Suryakenchana

I will be offering the 📚GCE Preparation programme that covers all subjects — except MT — and focus on habituating study skills that saves time and improves recall.

🗝️My key focus with each student will be :

(1) To identify trait specific study skills.
(2) To enable self-directed and independent learning through the Advanced Study Skills.

💻Sessions can be online and onsite based on a schedule.

🗓️All sessions are either on Saturday and/or Sunday, 10am-12.30pm or 2.00-4.30pm.

✅Fortnightly sessions will start this November.

✅(AM) Academic Mentoring can start anytime.

Our Academic Mentoring service has now been empowered by CVAT Personal Value Profile (PVP) that will benefit most students 15 years and older.

The PVP reveals traits that will provide behavioral dispositions and inclinations for specific tasks in learning and studying.

For example, through their PVP, we can better appreciate the likelihood of students readily structuring or organising their thoughts.

We could also anticipate if the student could readily habituate note crafting.

In this way we can pace the student’s study skills habituation that best suits them.

Now, the Academic and Professional Mentoring services include CVAT Personal Value Profiles (cvatbrasil.com).

I am back to helping individuals and teams gain greater self awareness so that they could readily take action and know their conflict/trapped behaviours.

Thanks for the technology for translation on most browsers, we can readily use the base Portugese site to continue offering CVAT Personal Value Profiles.

WHY A NEED TO BRING BACK C-VAT PROFILING?

C-VAT refers to Culture and Value Analysis Tool.

From responses to 20 questions, a Personal Value Profile (PVP) is generated revealing 16 dimensions of our Traits.

With each dimension, our scores in the Low, Mid or High range reveal our values and likely behavioral inclinations.

These variables over 16 dimensions gives us a combination that is more than 4 to 16 “TYPES”.

For one, it brings forth some level of uniqueness to each one of us.

At a very personal level, it is hard to consider that the Greatest Creator could only limit creation to a fixed set of (personality) types.

A key application that my PVP has been useful to me has been to know ways to help me Take Action.

I believe that most of us struggle to Take Action due to our Trapped or Conflict Behaviour which can be revealed with the PVP.

Gain Greater Self-Awareness for Taking Action It is always easy and simple to say, “Just do it!”The fact is that not everyone can readily “just do it!”. There are internal barriers that can prevent, impede, slow down or…

It took me some time to put together the principles, approaches and methods I have applied in leading teams since schooling.

Over the years, I learned to be readily decisive, empowered to delegate, lead in adversity, optimal with discomfort and confident with displacing myself.

I was also driven by a need to leave a legacy.

This new 2-day course bring together my learning and experience in leading for more than three decades in the people, private and public sector.

CHANGE, CONTINUITY & CONSISTENCY IN A VUCA WORLD

Change is inevitable given today’s increasing VUCA circumstances. Much of the volatility can be due to the massive loads of information and misinformation that led to hasty decisions with unexpected repercussions.

Since 1993, I have had several career changes that provided me with useful experiences.

My first profession as a regular Infantry officer prepared me well for subsequent changes and challenges in life. In the many battle and scenario planning, we reduce the many outcomes into two types - possible and probable.

In response to these possible and probable situations, we plan for a set of course of action, including contingencies. Bring routinely engaged in these exercises make them habitual.

My first major change was transiting from a military to civilian life. A marker for such a change was the receipt of my NRIC (ID card). Prior to this, I can only use my military ID card (SAF 11B).

Next change was moving to academia, embarking on my Masters by research, which was one of my contingencies. This path led me to two pathways - (1) teaching at tertiary institutions (NUS, Republic Poly, Lasalle College of the Arts and now, James Cook University); and (2) cultural heritage development.

This plan has been part of aspiring to the ideals of pendeta ratu, on which being a general or leading in the military is one pillar.

Leveraging on my experience with community development, I made a brief segued into this field as an Organisational Development manager for the Ministry of Community Development, Youth & Sports (MCYS) and venturing into the field of OD consultancy.

The continuity and consistency amidst these changes was the contingencies put in place that enabled me to seamless move into existing or new fields of expertise.

The habituation of processes like terrain analysis, approval of plan (with the emphasis on Intention of Higher Command and the Principal Points of Consideration), and G&T (grouping and task) makes managing work and team much easier.

Planning for contingencies is part of the overall risk management. Having to craft contigencies meant an assessment of risks with “what ifs” and worst-case scenarios.

Volunteering in community work while serving in the military allowed me to apply military approaches and frameworks to other settings, particularly a civilian one. Hence, when I had to leave the military, I was already adept at applying my work habits into civilian life.

While we encounter change, certain things continue.

It is the consistency of applied learning and habituating useful processes that will ensure we can be adaptive of a VUCA world.

Toying with possible autobiography

If it’s meant to be, it will be, InsyaAllah.

After a few changes in dates, the talk is finally set for 11 Jan 2024.

What a way to start 2024.

PHD@50

I learned this morning that part of my mental blocks with respect to the subject I am studying is the lack of ownership that I attach to the subject.

I know I can be excited and ethused into working long hours on two subjects - Javanese cultural heritage and study skills development.

For my PhD, I have the opportunity to venture into a new field. While my Honours and Masters was in Southeast Asian Studies, my PhD is in Management and Commerce.

As I will be studying about the intersection of micro business sustainability and custodianship of cultural heritage, I have to rely much on my experience in running a micro business thar trades in cultural heritage product or service.

I didn’t feel confident to own the academic knowledge about business. All the authors amd writings are new to me.

When I could readily cite Koentjaraningrat or Geertz on Javanese cultural heritage, I could not do the same for my current field.

So this morning, I began to work on owning this subject.

It has been a while since I posted anything on my page.

My inclinations have been to post in my social account on FB.

Perhaps, I shall dedicate this space here to sharing about my journey starting my PhD programme before my 49th birthday, and likely to be in the thick of it when I am 50.

I officially started my PhD programme at James Cook University Singapore on 1 Jun 2021.

Much of my initial struggles were:

(1) Relegating other responsibilities and duties so that I can have both the mindspace and time to focus on my PhD. With two businesses running, it was not easy. While I could easily delegate much of the work, the oversight on strategic and financial matters was difficult to relegate to a lower priority. Much of the concerns were the income opportunities for the team and the need to ensure adequate cashflow to cover recurring costs of operations.

(2) Catching up with the literature and research methodologies that has evolved since my last Masters research in 2006. When I embarked on my Masters research, there was only a six year gap from my Honours research. Now it’s a 15 years gap.

(3) Changing routines and workflow. I had to work on making my research, reading and reflection a routine that could sustain adequate flow. I tried various methods to spark my drive and get me into the flow quickly. I have learned through various experiments that I can do the following:
—-(I) Clean up my study for at least 1 hour.
—-(II) Do some creative work.
—-(III) Walk while reflecting.
—-(IV) Begin writing a reflection.

(4) Managing my anxieties with a major change in my life. I was not only embarking on a PhD programme. I was also embarking on a new career as an academic when I was offered the position of a Sessional Lecturer to teach a module per Study Period so far. In the process, I encountered new fears and responses to these fears. Part of it came from an Imposter Syndrome, especially when I received news that I was awarded the Postgraduate Research Scholarship.