Have a break, Have a Kit Kat

Extreme leaders take breaks. Living on the edge means practicing what you preach, and a big part of this means letting go of work sometimes. This blog entry will be about blogging for a change.

The best leaders in the world blogs because of publicity, interest and self marketing. What do you blog for?

I recently voted for someone I have never met before for the Malaysian top 50 blogs. He is a running virtual acquaintance - Runwitme - running with passion. His style and approach in blogging is such a pleasant read, plus I also identify with running and photography as a passion, so it was good to see someone who can run so many races, takes photos (nice ones too!) and tell a story, all in one. It beats reading the boring yarn on technology or some other guy in the company talking about the next new technology innovation in the horizon.

Which brings me to why we blog - the human race is about interactions. Through the internet, we have propagated our message of interaction, and the best thing about blogging is that it is self-expression, no one cares about what you write, and yet you care. And it is a great means of sharing too.

I read blogs as a means of taking a break. After weekend races, I sit down to write a "race report" and then I look around for photos of the race of others. Occasionally during work days, I read some of my colleagues' or my old school friend's blogs. I also surf for blogs on my interest areas - photography, running, and gossip in general.

The human need for interaction is as simple and primal as a need to communicate and be part of society, and technology has enabled this through the virtual world of blogging.

I just joined facebook recently. I would not have seen anyone else at my organisation do this at my level. And yet, I could identify with a lot of my school friends who has done this. It is quite interesting to be linked to each other, and I have just begun exploring this degree of separation thing.

Leaders of organisations, set up your own blog site now. Set up a few. It is extremely fun!

Give you enough rope to hang yourself

I decided this blog will be about lessons I learnt from the corporate world. This is the world where I spend 12 hrs a day battling with the good, bad and ugly. In the end, I still represent a good organisation, so there is a few things I may not be able to say, but then again, there are some extreme leadership lessons I would really like to share.

The other day, one of my reporting to boss said - certain people who know how to play the game will give you enough rope to hang yourself.

This is a cruel reality - that there are those of us who urge on others but know when to back off to protect themselves, or know how to maneouver such that the roadkill or accidents do not reflect upon themselves.

I just had enough rope to hang myself recently, and I did, but I decided it was not my time yet. I learnt an ugly lesson of how things work around here, in almost my 1st year anniversary in office as a senior leader of this organisation.

Extreme leaders hurt themselves along the way. And sometimes we need to know how to give up too - I have not yet learnt this second part of the lesson, so I guess my pain threshold is high.

Extreme Leadership - a new beginning

Its the end of the financial year coming up and also when the school holidays are here for Malaysia. Most of my colleagues are either clearing leave or planning to do so next week to spend some time with their children.

Whilst I was meeting with a vendor MD today, I was thinking what I would take a year off to do. The list in the day-dream I recalled were :
1) Run a marathon - Mar 2008 KLIM
2) Start a business - a coffee espresso bar
3) Learn how to make money in the share market
4) Write a book
5) Travel to unknown places

Extreme Leaders know how to pace themselves - a marathon is not a sprint.