Hiring? Laying Off? What You Must Know Now

Framroze Virjee, Adam KohSweeney. Business Week (Online). New York: Oct 9, 2009.

Note: Many employers are concerned about today’s big-picture labor initiatives. Perhaps a better focus: three key points involving staffing decisions

Nine months into the Obama Administration, and 20 months [or so] into the current recession, the business community is justifiably asking itself: "What’s next?" Many business leaders are tracking the long list of potential labor-friendly [aka "business-hostile"] initiatives and litigation trends, including: an expected increase in audit and enforcement activity by the U.S. Labor Dept., the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and other state and federal agencies brought about by increased funding; proposals for mandatory paid medical leave and required health and welfare benefits; more equal pay discrimination claims based on the recently passed Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act; a seemingly endless uptick in individual and class-action lawsuits, as millions of laid-off employees explore their options with emboldened plaintiff attorneys; and the resurgence of organized labor in the private sector, regardless of the final form of the Employee Free Choice Act.

While each of these initiatives is of valid concern, they are generally beyond the control of individual employers at this juncture. So perhaps a better concern for employers these days is: "What am I missing as I lay off or rehire employees?" Here are three key possibilities.

Pay Mind to Disparate Impact

First, employers need to properly assess the statistical effect of their employment decisions. Both the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Ricci v. DeStefano [the firefighter promotional-testing case] and the confirmation hearings of now-Justice Sonia Sotomayor have pushed "disparate impact" issues front and center in the current national debate.

Discrimination against minority employees is often thought of as an issue of intent — "As long as my motives are not discriminatory, I am not discriminating and I will be fine, right?" Not necessarily so. Unlike disparate [discriminatory] treatment cases, disparate impact claims are based on statistics, without regard to intent. The question at the heart of these claims: Did the employer’s policy or practice disproportionately affect a protected class of employees? This means that employers need to consider carefully the statistical impact of layoff decisions. And, on the other end, when rehiring after a layoff, the same issue should be considered. Enterprising plaintiffs’ lawyers may argue disparate impact if the minority makeup of your company looks markedly different post-rehiring compared with pre-layoff.

It is worth noting that the Ricci case has left many employers in a no-win situation. In that case, the New Haven Fire Dept. would almost certainly have been sued by minority employees if they had used the promotional test results at issue [a test on which minorities disproportionately scored lower]. Instead, they were successfully sued by white employees when they didn’t use the results — highlighting the need for careful consideration of employee testing issues.

Read Up on Compensation Law

Company compensation practices present another area of vulnerability when hiring or firing employees. Despite the well-publicized explosion of lawsuits alleging failure to pay overtime and other "wage and hour" violations, many employers remain blissfully unaware of the complicated, treacherous, and arcane rules surrounding employee classification and compensation. Importantly, federal law in this area has no preemptive effect — which means employers must consider federal, state, and sometimes even local law when deciding such issues.

When terminating employees, key concerns include whether the employee is owed commissions or bonuses [forfeiture provisions or policies are not always lawful] and how quickly final wages must be paid [several states require immediate payment in some circumstances]. With regard to hiring or rehiring decisions, recognize that this is the single best time to assure that all planned compensation approaches — including whether the employee is entitled to overtime under applicable law — are lawful or at least defensible.

In the End, It’s About People

Lastly, perhaps the most important consideration when hiring or terminating an employee is not really a legal issue at all — it is the so-called "human touch." The fact is, plaintiffs’ attorneys rarely file suit over the issue that first drove the employee to visit them. Rather, they leverage the opportunity that a disgruntled employee presents to explore the employer’s practices and the employee’s experiences to identify and isolate those factors that can be "spun" into a claim. Thus, employers should consider whether their decisions could drive the employee into the arms of a plaintiffs’ lawyer [or, for that matter, the arms of organized labor].

The best advice: Treat employees with respect and civility, and don’t lose sight of the forest for the trees. It is often prudent to be flexible and meet employees halfway where possible, even when not strictly required. Keep in mind that a minor concession, an accommodation, or a little extra effort early in the process will often head off the major issues before they surface.

http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/oct2009/ca2009106_306993.htm

Using a Balanced Scorecard in a Nonprofit Organization

"Balanced scorecard" has been a corporate management buzzword for about a decade. Like many management movements, it’s migrating from corporations to nonprofit offices. The idea of creating a balanced scorecard is as valid for nonprofits as for businesses, but it must be modified to make it work effectively in the nonprofit world. This article looks at what a balanced scorecard is all about and how to apply the idea to your organization. If you understand the ideas behind a balanced scorecard, you’ll be free to modify the classic formula so it becomes a better tool for your organization. To make the balanced scorecard more relevant for nonprofits, you should also expand the original four measurement perspectives into six categories: 1. revenue and funding, 2. resource allocation (including budgets), 3. product and service recipients, 4. donors and board members, 5. internal operations, and 6. staff development.

Here’s how to adapt this powerful tool to transform your organization.

Balanced scorecard" has been a corporate management buzzword for about a decade. Like many management movements, it’s migrating from corporations to nonprofit offices.

The idea of creating a balanced scorecard is as valid for nonprofits as for businesses, but it must be modified to make it work effectively in the nonprofit world. In this article, we’ll look at what a balanced scorecard is all about and how to apply the idea to your organization.

The Reason for a Balanced Scorecard

Historically, organizations have measured their performance mainly, if not totally, with financial measures. In the 1990s, a group of researchers and consultants from the Nolan Norton Institute, the research arm of the accounting firm KPMG, began to study commonly used performance measures. Their hypothesis was that these practices were hindering organizations because the measurement focus was too narrow.

The study confirmed their suspicions. After careful analysis, the researchers suggested that leaders ought to balance the way they assess their organizations by looking at more than financial performance.1 The original balanced scorecard, which has been carried forward formulai cally by most companies that use it today, was organized around four perspectives:

* financial

* customer

* internal

* innovation and learning.

Common Mistakes

Rather than understanding what a balanced scorecard is supposed to accomplish, why, and how, many managers simply implement it as if it were a recipe. While the technique described in professional literature accumulates the wisdom and experience of many people and represents a form of best practice, it shouldn’t be copied blindly under the assumption that one size fits all. The four dimensions (financial, customer, internal, and innovation and learning) can and should be modified to fit an organization.

Other common mistakes are jumping into a measurement program too fast and making the program too complicated. Deriving meaningful measurements, gathering reliable data, developing useful analytical techniques, and educating managers about how to use the data are all difficult steps. Doing everything at once with a bucketful of 50 different measures is doomed to failure. Managers who don’t have experience with measurement programs, or fail to heed the warnings of those who do, typically underestimate the difficulties of using a balanced scorecard program.

Creating Organizational Measures

Despite the pitfalls, the balanced scorecard is a valuable management tool. You can use it successfully if you take a thoughtful approach to the process.

The real trick behind any measurement program is to figure out first what you want to measure, and then how to measure it. Many times, managers who want to evaluate their work groups simply jump into collecting measures, not because the measures relate to organizational attributes in which they’re interested, but because the measures are simple and available. Thus, managers build assessments based on measures such as attendance data, production records, budget deviances, and computer system up-time. When you build an assessment program around the measures you have available, instead of building metrics2 around concepts you need to measure, then you have a classic case of the tail wagging the dog.

You can tell what’s important to measure by referring to your organization’s strategic plan. The plan lists your goals and the strategies by which you hope to achieve them. Goals relate to outcomes, and strategies relate to procedures. Measures can and should relate to both. Process measures reflect how well your organization is executing its strategies. Outcome measures show how well your strategies actually accomplish their intended results.

In short, start with planning; then create a measurement process to gauge how well you’re executing your plan. When you build your measures around your plan, they’ll do more than provide data. They’ll become the basis for a management tool.

For example, suppose you decide it’s important to have a larger base of active donors. In your strategic plan, you set a goal of expanding your donor mailing list by 25% over the year. As one of your strategies, you plan to do aggressive acquisition mailings using several new rental lists.

You can collect process measures indicating how many acquisition mailings you do and how many use the targeted lists. You can examine the increase in your house file as an outcome measure. These are excellent measures because they relate directly to what you intended to do and what you hoped to accomplish.

Your mail list manager also may give you many statistics describing your donors’ demographics. What about using those data for a balanced scor ecard? Sure, these measures are readily available; but do you need them? The question isn’t "What statistics are available?" The questions are "What have we planned to do this year? How have we planned to do it?" and then, "Does this statistic help us answer either of those questions?" For a balanced scorecard, you should use only those metrics that relate directly to your organization’s planned processes and targeted outcomes.

The Balanced Scorecard Categories

Like any tool, a balanced scorecard is a means to an end, not an end in itself. In some organizations, however, a higher power simply mandates that the organization shall implement a balanced scorecard. In this case, the balanced scorecard foolishly becomes the end in itself. Eventually, the management group will realize that the benefits accruing from the balanced scorecard (as they have implemented it) are too few to justify the work going into it.

If you understand the ideas behind a balanced scorecard, you’ll be free to modify the classic formula so it becomes a better tool for your organization. To make the balanced scorecard more relevant for nonprofits, you should also expand the original four measurement perspectives into six categories:

1. revenue and funding

2. resource allocation (including budgets)

3. product and service recipients

4. donors and board members

5. internal operations

6. staff development.

The first category – revenue and funding – is extremely important for any nonprofit organization. It includes fundraising approaches, investment strategies, alternative funding sources, fundraising costs, the use of fundraising consultants, and so on.

The second category – resource allocation – involves financial and non- financial resources from an internal perspective. Organizations start the year with a budget, created to support their plans and reflect their priorities for the upcoming year. Alas, every year brings unforeseen events, changes in priorities, emergency allocations, and the like. Therefore, a complete budget plan should also include principles for budgetary reviews and, as necessary, reallocations. That’s the focus for this category of measurement.

The third category – product and service recipients – relates to the "customer" category of the original balanced scorecard. In the classical for-profit company, a major goal is to satisfy customers, since they’re the primary source of revenues. So, a balanced scorecard can focus simply on customers. The situation is more complex for nonprofits. Most nonprofits deliver some type of product or service, which often is the source of only a portion of revenues, and may be a source of no revenue at all. In a drug treatment facility, for example, customers (drug abusers) don’t pay for treatment, and their satisfaction with the facility’s treatment may be irrelevant to the most important measures of organizational performance. Nonetheless, even in such a case, the nonprofit is most likely concerned about how it interacts with service recipients and will want to measure that somehow.

The fourth category – donors and board members – also pertains to the original "customer" category, since donors and board members are treated as customers even though they probably don’t receive the nonprofit’s services. These are the people who contribute dollars, labor, and advice to support the nonprofit. It’s their satisfaction, often more than that of direct service recipients, that’s crucial to keeping a nonprofit operation going. It’s therefore totally appropriate to separate out these two types of customers (service recipients vs. donors and board members) within an organization’s strategic plan and thus within the balanced scorecard.

The fifth category – internal operations – is fairly similar for for-profit and nonprofit organizations. It is, however, more critical for nonprofits. For-profits are concerned, of course, about the efficiencies of internal operations. Yet they plan to operate with a margin of profit, which, in poorly performing years, can simply slim down or disappear to cover the effects of lessthan-optimal performance. In contrast, many nonprofits work on virtually no margin of error. A year of poor performance can result in dramatic cutbacks, since many nonprofits have no safety buffers built into their budgets.

The final category – staff development – addresses the fact that organizations need to continuously grow, adapt, and improve, and that future development is tied to the organization’s staff. For most nonprofits, developing the organization means, in a literal sense, developing its employees.

Putting ItAII in Play

Once you understand what a balanced scorecard is all about, you’re ready to apply it. This is a multi-step process that’s not for the weak of heart or the short of patience. While it does, over time, lead to more efficient and effective practices, the balanced scorecard requires an organization to invest substantial time, energy, and talent up-front to make it work well. Worse, if the balanced scorecard technique isn’t well planned, the result is likely to be a disappointing waste of time with little to show for it.

If you’re up for the challenge, here are your steps:

1. Get your board and managers educated on the basics and committed to the effort.

2. Appoint someone on staff to be in charge of creating and maintaining the balanced scorecard.

3. Consider hiring a consultant to help you implement a balanced scorecard (depending on your organization’s size and the knowledge of the person you’ve put in charge).

4. Build your scorecard categories to match what’s in your strategic plan. Or, build your strategic plan around the categories you’ll use for the scorecard. Or, modify your existing strategic plan so it matches the scorecard categories.

5. Derive the balanced scorecard measures, metrics, and analytical techniques, and use them in test mode for two or three months.

6. Use the test experience to improve the balanced scorecard measures and processes.

7. Collect, analyze, report, and archive scorecard measures on a regular (monthly or quarterly) basis.

With a balanced scorecard, as with all management tools, the devil’s in the details. The balanced scorecard is highly appealing in theory. In practice, it’s a challenge to implement it correctly. If you can do it, though, the benefits will be substantial and fully demonstrable.

[Sidebar]

The technique accumulates the wisdom and experience of many people.

[Sidebar]

The real trick is to figure out first what you want to measure, and then how to measure it.

[Sidebar]

You can tell what’s important to measure by referring to your organization’s strategic plan.

[Footnote]

Footnotes

1 For the best single summary of this research, get a copy of The Balanced Scorecard by Robert S. Kaplan & David P. Norton (Boston: Harvard Business School Press).

2 The words "measures" and "metrics" are often used interchangeably, but technically they aren’t synonyms. A measure is a basic quantitative or qualitative evaluative label, derived through a specified process, and assigned to a fundamental attribute of a concept that you’re trying to characterize. A metric is a derivation or combination of one or more primary measures. For example, a category 3 hurricane earns its designation by being in a certain spot on the earth and having winds that rotate in a particular direction with speeds over a predetermined threshold. For the hurricane, the category designation is a metric; the location, wind direction, and wind speed are primary measures.

[Reference]

Resources

Dixon, Greta Kmarie, "Evaluating Nonprofit Programs: Now It’s Essential," Nonprofit World, Vol. 12, No. 3.

Minnis, William G., "Four Steps to Evaluation Success," Nonprofit World, Vol. 23, No. 2.

Stout, William, "A New Way to Evaluate Your Organization’s Performance: Measure Your Use of Time," Nonprofit World, Vol. 19, No. 4.

Tom, Baldwin & Bill Frentzel, "Performance- Based Management Builds Support & Funding," Nonprofit World, Vol. 23, No. 6

Vogt, Jean, "Using Your Outcome Measurement System," Nonprofit World, Vol. 18, No. 1.

These resources are available from the Society’s Resource Center, http://www.snpo.org/members. Also see Learning Institute programs on-line: Outcome Measurement (www.snpo.org/lino).

[Author Affiliation]

Joel S. Zimmerman, Ph.D. Qzimmerman@cdr-nfl.com), is director of consulting services for CDR Fundraising Group, 1670 Village Green, Crofton, Maryland 21114. Dr. Zimmerman has authored many articles in the social science and technology areas.

Tuhan, hari ini aku genap 36 Tahun

Tuhan,
36 tahun sudah Engkau berikan kesempatan buatku untuk mengarungi lautan kehidupan.
Rasanya waktu berjalan sangat cepat, amat cepat sekali.

Engkau sangat Pengasih dan Penyayang,
Tak TERKIRA,
Terlalu banyak nikmat yang aku terima dan tak ‘kan ku bisa sebut satu persatu.

Aku bersyukur padamu ya Rahman,
Dengan tidak banyak berkata-kata,
Berjanji untuk berbuat lebih banyak lagi untuk orang lain.

Anugerah Nikmat Iman dan Islam,
Anugerah jalan menuju-mu melalui Thoriqah Qodiriya wa Naqsabandiyah,
Anugerah Anindya Prajna Hermastho,
Anugerah semat drajat dan kramat.

Semua saya terima, saya ikhlas dan saya serahkan kembali kepada Mu ya Rob…
Jadikan aku orang yang memiliki tetapi tidak memiliki,
Karena semua ini adalah milik-Mu.

Tuhan,
Kalaulah ini sebuah permintaan,
Yang aku sangat malu untuk menyampaikannya,
Karena Engkaupun juga tahu, apa yang tersembunyi dalam hatiku.

Aku mohon jangan cabut kenikmatan dzikrullah bersama-Mu.
karena Ia lah yang membuatku mampu mengarungi hidup yang penuh dengan godaan dan tantangan,
Menjadikan hari-hariku bersinar karena nikmat-MU.

Hari ini aku genap 36 tahun,
Makin dekat hari-hari menuju ajal dan menjumpai Mu,
Mohon Engkau terima segala amal ibadah-ku yang masih berbalut dengan kesombongan ini,
Berikanlah ampunan atas segala kekhilafan dan dosa yang selalu aku lakukan,

La Ilaha Illa Anta Subhanaka ini kuntu Minazlhalimin,
Bersihkan hatiku setiap saat dengan dzikir kepada-Mu,
Semoga Engkau sempurnakan nikmat-Mu dengan bangunan keluarga sakinah wa rahmah,
Hidayah bagi istri dan anak kami untuk terus mencintai Allah dan Rosul-Nya.

Ya Allah perbaikilah agamaku, tempat bersandar segala urusanku,
Perbaikilah dunia-ku, tempat penghidupan-ku,
Perbaikilah akherat-ku, tempat aku akan kembali,
Jadikan setiap tarikan nafas ini amal kebaikanku,
Matikalah aku dalam iman, islam dan khusnul khotimah,
Jadikan kematianku kebebasan dari segala bentuk kejahatan.

Tambah sehat,
Tambah ilmu,
Tambah teman,
Tambah amal,
Tambah spiritual,

Karuniakanlah kebaikan dari sisi Mu,
Lapangkalah dadaku,
Mudahkanlah segala urusan-ku,
Berikanlah cahaya dalam ruhaniku.
Ampunan bagi-orang-orang yang mencintaiku dan aku cintai…
Bahagia dunia dan akherat.

Sholawat salam untuk Nabi Muhammad SAW beserta alhlu bait dan sahabatnya yang mulia.
Amin ya Robbal alamin.

Menyatukan Diri dengan Kehendak-Nya

Laksanakan syariat-mu
Jalani thoriqah-mu
Liputi dirimu dengan hakekat-mu

Mulai detik ini tiada tempatmu berpaling, kecuali kepada-Nya.

—————

8-9 Oktober 2009, kala subuh menjelang…di ufuk Suryalaya.
Akhirnya Pangersa Abah melalui Wakil Talqin H. Sandisi melakukan talqin pada hamba yang fakir ini.
Bertemu, mencium Pangersa Abah Anom dalam sebuah antrean adalah salah satu kebahagian yang tak terkira.
Ya Allah berikanlah kekuatan dan ketetapan hati untuk melangkah dijalan Mu.

Drs. H. Sandisi
Kp. Godebag Rt.03 Rw. 01 (Pontren Suryalaya)
Desa Tanjungkerta Kec. Pagerageung
Kab.Tasikmalaya – Jawa Barat
Tlp. (0265) 455859

—————-

Mursyid Kammil Mukammil Thoriqoh Naqsyabandi Al-Haqqani, As-Sayyid Al-‘Alamah Al-‘Arif billah Syekh Mohammad Nazim Adil al-Haqqani dan kholifahnya Syekh Hisyam Al-Kabbani berkunjung ke As-Sayyid Al-‘Alamah Al-‘Arif billah Syekh Ahmad Shohibul wafa Tajul ‘Arifin (Abah Anom ) sebagai Mursyid Thoriqoh Qodiriyyah wan Naqsyabandiyyah yang berada di Pondok Pesantren Suryalaya Tasikmalaya, Jawa Barat Indonesia
Pagi hari setelah Salat Subuh di hotel, rombongan berangkat menuju Pesantren Suryalaya di Tasikmalaya. Di sana Mawlana Syekh Nazim QS, Syekh Hisyam QS dan rombongan menemui K.H. Shohibul Wafa Tajul Arifin yang lebih dikenal dengan Abah Anom, Mursyid Tarekat Qadiriah wa Naqsybandiyyah. Mawlana Syekh Nazim QS yang berusia 10 tahun lebih muda memasuki kediaman Abah Anom dan mencium tangan beliau.
Abah Anom berada dalam kondisi yang tidak bisa menggerakkan seluruh bagian tubuhnya, bahkan untuk tersenyum pun beliau sulit sekali, namun Mawlana mengatakan, “Jangan kalian pikir bahwa Tajul Arifin sedang tidur, beliau mengirimkan ke dalam hati saya, apa yang beliau ingin sampaikan kepada kalian.” Beliau lalu melanjutkan bahwa Abah Anom merupakan salah seorang pembawa Cahaya Muhammad SAW. Seluruh ruangan menjadi terharu. Banyak yang menangis karena bahagia. Setelah itu, Abah Anom memberi isyarat bahwa beliau akan berdoa—suatu kejadian yang sangat langka—dan ini menambah suasana menjadi lebih haru, karena untuk pertama kalinya mereka dapat mendengar suara Abah Anom. Beliau adalah seorang Syekh besar, yang muridnya tidak hanya berasal dari Indonesia, tetapi juga dari Malaysia, Singapura dan lain-lain.
“Banyak para alim ulama dan para cendikiawan muslim memberikan pengetahuan agama kepada umat, pengetahuan itu bagaikan lilin-lilin, apalah artinya lilin-lilin yang banyak meskipun lilin-lilin itu sebesar pohon kelapa kalau lilin-lilin itu tidak bercahaya. Dan cahaya itu salah satunya berada dalam kalbunya beliau ( Syekh Ahmad Shohibul Wafa Tajul ‘Arifin).
Saya tidak tahu apakah Nur Illahi yang dibawanya akan putus sampai pada beliau saja, atau masih akan berlanjut pada orang lain. Tapi saya yakin dan berharap, sesudah beliau nanti masih akan ada orang lain yang menjadi pembawa Nur Illahi itu.Siapakah orangnya, saya tidak tahu.
Maka Anda sekalian para hadirin, ambillah Nur Illahi itu dari beliau saat ini. Mumpung beliau masih ada, mumpung beliau masih hadir di tengah kita, sulutkan Nur Illahi dari kalbu beliau kepada kalbu anda masing-masing. Sekali lagi, dapatkanlah Nur Ilahi dari orang-orang seperti Syekh Ahmad Shohibulwafa Tajul ‘Arifin.
Dari kalbu beliau terpancar pesan-pesan kepada kalbu saya. Saya berbicara dan menyampaikan semua pesan ini bukan dari isi kalbu saya sendiri. Saya mengambilnya dari kalbu beliau. Di hadapan beliau saya terlalu malu untuk tidak mengambil apa yang ada pada kalbu beliau. Saya malu untuk berbicara hanya dengan apa yang ada pada kalbu saya sendiri.”
Pidato Syekh Nazim diatas juga pernah dimuat di Majalah Sufi “Lilin-lilin tapi tidak bercahaya”
Syekh Nazim adil al-Haqqani berpamitan kepada Syeikh Ahmad Shohibulwafa Tajul ‘Arifin (Abah Anom) untuk kembali ke Jakarta
Dan dibawah ini pidato yang diterjemahkan oleh KH.Wahfiudin yang telah mendampingi Syekh Nazim Haqqoni dan Syekh Ahmad Shohibul Wafa Tajul ‘Arifin ( Abah Anom ) disuryalaya.
Diterjemahkan Oleh Wahfiudin, M.B.A
(Wakil Talqin Syekh Ahmad Shohibul Wafa Tajul ‘Arifin r.a)
dan sebagai
(Muballigh Tv-Tv Swasta)
1. Hamdalah, sholawat, do’a untuk seluruh yang hadir, maupun muslimin/muslimat seluruhnya.
2. Kalau saya berbicara dalam bahasa Inggris tentu hanya sedikit orang yang faham, maka saya membutuhkan perterjemah. Sebenarnya saya ingin berbicara panjang lebar, tetapi orang-orang yang hadir sudah letih menunggu dan punya kepentingan-kepentingan yang lain. Maka saya akan berbicara kurang lebih setangah jam saja.
3. Kita saat ini hidup di zaman sulit dan serba kekurangan. Kekurangan orang-orang yang kuat, kekurangan orang-orang yang memiliki iman, kekurangan orang yang memiliki cahaya (nur) ilahi. Padahal tanpa nur Ilahi, segala kepandaian yang dimiliki manusia menjadi tidak ada apa-apanya.
4. Banyak ‘ulama dan cendikiawan di berbagai madrasah dan mejelis ilmu mengajarkan macam-macam ilmu pengetahuan. Tapi ilmu pengetahuan itu hanya ibarat lilin-lilin kecil saja dan menjadi tak berguna tanpa adanya api yang membawa cahaya. Meskipun orang membuat lilin-lilin sebesar pohon-pohon kelapa, apa artinya lilin-lilin itu kalau tidak dapat menerangi. Maka selain mencari lilinya, cari pula apinya yang menimbulkan cahaya.
5. Allah adalah cahaya langit dan bumi. Cahaya Allah disampaikan kepada Nabi Muhammad SAW. lalu meneruskannya kepada para Sahabatnya dan para sahabatnya meneruskannya lagi kepada generasi-generasi sholih berikutnya. Dari mereka cahaya itu terus tersalurkan kepada orang-orang yang “siap” dan “mau” menerimanya. Itulah para mursyid thoriqoh. Ada 41 thariqoh di dunia, 40 diantaranya memperoleh Nur Ilahi melalui Sayyidina Ali bin Abi Tholib KW. Hanya satu yang memperoleh Nur Ilahi melalui Sayyidina Abu Bakar as-Shadiq, itulah thariqah Naqsyabandiyyah.
6. Sekarang, tidak banyak lagi orang-orang yang membawa obor Nur Ilahi itu. Di Indonesia yang penduduknya banyak inipun, orang pembawa obor Nur Ilahi tidak lebih dari sepuluh jari tangan jumlahnya. salah satunya adalah Beliau yang ada disebelah saya, Syekh Ahmad Shohibulwafa Tajul ‘Arifin.
7. Syekh Ahmad Shohibulwafa Tajul ‘Arifin ini sudah berusia lanjut, dan sudah agak lemah keadaan fisiknya. Saya tidak tahu apakah Nur Illahi yang dibawanya akan putus sampai pada beliau saja, atau masih akan berlanjut pada orang lain. Tapi saya yakin dan berharap, sesudah beliau nanti masih akan ada orang lain yang menjadi pembawa Nur Illahi itu. Siapakah orangnya, saya tidak tahu.
8. Maka Anda sekalian para hadirin, ambillah Nur Illahi itu dari beliau saat ini. Mumpung beliau masih ada, mumpung beliau masih hadir di tengah kita, sulutkan Nur Illahi dari kalbu beliau kepada kalbu anda masing-masing.
9. Orang yang hidup di dunia tanpa Nur Illahi adalah orang yang buta. Dan (Syekh Nazim mengutip al-Qur’an), “Barang siapa yang didunia ini buta, maka di akhiratnya pun akan buta”. Sekali lagi, dapatkanlah Nur Ilahi dari orang-orang seperti Syekh Ahmad Shohibulwafa Tajul ‘Arifin.
10. Beliau (Syekh Ahmad Shohibulwafa Tajul ‘Arifin) nampaknya saja tertunduk dan tidur. Sebetulnya beliau tidak tidur. Dari kalbu beliau terpancar pesan-pesan kepada kalbu saya. Saya berbicara dan menyampaikan semua pesan ini bukan dari isi kalbu saya sendiri. Saya mengambilnya dari kalbu beliau. Di hadapan beliau saya terlalu malu untuk tidak mengambil apa yang ada pada kalbu beliau. Saya malu untuk berbicara hanya dengan apa yang ada pada kalbu saya sendiri.
11. Demikianlah apa yang saya perlu saya sampaikan kepada anda semua. (Lalu Syekh Nazim menutup pembicaraannya dengan tahlil, sholawat dan do’a). Saya tuliskan point-point ceramah Syekh Nazim ini berdasarkan sisa ingatan saya ketika mendengar dan menterjemahkan pidato beliau empat hari setelah kejadian, sepulang saya dari Medan. Tentu saja ada banyak kekeliruan ataupun kekurangannya. Saya mohon maaf, dan kepada Allah Swt., saya bersimpuh memohon ampun. Jakarta09 Mei 2001**
Sumber : Haqqani Indonesia dan berbagai sumber

Dzikrullah 165

Tiada jalan yang lebih aman, selamat, tentram, mampu menjauhkan dari kekhawatiran & kesedihan,
kecuali dengan memperbanyak dzikir.

Maka makanlah hidangan bergizi ini sebanyak-banyaknya, karena ia akan membuatmu maboook tanpa minum arak…!

Jalan Mulai Terbuka

Langkah ini membawa pada Guru,
Semakin dekat.
Makin terasa
Makin yakin.
Jalan kebahagiaan ada di depanku.
Subhanallah.

Ya Allah
Ya Mujib Ya Aziz ya Hakim,
Engkaulah pemilik tarikan nafas ini.
Berikanlah ketetapan yang terbaik menurut-Mu.

Ya Rob.
Bukakanlah Pintu Pintu menuju-Mu.
Biarkan aku bersimpuh, dalam segala ketakberdayaanku dihadapan-Mu.
Biarkan aku berlari menuju Cinta dan Kesucian-Mu.

Building Leadership and Organizational Capability at Agilent

AGILENT IMPLEMENTS A COLLECTION OF LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS TO MAINTAIN A STELLAR MANAGEMENT BENCH AND SATISFIED CUSTOMERS.

When measurement matters, engineers, scientists, manufacturers, businesses, researchers, and government agencies rely on Agilent tools and solutions. From home entertainment to homeland security, from food safety to network reliability, and from communicating wirelessly to discovering the genetic basis of disease, Agilent provides the measurement capabilities that make our world more productive and a safer, healthier, more enjoyable place to live.

Simply put, Agilent makes a measurable difference in the lives of people everywhere.

At Agilent (and really at any company), the only way to accomplish our corporate strategy is through our people. The strategic intent of the learning and development team is to accelerate and deepen the development of successful leaders who drive our business strategy and cultural transformation forward. No significant strategy at Agilent has been rolled out without leadership development being a critical plank.

When Bill Sullivan became Agilent Technologies’ second CEO, after declaring that our strategic intent was to be "the world’s premier measurement company," he outlined a clear focus on our customers, employees, and shareholders, with very specific measures of success. He immediately began to demonstrate the importance of leadership by declaring that a best-in-class general manager bench was one of his top three priorities. In the four years since that declaration, a systemic set of initiatives has been executed and cascaded through all levels of Agilent leadership, including individual contributors.

Agilent continues to demonstrate that we have a model for value creation regardless of external economics and our approach to leadership development has been critical in making this happen.

First, a focus on general managers

Bill Sullivan believes that general managers are the heart of the company’s ability to innovate and execute, and my colleagues felt we needed to take an innovative and systemic approach to achieving the goal of a best-in-class general management bench.

After we solidified Agilent’s strategic intent, we established the "Agilent Leadership Framework" and associated competencies, and specifically reset general managers’ expectations, metrics, and rewards, while refreshing the operating model fundamentals through the "General Management Program."

We used this highly customized development program created with TRI Corporation for Bill and his staff to clarify the general manager’s role and to deepen their financial acumen and operational excellence. As part of this program, each general manager was required to complete a performance improvement plan to address an area of underperformance in her actual business results. These plans were reviewed and critiqued by their managers and Bill, with actual progress tracked after the program.

A fundamental principle we have established in all of our development programs is accountability- based learning.

In parallel with the rollout of the General Management Program, we helped Bill establish clear metrics and processes to manage accountability for general manager development. While Bill was clear about what the business fundamental metrics needed to be, we needed a change management process to ensure that these metrics became institutionalized as levers of accountability and continuous improvement, starting at the top.

As part of our balanced enterprise scorecard, we implemented a quarterly leadership audit as a metric for leadership and culture. Our quarterly leadership audit is a tool to create companywide focus and accountability on the critical few areas of leadership that most need improvement in the next year, based on our business priorities for the year ahead.

We set the leadership audit targets to reflect the external 75th percentile as a way to reinforce the high, externally focused bar that Bill was setting for our general managers. The audit focuses on the critical leadership practices that we know drive business results. For the past two years, our focus areas have been customer orientation, speed and decisiveness, and engagement – three indices that comprise an important construct we call "speed to opportunity."

This fiscal year, we moved to a semiannual leadership audit, and our scores have been steadily increasing. In our balanced scorecard approach, all general managers and executives are now measured on their results versus targets in four key areas: financials, customers, markets, and leadership and culture. The power of this approach is that we measure ourselves from the outside-in, with competitive, external data in each of these areas.

To supplement the quarterly leadership audit as a measure of the critical few leadership practices that need improvement in a given year, we facilitated discussions with Bill and the executive staff to consciously articulate and codify the new Agilent leadership framework and expectations so these key messages could be reinforced systemically and cascaded through the organization.

We have developed specific competencies for our Agilent leadership framework, and we have scaled them appropriately to each level of leadership. Our Agilent competencies have helped our organization define in behavioral terms what leaders at all levels need to do to produce the results the organization expects, doing so in a way that is consistent with, and builds, a unified culture. These competencies have been integrated into our management practices and human resources systems from selection to performance management.

Inspired by Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood’s construct of "leadership brand," we built on this foundation by developing a leadership brand – "uncompromising integrity with speed to opportunity" – that creates a competitive advantage for Agilent and differentiates us in the eyes of our customers.

Next, a focus on all levels of leadership

Once the General Management Program was underway, Bill wanted to assure that the expectations of leadership were clear at every level of the organization. As a result of this commitment and direction to leadership development, we cascaded the new Agilent leadership objectives, expectations, and business acumen education from the General Manager Program through senior, middle, and first-level management via a robust curriculum we call the Agilent "Leadership Core," which includes the Senior Management Program, the Middle Management Program, and the First-Level Manager Program.

One of our other key principles is leader engagement, and in 2008, 67 percent of our executives were involved in the delivery of our key leadership programs. The learning and leadership team takes a three-phase approach to each program in the curriculum to ensure transfer and application for results.

First, the preparation phase allows learners to meet with their manager and discuss questions to align both the learner and the manager in preparation for the application of learning. Some programs may include webinars or other prereading to assure that participants come prepared to fully engage in the experiential portion of the program. We have a various methods we use in our post-performance support phase for each one of our programs.

The experiential and the follow-up phases of each program are described as follows:

Senior Manager Program. The Senior Manager Program evolved directly from the General Management Program and continues to provide Agilent’s new and newly promoted senior managers and general managers an intensive 4.5-day program focused on financial acumen and operational excellence.

Bill begins each of these programs with a discussion of expectations of senior leaders. The participants are then placed in diverse teams that compete in a dynamic business simulation. Each team creates a strategic intent and competes for six quarters to win market share, spur growth, and achieve the highest return on invested capital.

Operational reviews in which experienced senior managers review the competing teams increase the realistic experience for participants. Participating senior managers create a follow-up action plan to accelerate their business results, which they then report on three months following the program.

Middle Manager Program. Once all the senior managers completed their program and it had moved to what we call "steady state," we launched the Middle Manager Program. Bill and the senior leadership team provided extensive input to the outcomes and the focus for the program. The dynamic, 3.5-day simulation immersion training focuses on executing business decisions in a competitive environment customized to reflect Agilent’s customer segments. (The program was customized by our partner BTS after 40 interviews with line leaders.) Dialogue and decision skills appropriate to middle managers are interwoven in the program, using practice, scenarios, and challenges. Participants identify a learning partner with whom they meet at least monthly as they progress through a three-month follow-up action plan.

For this program, one of the additional ways we determine if we are causing an impact is by interviewing managers of the participants several months after the program. Here are some comments that have been shared with us:

* "Increased role on his biggest deal opportunity in leading the division and the customer. This has led to greater customer intimacy and more specific knowledge that is leading to better program decisions."

* "A more explicit plan for process improvement and a fundamental changes roadmap for creating differentiation. Now he is using this to stir up support across functions. He has increased confidence as a result of the program."

First-Level Manager Program. The First-Level Manager Program launched last year once 80 percent of our middle managers had completed their program. This development initiative continues the cascading of leadership capabilities defined for every level of leadership. One day is focused on a BTS-customized business "board game" that allows participants to see how money flows through the organization. The second and third days are spent on leadership skills such as building the customer voice into work, management by objectives, creating winning teams, and dialogue and decision skills.

Participants apply their learning in "pods" using a wiki to keep connected following the program, and a webinar is held with the cohort group to discuss their results 10 to 12 weeks after each session.

Working at Agilent. Working at Agilent, which is for all individual contributors worldwide, will complete the Agilent leadership core, and we begin delivery in summer of 2009. We were looking for the tipping point to start, because we wanted to make sure enough first-level managers had been through their enterprise development program. We have been very intentional about when to begin delivery to each level of leadership at Agilent to ensure that the environment would support what was being taught and that each learner’s manager understood what was expected from him.

The decision to launch a program directed to all individual contributors, during one of the most significant economic downturns Agilent has experienced, was not taken lightly. It demonstrates Bill’s commitment to having best-in-class leadership at every level. Working at Agilent is a one-day program focusing on personal leadership, application of Agilent values, and aligning objectives to Agilent priorities.

We need all of our employees to focus on the critical few customer opportunities in this challenging market environment and act with speed and decisiveness. Participants will apply their learning not only with their manager, but also with learning partners throughout a sixweek period.

Closing thoughts

Each of these stages in our development represents a major milestone on our journey to become the world’s premier measurement company in the eyes of our customers, employees, and shareholders.

Each step on this journey "includes and transcends" the steps that preceded it, some of the mindset that the changes we have made are developing individual leaders to develop the leadership bench by

* creating one-size-fits-all development programs to customized accountability-based learning

* measuring satisfaction with development programs to measure leadership behavior in the eyes of followers, plus results versus competitors

* moving from best-in-company versus internal peers, to best-in-class versus external benchmarks.

 

LISTEN TO THIS FEATURE at http://www.astd.org/TD/TDpodcasts.htm

When Bill Sullivan became Agilent Technologies’ second CEO, after declaring that our strategic intent was to be "the world’s premier measurement company," he outlined a clear focus on our customers, employees, and shareholders, with very specific measures of success.

As a result of this commitment and direction to leadership development, we cascaded the new Agilent leadership objectives, expectations, and business acumen education from the General Manager Program through senior, middle, and first-level management via a robust curriculum we call the Agilent "Leadership Core."

 

[Author Affiliation]

TERESA ROCHE, VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF LEARNING OFFICER

[Author Affiliation]

Teresa Roche is vice president and chief learning officer at Agilent, teresa_roche@agilent.com.

What Gets Watched Gets Done: How Metrics Can Motivate

The old BI adage "what gets watched gets done" suggests that when activities are observed and measured, people change their behavior to look good on the performance metrics. This is exactly what makes dashboards and scorecards so powerful: They focus organizational attention and motivate behavior.

This recognition is not new. Executives quickly grasp the power of metrics. For example, there is the old story about a steel baron who, at the end of the first shift, asked the foreman, "How much steel did you produce?" When told, the owner took a piece of chalk and wrote the number on the plant floor. When the next shift came in and asked about the number, they were told it represented the tons of steel produced during the last shift. When the second shift ended, the next foreman crossed out the previous number and wrote the new, larger number. This process continued for several days and led to exceptionally high levels of steel production.

Dashboards at 1-800 CONTACTS

1-800 CONTACTS provides a great example of the ability of dashboards to motivate behavior. The company uses dashboards in its call center and has seen significant improvements in operator performance. It also has an interesting twist in the way it uses dashboards to create a competitive environment for the operators.

The company was founded in 1995 by two entrepreneurs who offered contact lenses at low prices with convenient ordering and fast delivery. Today, 1-800 CONTACTS is the world s largest contact lens store, selling as many contact lenses as 2,500 retail optical shops combined.

Customers can order over the Internet, by mail or fax, at WaImart, or by phone. The company has almost 300 trained customer service agents.

Until four years ago, 1-800 CONTACTS had no formal BI initiative. A full-time DBA would create reports on demand when requested by management. When Jim Hill, director of data management, came on board with his team, their first task was to build a data warehouse to support executive reporting.

Soon after the data warehouse was built and a reporting system was in place, call center management approached Jim for help with developing a better incentive system for operators. The legacy system was largely manual and there were no good statistics or benchmarks available for assessing and rewarding the agents’ performance. Jim’s response was to create a dashboard that used warehouse data and displayed metrics such as operator closing rates and average order size.

When the prototype was shown to management, one executive said that it was fine but that he wanted to create more of a "horse race" where the agents could see how they were doing and compete against one another. The next version was close to what is in place today. The operators’ dashboards are updated every 15 minutes and they can see how they are doing on key metrics and in comparison with the other operators. The operators’ compensation is based in part on the metrics displayed and their performance relative to other operators.

The Operators’ Dashboard

Figure 1 shows a typical operator’s dashboard. The color- coded gauges on the left indicate how the operator is performing on the closing ratio, average sale, and calls /hour metrics for the day. The bar charts to the right are more detailed and show performance on an hourly basis. The straight lines are the operator’s average monthly performance for the metrics. This operator has been doing better than his month’s average closing ratio and average sale, but only in the 1:00 p.m. hour has he done better than his monthly average on calls /hour. At the right of the screen is a testimonial from a customer about favorable customer service. This serves as a motivator for the operators and is updated every month or so. The ribbon at the bottom of the screen identifies the top five performing agents for each of the three measures (and a few others).

There are two ways operators can see how they are doing in comparison to the other agents. First, for today’s performance, the gauges are color coded. In Figure 1, a green light for the closing ratio and average sale indicates that the operator is in the top quartile of operators. By way of contrast, a red light shows that when measured by number of calls answered per hour, the operator’s performance is in the bottom quartile.

The second way for an agent to see how he or she is doing is to select the metrics button from the top menu. This takes the agent to a dashboard (not shown) that provides month- to- date comparisons with the other operators on his team (operators are divided into teams of about 24) and the call center as a whole.

This page also shows the calculation of the operators Call Center Incentive (CCI) index, which is used in determining the agents’ monthly compensation. The CCI formula uses a closing ratio index, average order size index, hours worked, bonus points associated with selling solutions or setting up appointments, and a quality index that is based on audits of the quality of the operators interactions with customers. The indices are computed so operators are compared to other operators who are working at the same time.

At the end of the month, all of the agents are ranked based on their CCI scores. The top 80 percent of the agents receive bonuses based on their scores and the size of the bonus pool, which is tied to overall business success. A top-performing agent can earn a bonus of as much as $1,000 per month.

The Executives’ Dashboard

The executives’ dashboard (not shown) reveals how the business is doing at any time during the day, how the business is performing relative to four weeks and to a year ago, the performance of the various channels (e.g., Internet, call center), and the predicted sales for the day. The last item is particularly interesting. Using historical data, by 10:00 a.m. each morning it is possible to predict sales for the day within $2,000 (assuming no unusual event occurs). The company plans to add even more comparisons and trending information to the executives’ dashboards.

How does an executive use the dashboard? One example would be a marketing manager who knows the timing of a new marketing campaign. The manager can use the dashboard to monitor the campaign’s effectiveness and respond accordingly.

Impact on Performance

The operators’ dashboards had the anticipated impact. What gets watched gets done. After the dashboards were in place, revenues increased $50,000 per month and call quality remained high. Call center management attributed the increased sales revenue to the dashboards.

The Operators’ Reactions

The agents had an interesting reaction to the dashboards and to a compensation system that had operators competing against one another. Jason Cann, who was an operator when the dashboards were first implemented and is now a team supervisor, provided a first-hand perspective.

Nearly all of the agents welcomed the introduction of the dashboards. Before the dashboards were installed, competition for incentive dollars was based on the closing ratio. Many of the agents considered this to be unfair. Closing ratios tend to vary with the day and time of day, and those agents who worked at a time when closing ratios tend to be lower felt they were at a disadvantage. For example, in the afternoon there are relatively more calls about existing orders than new orders. Consequently, many of the agents liked the dashboards and the CCI index because they provided a better measure of performance. Interestingly, one high-producing agent who did not like the new system left the company. He had been a leader in closing ratio and sales, but did not score well on the CCI index because of poor-quality interactions with customers. As a result, he was no longer considered to be a top producer.

Most of the operators liked, and continue to like, the dashboards and compensation system. One reason is the agents’ ability to constantly monitor their performance and compare it to other agents’ performance. They just seem to like the scorekeeping and competition. The company also tries to hire people who seem likely to work well in a competitive environment.

Another reason agents like the system is that they can see whether their performance is consistent over time and at a high level. This allows the agents to be accountable to themselves. Jason says that the culture of the call center has changed because the agents now know where their performance stands and the dashboards help them to improve. Every 15 minutes the agents can see how far they have "moved the needle."

Most of the agents who find themselves in the bottom 20 percent (and thus do not qualify for bonuses) respond by working harder to improve their performance. The rest probably would not work hard under any system.

Finally, the dashboards allow the agents to see how their teams are performing against the other teams. Regular team competitions are fun for the agents and profitable for the company.

Choosing the Right Metrics

The metrics for dashboards must be chosen carefully. Metrics should:

* Be accurate

* Be easy to understand

* Be actionable

* Be controllable

* Be few in number

* Be supported by data

* Be presented in the context of targets, goals, and past performance

* Balance and reinforce one another

* Be quantitative whenever possible

* Measure the true event when possible, not an associated event

* Be periodically reviewed and revised

* Be owned by the person who is responsible for the outcome

* Include both leading and lagging measures

* Be aligned with the business strategy

Some of these are especially interesting as they apply to the CCI index. Metrics should balance and reinforce one another. For example, a concern with any set of metrics is that they may be "gamed"; that is, people may engage in behaviors that allow them to perform well on the metrics but, in a larger context, produce results that are undesirable for the organization. In the case of the CCI index, the closing ratio index and average sales index are balanced by the quality of the customer interaction. Because of the quality index in the CCI formula, operators are discouraged from pushing for high closing rates and sales at the expense of a pleasant customer experience.

Although the CCI index provides a good balance of performance metrics, it is relatively complicated. Operators cannot equate any particular score to their compensation. As a result, it violates the "easy to understand" characteristic of a good metric. Basing compensation directly on operator sales would be simpler, but management is hesitant to move in this direction lest there be an associated decrease in the quality of customer interactions. Management continues to consider a CCI index or other method for assessing overall operator performance that is both easy to understand and provides appropriate incentives.

Summary

Dashboards and scorecards are powerful ways to monitor performance and focus organizational attention. This has been shown to be the case at 1-800 CONTACTS, where the company has taken the use of dashboards one step further by using them to create a competitive environment. Call center operators compete for bonuses, and the dashboards foster this competition by showing how the operators are doing on the metrics used to determine those bonuses.

What is especially interesting is how well the operators have responded to the system. With few exceptions, the agents think highly of the system. This shows that employees like feedback on how they are performing and enjoy competing. It is important, however, that the metrics used in the competitive environment are well thought out and have a balance consistent with overall company goals.

[Author Affiliation]

Hugh J. Watson is Professor of MIS and C. Herman and Mary Virginia Terry Chair of Business Administration in the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia.

hwatson@terry.uga.edu

Jim Hill is director of data management at 1-800 CONTACTS.

jhill@1800contacts.com

Gempa Pariaman-Jambi

Kering sudah airmata ini.

Semoga ini semua makin mempertebal rasa cinta kita kepada Nya.
Hanya kepada Allah lah kita berserah diri.
Sungguh, ini makin membukakan mata batin kita semua.
Allah Maha Berkehendak, dan Kehendak-Nya adalah yang terbaik bagi hamba-Nya.