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PETALING JAYA :  Increased consumption of turtle eggs among locals may contribute to the extinction of the species, a report by World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Malaysia states.

The report commissioned by the organisation and prepared by Traffic Southeast Asia, entitled Marine Turtle Egg Consumption and Trade in Malaysia has shown that market demand for the eggs exceeds supply.

About 422,000 eggs were traded in Terengganu in 2007, indicating a trade volume which was two times higher than the number of green turtle nestings in the state.

WWF-Malaysia executive director and chief executive officer Datuk Dr Dionysius Sharma said one of the factors which contributed to the leatherback turtles’ disappearance was consumption of their eggs.

“We do not want the same thing to happen to our green and hawksbill turtles,” he said in a statement on Tuesday.

Out of the 396 households surveyed, about 61% had consumed turtle eggs before.

The majority of the respondents had consumed turtle eggs once or twice annually and bought between one and five eggs each time.

Turtle eggs were sold at local markets with 91% obtained from Pasar Payang in Kuala Tere-ngganu.

Most consumers eat turtle eggs as a delicacy, as a source of protein or for traditional and medicinal purposes.

Traffic South-East Asia senior programme officer Noorainie Awang Anak said the time and effort spent on research and putting together an action plan would be of little value if action was not taken soon.

“We hope that an action plan will include a national ban on the commercial sale of turtle eggs as well as their consumption,” she said.

Source:

http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2010/3/11/nation/5835536&sec=nation

Understanding the Pressure For and Against Change:

Force Field Analysis is a useful technique for looking at all the forces for and against a decision. In effect, it is a specialized method of weighing pros and cons.

By carrying out the analysis you can plan to strengthen the forces supporting a decision, and reduce the impact of opposition to it.

To carry out a force field analysis, can download free worksheet and then use it to follow these steps:

• Describe your plan or proposal for change in the middle.

• List all forces for change in one column, and all forces against change in another column.

• Assign a score to each force, from 1 (weak) to 5 (strong).

For example, imagine that you are a manager deciding whether to install new manufacturing equipment in your factory. You might draw up a force field analysis like the one in Figure 1:

Once you have carried out an analysis, you can decide whether your project is viable. In the example above, you might initially question whether it is worth going ahead with the plan.

Where you have already decided to carry out a project, Force Field Analysis can help you to work out how to improve its probability of success. Here you have two choices:

• To reduce the strength of the forces opposing a project, or
• To increase the forces pushing a project

Often the most elegant solution is the first: just trying to force change through may cause its own problems. People can be uncooperative if change is forced on them.

If you had to implement the project in the example above, the analysis might suggest a number of changes to the initial plan:

• By training staff (increase cost by 1) you could eliminate fear of technology (reduce fear by 2)
• It would be useful to show staff that change is necessary for business survival (new force in favor, +2)
• Staff could be shown that new machines would introduce variety and interest to their jobs (new force, +1)
• You could raise wages to reflect new productivity (cost +1, loss of overtime -2)
• Slightly different machines with filters to eliminate pollution could be installed (environmental impact -1)

These changes would swing the balance from 11:10 (against the plan), to 8:13 (in favor of the plan).

Source:

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTED_06.htm

Looking at a Decision from All Points of View:

“Six Thinking Hats” is a powerful technique that helps you look at important decisions from a number of different perspectives. It helps you make better decisions by pushing you to move outside your habitual ways of thinking. As such, it helps you understand the full complexity of a decision, and spot issues and opportunities which you might otherwise not notice.

Many successful people think from a very rational, positive viewpoint, and this is part of the reason that they are successful. Often, though, they may fail to look at problems from emotional, intuitive, creative or negative viewpoints. This can mean that they underestimate resistance to change, don’t make creative leaps, and fail to make essential contingency plans.

Similarly, pessimists may be excessively defensive, and people used to a very logical approach to problem solving may fail to engage their creativity or listen to their intuition.

If you look at a problem using the Six Thinking Hats technique, then you’ll use all of these approaches to develop your best solution. Your decisions and plans will mix ambition, skill in execution, sensitivity, creativity and good contingency planning.

This tool was created by Edward de Bono in his book “6 Thinking Hats“.

To use Six Thinking Hats to improve the quality of your decision-making, look at the decision “wearing” each of the thinking hats in turn.

Each “Thinking Hat” is a different style of thinking. These are explained below:

• White Hat:
  With this thinking hat, you focus on the data available. Look at the information you have, and see what you can learn from it. Look for gaps in your knowledge, and either try to fill them or take account of them.

  This is where you analyze past trends, and try to extrapolate from historical data.

• Red Hat:
  Wearing the red hat, you look at the decision using intuition, gut reaction, and emotion. Also try to think how other people will react emotionally, and try to understand the intuitive responses of people who do not fully know your reasoning.
• Black Hat:
  When using black hat thinking, look at things pessimistically, cautiously and defensively. Try to see why ideas and approaches might not work. This is important because it highlights the weak points in a plan or course of action. It allows you to eliminate them, alter your approach, or prepare contingency plans to counter problems that arise.Black Hat thinking helps to make your plans tougher and more resilient. It can also help you to spot fatal flaws and risks before you embark on a course of action. Black Hat thinking is one of the real benefits of this technique, as many successful people get so used to thinking positively that often they cannot see problems in advance, leaving them under-prepared for difficulties.
• Yellow Hat:
  The yellow hat helps you to think positively. It is the optimistic viewpoint that helps you to see all the benefits of the decision and the value in it, and spot the opportunities that arise from it. Yellow Hat thinking helps you to keep going when everything looks gloomy and difficult.

• Green Hat:
  The Green Hat stands for creativity. This is where you can develop creative solutions to a problem. It is a freewheeling way of thinking, in which there is little criticism of ideas.
• Blue Hat:
  The Blue Hat stands for process control. This is the hat worn by people chairing meetings. When running into difficulties because ideas are running dry, they may direct activity into Green Hat thinking. When contingency plans are needed, they will ask for Black Hat thinking, and so on.

You can use Six Thinking Hats in meetings or on your own. In meetings it has the benefit of defusing the disagreements that can happen when people with different thinking styles discuss the same problem.

A similar approach is to look at problems from the point of view of different professionals (e.g. doctors, architects, sales directors) or different customers.

Example:

The directors of a property company are looking at whether they should construct a new office building. The economy is doing well, and the amount of vacant office space is reducing sharply. As part of their decision they decide to use the 6 Thinking Hats technique during a planning meeting.

Looking at the problem with the White Hat, they analyze the data they have. They examine the trend in vacant office space, which shows a sharp reduction. They anticipate that by the time the office block would be completed, that there will be a severe shortage of office space. Current government projections show steady economic growth for at least the construction period.

With Red Hat thinking, some of the directors think the proposed building looks quite ugly. While it would be highly cost-effective, they worry that people would not like to work in it.

When they think with the Black Hat, they worry that government projections may be wrong. The economy may be about to enter a ‘cyclical downturn’, in which case the office building may be empty for a long time.

If the building is not attractive, then companies will choose to work in another better-looking building at the same rent.

With the Yellow Hat, however, if the economy holds up and their projections are correct, the company stands to make a great deal of money.

If they are lucky, maybe they could sell the building before the next downturn, or rent to tenants on long-term leases that will last through any recession.

With Green Hat thinking they consider whether they should change the design to make the building more pleasant. Perhaps they could build prestige offices that people would want to rent in any economic climate. Alternatively, maybe they should invest the money in the short term to buy up property at a low cost when a recession comes.

The Blue Hat has been used by the meeting’s Chair to move between the different thinking styles. He or she may have needed to keep other members of the team from switching styles, or from criticizing other peoples’ points.

Source:

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTED_07.htm

MIRI:  When it comes to smoking violation, the law does not discriminate between adults and minors.

Whoever contravenes at certain places or the Control of Tobacco Product Regulations 2004 will be dealt with accordingly.

“Regardless of age, those who got caught smoking in school or gazetted non-smoking areas will be fined,” warned a senior environmental health officer here, Simon Emang.

He said the authority would not hesitate to act against those flouting the regulation, whether or not they had a lighted cigarette in their hand.

Even if a cigarette stick was found in their trouser pockets or school bags, the offenders would be compounded for violating the Control of Tobacco Product Regulations 2004.

“Do not take age for granted because children will not be exempted from the penalty irrespective of where they get caught,” said Simon in an interview with the Borneo Post recently.

Last year, according to him, 16 minors (under 18 years old) were caught puffing away near their schools. All were boys.

The 16 were among the 70 smokers, including a woman in her 40s, apprehended during an ‘anti-smoking’ campaign by health enforcement officers.

“Forty of them were caught at Miri Hospital, three at shopping complexes, seven at a polyclinic, four at Miri Airport and the rest are minors,” said Simon who is from the Enforcement and Prosecution Unit of the Health Department.

The adult offenders were compounded RM250 each and the minors were fined RM50 each.

by Mary Francis.

http://www.theborneopost.com/?p=15716

Making a Choice Where Many Factors Must Be Considered.

Grid Analysis (also known as Decision Matrix Analysis, Pugh Matrix Analysis or MAUT, which stands for Multi-Attribute Utility Theory) is a useful technique to use for making a decision.

It is particularly powerful where you have a number of good alternatives to choose from, and many different factors to take into account. This makes it a great technique to use in almost any important decision where there isn’t a clear and obvious preferred option.

Being able to use Grid Analysis means that you can take decisions confidently and rationally, at a time when other people might be struggling to make a decision.

The technique works by getting you to list your options as rows on a table, and the factors you need consider as columns. You then score each option/factor combination, weight this score, and add these scores up to give an overall score for the option.

While this sounds complex, in reality the technique is quite easy to use. Here’s a step-by-step guide with an example.

Start by downloading our free worksheet, and then work through these steps:

1. The first step is to list all of your options as the row labels on the table, and list the factors that you need to consider as the column headings.

2. Next, work out the relative importance of the factors in your decision. Show these as numbers from, say, 0 to 5, where 0 means that the factor is absolutely unimportant in the final decision, and 5 means that it is very important. (It’s perfectly acceptable to have factors with the same importance.) We will use these to weight your preferences by the importance of the factor.

These values may be obvious. If they are not, then use a technique such as Paired Comparison Analysis to estimate them.

3. The next step is to work your way down the columns of your table, scoring each option for each of the factors in your decision. Score each option from 0 (poor) to 5 (very good). Note that you do not have to have a different score for each option - if none of them are good for a particular factor in your decision, then all options should score 0.

4. Now multiply each of your scores from step 3 by the values for relative importance you calculated in step 2. This will give you weighted scores for each option/factor combination.

5. Finally, add up these weighted scores for each of your options. The option that scores the highest wins!

Example:

A windsurfing enthusiast is about to replace his car. He needs one that not only carries a board and sails, but also that will be good for business travel. He has always loved open-topped sports cars. No car he can find is good for all three things.

His options are:

• An SUV/4×4, hard topped vehicle.
• A comfortable ‘family car’.
• A station wagon/estate car.
• A convertible sports car.

Criteria that he wants to consider are:

• Cost.
• Ability to carry a sail board safely.
• Ability to store sails and equipment securely.
• Comfort over long distances.
• Fun!
• Nice look and build quality to car.

Firstly he draws up the table shown in Figure 1, and scores each option by how well it satisfies each factor:

Figure 1: Example Grid Analysis Showing Unweighted Assessment of How Each Type of Car Satisfies Each Factor

Next he decides the relative weights for each of the factors. He multiplies these by the scores already entered, and totals them. This is shown in Figure 2:

Figure 2: Example Grid Analysis Showing Weighted Assessment of How Each Type of Car Satisfies Each Factor

This gives an interesting result: Despite its lack of fun, a station wagon may be the best choice.

If the wind-surfer still feels unhappy with the decision, maybe he has underestimated the importance of one of the factors. Perhaps he should give ‘fun’ a weight of 7, and buy an old station wagon to carry his board!

Source:

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTED_03.htm

Working Out the Relative Importance of Different Options:

Paired Comparison Analysis helps you to work out the importance of a number of options relative to each other. It is particularly useful where you do not have objective data to base this on.

This makes it easy to choose the most important problem to solve, or select the solution that will give you the greatest advantage. Paired Comparison Analysis helps you to set priorities where there are conflicting demands on your resources.

It is also an ideal tool for comparing “apples with oranges” – completely different options such as whether to invest in marketing, a new IT system or a new piece of machinery. These decisions are usually much harder than comparing three possible new IT systems, for example.

To use the technique.  You can use this to compare each option with each other option, one-by-one. For each comparison, you will decide which of the two options is most important, and then assign a score to show how much more important it is.

Follow these steps to use the technique:

1. List the options you will compare. Assign a letter to each option.
2. Mark the options as row and column headings on the worksheet.
3. Note that the cells on the table where you will be comparing an option with itself have been blocked out - there will never be a difference in these cells!
4. The cells on the table where you will be duplicating a comparison are also blocked out.
5. Within the remaining cells compare the option in the row with the one in the column. For each cell, decide which of the two options is more important. Write down the letter of the more important option in the cell, and score the difference in importance from 0 (no difference) to 3 (major difference).
6. Finally, consolidate the results by adding up the total of all the values for each of the options. You may want to convert these values into a percentage of the total score.

As a simple example, an entrepreneur is looking at ways in which she can expand her business. She has limited resources, but also has the options she lists below:

• Expand into overseas markets
• Expand in home markets
• Improve customer service
• Improve quality

Firstly she draws up the Paired Comparison Analysis table in Figure 1:

Figure 1: Example Paired Comparison Analysis Table (not filled in):

Then she compares options, writes down the letter of the most important option, and scores their difference in importance. An example of how she might do this is shown in figure 2:

Figure 2: Example Paired Comparison Analysis Table (filled in):

Finally she adds up the A, B, C and D values, and converts each into a percentage of the total. This gives these totals:

• A = 3 (37.5%)
• B = 1 (12.5%)
• C = 4 (50%)
• D = 0.

Here it is most important to improve customer service (C) and then to tackle export markets (A). Quality is not a high priority - perhaps it is good already.

Key points:

Paired Comparison Analysis is a good way of weighing up the relative importance of different courses of action. It is useful where priorities are not clear, or are competing in importance.

The tool provides a framework for comparing each course of action against all others, and helps to show the difference in importance between factors.

Source:

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTED_02.htm