From: HRM Asia

When Dilbert creator Scott Adams asked people for joke job descriptions he got more than he bargained for with hundreds of responses. Here are 16 of the best:
 

• Help people hate each other – Divorce Lawyer (Scott Adams’ favourite)
   
• Talk in other people’s sleep – College Professor
   
• Call people who know what they’re doing and ask them what they’re doing – Incident Manager
   
• Make people feel bad about their work – Quality Assurance Tester
   
• Take numbers on pieces of paper, rearrange them and put them on different pieces of paper –  Tax Accountant
   
• Show you innovative ways to burn money in the spirit of patriotism – Fireworks Stand Manager
   
• Arrive after the battle and bayonet all the wounded – Auditor
   
• Shepherd clients through the process of setting their products on fire – Consumer Products Tester
   
• Persuade kids that it’s really fun being wet, cold and scared out of their minds – Sailing Instructor
   
• Ensure that stupid people stay in the gene pool – Lifeguard (HC’s favourite)
   
• Spend most of the day looking out the window – Pilot
   
• Go to strange people’s houses and take their money – Pizza Delivery Boy
   
• Take pictures of the unlucky and the stupid – X-ray Technician
   
• Run away and call the police – Security Guard
   
• Copy and paste from the Internet – Student

It seems like these days, online security and privacy is a topic which is always in the news and with social media sites like facebook allowing us to control the type of personal information that we want to share with the rest of the world, we may feel a sense of security.  The questions is: is our privacy really secure? 

So Microsoft has launched its Windows 8 operating system and the Surface Tablet.  A few of the tech reviewers have been giving their comments and they don't seem to be flattering to Microsoft.  It looks like its going to be a struggle for Microsoft to push their way into the tablet business, what with two other giants, Apple and Google, dominating the arena.
This is a comment from Tab Times about Microsoft's debut of their Surface Pro.
Another one from Mashable was titled: "Opinion: Microsoft’s Astonishing Windows 8 Boondoggle".

Of course I realize that Microsoft has taken a lot of flak over the years from many quarters for the various parties, customers, tech reviewers, even regulators, and still survived it all.  However, in the coming decades, as tablets become more prevalent and take over the PC as workhorses in the workplace, the Microsoft dominance will wane.  It is struggling to keep re-inventing itself, to maintain its relevance in the future, and it would be interesting to see what new ideas Microsoft can come up with to go ahead of the tech curve.

I occasionally read the Harvard Business Review blogs and gain some insight into practical issues.  Just today, I picked up an article on companies jumping onto social media bandwagon to resolve customer service (or rather customer complain issues).  The article makes real sense... more like commonsense when you think about it.

The HBR blog can be accessed here.

This is the first entry to my blog on Minuteman Resources.  So what should I write about? 
I guess it should be a short introduction of myself, as a management consultant.  I've been in this business for, oh, the last sixteen years or so.  During this time, I have been given an opportunity to learn and keep learning about the business of providing consulting advice in the sphere of management systems to quite a number of organizations.  Along the way, naturally, I had to do my own set of research in obtaining information.  

You see, management consultancy is a service which provides sound advice, executive coaching and business strategies to organizations that are willing to pay for the service.  Sure, anyone with enough experience could provide consulting services, and so organizations could actually have 'internal consultants'.  The only problem then would be that if the 'internal consultant' comes from WITHIN the organization, they would not be able to give an independent perspective to problem-solving.

This, then, is where I come in.  I could give a fresh perspective to a problem.  In fact, most of the time, I end up facilitating the organization's thinking capabilities by raising fresh perspectives garnered through my vast experience with over 200 clients