o General Knowledge (GK) is about “how things work” at a general and not specialist level.   GK refers to knowledge that can be applied in many different ways and mostly different to the way it was initially acquired.  An example of GK is that whales and elephants are the largest mammals that exist in the world today. 

o A school age person having just completed Form 6 would have lesser GK than one just completed a university degree.  This is due to lesser time of exposing to a wider scope and receiving knowledge from a structured learning process.  Outside of formal schooling, people would acquire a level of GK at a rate dependent on individuals.  A person who is aware of the existence of GK has a higher probability of possessing more GK than a person without the same awareness.  There is no scale that corresponds to age or desire.    

o Why do we need GK?  GK allows a person to make more associations when planning or doing.  A decision made by a person after considering multiple scenarios has a higher chance of being a better decision than one made without any consideration.  The associations must be valid and this is why input filtering is essential.

o We can develop or acquire general knowledge from news, documentaries, analyses, books, blogs, websites, and other people but we must be able to differentiate information from non-information.   Are those sources reliable or the sources from which they obtain the information reliable?  This is a very important question.  Possessing information that is not true or reliable is harmful to any decision making process.  We must establish the credibility of incoming information by a verification process (this needs due diligence) or inferencing process (this needs logical analysis skills).  When a piece of verified information is taken in, it must be associated with a context or concept and be able to be reproduced by ourselves in our own words to become our knowledge. 

o The width of horizon can be expressed in terms of university curriculum.  At the first level would be science versus non-science to be simplistic.  Science consists of physics, chemistry, biology and more.  Science in this context includes engineering and technology.  Technology includes medical, bridge constructions and space explorations etc.  The non-science stream includes languages, history, arts, and philosophy.  Arts includes performing and non-performing etc.  Philosophy includes logic, psychology and cosmology etc.  There are curriculums not clearly demarcated and crossing disciplines. 

o The depth of assimilation is an internal process in a person.  The same piece of current affairs news will be taken in by 2 persons as having 2 different meanings, implications, consequences etc.  The depth would be higher in a person with both a wider horizon and a more analytical mind.

o We will not be able to set a measurement scale because knowledge is unlimited.  We can only do a few tests to ensure that our own team members have reached a certain level of GK that is needed to support decision making in Compucon New Zealand.  The DMA20 tests will expose the person to issues as discussed in the notes above. 

We include "outside the square" sessions in our monthly CPD seminars for GK

We have been inviting our business partners to rate our team performance every 6 months since 1992.  The last survey was carried out on 20 June 2012 in a CPD seminar which was designated for technology and company roadmap reviews.   The survey is identified as 1206 in the first row of the table and it is an abbreviation for year 2012 and month of June. 

The appraisal consists of 9 aspects of Compucon performance as a team.  The 9th item was added in 2008 when the IT and PC industry showed signs of fatigue and hypes of cloud and mobile computing showed signs of incubation. 

The appraisal scale is from 1 to 5 on a relative sense.  A high score means Compucon is better than other players in the industry and a low score means Compucon is not as good as others. 

Since the scope of appraisal pertains to operational issues, the table only shows inputs from business partners who have dealt with Compucon for more than 12 months and have attended 2 or more times of our Tech Briefing CPD seminars.  These conditions ensure that whoever appraise Compucon performance have a minimum understanding of Compucon through a direct relationship.  All persons carry the same weighting once the person satisfies the conditions irrespective of the level of business with or attitude towards Compucon.

The scores shown in the table are averages.  An extreme low or high score from one person will distort the average.  This situation exists as the appraisal is highly influenced by how the appraiser feels at the time.  It would be inaccurate to interpret the results of any event then.  However, overviews and trends are meaningful.

The bottom row is the average of the 8 or 9 performance scores as a single figure.  The table shows 4.4 in 2006.  It rose to 4.6 in 2009, and reached above 4.8 in 2011.  The trend is largely upwards.   This implies that Compucon business partners have found Compucon to be a better team to do business with over time.

Not all signs are positive.  Figures in red colour are the worst scores received by Compucon in a specific performance area.  For example, Product Quality received its lowest score of 4.66 in 2010 and it was mainly due to the high defect rate of Seagate hard disks.  Compucon has taken actions to improve and Product Quality achieved 4.97 in 2011 which can be interpreted as the best in the industry. 

Range of Systems also hit the dip in 2010.  Compucon is in the business of supplying to businesses through businesses- called B2B2B or 3B in short.  Some business partners supply to small businesses and even home computer users.  They will not give a high rating to Compucon in this respect.  The highest score reached is 4.87 although Compucon has seriously attempted to cover system hardware for serious business computing.  This score can only go up further by having business partners with matched business scopes.

The other 7 performance areas hit their lows earlier on and have been climbing up the ladder gradually over time. 

The lowest score received by Compucon in 2012 June is in Marketing Efforts at 4.55 (which is not low at all).  In fact, it is the max score given by business partners to Compucon so far.  The score is therefore an endorsement of efforts.  Compucon has doubled the number of website pages from 800 in 2010 to 1600 in 2012.  This was a tremendous effort and incurred substantial costs. 

Another low’ish score in 2012 June is Price Competitiveness at 4.58.   Compucon would not be competitive in retail trading and would be very competitive in technical and business support.  This observation was actually revealed by looking into the scores given by individual business partners.  Those who emphasise business support rated Compucon highly, and those who are involved in smaller businesses rated Compucon not as highly.  The gap is not large nevertheless. 

Brand Equity shows a meteoric rise from 3.21 in 2007 to reach 4.00 consistently by 2010 and hit 4.93 in 2011.  What has happened in the interval?  Compucon did not do more advertising during the period, but did organise internal campaigns to cleanse and polish the brand.  The exercise is called Brand Index and it involves all team members.  The secret is attention to details including our dress code and message of day to day communication.

In summary Compucon obtained 4 distinctions, 3 credits and 2 passes in the latest exam.  We will maintain the high level of performance in 7 areas and attempt to improve the last 2 areas. 

Distinction is above 4.90 (this is a self imposed criterion)
 - Product Quality
 - Customer Service
 - Communication
 - Direction

Credit is above 4.80 (self imposed)
 - Range of Systems
 - Technical Service
 - Brand Equity

Pass is above 4.50 (self imposed)
 - Price Competitiveness
 - Marketing Efforts