The art of working: Day1 for salary man with strategic keywords and also for start-up, venture to big companies

1. The art of working
~Strategy and keywords~
for salary man, start-up,
even big company
NguyenHai MINH
nguyenhaiminh@gmail.com
COO of FX, game ventures
IT manager at World Mega Bank
SE at multination software vendors
Worked directly with line manager
ex-CFO, 10B US$
Sales man, 3B US$
CEO of 100M US$
CEO of 15M US$

2. Agenda
• Mindset, strategy
• Logic thinking and effective communication
• Strong spirit to solve issues
• Understand your company
– Project management
– Operation Management
• Return to day 1’s orientation

3. Realistic life design: Lifetime salary
Peaceful life

4. Peaceful way is really peaceful?
• May OK for normal expense: Food, house, car, …
• NOK for unexpected: surgeons, restructured, …
• Question: Really Japanese/American/European
love his/her company?
• Answer: NOPE, all people work for food because
of suffer from being restructured in future

5. – 2008, 2012, 2013 and from now on
“no need to come tomorrow” is often used
– Volume of restructuring: too many companies with
sudden death due to bubble, …
– In general, 10 ventures established and 9 is in
bankrupt after 1 year, and 1 in ill situation
– 3 years is needed to check survival of any company

6. Why 3 years: company balance
• Revenue vs Expense: Simply +, -, and SUM
Question: Investors has enough money for 3 years from
beginning? Or bankrupt on the way?
Answer: Almost bankrupt

7. MINDSET as Maslow theory
• Love/belonging is too luxury
• Only try to survive: Breath, food, water, sleep…
HOW to be SURVIVAL???

8. Strategy: work hard when young
• Salary = Value  more value, more salary
• Work hard, make value  save time  more work,
more experience, more value
• Maslow’s 2nd : Relief, safety
– People love things “made in Japan” because of feeling safe
– Seek relief in food, business partner … and in WORK
 working hard make supervisors feel relief.
• Loyalty make belief and being assigned important job
 More value

9. Strategy: work hard when young
• Push pressure to PM: please give more works
• Self PR with daily report
• Hard to study after 35
• Time run fast from 25-35
• Hard to get job after 35
Nor you will become window-side people
Additional reason

10. Try to logical thinking
• Salary = Value
• Nothing is from GOD, all need long process of
saving Integration(Math is not too far from
life)
• Believe on yourself and try to get relief from
others
• Excel, balance sheet: only +, -,
(money is not naturally generated, just
transfered from one to other)

11. Strong spirit to solve issues
• Ignored issue will cause delay, loss … later on
• The day without issue is the day having issue
Take easy to receive issue and solve it with strong
spirit
• Same in work, issue in private life also often occur and
you need to solve with strong spirit
• Methodology : Collect information and build up your
own decision making standard

12. Effective Communication

13. Horenso
• When issue happens, need to report to your
line manager first and if possible, propose
your action at same time or later then get
their instruction, then you solve

14. Way of working
• Propose some options and suggest the best
based on some detail criterias
• You need work hard until enable to propose
• If you see your boss a little irritate, you need
to be sympathized and work harder/quicker

15. When meeting
• Confirm your understanding is same with
intention of speaker
• When talking with supervisor, you should
respect them by compact time via focusing on
keywords,… or talk faster

16. Meeting minutes
• Before meeting: needs agenda to focus on
important points
• Meeting minutes is not description of meeting
progress
• Focus only on conclusions, how(if technical) , next
meeting(if having)
• Conclusion must be “who do what until when”
• Try to write MM within the day
• Send mail to related people with correct manner
of TO/CC/BCC
• Meeting minutes show the logic thinking of MM
writer and conductor

17. Reason
• 4 people with salary 5K US$/month meeting in
1.5hours, so the meeting value’s is
5000 US$ /168 hours * 1.5 hours* 4 people
=178.6US$
• If not recording, không ghi thì
– Task is not implemented
– Loss value
– Loss time to brainstorm, cause stress,
– Supervisor cannot follow
• Meeting minutes increase company value

18. Mail
• Top managers make decision: need information soonest
and standard judge
• Collect information: Top managers can reads mails
among end teams  quick decision  more works 
more value
• Mail subjects to attract and positioning
“[company name][division][project][important] …abc”
• Write conclusion numbers want to discuss first
• Write conclusion first and explanation later

19. Understand a company

20. Running IT venture
• 15% for marketing, 300M$ for each year in case of
DeNA, Gree, Line…
• Need enough money for 3 years if ventures
• Need at least 40,000 new users for each month
for any SNS portal
• Need focus on 1 field
• Try and error until AHA moment of grow hack
• Recruit 1.2-1.5 times than needed staffs due to
high human resource liquidity and high cost of OT
/outsourcing and of course often underestimation

21. Managers who must know detail
• Can give decision and solve problem quickly
• Study/Work hard to understand technical,
business logic, marketing, Business intelligent

22. No VIP but still smooth run
• Ready for worst case: top managers resign any
time
– Password is secured in envelop
• Top managers’ duty: prepare successor
• Network system need high availability for
down time zero
• All big companies has Business Continuity Plan
by building back-up site
• 2 children …

23. Daily report
• A staff: Task 1: from 20% to 30% : 4h: delay
• A staff: Task 2: from 0% to 100% : 4h: on-schedule
• Action: xxx
So for 100% of task 1, A staff need 40 hours, 1 week
Team leader need to check and adjust if A staff
work on performance or not.
If not, criticize him/her immediately and ask
him/her to take action until delay is recovered

24. Level up SENSE
• Project manager estimate correctly
• Team leader correctly estimate, solve problems
• Testers know difficult cases and where need to
focus
• Business Analyst write detail to decrease Q&A
• Marketing needs to know effective channel
• …
These sense can be built only via daily hard work

25. 4E + 1C +1Q
• Envision
• Enable
• Energize: not only incentive, need includes
empower
• Besides, try to criticize once a week in private
or public
• Question to make them thinking as your way

26. RUNNING PROJECT

27. Mindset
• In project, team should work hard and even
tough together. That is better than getting
claims from Customer and explain to
supervisor
• Only 0 or 1; 0.99 will still be seen as 0
• Award to winner is always double of runner
up, although the gap is 1-2 milisecond

28. Project management
• Task in schedule must be as detail as possible, even
mailing, meeting,… all take times and belong project
timeline
• Especially, purchasing of IT hardware is take 2-3
months
• High cost of OT fee and outsource in case of delay.
• Check delay daily and try to action when being delay
nor PM has to work hard to re-schedule
•  team leader must re-arrange with others team to
take responsibility for delay.

29. Service design: code/test
• Focus on smoothness of functions
– Sign up
– Sign in
– Sending mail
– Sign out
– Payment
– Communication among modules, systems
– Logs
– And other functions

30. SRS, non-requirements
• Make clear definition of
– Functionality
– OS
– Browser
– Response
– Stress
– Security
– …
As detail as possible
(Almost companies do not have detail design)
-Message is guide to action, not only display error
having message design from beginning

31. Design
• Nowadays, graphical design become more
important after Apple’s rise, after of
satisfaction to Microsoft’s functionality
• Not only end-user, back office staffs also need
design to work all-day

32. Solve problem
• Make work flow and data flow
• Check value at each node
• Determine the fault area
• Check value on setting, especially
environment parameters
• Write logs
• Check setting

33. Release
• Write to-do list and checklist
• Focus on testing as service design’s main point

34. OPERATION

35. Interview
• Background
• Reason of leaving previous jobs
• Logic thinking
• Experience on big system
• Understand of business logic
• Biggest success/failure and his/her
contribution/responsibility
• Less previous company
• Spirit to solve problems
• Review tasks if leader

36. Probation
• Need to fire some in probation
• Give some bonus if good performance
Weekly PDCA
• What is done and what to do next
• Try to keep weekly

37. Task Audit
X: change by PIC name
Grey out if done

38. Join activities as many as possible
• Lunch, tea-break
• Sports: soccer, badminton, Ping-Pong
• Entertainment: billiards, travel
• Teambuilding
• Weekly free talk
• All communication is in English
• Meeting at morning for new inspiration

39. Sometimes
need to remember feeling at DAY 1

40. THANK YOU
nguyenhaiminh@gmail.com