Books I've Read @ 2nd Half 2021

 

Here are the books I've finished reading throughout July - December 2021 (In no particular order):

1. "The Gift: Young Muslim Entrepeneurs" by Sajid Hussain

2. "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance" by Angela Duckworth

3. "Dare to Lead: Daring greatly and Rising Strong at Work" by Brene Brown

4. "This is Love" by Ali Albarghouthi

5. "Tiny Habits: The Small Changes that Change Everything" by BJ Fogg

6. "How to Overcome Your Childhood" by The School of Life

7. "Beat It! Fifty plus shades of hope" by Wael Ibrahim

8. "Be the Boss Everyone Wants to Work For: A Guide for New Leaders" by William Gentry

9. "Get Out of Your Own Way - Practical Lessons for Conquering Procrastination, Fear, Envy, Neediness, Guilt and More" - Mark Goulston, Philip Goldberg

10. "The Productive Muslim: Where Faith Meets Productivity" by Mohammed Faris

11. "Influencing Virtual Teams: 17 Tactics That Get Things Done with Your Remote Employees" by Hassan Osman 

12. "Talk to Allah: Finding Comfort by Making Du'aa to Him" by Ayesha Syahira

Alhamdulillah found some really valuable gems this year. Will share my Top 10 in a separate post, insha Allah.

Read any of the above? Any of your favorites in this list? 

Ending the meeting when things get "hot" or uncomfortable? 🔥

 

Recently, a department released a series of knowledge sharing on Meeting Management 101. While I found many of the tips to be useful, something caught my eye in the recent sharing, which triggered me to share my thoughts and constructive feedback with the team:

I respectfully disagree with advising people to simply end meetings just because “the discussion gets contentious” and if “people are getting restless”. 

We shouldn’t just end to avoid uncomfortable conversations. Sometimes ironing out disagreements are necessary and in fact the reason we organize the meeting in the first place.

If we keep pulling the plug when things get tough, we are merely procrastinating & prolonging the problem, by sweeping it under the rug and deferring it. It is precisely this attitude that makes meetings ineffective and ironically result in too many meetings! 

You don’t magically get conclusive decisions by “sleeping on it”.

In fact, in my experience, quickly ironing out the discomfort is a lot more productive: either it immediately resolves the problem, or respectfully disagree so we can quickly perform course correction in another direction. Either way, we resolve the deadlock and keep moving forward! 

I believe that if we want to realize our Cultural Beliefs of “Speak Up” and “Courage to Act”, we need to train ourselves to own up and normalize difficult conversations, to iron them out in a respectful, professional manner. 

Advising people to end meetings when discussions get contentious might defeat that purpose altogether. 

And this principle also applies in contexts outside of the workplace, such as speaking to our family and friends. Especially in parenting. Yes, advising others, calling towards good and forbidding others against evil can be very uncomfortable. That's life. Double down and keep moving. 

If the leaders, parents and teachers don't step up to confront uncomfortable conversations, then who will? 

Also, it’s incorrect to simply end when “people are getting restless”. I find this ‘when to end’ tip very misleading and counter-productive to the reason you have the meeting in the first place

Firstly, in a virtual environment (of which 50% of us are still working in on rotation basis), you can never truly gauge people’s “restlessness”.

Secondly: if people are getting restless, so what??

Is that their problem, or my problem? 

By the way, people also get restless listening to Friday sermon / khutbah jumaat. Should we stop the sermon? 

If we haven’t fulfilled our objectives, why should we postpone or end the meeting because some fellas get bored?

Coming from engineering, we participate many engineering reviews and technical discussions, which can be very tiring, but are necessary steps. As a certified Risk Assessment facilitator myself conducting dozens of reviews, I do observe that team members feel tired very early on in these sessions. These sessions involve a lot of high value TP manhours, and takes a lot of effort to organize. Postponing and deferring results in a lot of unnecessary re-work, especially if we have a different quorum. 

 

Yes, I acknowledge that sometimes it could be due to my poor facilitation skills or un-engaging approach. So fix that first. 

Perhaps we need to enhance our facilitation and engagement skills and, in a dopamine-hooked digital age, train ourselves to be more attentive, but this definitely does NOT mean we just pull the plug. 

But Allah knows best, that's just my humble perspective. What do you think? 

Siapakah Al-Mutaffifeen? - Pandai menuntut hak, tapi kantoi bila dituntut tanggungjawab sendiri

 

Kebiasaannya, golongan "Mutaffifeen" di dalam surah ini biasanya dikaitkan dengan mereka yang berlaku curang - yakni, menipu - dalam konteks perniagaan: Bila nak beli, tuntut timbangan penuh. Tapi bila menjual, mencari helah dan tipu daya untuk mengurangkan timabangan.

Hakikatnya, ayat ini juga mempunyai implikasi yang lebih mendalam. Di dalam halaqah tafsir Al-Qur'an, Dr. Firanda mengungkapkan bahawa para ulamak juga telah membahaskan bahawasanya Mutaffifeen juga membawa maksud: 

"Orang yang hanya pandai menuntut, namun tidak ingin dituntut"

Seolah-olah adanya unsur nifaq (hipokrit): Apabila berkaitan dengan hak mereka, demand habis-habisan. Tetapi, bila kewajipan mereka sendiri berkenaan dengan hak orang lain, mereka tidak tunaikan, mengelat, hanya anggap remeh atau banyak bagi alasan. 

Antara contoh yang diungkapkan:

1. Seorang suami yang menuntut isterinya menjadi isteri solehah, tak boleh bantah suami, buat kerja rumah. Tetapi bila hak isteri, kasih sayang, dia tidak tunaikan. 

2. Rakyat dan pemimpin. Apabila rakyat hanya bising menuntut Hak kita dipenuhi dan selalu persoalkan tentang keburukan pemimpin, tetapi kewajipan kita sebagai rakyat, fail langgar belaka.

Dan, bila direnungkan lagi, kita boleh masukkan lagi kategori lain:

3. Di tempat pekerjaan, saya dapat lihat sendiri: apabila nak tuntut hak sebagai client, bukan main lagi belasah kontraktor Bila kelasahan boss, cepat aje bersuara. Tapi tanggungjawab sendiri terbabas.. banyak alasan, "sibuk", dan sebagainya. 

4. Ibu dan ayah kepada anak-anak mereka: kadangkala cepat mengungkitkan hak ketaatan, laju je nak ungkit "derhaka" - tetapi kewajipan untuk memberi didikan agama, tauhid dan tarbiyahkan akhlak dengan baik? Allahu a'lam.

Apa yang seringkali berlaku, ramai berfikiran "dia tidak tunaikan kewajipan dia, why should I bother?" sebagai alasan untuk melepaskan tanggungjawab.

Persepsi ini salah. Kita akan dipersoalkan untuk tanggungjawab kita, dan mereka juga turut disoal. Kezaliman tidak akan diselesaikan dengan kezaliman. 

"Sesungguhnya, Allah tidak akan mengubah nasib satu kaum, sehinggalah mereka mengubah apa yang ada pada diri mereka sendiri" (Ar-Ra'd, 11)

Semoga kita istiqamah dalam menunaikan tanggungjawab kita dan saling menasihati, dan semoga Allah lindungi kita daripada daripada tergolong antara Al-Mutaffifeen.

When our children give us gifts.. 🎁

 

The Prophet said, 

تَهَادُوا تَحَابُّوا

"Give gifts and you will love one another." (Narrated in Adab Al-Mufrad of Al-Bukhari)

Whenever we go out for a walk, Muawiyah has a habit of picking up things he finds interesting, and giving it to us as a "present". An intriguing colored rock, a pretty seashell, a perfectly-shaped flower, a dropped fruit on the ground. 

In our recent walk in the park, Muawiyah picked up these tiny flowers and gave one to Ibu and Abah each. 🌷🌷

When we returned to the car after finishing our morning walk, Muawiyah asked me, "Abah where is your flower?"

When I showed it to him, I could see a hint of a satisfied smile on his face. 😊

Then he turned to his mother: "Ibu?"

"Oh, Ibu threw it away already. Kat mana ntah"

Muawiyah: "Kenapa Ibu threw it away?" 

We then changed the conversation topic something, but later out of nowhere, Muawiyah again asked, "Kenapa Ibu threw away the flower? Ha?"

As we arrived home about to leave the car, again he asked, 

"Kenapa Ibu threw away the flower? Ha?"

Clearly, he wasn't too happy about getting rid of his "present". 

When it comes to gifts, sometimes they don't seem like they have much value to us as the receiver, but it means a lot to the giver. 

When we show disinterest, it can be disappointing to them.

.. And Don't we all feel this too? 

As much as I try to be sincere, I know I certainly feel like this sometimes. When we give gifts to people and find out later that they apathetically chuck it away, didn't utilize/consume it, or gave it away, as much as we try to be sincere, sometimes we cannot escape the feeling that our gifts were "unappreciated" or "taken for granted". 

If we adults feel this way, wouldn't our children feel the same? 

Whenever Muawiyah "gives" any "presents", no matter how trivial, I make sure I do two things:

1. Thank him and acknowledge the gesture - One thing better than making others happy is to ALLOW others to make US happy. And wouldn't we want to give that to our kids? 

2. Keep it and cherish it. 

Now, in theory, this might sound like in the long run, we are constantly accumulating random stuff. But in practice, it doesn't take long for kids (especially little boy toddlers) to kind of forget about it, leave it off somewhere, and move on. And when that happens, you leave it off too 😁. 

The big picture idea here is to inculcate generosity and the spirit of giving. If we trivialise their good gestures, we subconsciously discourage them from giving. 

He doesn't have much, but what he does, he wants to give, so let's celebrate that. That's the little that he has and he wants to give away. 

The Prophet ﷺ said:

"One Dirham can be better (in rewards, in the sight of Allah) more than a hundred thousand Dirhams." 

They said: "O Messenger of Allah ﷺ, how?" He said: "A person only had two Dirhams and gave one in charity, 

Whereas another wealthy man took out a  small par of his wealth and took out a hundred thousand Dirhams and gave them in charity."' (An-Nasa'ee)

Energising 16 Forum: Moderating Panel Discussions, "SKG16 Towards MFT 50:0"

Alhamdulillah today I had the opportunity to moderate panel discussions focusing on how our technical fraternities can play our part to fulfill our organization's long term goals and aspirations of Moving Forward Together (MFT).

One of the most profound takeaway points was Process Engineering Custodian Salehuddin Sidek: 

"They always say that 'people are our greatest assets', but what we need to remember is,  if we don't nurture them well, people can also be our WORST liabilities!" 😖

He gave a rude awakening emphasizing a major problem: quite frankly, we are "too lazy" to read. We need to step up and at put in the hard work to excel in our basics.

He also gave three takeaway points for us to excel in capability and develop adaptability no matter what the circumstances are: 

1. Sharing: inculcate a sharing culture amongst our teams. Talk to each other. Openly share your pain points and generously share your solutions. Keep progressing to fail fast and fail forward

2. Mobility: Cultivate the courage to step out of our comfort zone and learn new things

3. Find good coaches who can guide us 

If we keep up these habits, we future-proof ourselves regardless of capability institutionalization or industrial circumstances!

I also loved the point by Dr. Riaz on the apparent disconnect and negative perceptions taking place between the "center" and the "region". Surprisingly, the solution is a very human one: build relationships. Be willing to engage each other and have open, honest conversations to build trust. Standards and guidelines will only be as effective as the people implementing them. We aren't at war here: Both parties need each other to thrive, and we need to collaborate and make this work together. 

Alhamdulillah I am grateful for having the opportunity to moderate this discussion (which almost felt like @thebarakaheffect podcast discussion 😄).

I really enjoyed defying expectations by throwing in a pantun or two in the mix just to keep things fun - a move that set the chatbox on fire and excited the participants with trending "balas pantun" throughout 🤣