Wednesday, August 4, 2010

How people trust

How people trust
When we meet and need to interact with someone else, how do we decide whether our requests will be taken seriously? How do we decide whether this person can or cannot be trusted?

Similarity
A simple fact of interpersonal relationships is that we assume that if people are like us, then they will both think and act in the same way as us. This allows us to predict how they will behave, including how trustworthy they are. Similarity allows us to transfer our beliefs about ourselves to the other person. I’m a nice person and they are like me, then they must be nice too. And as I am trustworthy, so also must they be trustworthy.

We thus seek signs of similarity, both in their internal beliefs, etc. and in the external signs and behaviours through which they demonstrate what they are really like.

Internal factors
The way we think and understand the world determines how we act. If I can ‘get inside your head’, then I can better understand your real intent and whether I can trust you.

Beliefs are mental underpinnings to everything we do. They are assumed truths on which we base many decisions. If we believe that people are, in general, good and do not seek to deceive others, then we are more likely to trust them.
Values are the rules that tell us what is right and wrong, what we should and should not do, what is more important and less important. They often are concerned with how we behave in relationships with other people. Agilent’s company values include trust as a rule which says ‘trust the other people in the company, and act in a trustworthy manner’.
Mental models are the complex maps we make of the world and which we then use to interpret what is going on around us. They help us predict what will happen and hence keep control of our personal world. We have mental models of how we and others work in
Goals are the targets we set ourselves to achieve, based on our models of both the world and ourselves, and hence what we believe is possible to achieve. If my goals and yours are the same, then it is easier to trust that you will act to help me, because it is in your interests too.
External factors
Appearances: When people have the same outer accoutrements of living as us, from cars to clothes, we tend to translate this outer appearance into an assumption that the inner beliefs, etc. are also similar.
Behaviours: We can easily observe how the other person acts, perhaps in situations which do not require significant trust to be given. From both direct experience and from what other people tell us about them, we can build up a picture and judge from this how much we have in common.
Experiences: Where we have had common experiences, from working together on the same project to going to the same university in different decades, having an experience in common is likely to make us feel some sense of camaraderie, enabling at least a first level of comfortable conversation.
Preferences: When the other person prefers the same music as us and has the same biases, whether it be religious, political or otherwise, we feel more like them and consequently believe that they are more like us.
Contextual factors
Culture: Cultural contexts include being at work, being at home and being on the golf course. In each situation, there are different cultural rules about trust.
Group: If we are in a similar group, such as the same department, same family or same profession, then this says ‘we are similar’ and we will automatically trust more.
Concern
We can evaluate how people will treat our vulnerabilities by evaluating the concern they show, both for other people and for ourselves.

Care
Someone who clearly cares for us, taking positive steps to help and offering emotional support as needed, is someone we will quickly conclude that we can trust. Caring is often an emotional attribute, but it can also be logical, such as when I know that to be accepted within a group, I must be civil and civilised in my dealings with the other people.

Power
Where the other person has power to hurt us, but does not, then we may conclude that they are trustworthy. Types of power include positional power (eg management), charisma/social leadership, expertise/knowledge. Thus, for example, if I am buying a car from you and you tell me what the problems are,

Reliability
We can judge a person’s trustworthiness by how reliable they are, which translates into how easily we can predict what they do. This may also include a person who we disagree and who may harm us: it is often better to trust a person to be unkind or unhelpful than face the uncertainty of whether or not they will be in a good mood today.

Reciprocity
We can check their fairness in exchanges by determining the overall value balance. Do they give a little and expect a lot? Are neutral or biased standards used to decide what is fair? Do they conveniently ‘forget’ the help you gave them last month?

A trustworthy person will, over time, give and take on an approximately equal basis. This can be difficult to determine, for example where someone is giving physical help and receiving gratitude (and is quite happy with this. In the end the best way of judging fairness is whether all parties feel good about the exchange.

Integrity
A person of integrity sticks to their values through thick and thin, even when it is apparent that they could gain at least a short-term advantage from ‘bending the rules’. This makes them very predictable and their words and actions can be trusted, even when we largely disagree with them.

It is worth noting here that in many studies of leaders, a key attribute of leadership is unswerving integrity. Especially when you are leading a company into uncharted waters, you need a high level of trust to be placed in you by your followers.


http://changingminds.org/explanations/trust/how_people_trust.htm

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Some Hidden Information contained in Famous Logos!!!

Some Hidden Information contained in Famous Logos!!!


This logo doesn’t seem to hide much at first sight, but it gives you a little insight in the philosophy behind the brand. First of all, the yellow swoosh looks like a smile: Amazon.com want to have the best customer satisfaction. The swoosh also connects the letters a and z, meaning that this store has everything from a to z.



This is probably one of the best known logos with a hidden meaning. If you look closely, you’ll see an arrow that’s formed by the letters E and x. This arrow symbolizes speed and precision, two major selling points of this company.



Continental is a manufacturer of tyres. You can actually see this in their logo, because the first two letters create a 3-dimensional tyre.


Toblerone is a chocolate-company from Bern, Switzerland . Bern is sometimes called ‘The City Of Bears’. They have incorporated this idea in the Toblerone logo, because if you look closely, you’ll see the silhouette of a bear.


Sony Vaio is a well known brand of laptops. But did you know that the name Vaio logo also had a hidden meaning? Well, the first two letters represent the basic analogue signal. The last two letters look like a 1 and 0, representing the digital signal.


The old logo of Baskin Robbins had the number 31 with an arc above it. The new logo took this idea to the next level. The pink parts of the BR still form the number 31, a reference to the 31 flavours.


Carrefour is one of the biggest European retailers, and it’s also French for “crossroads”. The logo symbolizes this word via two opposite arrows. They also added the first letter of the name, because if you look closely you’ll see the letter C in the negative space between the two arrows.


Unilever is one of the biggest producers of food, beverages, cleaning agents and personal care products. They produce a huge amount of different products and they wanted to reflect this in their logo. Each part of the logo has a meaning. For example: the heart represents love, care and health - feeling good, a bird is a symbol of freedom. Relief from daily chores – getting more out of life.


At first, this logo might not make much sense. But if you look closely, you’ll see the number 1 in the negative space between the F and the red stripes. I also love how this logo communicates a feeling of speed.


The Sun logo is one of the most famous ambigrams in the world. You can read the brand name in every direction; both horizontally and vertically. This logo was designed by Professor Vaughan Pratt of Stanford University


The NBC (National Broadcasting Company) is one of the biggest American television networks. I think most of you have already seen the peacock in this logo. The peacock has 6 different tail feathers, referring to the six divisions at the time that this logo was created. The peacock’s head is flipped to the right to suggest it was looking forward, not back.

Monday, August 2, 2010

How to Avoid a Double-Dip Global Recession

How to Avoid a Double-Dip Global Recession
Roubini has come up with another lucid and cogent set of categorical policy measures that, in his view, will go far to stave off and, avert a global double-dip:


There is an ongoing debate among global policymakers about when and how fast to exit from the strong monetary and fiscal stimulus that prevented the Great Recession of 2008-2009 from turning into a new Great Depression. Germany and the European Central Bank are pushing aggressively for early fiscal austerity; the United States is worried about the risks of excessively early fiscal consolidation.

In fact, policymakers are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. If they take away the monetary and fiscal stimulus too soon – when private demand remains shaky – there is a risk of falling back into recession and deflation. While fiscal austerity may be necessary in countries with large deficits and debt, raising taxes and cutting government spending may make the recession and deflation worse.

On the other hand, if policymakers maintain the stimulus for too long, runaway fiscal deficits may lead to a sovereign debt crisis (markets are already punishing fiscally undisciplined countries with larger sovereign spreads). Or, if these deficits are monetized, high inflation may force up long-term interest rates and again choke off economic recovery.

The problem is compounded by the fact that, for the last decade, the US and other deficit countries – including the United Kingdom, Spain, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Iceland, Dubai, and Australia – have been consumers of first and last resort, spending more than their income and running current-account deficits. Meanwhile, emerging Asian economies – particularly China – together with Japan, Germany, and a few other countries have been the producers of first and last resort, spending less than their income and running current-account surpluses.

Overspending countries are now retrenching, owing to the need to reduce their private and public spending, to import less, and to reduce their external deficits and deleverage. But if the deficit countries spend less while the surplus countries don’t compensate by savings less and spending more – especially on private and public consumption – then excess productive capacity will meet a lack of aggregate demand, leading to another slump in global economic growth.

So what should policymakers do? First, in countries where early fiscal austerity is necessary to prevent a fiscal crisis, monetary policy should be much easier – via lower policy rates and more quantitative easing – to compensate for the recessionary and deflationary effects of fiscal tightening. In general, near-zero policy rates should be maintained in most advanced economies to support the economic recovery.

Second, countries where bond-market vigilantes have not yet awakened – the US, the UK, and Japan – should maintain their fiscal stimulus while designing credible fiscal consolidation plans to be implemented later over the medium term.

Third, over-saving countries like China and emerging Asia, Germany, and Japan should implement policies that reduce their savings and current-account surpluses. Specifically, China and emerging Asia should implement reforms that reduce the need for precautionary savings and let their currencies appreciate; Germany should maintain its fiscal stimulus and extend it into 2011, rather than starting its ill-conceived fiscal austerity now; and Japan should pursue measures to reduce its current-account surplus and stimulate real incomes and consumption.

Fourth, countries with current-account surpluses should let their undervalued currencies appreciate, while the ECB should follow an easier monetary policy that accommodates a gradual further weakening of the euro to restore competiveness and growth in the eurozone.

Fifth, in countries where private-sector deleveraging is very rapid via a fall in private consumption and private investment, the fiscal stimulus should be maintained and extended, as long as financial markets do not perceive those deficits as unsustainable.

Sixth, while regulatory reform that increases the liquidity and capital ratios for financial institutions is necessary, those higher ratios should be phased in gradually to prevent a further worsening of the credit crunch.

Seventh, in countries where private and public debt levels are unsustainable – household debt in countries where the housing boom has gone bust and debts of governments, like Greece’s, that suffer from insolvency rather than just illiquidity – liabilities should be restructured and reduced to prevent a severe debt deflation and contraction of spending.

Finally, the International Monetary Fund, the European Union, and other multilateral institutions should provide generous lender-of-last-resort support in order to prevent a severe deflationary recession in countries that need private and public deleveraging.

In general, deleveraging by households, governments, and financial institutions should be gradual – and supported by currency weakening – if we are to avoid a double-dip recession and a worsening of deflation. Countries that can still afford fiscal stimulus and need to reduce their savings and increase spending should contribute to the global current-account adjustment – via currency adjustments and expenditure increases – in order to prevent a global shortage of aggregate demand.

Failure to implement such coordinated policy measures – to sustain global aggregate demand at a time when deflationary trends are still severe in advanced economies – could lead to a very dangerous and damaging double-dip recession in advanced economies. Such an outcome would cause another bout of severe systemic risk in global financial markets, trigger a series of contagious sovereign defaults, and severely damage the growth prospects of emerging-market economies that have so far experienced a more robust recovery than advanced countries.

August 2010 Gatherings by Camelia

August 2010 Gatherings by Camelia
"Came" means Business Networking (referral business/business gathering)


Came 239
7 August 2010 (Sat)
Time: 2pm to 4pm
Venue: A & W Restoran,Leisure Mall, Tmn Segar,Cheras,Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Came 240
7 August 2010 (Sat)
Time: 7pm to 9pm
Venue: Pappa Rich,Dataran 32,Jalan 19, Petaling Jaya, Selangor,Malaysia.(opposite Toyota Car Showroom)

Came 241
8 August 2010 (Sunday)
Time: 3pm to 5pm
Venue: Teh Tarik Place, 1 Utama Shopping Mall,Petaling Jaya, Selangor,Malaysia.
Came 242
8 August 2010 (Sunday)
Time: 8pm to 10pm
Venue: Chawan Kafe,Bangsar,Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia.(opposite Bangsar Village 2 Shopping Mall)

Came 243
11 August 2010 (Wednesday)
Time: 12pm to 2pm
Venue: Old Town White Coffee, Kelana Mall,LDP,Petaling Jaya, Selangor,Malaysia. (next to Giant Kelana Jaya)

Came 244
11 August 2010 (Wednesday)
Time: 7pm to 9pm
Venue: Garden Food Court, The Gardens, Mid Valley Mega Mall, Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia.

Came 245
12 August 2010 (Thursday)
Time: 2pm to 4pm
Venue: Mc Donalds, KL Sentral station, Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia.

Came 246
12 August 2010 (Thursday)
Time: 7pm to 9pm
Venue: Burger Kings,KLCC Suria Mall, Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia.

Came 247
20 August 2010 (Friday)
Time: 2pm to 4pm
Venue: Old Town White Coffee,Pavilon Mall,Jalan Bukit Bintang,Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia.

Came 248
20 August 2010 (Friday)
Time: 7pm to 9pm
Venue: Station 1 Cafe,Sunway Metro,Petaling Jaya, Selangor,Malaysia. (next to Sunway Pyramid)

Pls Call /SMS to confirm the date/place/time.

Please give me time to reserve a seat for you.

Do not be LAST MINUTE.I will not entertain you.

You may bring your friends or bosses or spouse.

PLEASE BE PUNCTUAL, Thank you!!

Mobile : 6-016-9795515
Love Camelia
Malaysian Chinese lady

*Venue and time subject to change