hello to shorter lunch time.
It's actually been debated since early 2009, whether to do just that or not. The primary problem then was loss of productivity. Restaurant City and Farmville (along with Plants vs Zombies) were grave dangers to work time. Even before, non-stop chatting in YM was already an issue. It seems staying largely unseen by the boss was enough temptation for quite a few.
By large, I resisted having a permanent ban on FB along with some other sites. We want our people to choose the right thing, and be smart about stuff like this. FB and other sites can be good stress relievers after all.
2009 Team building helped some with that regard. After that, clear and blatant abuse were less common, although it was still much of a problem with people stationed in unwatched, far away places.
2010 however brought even more important reasons to do something about it. High bandwidth streaming sites like Youtube was hurting our VPN and email. Then sometimes, we find people fighting because of some status update commonly read wrong or hitting too close to the heart, or below the belt. People here are getting their fun in FB at the expense of others, methinks.
(There's something ironic when people fight because of something said in Facebook. It was supposed to help connect people. But on those times, it was virtually helping connect punches between otherwise good friends. People stopped talking straight. FB was replacing normal human interaction. Scary.)
One interim step I took was to temporarily disable web access to certain sites to specific computers that were found exceeding their "breaktime" quota. But that's unnecessarily Big Brother for me.
So we're now where we are. In the mean time, they're off-limits during work hours. Hello to shorter lunch time.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Letterhead Through the Years
Our company letterhead has gone through several iterations over the the last decade. I still remember the first one with the red A over the M logo. That was maybe 1997. If I find a copy of that one, I'll post it here.
2000 - 2005 Letterhead
2008 - 2009 Letterhead
A designer's rendition of our letterhead. Minimalistic design. Symmetry.
2010 Letterhead
This is really just a minor revision. A line of brand logos was added to put some connection to water products.
2011 Letterhead Revisions
This year's letterhead is a major revamp. Why another change? The 2010's line of logo felt tacked in. The 2008 design is elegant, but sometimes we need the company name somewhere there.
In the header are the company logo and specific company details. To adapt the letterhead to our other branches, only the header needs to be modified.
I have had mixed reactions to the logo placement on the upper right corner. It's definitely not common. Nevertheless, I felt a right aligned header magnifies reader focus to the content of the letter.
In previous iterations of this design, all the letterhead text are grayed instead of solid black to further emphasize the document content. But printing issues have made the text too dithered and illegible. So we settled with solid black.
The lower left box of brand logos balances the weight of the upper right header placement. The logos are small but recognizable. It might be an issue if you read things with a magnifying glass. But again, I didn't want the all-too-many logos to detract reader focus. When the reader, out of curiosity, gives attention to the small logos, she will hopefully not find it hard to distinguish the brands we represent.
The lower center box are tag lines of our products and markets, centered for the persons unfamiliar in our industry. Our website is also put here at the bottom, to act as a portal for the recipient to get more company information.
Last but not the least, the lower right box emphasizes to the reader the national level of our business.
2000 - 2005 Letterhead
Our early 200x logo just slightly evolved over 5 years as we added brand logos in the footer. We used A.O. Smith's electrical motor logo rather the Water Heaters logo, even though we were much bigger into water heaters than motors.
2006 - 2008 Letterhead
This revision was due to a change in logo. As part of a marketing strategy, we wanted "Water Systems" in our logo. "Amici" as a word is obviously rather generic. The Amici pizza shop wasn't commercialized then. Nowadays, we get confused reactions from callers mistaking us for the pizza parlor.
2010 Letterhead
2011 Letterhead Revisions
This year's letterhead is a major revamp. Why another change? The 2010's line of logo felt tacked in. The 2008 design is elegant, but sometimes we need the company name somewhere there.
In the header are the company logo and specific company details. To adapt the letterhead to our other branches, only the header needs to be modified.
I have had mixed reactions to the logo placement on the upper right corner. It's definitely not common. Nevertheless, I felt a right aligned header magnifies reader focus to the content of the letter.
In previous iterations of this design, all the letterhead text are grayed instead of solid black to further emphasize the document content. But printing issues have made the text too dithered and illegible. So we settled with solid black.
The lower left box of brand logos balances the weight of the upper right header placement. The logos are small but recognizable. It might be an issue if you read things with a magnifying glass. But again, I didn't want the all-too-many logos to detract reader focus. When the reader, out of curiosity, gives attention to the small logos, she will hopefully not find it hard to distinguish the brands we represent.
The lower center box are tag lines of our products and markets, centered for the persons unfamiliar in our industry. Our website is also put here at the bottom, to act as a portal for the recipient to get more company information.
Last but not the least, the lower right box emphasizes to the reader the national level of our business.
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