A Hands-on Plan for Managing Work and Balancing Time
by Steve Prentice
from the back... Cool Time doesn't focus on prioritizing and agenda setting. In the real world of interruptions, e-mail, and distractions, few people are able to organize their work in isolation from everything else. In fact, effective time management is more about human relationships and expectations than it is about making lists.
Amanda's note: While I did pick up some tips and insights from this book, for some reason I didn't have any flags. I think it's because I learned so much between the Covey workshops and Working Smart With Outlook, that my new nuggets weren't the loud 'ahas' that I typically experience when I read.
However, here is just a list of the stuff I remember picking up:
- schedule 55 min meetings
- check email at set times a day (I'm doing 9, 11:30 and 4pm and it's working great)
- the I-beam review
- keystone time
- opportunity time
- right not to answer if you don't recognize the number on call display
- out of office message on your phone - make it a good one
- a great deal of email is sent before it's really ready to be sent
- use effective subject lines
- alternate meeting strategies: stealth and pouncing and coffee shops
- May and October/November are peak times for energy levels, staff availability and work focus
- use a word document for your knowledge base (can assign bookmarks and hyperlinks within document)
http://www.cool-time.com/
18.12.07
17.12.07
Start Late, Finish Rich
A No Fail Plan For Achieving Financial Freedom At Any Age
by David Bach
I don't really think this book needs a 'from the flap' with a self-explanatory title like that!
Here are my flags...
pg 10 You may think this book is only about money, but you will learn that it's really about a lot more. My mission is to free you to be who you were put here to be - and my experience has taught me that what hold most people back from their purpose in life are financial challenges. Break the financial handcuffs of living paycheque to paycheque, worrying about debt, and losing sleep over how you are going to survive financially in the future, and you will be able to focus on what is really important to you. You are already rich inside - this book will help you reconnect with your born given gift.
This book may be called Start Late, Finish Rich, but I know that inside you are already rich in spirit. All we need to do now is help you become materially rich so you can live the life you were meant to live.
pg 15 The past will continue to be your future if you drag it along with you!
pg 29 Find your Double Latte Factor! It's not how much we earn, it's how much we spend! If there is one key concept on which everything else I have to say about finishing rich is built, it is this: how much you earn almost has no bearing on whether or not you can and will build wealth.
pg 74 Dead on last payment:
1. Make a list of the current outstanding balances on each of your credit-card accounts.
2. Divide each balance by the minimum payment that particular credit card company wants from you. This gives you the DOLP.
3. Once you've figured out the DOLP for each account, rank them in reverse order, putting the account with the lowest DOLP number first. You now know the most efficient order in which you should pay off your various credit card balances. Take half your latte factor savings and apply them to the card with the lowest DOLP rating. For each of your other cards, you make only the minimum payment.
pg 89 The question I'm asked most often about Pay Yourself First is, "How much?" I've always believed that to be fair to yourself and your future, you should Pay Yourself First at least one hour's worth of income every day. Say you make $50,000 a year. That works out to roughly $1,000 a week, or $25 an hour (figuring a 40-hour workweek). So paying yourself first an hour's worth of income every day means saving $25 per workday, or $125 a week, or $6,250 a year. With a 10 percent annual return, if you were to begin at 30, you'd end up with just under $2 million by the time you're 65.
pg 110 ... So knowing that you live in an insane world, what should you do with your money? ... I created the Perfect Pie Approach. ...draw a circle, divide into three equal slices: Stocks (mutual funds), Bonds (bond mutual funds), Real Estate.
pg 112 If you don't own a home - or the equity in your home doesn't equal one-third of your total assets - then you need to have real estate added to your portfolio. The single easiest way to add real estate to your portfolio is to invest in REITs. To be technical about it, a REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust) is a company that happens to be in the business of owning and operating real estate. First developed in Canada in 1993, REITs are generally publicly traded (though some are privately held) and they usually own income-producing properties such as office buildings, stores, hotels, apartment buildings, and shopping centres. There are also REITs that own hospitals and nursing care facilities, and some even own real estate loan portfolios. While there are more than 200 REITs in the US, there are only 20 REITs currently operating in Canada.
pg 11 I don't recommend that you buy individual REITs because it's too easy to pick the wrong one. The solution is simple: You should buy an index fund of REITs. (An index fund is a mutual fund that is designed to mirror the performance of a particular market indicator us as the S&P/TSX 60). In Canada, Barclay's Global Investors offers an ETF called the iUnits S&P/TSX REIT EFT. This REIT fund can be purchased through any brokerage and put into your RRSP; details are available at http://www.iunits.com/.
You can also participate in the REIT market through a real estate mutual fund, although you won't get the same benefit from one of these funds as you'd get by investing in the EFT. That's because... also invest in equities and other securities of Canadian companies that are involved in owning or managing real estate.
pg 285 Living to retire is not living... The fact is, you don't have to have a fully funded RRSP to have joy. What really matters is that you have consistent joy in your life right now, that you have some fun now, that you forget the idea that your supposed to wait until you retire to have those things.
pg 289 The purpose of your life is joy. This may sound far-fetched, but it's not. I believe you are here to have a life of meaning and joy - to do great things, to be a great person. To live rich. How do you find this fulfillment? You don't find it. You live it. Joy is not out there under a rock. It is not found in any one specific thing, like getting a new job, starting a new marriage, losing 30 pounds, or having a child. It is inside you waiting to come out. Joy comes from doing what you are meant to be doing with your life.
pg 292 If it's so easy to start late and finish rich, why do so many people think it's impossible? The answer is that most people are too busy to put time and energy into what matters most. We clutter up our lives with things we think are important instead of living what is really important. We major in minor things.
pg 300 (lessons to our kids) Lesson No 11: Teach them to dream big dreams. The world needs more dreamers. Let the adults be realistic. We need our kids to believe and know that they really can be "anything" and "anyone" they want to be. Our greatest purpose in life is to use the gifts our creator gave us to be who we were put here to be. For many of our kids, this means dreaming a life bigger than the one they are currently living.
Please, as an adult, be a dream creator and not a dream stealer. Your words of encouragement to a young person may shape not only the child's destiny but the world's. You don't know who you are talking to when you speak to a young person. You might be speaking to the next Dr. Martin Luther King, or Pierre Trudeau or Oprah Winfrey or Wayne Gretzky or Lance Armstrong. You don't know what the child you love can do. Only the child can know, and she or he might not know it yet. So encourage the dream!
by David Bach
I don't really think this book needs a 'from the flap' with a self-explanatory title like that!
Here are my flags...
pg 10 You may think this book is only about money, but you will learn that it's really about a lot more. My mission is to free you to be who you were put here to be - and my experience has taught me that what hold most people back from their purpose in life are financial challenges. Break the financial handcuffs of living paycheque to paycheque, worrying about debt, and losing sleep over how you are going to survive financially in the future, and you will be able to focus on what is really important to you. You are already rich inside - this book will help you reconnect with your born given gift.
This book may be called Start Late, Finish Rich, but I know that inside you are already rich in spirit. All we need to do now is help you become materially rich so you can live the life you were meant to live.
pg 15 The past will continue to be your future if you drag it along with you!
pg 29 Find your Double Latte Factor! It's not how much we earn, it's how much we spend! If there is one key concept on which everything else I have to say about finishing rich is built, it is this: how much you earn almost has no bearing on whether or not you can and will build wealth.
pg 74 Dead on last payment:
1. Make a list of the current outstanding balances on each of your credit-card accounts.
2. Divide each balance by the minimum payment that particular credit card company wants from you. This gives you the DOLP.
3. Once you've figured out the DOLP for each account, rank them in reverse order, putting the account with the lowest DOLP number first. You now know the most efficient order in which you should pay off your various credit card balances. Take half your latte factor savings and apply them to the card with the lowest DOLP rating. For each of your other cards, you make only the minimum payment.
pg 89 The question I'm asked most often about Pay Yourself First is, "How much?" I've always believed that to be fair to yourself and your future, you should Pay Yourself First at least one hour's worth of income every day. Say you make $50,000 a year. That works out to roughly $1,000 a week, or $25 an hour (figuring a 40-hour workweek). So paying yourself first an hour's worth of income every day means saving $25 per workday, or $125 a week, or $6,250 a year. With a 10 percent annual return, if you were to begin at 30, you'd end up with just under $2 million by the time you're 65.
pg 110 ... So knowing that you live in an insane world, what should you do with your money? ... I created the Perfect Pie Approach. ...draw a circle, divide into three equal slices: Stocks (mutual funds), Bonds (bond mutual funds), Real Estate.
pg 112 If you don't own a home - or the equity in your home doesn't equal one-third of your total assets - then you need to have real estate added to your portfolio. The single easiest way to add real estate to your portfolio is to invest in REITs. To be technical about it, a REIT (Real Estate Investment Trust) is a company that happens to be in the business of owning and operating real estate. First developed in Canada in 1993, REITs are generally publicly traded (though some are privately held) and they usually own income-producing properties such as office buildings, stores, hotels, apartment buildings, and shopping centres. There are also REITs that own hospitals and nursing care facilities, and some even own real estate loan portfolios. While there are more than 200 REITs in the US, there are only 20 REITs currently operating in Canada.
pg 11 I don't recommend that you buy individual REITs because it's too easy to pick the wrong one. The solution is simple: You should buy an index fund of REITs. (An index fund is a mutual fund that is designed to mirror the performance of a particular market indicator us as the S&P/TSX 60). In Canada, Barclay's Global Investors offers an ETF called the iUnits S&P/TSX REIT EFT. This REIT fund can be purchased through any brokerage and put into your RRSP; details are available at http://www.iunits.com/.
You can also participate in the REIT market through a real estate mutual fund, although you won't get the same benefit from one of these funds as you'd get by investing in the EFT. That's because... also invest in equities and other securities of Canadian companies that are involved in owning or managing real estate.
pg 285 Living to retire is not living... The fact is, you don't have to have a fully funded RRSP to have joy. What really matters is that you have consistent joy in your life right now, that you have some fun now, that you forget the idea that your supposed to wait until you retire to have those things.
pg 289 The purpose of your life is joy. This may sound far-fetched, but it's not. I believe you are here to have a life of meaning and joy - to do great things, to be a great person. To live rich. How do you find this fulfillment? You don't find it. You live it. Joy is not out there under a rock. It is not found in any one specific thing, like getting a new job, starting a new marriage, losing 30 pounds, or having a child. It is inside you waiting to come out. Joy comes from doing what you are meant to be doing with your life.
pg 292 If it's so easy to start late and finish rich, why do so many people think it's impossible? The answer is that most people are too busy to put time and energy into what matters most. We clutter up our lives with things we think are important instead of living what is really important. We major in minor things.
pg 300 (lessons to our kids) Lesson No 11: Teach them to dream big dreams. The world needs more dreamers. Let the adults be realistic. We need our kids to believe and know that they really can be "anything" and "anyone" they want to be. Our greatest purpose in life is to use the gifts our creator gave us to be who we were put here to be. For many of our kids, this means dreaming a life bigger than the one they are currently living.
Please, as an adult, be a dream creator and not a dream stealer. Your words of encouragement to a young person may shape not only the child's destiny but the world's. You don't know who you are talking to when you speak to a young person. You might be speaking to the next Dr. Martin Luther King, or Pierre Trudeau or Oprah Winfrey or Wayne Gretzky or Lance Armstrong. You don't know what the child you love can do. Only the child can know, and she or he might not know it yet. So encourage the dream!
15.12.07
Crazy Times Call For Crazy Organizations
The Tom Peters Seminar
From the back: "These bold ideas vault business people beyond reengineering, beyond total quality management, beyond empowerment, even beyond change - toward reinvention and revolution. The result, organized around nine such "beyonds" , is a timely, graphically exciting volume, loaded with "how tos."
Amanda's note: What I find interesting is that this book is from the mid 90's. Some of these ideas still sound innovative (just to me cause I'm new to this stuff?) over ten years later. Why is this? They didn't really work? Or is the business world really that slow - still too much focus on maintaining the old instead of playing a new game? (and guess what, it was Phil Knight of Nike that said "The target now is to invent a new game."
My flags...
pg 39 "You don't do brainwork in groups of a thousand...you do it in quartets, octets, groups of ten..." anonymous exec.
pg 47 "All good work is done in defiance of management." Bob Woodward
pg 51 The problem ultimately boils down to cold, statistical considerations. If everybody thinks alike in a so-called decentralized operation, then 14 new-product tries from 14 "autonomous" divisions aren't statistically independent. It's really one try repeated 14 times. Autocorrelation. Low variation.
pg 57 "People think the president of an outfit has to be the main organizer," Quad/Graphics CEO Harry Quadracci told me. "No, the president is the main disorganizer. Everybody 'manages' quite well; whenever anything goes wrong, they take immediate action to make sure nothing will go wrong again. The problem is, nothing new will ever happen, either."
pg 59 Successful change comes from creating "self-inflicted catastrophes," says Symmetrix CEO George Bennet. "The idea is to build a greenhouse in which to nurture the new order - to test the new organizational forms and the creative use of technology - to break the rules and invent the future. The greenhouse is then encouraged to cannibalize the customer base and staff of the old organization over time."
pg 60 Set the tone for recruitment and people development (people of imagination, anarchists who may lead you down the bumpy but gold-paved path to an exciting future)
pg 75 To inject fun and simplicity into cost-analysis training, financial education director Chuck Mayhew calculates labor, materials, overhead, cost, and sales figures based on a Toll House chocolate chip cookie recipe. By adjusting pricing, ingredients, and profit margins, employees can fiddle with the model and test various sales and cost-saving techniques. The intent, Sheppard says, is to teach employees to "manage hour-to-hour activities for improved profitability."
pg 78 "The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him." Henry Stimson
pg 81 At the information-systems firm Scitor, CEO Roger Meade has made challenging management part of the corporate creed:
Utilize your best judgement at all times. Ask yourself: Is it fair and reasonable? Is it honest? Does it make good business sense in the context of our established objectives? If you can answer yes to all of these, then proceed. Remember, you are accountable against this policy for all your actions.
pg Think resume. T-h-i-n-k r-e-s-u-m-e. What does this mean? It means frequently asking yourself six questions:
1. What the hell do I do?
2. What have I actually done?
3. Who among my customers will testify to it?
4. What evidence is there that my skills are state of the art?
5. Who new do I know, far beyond the company's walls, who will help me deal with an ever-chillier world?
6. Will my year-end resume look different from last year's?
pg 98 ...Harari's advice to all bosses: "Pretend you are leaving the company in six months with no replacement, overhaul your organization and train your people to take over your job, and then find a new way to add value. And be prepared to repeat the cycle, over and over again (maybe with different employers) until your retire". Scary? Yes. But imperative. (University of San Fran management prof Oren Harari)
pg 100 Support for this "Just Do It" mentality, to borrow a phrase, comes from an intriguing study at Bell Labs reported in the Harvard Business Review. The research analyzed differences between average and top performers. Both types of Bell Labs employees agreed that taking the initiative was the most important thing in getting ahead. Interestingly, both said they regularly took the initiative.
The difference boiled down to two disparate views of what "taking the imitative" meant. The average performer told the researchers that it meant dealing in information - for example, "writing a memo to [a] supervisor about a software bug." The stars, on the other hand, said that taking the imitative meant "fixing [the] bug yourself."
pg 108 The lessons learned from the Sewells and Millikens of the world might be a tough one to swallow. Whether you're a new B-school graduate, rising marketing exec, or CEO, you need to ask yourself: Am I on the road to towering competence that can become the basis for startling moves in my industry? If not, precisely what do I plan to do about it? (And when do I plan to start?) ... In an age where all value is cerebral, it's high time to take a look at whether or not we're developing an unfair share of gold medalists (who are in hot pursuit of towering competence).
pg 112 ... former Apple boss John Sculley succinctly described what I call "the new loyalty." He said, in effect: Look, Apple can't promise you a job for life. Not even for five or 10 years. Maybe not even for a couple of years. But what Apple can - and does - promise is that, whether you're aboard for three months, six months, six years, or unlikely as it may be, 16 years, you will be constantly learning, constantly challenged. At the end, you will be demonstrably better positioned in the local or global labor market than you would have been had you not spent the time with us.
pg 137 On the other hand, they see that a previously internal-only service has profit potential outside (Kennametal, Lane).
pg 141 Can somebody handle any of your "service packages" better than you can? If the answer is yes, seriously consider outsourcing. ... Can you extend your staff services (Kennametal inventory management, Lane Group training, IBM employee benefits) to a customer's or competitor's shop?
pg 143 ...1994 television ad for MCI, recited by 11-year-old Anna Paquin:
There will be a road
It will not connect two points.
It will connect all points.
Its speed limit will be the speed of light.
It will not go from here to there.
There will be no more there.
We will all only be here.
pg 145 Once more, to say it is not to do it. That's for sure. Time spent, language ("outpartnering" for "outsourcing"), and hierarchical importance (EVP of strategic relationships) help. But much more must be done on working with "outsiders" as trusted comrades in arms. For a first-rate discussion of this classic and novel topic, you'll do no better than "The TeamNet Factor" by longtime networkers Jessica Lipnack and Jeffrey Stamps.
pg 216 (Amanda's comment: this is Po's theory, years before his book!) Alan Webber wrote in the Harvard Business Review, "In the new economy, individuals at all levels of the company and in all kinds of companies are challenged to develop new knowledge and to create new value, to take responsibility for their ideas and to pursue them as far as they can go. People who manage in the new economy must tap into the emotional energy that comes from wrestling with their own destiny. In the end, that's a job description that most people would welcome."
pg 216 The spirit of Nintendo is best captured by a simple exchange. A game designer, Gunpei Yokoi, asked his boss, "What should I make?" Nintendo chief executive Hiroshi Yamauchi replied, "Something great." ... Has any boss, in your career, ever said to you, 'Do / make something great'?
pg 234 Imagine the first focus group that gathered to review Post-it Notes prototypes. "Folks," the suave marketer began, "what I have here are little squares of yellow paper. They have glue on one side. Not very good glue. I mean, it doesn't stick very well. It sort of sticks, but , you know, then it doesn't. Well, this thing is going to replace paperclips. We think it will be a $1 billion market someday". Would you have bought that act? Don't be silly. Can you live without Post-its today? Maybe, but would you want to?
"When I meet a friend who has just returned from a visit to the hospital, clinic, or doctors office," wrote the respected health-care futurist Leland Kaiser, "I ask, 'Did you have a good time?' This is the same question I might ask a friend if she or he just returned from a trip to Disneyland. A visit to a health-care facility should be a great experience." ... I love Kaiser's question because it's beautiful, because it's surprising, breaks all the rules, and because it's TGR (things gone right) to the core. .. "Did you have a good time?" That's a challenge, that's a rallying cry I can imagine building a hospital around. I just plain love it.
pg 278 Sam, the cautious division chief, is the patient professor conducting a tutorial; he loves to chew on ideas, asks good questions, and is a pleasure to talk to. Gwen, in contrast, is often abrupt and, not infrequently, even rude. She doesn't mean to be, but part of her can't figure out why the hell you're there giving the presentation in the first place. If she were you, she already would have recruited some supporters in the field, scraped up some dough, and built something. From the moment she walked through the door as a 21-year-old junior marketing assistant, Gwen has subscribed to the "It's better to ask for forgiveness than permission" school of subordinate behaviour.
pg 282 Put the pedal all the way to the metal ("organizations are capable of taking on more..." - Mike Walsh). Action ("put our heads down and engineer like mad" - Ed McCracken). Embrace failure ("he doesn't give a f---" - John Brown on Richard Branson). No tepid responses ("make something great" - Yamauchi). Focus amidst the mayhem ("you've got twelve minutes" - Roger Milliken). These are the five cardinal virtues of the most effective leader-revolutionaries, at all levels, including the front line, that I've met.
From the back: "These bold ideas vault business people beyond reengineering, beyond total quality management, beyond empowerment, even beyond change - toward reinvention and revolution. The result, organized around nine such "beyonds" , is a timely, graphically exciting volume, loaded with "how tos."
Amanda's note: What I find interesting is that this book is from the mid 90's. Some of these ideas still sound innovative (just to me cause I'm new to this stuff?) over ten years later. Why is this? They didn't really work? Or is the business world really that slow - still too much focus on maintaining the old instead of playing a new game? (and guess what, it was Phil Knight of Nike that said "The target now is to invent a new game."
My flags...
pg 39 "You don't do brainwork in groups of a thousand...you do it in quartets, octets, groups of ten..." anonymous exec.
pg 47 "All good work is done in defiance of management." Bob Woodward
pg 51 The problem ultimately boils down to cold, statistical considerations. If everybody thinks alike in a so-called decentralized operation, then 14 new-product tries from 14 "autonomous" divisions aren't statistically independent. It's really one try repeated 14 times. Autocorrelation. Low variation.
pg 57 "People think the president of an outfit has to be the main organizer," Quad/Graphics CEO Harry Quadracci told me. "No, the president is the main disorganizer. Everybody 'manages' quite well; whenever anything goes wrong, they take immediate action to make sure nothing will go wrong again. The problem is, nothing new will ever happen, either."
pg 59 Successful change comes from creating "self-inflicted catastrophes," says Symmetrix CEO George Bennet. "The idea is to build a greenhouse in which to nurture the new order - to test the new organizational forms and the creative use of technology - to break the rules and invent the future. The greenhouse is then encouraged to cannibalize the customer base and staff of the old organization over time."
pg 60 Set the tone for recruitment and people development (people of imagination, anarchists who may lead you down the bumpy but gold-paved path to an exciting future)
pg 75 To inject fun and simplicity into cost-analysis training, financial education director Chuck Mayhew calculates labor, materials, overhead, cost, and sales figures based on a Toll House chocolate chip cookie recipe. By adjusting pricing, ingredients, and profit margins, employees can fiddle with the model and test various sales and cost-saving techniques. The intent, Sheppard says, is to teach employees to "manage hour-to-hour activities for improved profitability."
pg 78 "The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him." Henry Stimson
pg 81 At the information-systems firm Scitor, CEO Roger Meade has made challenging management part of the corporate creed:
Utilize your best judgement at all times. Ask yourself: Is it fair and reasonable? Is it honest? Does it make good business sense in the context of our established objectives? If you can answer yes to all of these, then proceed. Remember, you are accountable against this policy for all your actions.
pg Think resume. T-h-i-n-k r-e-s-u-m-e. What does this mean? It means frequently asking yourself six questions:
1. What the hell do I do?
2. What have I actually done?
3. Who among my customers will testify to it?
4. What evidence is there that my skills are state of the art?
5. Who new do I know, far beyond the company's walls, who will help me deal with an ever-chillier world?
6. Will my year-end resume look different from last year's?
pg 98 ...Harari's advice to all bosses: "Pretend you are leaving the company in six months with no replacement, overhaul your organization and train your people to take over your job, and then find a new way to add value. And be prepared to repeat the cycle, over and over again (maybe with different employers) until your retire". Scary? Yes. But imperative. (University of San Fran management prof Oren Harari)
pg 100 Support for this "Just Do It" mentality, to borrow a phrase, comes from an intriguing study at Bell Labs reported in the Harvard Business Review. The research analyzed differences between average and top performers. Both types of Bell Labs employees agreed that taking the initiative was the most important thing in getting ahead. Interestingly, both said they regularly took the initiative.
The difference boiled down to two disparate views of what "taking the imitative" meant. The average performer told the researchers that it meant dealing in information - for example, "writing a memo to [a] supervisor about a software bug." The stars, on the other hand, said that taking the imitative meant "fixing [the] bug yourself."
pg 108 The lessons learned from the Sewells and Millikens of the world might be a tough one to swallow. Whether you're a new B-school graduate, rising marketing exec, or CEO, you need to ask yourself: Am I on the road to towering competence that can become the basis for startling moves in my industry? If not, precisely what do I plan to do about it? (And when do I plan to start?) ... In an age where all value is cerebral, it's high time to take a look at whether or not we're developing an unfair share of gold medalists (who are in hot pursuit of towering competence).
pg 112 ... former Apple boss John Sculley succinctly described what I call "the new loyalty." He said, in effect: Look, Apple can't promise you a job for life. Not even for five or 10 years. Maybe not even for a couple of years. But what Apple can - and does - promise is that, whether you're aboard for three months, six months, six years, or unlikely as it may be, 16 years, you will be constantly learning, constantly challenged. At the end, you will be demonstrably better positioned in the local or global labor market than you would have been had you not spent the time with us.
pg 137 On the other hand, they see that a previously internal-only service has profit potential outside (Kennametal, Lane).
pg 141 Can somebody handle any of your "service packages" better than you can? If the answer is yes, seriously consider outsourcing. ... Can you extend your staff services (Kennametal inventory management, Lane Group training, IBM employee benefits) to a customer's or competitor's shop?
pg 143 ...1994 television ad for MCI, recited by 11-year-old Anna Paquin:
There will be a road
It will not connect two points.
It will connect all points.
Its speed limit will be the speed of light.
It will not go from here to there.
There will be no more there.
We will all only be here.
pg 145 Once more, to say it is not to do it. That's for sure. Time spent, language ("outpartnering" for "outsourcing"), and hierarchical importance (EVP of strategic relationships) help. But much more must be done on working with "outsiders" as trusted comrades in arms. For a first-rate discussion of this classic and novel topic, you'll do no better than "The TeamNet Factor" by longtime networkers Jessica Lipnack and Jeffrey Stamps.
pg 216 (Amanda's comment: this is Po's theory, years before his book!) Alan Webber wrote in the Harvard Business Review, "In the new economy, individuals at all levels of the company and in all kinds of companies are challenged to develop new knowledge and to create new value, to take responsibility for their ideas and to pursue them as far as they can go. People who manage in the new economy must tap into the emotional energy that comes from wrestling with their own destiny. In the end, that's a job description that most people would welcome."
pg 216 The spirit of Nintendo is best captured by a simple exchange. A game designer, Gunpei Yokoi, asked his boss, "What should I make?" Nintendo chief executive Hiroshi Yamauchi replied, "Something great." ... Has any boss, in your career, ever said to you, 'Do / make something great'?
pg 234 Imagine the first focus group that gathered to review Post-it Notes prototypes. "Folks," the suave marketer began, "what I have here are little squares of yellow paper. They have glue on one side. Not very good glue. I mean, it doesn't stick very well. It sort of sticks, but , you know, then it doesn't. Well, this thing is going to replace paperclips. We think it will be a $1 billion market someday". Would you have bought that act? Don't be silly. Can you live without Post-its today? Maybe, but would you want to?
"When I meet a friend who has just returned from a visit to the hospital, clinic, or doctors office," wrote the respected health-care futurist Leland Kaiser, "I ask, 'Did you have a good time?' This is the same question I might ask a friend if she or he just returned from a trip to Disneyland. A visit to a health-care facility should be a great experience." ... I love Kaiser's question because it's beautiful, because it's surprising, breaks all the rules, and because it's TGR (things gone right) to the core. .. "Did you have a good time?" That's a challenge, that's a rallying cry I can imagine building a hospital around. I just plain love it.
pg 278 Sam, the cautious division chief, is the patient professor conducting a tutorial; he loves to chew on ideas, asks good questions, and is a pleasure to talk to. Gwen, in contrast, is often abrupt and, not infrequently, even rude. She doesn't mean to be, but part of her can't figure out why the hell you're there giving the presentation in the first place. If she were you, she already would have recruited some supporters in the field, scraped up some dough, and built something. From the moment she walked through the door as a 21-year-old junior marketing assistant, Gwen has subscribed to the "It's better to ask for forgiveness than permission" school of subordinate behaviour.
pg 282 Put the pedal all the way to the metal ("organizations are capable of taking on more..." - Mike Walsh). Action ("put our heads down and engineer like mad" - Ed McCracken). Embrace failure ("he doesn't give a f---" - John Brown on Richard Branson). No tepid responses ("make something great" - Yamauchi). Focus amidst the mayhem ("you've got twelve minutes" - Roger Milliken). These are the five cardinal virtues of the most effective leader-revolutionaries, at all levels, including the front line, that I've met.
25.11.07
Three Great Questions - Productivity
This blog post on "Too Busy Being Unproductive to Learn to Be Productive" had three great questions to help you with your productivity:
Answer three critical questions before you begin: (1) does this work need to be done at all, (2) should I be the one doing it, and (3) is there a better way to do it than the usual or prescribed way? The right answer to all three questions can save you a lot of time.
For someone who doesn't like to spray the monkeys, these questions provide an excellent framework for both small innovations and productivity.
Never heard about these darn monkeys? Here's the fable...
Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the other monkeys with cold water.
After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.
Now put away the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.
Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm! Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked. Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.
After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana. Why not? Because as far as they know that’s the way it’s always been done around here.
Answer three critical questions before you begin: (1) does this work need to be done at all, (2) should I be the one doing it, and (3) is there a better way to do it than the usual or prescribed way? The right answer to all three questions can save you a lot of time.
For someone who doesn't like to spray the monkeys, these questions provide an excellent framework for both small innovations and productivity.
Never heard about these darn monkeys? Here's the fable...
Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the other monkeys with cold water.
After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.
Now put away the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.
Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm! Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked. Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.
After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana. Why not? Because as far as they know that’s the way it’s always been done around here.
24.11.07
CEO Read
A quote I cherish is "leaders are readers", and how fitting then is a site with the moniker 800 CEO Read?! Check out the review on a book I read and loved, Mavericks At Work. I'll be frequenting this site for new titles to add to my ever-growing list of books to read.
Sidebar: how's this for an interesting 'full circle' experience. After perusing 800 CEO Read, I was intrigued about Gary Hamel's latest book, The Future of Management. I wanted to purchase The Definitive Drucker(my library copy proved to be worth owning) , so off to Chapters I went to dole out some funds for both reads. While in the business/leadership section, a young fellow asked me a couple of questions. This led to quite a dialogue about what he was looking for and the books I had read and recommended. In the end, my official recommendation was for him to check out both the changethis and 800 CEO Read websites! PS I didn't purchase Hamel's book, but did walk away with EHE's book as well as The Art Of Possibility. Watch for my flags on these two.
Sidebar: how's this for an interesting 'full circle' experience. After perusing 800 CEO Read, I was intrigued about Gary Hamel's latest book, The Future of Management. I wanted to purchase The Definitive Drucker(my library copy proved to be worth owning) , so off to Chapters I went to dole out some funds for both reads. While in the business/leadership section, a young fellow asked me a couple of questions. This led to quite a dialogue about what he was looking for and the books I had read and recommended. In the end, my official recommendation was for him to check out both the changethis and 800 CEO Read websites! PS I didn't purchase Hamel's book, but did walk away with EHE's book as well as The Art Of Possibility. Watch for my flags on these two.
The Personal MBA
I ended up on squidoo's site to check out The Personal MBA. I can't imagine the rigor required to define 69 books.
Here's the gist from the site itself:
The core of the Personal MBA is a list of the very best books the business press has to offer. Some books will give you tools: processes or actions you can apply immediately to your improve your life and work. Others will give you ideas: help in envisioning what you and your business are capable of becoming. All of them will give you mental models: useful ways of thinking about the world that you can use to your advantage in a wide variety of situations.The Personal MBA Recommended Reading List is the tangible result of hundreds of hours of reading, research, discussion, and evaluation. By reading these books and applying what you learn to your daily life, you will progressively develop a greater understanding of business and increase your effectiveness in the working world. Each book in the list has been selected for a single purpose: to maximize your educational return on invested time.
This appeals to the reader/learner in me. I know the impact reading business books has had on me, so definitely support the idea that reading books like these gives you incredible insight and business advantage. What I'm not convinced of is that these 69 books are the right books for everyone. I think I prefer my meandering journey over a prescribed list. However, you can be I will be checking the list for recommendations.
Happy reading!
Here's the gist from the site itself:
The core of the Personal MBA is a list of the very best books the business press has to offer. Some books will give you tools: processes or actions you can apply immediately to your improve your life and work. Others will give you ideas: help in envisioning what you and your business are capable of becoming. All of them will give you mental models: useful ways of thinking about the world that you can use to your advantage in a wide variety of situations.The Personal MBA Recommended Reading List is the tangible result of hundreds of hours of reading, research, discussion, and evaluation. By reading these books and applying what you learn to your daily life, you will progressively develop a greater understanding of business and increase your effectiveness in the working world. Each book in the list has been selected for a single purpose: to maximize your educational return on invested time.
This appeals to the reader/learner in me. I know the impact reading business books has had on me, so definitely support the idea that reading books like these gives you incredible insight and business advantage. What I'm not convinced of is that these 69 books are the right books for everyone. I think I prefer my meandering journey over a prescribed list. However, you can be I will be checking the list for recommendations.
Happy reading!
Latest Web Addiction - changethis.com
As I wandered across several blogs, I came across this site: changethis.com. My business book reading has been halted in a serious way while I indulge in manifesto overload. Here are some of my fave's and why... wait, argh... stop. Trying to create my fave list has just resulted in another hour of manifesto reading. Just check it out yourself already!
A Mighty Heart
The Brave Life and Death of My Husband, Danny Pearl
by Mariane Pearl
This book needs no "from the cover". Cast your mind back to 2002 and recall the kidnapped journalist whose death was broadcast over the internet. This is his story. Incredible
I had two flags from this very powerful book...
pg 59 War held no appeal for Danny or for me. What interested us was the challenge presented by peace. People often see peace as the simple absence of war, but it is instead the result of courageous actions taken to initiate a dialogue between civilizations. Both Danny and I saw our profession as a way to contribute to the dialogue, to allow voices on all sides to be heard, and to bear witness.
pg 272 ... the words of a poem by Diane Ackerman called "School Prayer" - words I have tried, and keep trying, to embody with my whole life:
"I swear I will not dishonour
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace ."
by Mariane Pearl
This book needs no "from the cover". Cast your mind back to 2002 and recall the kidnapped journalist whose death was broadcast over the internet. This is his story. Incredible
I had two flags from this very powerful book...
pg 59 War held no appeal for Danny or for me. What interested us was the challenge presented by peace. People often see peace as the simple absence of war, but it is instead the result of courageous actions taken to initiate a dialogue between civilizations. Both Danny and I saw our profession as a way to contribute to the dialogue, to allow voices on all sides to be heard, and to bear witness.
pg 272 ... the words of a poem by Diane Ackerman called "School Prayer" - words I have tried, and keep trying, to embody with my whole life:
"I swear I will not dishonour
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace ."
20.10.07
Growing the Distance
Timeless principles for personal, career, and family success
by Jim Clemmer
My flags...
pg 33 In Going Deep, Ian Percy writes, "Most business people I know are much more concerned with the quality of their customer service than they are with the quality of their parenting and spousing." ... Yet these executives had failed to ask themselves an important question: When the company suddenly tosses them aside or they reach retirement, will they be so sure that career success is worth the cost of a broken family? Does this trade-off really represent their core values?
pg 42 We find what we focus upon. Whether I think my world is full of richness and opportunity or garbage and despair - I am right. It's exactly like that. Because that's my point of focus.
pg 51 "What's the world's greatest lie?" the boy asked, completely surprised. "It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That's the world's greatest lie." Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
pg 53 "...everything can be taken from us but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances - to choose one's own way." Viktor Frankl
pg 78 "When I was young and free and my imagination had no limits, I dreamed of changing the world. As I grew older and wiser, I discovered the world would not change, so I shortened my sights somewhat and decided to change my country. But it, too, seemed immovable. As I grew into my twilight years, in one desperate attempt, I settled for changing my family, those closest to me, but alas, they would have none of it. And now as I lie on my deathbed, I suddenly realize if only I had changed myself first, then by example I would have changed my family. From their inspiration and encouragement, I would have been able to better my country and, who knows, I may have even changed the world." Anonymous epitaph written on a tomb at Westminster Abbey
pg 80 In my firm's leadership development work, we use a simple exercise to help people see the connection between changes they'd like to see in others and those they need to make in themselves.
Draw a line down the middle of a page. Title the left column "Changes I'd Like Them To Make". List the four or five biggest changes you'd like to see in others.
OK, that's the easy part. Now title the right column "Ways I Can Exemplify These Changes". Here, write down the ways you can influence "them" with your personal behavior. Difficult, isn't it? Of course it is - because it forces us to acknowledge all those things we have or haven't been doing to influence their behavior.
It's much easier to be a victim here, to blame others for their behaviour and refuse to accept any responsibility at all. But how honest and true is that - really? ... The big (and often painful) leadership question is: "What do I need to change about me to help change them?" Instead of just wishing for a change of circumstance, I may need a change of character.
pg 81 Good intentions are useless if they stop there. Unless we act on them, they're nothing more than warm, fuzzy thoughts in our heads. When it comes to leadership, the messenger must be the message.
The biblical story of the Good Samaritan would have no meaning if all he did was look with sympathy at the badly wounded traveler lying by the road. He acted on his compassion and made a difference. One of the biggest differences between most people and authentic leaders is action. Real leaders make it happen.
pg 87 Studies of thriving people and their successful career paths show that they types of jobs they have had is much less important than the type of person they are. There are no dead-end jobs, but there are dead-end people. Unsuccessful people in unfulfilling jobs often make the mistake of thinking that they are working for someone else. ... Albert Schweitzer, the Noble Prize-winning French philosopher, physician and musician, fervently believed that "the tragedy of life is what dies inside a person while they live."
pg 91 ... But we all agreed that a highly skilled mechanic who loves his or her work and is continually growing and developing in it is a much more productive leader than a doctor who feels trapped in a system he or she despises. I've met cleaners, security guards, bus drivers, and other people in low-skilled, low-paying jobs who love what they do and make strong contributions to their organizations and society. As the highly passionate American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr put it, "If a man is called a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well."
Life is too short to give in to the Victimitis Virus and get stuck in the rut of a meaningless job; wishing and hoping I win the lottery, my fairy-job mother magically appears, or I can just hang in there. Meaningful work goes well beyond what I do for a living; it joyfully expresses what I do with my living.
pg 97 "The bedrock of character is self-discipline; the virtuous life, as philosophers since Aristotle have observed, is based on self-control. A related keystone of character is being able to motivate and guide oneself, whether in doing homework, finishing a job, or getting up in the morning. And, as we have seen, the ability to defer gratification and to control and channel one's urges to act is a basic emotional skill, one that in a former day was called will." Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ
pg 111 ... written by a former football player and student of Lou Holtz. At the heart of the poem:
I've seen my share of tombstones but never took the time to truly read
The meaning behind what is there for others to see
Under the person's name it read the date of birth, dash, and the date the person passed
But the more I think about the tombstone, the important thing is the dash
pg 115 Author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia outlines another face of love when talking about a contest he was asked to judge. The purpose of the contest was to find the most caring child. The winner was a four year-old whose next-door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the old man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman's yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. When his mother asked him what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said, "Nothing, I just helped him cry."
pg 122 Leaders love their organization's greater purpose and see its products or services contributing to a bigger world that they love. That love - and desire for growth and development - extends to everyone involved.
pg 123 What's our best defence against being victims of change? To grow and develop every day; to change ourselves - and to lead others in the process.
pg 127 Losing our childlike curiosity. Our sense of wonder and discovery is replaced with cynicism and apathy, often expressed as "been there, done that, what else is new." Pablo Picasso, one of the most prolific painters in history (with more than 20,000 works) once observed that "every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."
pg 128 Fearing to attempt. We know that the turtle only makes progress by sticking his head out. Yet we sit and dream about what we're going to do - someday. If we don't take steady steps toward our dreams, the walls around our complacency zone get ever higher and thicker.
pg 129 "In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists." Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition.
131 It's too easy to see learning as an end result rather than an ongoing process. Once I get my diploma, certification, or job, it's all too natural to relax and feel that I should now enjoy the fruits of my labors. Therein lies the deadly trap of viewing learning (or change) as a phase, not a way of life.
Constant growth, development, and adaptability to change comes from lifelong learning. As the 19th-century British theologian and essayist John Henry Newman once said, "Growth is the only evidence of life." If we're not growing, we're like a dying tree; eventually the winds of change will snap us of our rotting trunks and blow us over.
(Sidebar - this reminds me of a line from the movie "The Shawshank Redemption": Get busy living, or get busy dying.)
pg 137 The art of developing others is the art of assisting their self-discovery. Writing in the 15th century, Galileo put it this way: "You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him to find it within himself." ... I the workplace, managers are generally considered to be responsible for helping employees to grow and develop. The traditional management view is to get work done through people, but strong leaders develop people through work.
pg 144 True and lasting security comes from constant growth and development. We can't manage change, but we can be change opportunists.
by Jim Clemmer
My flags...
pg 33 In Going Deep, Ian Percy writes, "Most business people I know are much more concerned with the quality of their customer service than they are with the quality of their parenting and spousing." ... Yet these executives had failed to ask themselves an important question: When the company suddenly tosses them aside or they reach retirement, will they be so sure that career success is worth the cost of a broken family? Does this trade-off really represent their core values?
pg 42 We find what we focus upon. Whether I think my world is full of richness and opportunity or garbage and despair - I am right. It's exactly like that. Because that's my point of focus.
pg 51 "What's the world's greatest lie?" the boy asked, completely surprised. "It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That's the world's greatest lie." Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
pg 53 "...everything can be taken from us but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances - to choose one's own way." Viktor Frankl
pg 78 "When I was young and free and my imagination had no limits, I dreamed of changing the world. As I grew older and wiser, I discovered the world would not change, so I shortened my sights somewhat and decided to change my country. But it, too, seemed immovable. As I grew into my twilight years, in one desperate attempt, I settled for changing my family, those closest to me, but alas, they would have none of it. And now as I lie on my deathbed, I suddenly realize if only I had changed myself first, then by example I would have changed my family. From their inspiration and encouragement, I would have been able to better my country and, who knows, I may have even changed the world." Anonymous epitaph written on a tomb at Westminster Abbey
pg 80 In my firm's leadership development work, we use a simple exercise to help people see the connection between changes they'd like to see in others and those they need to make in themselves.
Draw a line down the middle of a page. Title the left column "Changes I'd Like Them To Make". List the four or five biggest changes you'd like to see in others.
OK, that's the easy part. Now title the right column "Ways I Can Exemplify These Changes". Here, write down the ways you can influence "them" with your personal behavior. Difficult, isn't it? Of course it is - because it forces us to acknowledge all those things we have or haven't been doing to influence their behavior.
It's much easier to be a victim here, to blame others for their behaviour and refuse to accept any responsibility at all. But how honest and true is that - really? ... The big (and often painful) leadership question is: "What do I need to change about me to help change them?" Instead of just wishing for a change of circumstance, I may need a change of character.
pg 81 Good intentions are useless if they stop there. Unless we act on them, they're nothing more than warm, fuzzy thoughts in our heads. When it comes to leadership, the messenger must be the message.
The biblical story of the Good Samaritan would have no meaning if all he did was look with sympathy at the badly wounded traveler lying by the road. He acted on his compassion and made a difference. One of the biggest differences between most people and authentic leaders is action. Real leaders make it happen.
pg 87 Studies of thriving people and their successful career paths show that they types of jobs they have had is much less important than the type of person they are. There are no dead-end jobs, but there are dead-end people. Unsuccessful people in unfulfilling jobs often make the mistake of thinking that they are working for someone else. ... Albert Schweitzer, the Noble Prize-winning French philosopher, physician and musician, fervently believed that "the tragedy of life is what dies inside a person while they live."
pg 91 ... But we all agreed that a highly skilled mechanic who loves his or her work and is continually growing and developing in it is a much more productive leader than a doctor who feels trapped in a system he or she despises. I've met cleaners, security guards, bus drivers, and other people in low-skilled, low-paying jobs who love what they do and make strong contributions to their organizations and society. As the highly passionate American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr put it, "If a man is called a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well."
Life is too short to give in to the Victimitis Virus and get stuck in the rut of a meaningless job; wishing and hoping I win the lottery, my fairy-job mother magically appears, or I can just hang in there. Meaningful work goes well beyond what I do for a living; it joyfully expresses what I do with my living.
pg 97 "The bedrock of character is self-discipline; the virtuous life, as philosophers since Aristotle have observed, is based on self-control. A related keystone of character is being able to motivate and guide oneself, whether in doing homework, finishing a job, or getting up in the morning. And, as we have seen, the ability to defer gratification and to control and channel one's urges to act is a basic emotional skill, one that in a former day was called will." Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ
pg 111 ... written by a former football player and student of Lou Holtz. At the heart of the poem:
I've seen my share of tombstones but never took the time to truly read
The meaning behind what is there for others to see
Under the person's name it read the date of birth, dash, and the date the person passed
But the more I think about the tombstone, the important thing is the dash
pg 115 Author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia outlines another face of love when talking about a contest he was asked to judge. The purpose of the contest was to find the most caring child. The winner was a four year-old whose next-door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the old man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman's yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. When his mother asked him what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said, "Nothing, I just helped him cry."
pg 122 Leaders love their organization's greater purpose and see its products or services contributing to a bigger world that they love. That love - and desire for growth and development - extends to everyone involved.
pg 123 What's our best defence against being victims of change? To grow and develop every day; to change ourselves - and to lead others in the process.
pg 127 Losing our childlike curiosity. Our sense of wonder and discovery is replaced with cynicism and apathy, often expressed as "been there, done that, what else is new." Pablo Picasso, one of the most prolific painters in history (with more than 20,000 works) once observed that "every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up."
pg 128 Fearing to attempt. We know that the turtle only makes progress by sticking his head out. Yet we sit and dream about what we're going to do - someday. If we don't take steady steps toward our dreams, the walls around our complacency zone get ever higher and thicker.
pg 129 "In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists." Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human Condition.
131 It's too easy to see learning as an end result rather than an ongoing process. Once I get my diploma, certification, or job, it's all too natural to relax and feel that I should now enjoy the fruits of my labors. Therein lies the deadly trap of viewing learning (or change) as a phase, not a way of life.
Constant growth, development, and adaptability to change comes from lifelong learning. As the 19th-century British theologian and essayist John Henry Newman once said, "Growth is the only evidence of life." If we're not growing, we're like a dying tree; eventually the winds of change will snap us of our rotting trunks and blow us over.
(Sidebar - this reminds me of a line from the movie "The Shawshank Redemption": Get busy living, or get busy dying.)
pg 137 The art of developing others is the art of assisting their self-discovery. Writing in the 15th century, Galileo put it this way: "You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him to find it within himself." ... I the workplace, managers are generally considered to be responsible for helping employees to grow and develop. The traditional management view is to get work done through people, but strong leaders develop people through work.
pg 144 True and lasting security comes from constant growth and development. We can't manage change, but we can be change opportunists.
16.10.07
The Art of Being Kind
by Stephan Einhorn
From the jacket... "Being kind in a genuine and positive way truly is an art; and it is an art that can be learned. Stefan Einhorn believes it is the single most important factor in achieving success and satisfaction in life - being a good person can make you happier, richer, more successful and fulfilled. ... Offering immediate practical solutions, The Art Of Being Kind holds powerful key to the rewards of being kind.
This book was an interesting read, from a 'flag bearer' perspective. Of the 212 pages, I had no flags until 152, but from there they proliferated. Here they are...
pg 152 So what goals are worth striving for if we want to achieve greater happiness and contentment? One study had looked at people's goals in life in relation to how happy they thought they were. It showed that the people who had struggled to get a high income and a successful and prestigious job were twice as likely to describe themselves a relatively or very unhappy, compared to those who named close friends and a happy marriage as their most important goals in life. Similarly, research in forty-one countries demonstrated a close correlation between the perception of happiness and how highly people valued love. The more important people regarded love to be, the happier they were. For those who valued wealth most, however, the situation was the reverse. The more important money was to them, the more unhappy they were.
pg 158 It is a question of finding a good balance. We cannot simply rush through life without enjoying and appreciating what we have. We are the ones who decide whether the glass is half full or half empty. In the end it depends on us deciding whether we want to be dissatisfied or satisfied with what we've got. In December 1914, Thomas Edison's laboratory burned down, and with it a lot of the prototypes that Edison and his colleagues had been working on. The loss of the building alone was not even covered by insurance. After looking at the devastation, Edison said: 'All our mistakes are burned up. Thank God we can start anew.'
pg 174 In the 1930s the Austrian physician Rene Spitz visited a children's home where there were many children but few staff, which meant the children hardly ever got any attention. They were kept clean and fed, but had very little human contact. Almost all the children appeared apathetic and underdeveloped, and some had already whithered away and died, without anyone understanding what disease they were suffering from. Strangely, there was one child who seemed well and who was growing and developing.
Spitz investigated why this was the case. It turned out that a cleaning lady used to clean the dormitory while the children were asleep. When she had finished cleaning, she always sat down on the bed closest to the door, picking up and cuddling the child who lay in it. Just for a short while - every night. In that bed lay the only child who had developed normally.
(sidebar - this reminds of a Mother Theresa quote: "There is more hunger in the world for love and appreciation than for bread.")
pg 180 It is almost never worth the cost of having a conflict, so for our own sake and everyone else's, we should try to handle the next approaching conflict with insight. I am not suggesting we flee any nascent conflicts, but that we should handle them with great wisdom.
We should be pragmatic in the face of a threatening conflict. We must ask ourselves: Where do I want to get to, and how can I get there? The obvious answer is almost always that we want to avoid gaining another enemy. We always lose by having enemies.
pg 182 Within Buddhism it is said that we should be grateful to our enemies, because they teach us tolerance and self-awareness. And this is true. Each time we approach a conflict, we are also approaching an opportunity: to understand ourselves better, and to train ourselves in the difficult art of treating our fellow human beings in the best possible way. Seeing the conflict as a challenge that we can use to train ourselves is undeniably better than being gripped by the discomfort and the primitive feelings many of us experience before a fight.
pg 185 There is a Buddhist story about two monks who had to wade across a river. A young woman was standing at the ford, worried about how she would reach the other side. One of the monks offered to carry her across on his shoulders. The other monk thought that it was outrageous that he should come into contact with a woman's body like that, but said nothing. Once they had reached the other side, and the woman had thanked the monk for his help, they continued their journey in silence. Eventually, as evening approached, the other monk could no longer hold back. and reproached his colleague for carrying the woman across the river. The monk who had carried the women looked at him in surprise and said: "Are you still carrying her? I put her down several hours ago.'
pg 188 There are only two possibilities for us to understand another person's thoughts, feelings and needs. One is to ask them how they feel and how they want to be treated. The other is to try and imagine how that person thinks and feels. This capacity for understanding - empathy - is available to all of us, to a greater or lesser degree.
pg 191 We bear responsibility for a lot in our lives - merely saying that we have to take responsibility does not tell us very much. What I mean here is the bit of extra responsibility beyond the usual. It is about exceeding expectations; it is about 'over-delivery'.
Several years ago my family was on holiday in a hotel in Italy. It was a well-run hotel, but one incident in particular filled us with delight. The children had taken with them an entire suitcase fill of cuddly toys, which we had to drag with us throughout the trip. Upon returning to our rooms after a day at the beach we discovered that the cleaners had been in. And they had done something beyond the usual call of duty. They had positioned the stuffed animals in a circle on the bed, so that it looked like they were having a meeting. The children were delighted, as were we adults.
pg 193 So should we work an extra five hours each week in order to be successful? No, we should not take everything upon ourselves, and we have the right to say no sometimes. But what we undertake to do, we should do really well. Whether it concerns work, family or friends, we should take responsibility for what we have undertaken, and then do a bit more.
pg 197 It is important to recognise a few simple things which we have a tendency to forget.
From the jacket... "Being kind in a genuine and positive way truly is an art; and it is an art that can be learned. Stefan Einhorn believes it is the single most important factor in achieving success and satisfaction in life - being a good person can make you happier, richer, more successful and fulfilled. ... Offering immediate practical solutions, The Art Of Being Kind holds powerful key to the rewards of being kind.
This book was an interesting read, from a 'flag bearer' perspective. Of the 212 pages, I had no flags until 152, but from there they proliferated. Here they are...
pg 152 So what goals are worth striving for if we want to achieve greater happiness and contentment? One study had looked at people's goals in life in relation to how happy they thought they were. It showed that the people who had struggled to get a high income and a successful and prestigious job were twice as likely to describe themselves a relatively or very unhappy, compared to those who named close friends and a happy marriage as their most important goals in life. Similarly, research in forty-one countries demonstrated a close correlation between the perception of happiness and how highly people valued love. The more important people regarded love to be, the happier they were. For those who valued wealth most, however, the situation was the reverse. The more important money was to them, the more unhappy they were.
pg 158 It is a question of finding a good balance. We cannot simply rush through life without enjoying and appreciating what we have. We are the ones who decide whether the glass is half full or half empty. In the end it depends on us deciding whether we want to be dissatisfied or satisfied with what we've got. In December 1914, Thomas Edison's laboratory burned down, and with it a lot of the prototypes that Edison and his colleagues had been working on. The loss of the building alone was not even covered by insurance. After looking at the devastation, Edison said: 'All our mistakes are burned up. Thank God we can start anew.'
pg 174 In the 1930s the Austrian physician Rene Spitz visited a children's home where there were many children but few staff, which meant the children hardly ever got any attention. They were kept clean and fed, but had very little human contact. Almost all the children appeared apathetic and underdeveloped, and some had already whithered away and died, without anyone understanding what disease they were suffering from. Strangely, there was one child who seemed well and who was growing and developing.
Spitz investigated why this was the case. It turned out that a cleaning lady used to clean the dormitory while the children were asleep. When she had finished cleaning, she always sat down on the bed closest to the door, picking up and cuddling the child who lay in it. Just for a short while - every night. In that bed lay the only child who had developed normally.
(sidebar - this reminds of a Mother Theresa quote: "There is more hunger in the world for love and appreciation than for bread.")
pg 180 It is almost never worth the cost of having a conflict, so for our own sake and everyone else's, we should try to handle the next approaching conflict with insight. I am not suggesting we flee any nascent conflicts, but that we should handle them with great wisdom.
We should be pragmatic in the face of a threatening conflict. We must ask ourselves: Where do I want to get to, and how can I get there? The obvious answer is almost always that we want to avoid gaining another enemy. We always lose by having enemies.
pg 182 Within Buddhism it is said that we should be grateful to our enemies, because they teach us tolerance and self-awareness. And this is true. Each time we approach a conflict, we are also approaching an opportunity: to understand ourselves better, and to train ourselves in the difficult art of treating our fellow human beings in the best possible way. Seeing the conflict as a challenge that we can use to train ourselves is undeniably better than being gripped by the discomfort and the primitive feelings many of us experience before a fight.
pg 185 There is a Buddhist story about two monks who had to wade across a river. A young woman was standing at the ford, worried about how she would reach the other side. One of the monks offered to carry her across on his shoulders. The other monk thought that it was outrageous that he should come into contact with a woman's body like that, but said nothing. Once they had reached the other side, and the woman had thanked the monk for his help, they continued their journey in silence. Eventually, as evening approached, the other monk could no longer hold back. and reproached his colleague for carrying the woman across the river. The monk who had carried the women looked at him in surprise and said: "Are you still carrying her? I put her down several hours ago.'
pg 188 There are only two possibilities for us to understand another person's thoughts, feelings and needs. One is to ask them how they feel and how they want to be treated. The other is to try and imagine how that person thinks and feels. This capacity for understanding - empathy - is available to all of us, to a greater or lesser degree.
pg 191 We bear responsibility for a lot in our lives - merely saying that we have to take responsibility does not tell us very much. What I mean here is the bit of extra responsibility beyond the usual. It is about exceeding expectations; it is about 'over-delivery'.
Several years ago my family was on holiday in a hotel in Italy. It was a well-run hotel, but one incident in particular filled us with delight. The children had taken with them an entire suitcase fill of cuddly toys, which we had to drag with us throughout the trip. Upon returning to our rooms after a day at the beach we discovered that the cleaners had been in. And they had done something beyond the usual call of duty. They had positioned the stuffed animals in a circle on the bed, so that it looked like they were having a meeting. The children were delighted, as were we adults.
pg 193 So should we work an extra five hours each week in order to be successful? No, we should not take everything upon ourselves, and we have the right to say no sometimes. But what we undertake to do, we should do really well. Whether it concerns work, family or friends, we should take responsibility for what we have undertaken, and then do a bit more.
pg 197 It is important to recognise a few simple things which we have a tendency to forget.
- We are always part of the problem we experience.
- We have great power to contribute to their solution.
- We can learn a lot on the way, and grow as individuals as a result.
If we want things to be different in our lives, then we ourselves have to take responsibility for that. No one else can do it for us. And if we see hindrances ahead of us, we must decide if they are real or merely excuses for that fact that we lack courage.
How do we start this process? The first step is to make the decision to change. And not only to make that decision in our minds, but also in our hearts. The next step is to stop and take the time to ask ourselves a few questions. We have to be self-reflective. Examples of these questions might be these.
- Am I doing right by myself?
- Am I treating others right?
- Am I doing the right thing?
- Why am I doing them?
- What do I think is important and meaningful?
It is important to take time now and again (not all the time) to think about where we are, who we are and where we are going. In the temple at Delphi there was an inscription in gold letters above the door: Gnothi seauton - 'Know thyself'. Self-awareness is a precondition for inner development, whether it be a matter of worldly or non-worldly goals.
pg 199 I believe Frankl is right. Far too many people strive for career goals, only to find when they achieve them that they feel empty. And then they set off after new goals, only to experience the same feeling once they got there. If we instead concentrate on what feels meaningful in our hearts, this feeling will not arise, but rather a feeling of direction and meaning. We cannot hold onto anything if our hands are clenched.
pg 201 Life is endlessly rich and meaningful. The problem is that we are often in so much of a hurry that we do not have time to appreciate the significance of everything we encounter and all that we do. We do not always see how much of what we do is meaningful and important. For this reason we need to stop and look about us in order to recognise it. We need to strive for that particular sense of meaning.Sometimes seriously ill patients speak of how meaningful they think life is, when they do not have long left. They can see the meaning in a beautiful day, in birdsong, or in an everyday encounter with another person. And this is indeed the case - a lot of what we take for granted contains great meaning and beauty. It is just that we do not always have time to see, listen and reflect.
pg 202 In the collective society in which we live today, we seldom get time to ourselves - time to reflect, encounter ourselves properly and ask ourselves questions about who we are, where we are going and why. It is no easy task to take on, but, as Thomas Transtromer wrote: 'In the middle of the forest is a glade which can only be found by someone who is lost.'Concluding Remarks
We will get a better world as a result. Even if individual people can sometimes feel powerless, this is not the case. Do not forget how the effects of a good deed can spread out like ripples on a pond. We can do more than we think for others, and in this way make our contribution to a better world. And a good world is much better to live in than a bad one.In South Africa there is a particular phrase, ubuntu, which is difficult to translate into a Western language but concerns the very core of being a human being. The Nobel Prize winner Desmond Tutu, in his book No Future Without Forgiveness, wrote this about ubuntu: 'A person with ubuntu is welcoming, hospitable, warm and generous, willing to share. Such people are open and available to others, willing to be vulnerable, affirming of others, do not feel threatened that others are able and good, for they have a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that they belong in a greater whole.' I wonder if I have ever seen a better description of the word 'kind'.
The English author and philosopher Aldous Huxley said towards the end of his life: 'It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by the way of advice than "Try to be a little kinder".' In the end it probably really is this simple - and this difficult: kindness is the greatest thing we can offer those around us, and ourselves.(suggested readings at the back of the book)
10.9.07
The Science of Happiness
Unlocking the Mysteries of Mood
by Stephen Braun
From the epilogue... The Science of Happiness grew out of my curiosity about the ways in which new drugs are changing the eternal pursuit of happiness. That curiosity was rooted in my own experiences with mood-altering drugs and with my own quest to obtain an optimal mood.
my flags...
pg 31 But decades of accumulated research into the nature of happiness proves that, contrary to people's gut instincts, happiness has little to do with money and other external factors. Instead, how happy people are seems to depend on something a good deal more mysterious an inner quality that allows people to experience happiness regardless of their external circumstances, as long as those circumstances are not completely corrosive or impoverished.
Scientists have found that the link between happiness and the things most people think bring happiness is stunningly weak, while the link between internal factors such as outlook, temperament, and personality are robust. This is a crucial insight. If happiness is a function of money and love and stress reduction and education, then the whole notion of using drugs to induce or enhance happiness would be a waste of time at best, and counterproductive at worst. But a huge amount of data demonstrate that external factors have a very limited impact on happiness.
pg 36 What does correlated with happiness are strong social connections, long-term loving relationships, a sense of optimism and openness to new experiences, the opportunity to pursue meaningful work, and spiritual belief or identification with an issue or idea larger than oneself.
pg 37 This is a specific case of a general pattern happiness arises from a continuous interaction between one's environment (relationships, work, physical health, upbringing) and one's temperament, the inborn tendency toward optimism or pessimism, cheerfulness or dourness, introversion or extroversion. Internal factors such as energy level, openness to new experiences, and emotional resilience can powerfully shape life events, including the quality and character of the relationships a person forms. It is not hyperbole to say that to a certain extent, people create their own environmental reality - and it is created in their own image.
pg 90 According to Gut, Nasse, and other proponents of Darwinian psychiatry, depressive moods are to our mental life what pain is to our physical life: potentially valuable signals that something is reducing our chances for survival, reproduction, and well-being. Most often, depressive moods are telling us that something is wrong with our intimate relationships, our life situation, or our efforts to achieve a goal.
In Gut's view, depressed moods are most often telling us that we are experiencing an unconscious crisis, frustrations, breakdown, or problem that needs our attention. She emphasizes the unconscious nature of the problems because being aware of a loss or a crisis changes how they feel. Grief, for instance, is a negative, depression like emotion associated with the conscious loss of companionship, whether from a spouse, friend, relative, or pet. Sadness can result from other types of conscious loss, such as loss of money, prestige, social power, or health.
Depression, however, has a distinctive feel to it - a feel that is tinged with the frustration, perplexity, and fear that come from experiencing a powerful emotion without knowing fully why one is experiencing it.
pg 93 An equally valuable aspect of the depressed response is the forced dropping of the rose-coloured glasses worn by "normals". As mentioned previously, a great deal of research has shown that depressed people have a more realistic view of themselves and their surroundings. They are better able to predict their performance relative to others, they better understand the limits of their control, they are more accurate at monitoring and assessing their own social behaviour, and they judge themselves equally responsible for previous successes and failures on a task rather than seeing themselves as more responsible for their successes than for their failures. The sometimes harsh reality revealed by depression may allow for a more accurate appraisal of a situation and lead to more successful outcome.
pg 147 The Zen answer to the question is not, as is sometimes believed, that moods should be "conquered" such that a person lives in an ever-present state of serenity, detachment, and calm. This answer, and the paradox behind it, are illustrated to a story from another Zen student, the writer Lawrence Shainberg. In his book Ambivalent Zen, Shainberg recalls sitting one time with his teacher, or Roshi, as he made green tea.
"So, Roshi, how are you today?" Shainberg said.
"Fine! Fine!" Roshi replied, as he did every time Shainberg asked him.
On this particular day Shainberg found this seemingly automatic reply irritating.
"Come one, Roshi," Shainberg said. "You always say that. Nobody's fine all the time. Don't you ever have bad days?"
"Bad days?" the Roshi answered, "Sure! On bad days I fine. On good days I fine."
The idea, of course, is that one can be "fine" all the time despite "bad days". The trick is accepting the inevitability of "bad days" - which could be extended to the inevitability of negative mood states in general, including anger, anxiety, sadness, fear, and depressive moods - and not complicating matters by trying to deny, avoid, repress, or becoming attached to such moods. The optimal mood state, at least from this Zen perspective, is not uninterrupted bliss but a state in which a range of moods can be experienced with a minimum of needless pain and suffering.
by Stephen Braun
From the epilogue... The Science of Happiness grew out of my curiosity about the ways in which new drugs are changing the eternal pursuit of happiness. That curiosity was rooted in my own experiences with mood-altering drugs and with my own quest to obtain an optimal mood.
my flags...
pg 31 But decades of accumulated research into the nature of happiness proves that, contrary to people's gut instincts, happiness has little to do with money and other external factors. Instead, how happy people are seems to depend on something a good deal more mysterious an inner quality that allows people to experience happiness regardless of their external circumstances, as long as those circumstances are not completely corrosive or impoverished.
Scientists have found that the link between happiness and the things most people think bring happiness is stunningly weak, while the link between internal factors such as outlook, temperament, and personality are robust. This is a crucial insight. If happiness is a function of money and love and stress reduction and education, then the whole notion of using drugs to induce or enhance happiness would be a waste of time at best, and counterproductive at worst. But a huge amount of data demonstrate that external factors have a very limited impact on happiness.
pg 36 What does correlated with happiness are strong social connections, long-term loving relationships, a sense of optimism and openness to new experiences, the opportunity to pursue meaningful work, and spiritual belief or identification with an issue or idea larger than oneself.
pg 37 This is a specific case of a general pattern happiness arises from a continuous interaction between one's environment (relationships, work, physical health, upbringing) and one's temperament, the inborn tendency toward optimism or pessimism, cheerfulness or dourness, introversion or extroversion. Internal factors such as energy level, openness to new experiences, and emotional resilience can powerfully shape life events, including the quality and character of the relationships a person forms. It is not hyperbole to say that to a certain extent, people create their own environmental reality - and it is created in their own image.
pg 90 According to Gut, Nasse, and other proponents of Darwinian psychiatry, depressive moods are to our mental life what pain is to our physical life: potentially valuable signals that something is reducing our chances for survival, reproduction, and well-being. Most often, depressive moods are telling us that something is wrong with our intimate relationships, our life situation, or our efforts to achieve a goal.
In Gut's view, depressed moods are most often telling us that we are experiencing an unconscious crisis, frustrations, breakdown, or problem that needs our attention. She emphasizes the unconscious nature of the problems because being aware of a loss or a crisis changes how they feel. Grief, for instance, is a negative, depression like emotion associated with the conscious loss of companionship, whether from a spouse, friend, relative, or pet. Sadness can result from other types of conscious loss, such as loss of money, prestige, social power, or health.
Depression, however, has a distinctive feel to it - a feel that is tinged with the frustration, perplexity, and fear that come from experiencing a powerful emotion without knowing fully why one is experiencing it.
pg 93 An equally valuable aspect of the depressed response is the forced dropping of the rose-coloured glasses worn by "normals". As mentioned previously, a great deal of research has shown that depressed people have a more realistic view of themselves and their surroundings. They are better able to predict their performance relative to others, they better understand the limits of their control, they are more accurate at monitoring and assessing their own social behaviour, and they judge themselves equally responsible for previous successes and failures on a task rather than seeing themselves as more responsible for their successes than for their failures. The sometimes harsh reality revealed by depression may allow for a more accurate appraisal of a situation and lead to more successful outcome.
pg 147 The Zen answer to the question is not, as is sometimes believed, that moods should be "conquered" such that a person lives in an ever-present state of serenity, detachment, and calm. This answer, and the paradox behind it, are illustrated to a story from another Zen student, the writer Lawrence Shainberg. In his book Ambivalent Zen, Shainberg recalls sitting one time with his teacher, or Roshi, as he made green tea.
"So, Roshi, how are you today?" Shainberg said.
"Fine! Fine!" Roshi replied, as he did every time Shainberg asked him.
On this particular day Shainberg found this seemingly automatic reply irritating.
"Come one, Roshi," Shainberg said. "You always say that. Nobody's fine all the time. Don't you ever have bad days?"
"Bad days?" the Roshi answered, "Sure! On bad days I fine. On good days I fine."
The idea, of course, is that one can be "fine" all the time despite "bad days". The trick is accepting the inevitability of "bad days" - which could be extended to the inevitability of negative mood states in general, including anger, anxiety, sadness, fear, and depressive moods - and not complicating matters by trying to deny, avoid, repress, or becoming attached to such moods. The optimal mood state, at least from this Zen perspective, is not uninterrupted bliss but a state in which a range of moods can be experienced with a minimum of needless pain and suffering.
5.9.07
Geisha, A Life
by Mineko Iwasaki with Rande Brown
From the cover, "No woman in the three-hundred-year history of the karyukai has ever come forward in public to tell her story - until now."
No flags, but it's an interesting real-life account of the world of geisha. If you've read Memoirs of a Geisha, you'll find some discrepancies (i.e. around the meaning of the mizuage ceremony) - very interesting!
From the cover, "No woman in the three-hundred-year history of the karyukai has ever come forward in public to tell her story - until now."
No flags, but it's an interesting real-life account of the world of geisha. If you've read Memoirs of a Geisha, you'll find some discrepancies (i.e. around the meaning of the mizuage ceremony) - very interesting!
The Deserter's Tale
The Story of an Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the War In Iraq
by Joshua Key as told to Lawrence Hill
The title sums it up - an eye-opening read into the American Military and the war in Iraq.
I had only a few flags:
pg 173 As far as I knew, I had not killed any person in Iraq. I had not fired my M-249 since it had stopped working a month or two earlier. I had taken part in about two hundred house raids but had months earlier lost an belief in the cause. Most of my buddies felt the same way. The house raids were nothing but an excuse to insult, intimidate, and arrest Iraqis. They gave us a convenient target to vent our frustrations, never having any real enemies to kill in battle. For a time, the raids gave us an opportunity to beat people, steal their belongings, and destroy the things we didn't care to take. But I wasn't the only one who had let up on the beatings and the stealing as my conscience returned. For most of us, setting off C-4 explosives, ransacking houses, and zipcuffing teenagers and men provided a boost of adrenaline and excitement for a month of two at the most. As time went on, we found no weapons of mass destruction. We found no signs of terrorism. We found nothing but people whose lives would deteriorate, or end, simply for having met us face to face in their cars and their houses. Some of us had not even respected them in death.
(sidebar - at one point in the book he commented that while America had begun the war in Iraq against terrorism, it was really the Americans in Iraq who were the terrorists.)
pg 228 Although I would love to sit down with the president, I would like even more to have half an hour with every young American who is thinking of signing up for the poverty draft. As poor and desperate as my young family was when I drove to the armed forces recruiting centre in Oklahoma in March 2002, I never would have signed up if I'd known I would be blasting into Iraqis' houses, terrorizing women and children, and detaining every man we could find - and all that for $1,200 a month as a private first class. Somehow, somewhere, I would have found a job and a way to survive. I never would have gone to war for my country if I had known what my country was going to do at war in Iraq.
by Joshua Key as told to Lawrence Hill
The title sums it up - an eye-opening read into the American Military and the war in Iraq.
I had only a few flags:
pg 173 As far as I knew, I had not killed any person in Iraq. I had not fired my M-249 since it had stopped working a month or two earlier. I had taken part in about two hundred house raids but had months earlier lost an belief in the cause. Most of my buddies felt the same way. The house raids were nothing but an excuse to insult, intimidate, and arrest Iraqis. They gave us a convenient target to vent our frustrations, never having any real enemies to kill in battle. For a time, the raids gave us an opportunity to beat people, steal their belongings, and destroy the things we didn't care to take. But I wasn't the only one who had let up on the beatings and the stealing as my conscience returned. For most of us, setting off C-4 explosives, ransacking houses, and zipcuffing teenagers and men provided a boost of adrenaline and excitement for a month of two at the most. As time went on, we found no weapons of mass destruction. We found no signs of terrorism. We found nothing but people whose lives would deteriorate, or end, simply for having met us face to face in their cars and their houses. Some of us had not even respected them in death.
(sidebar - at one point in the book he commented that while America had begun the war in Iraq against terrorism, it was really the Americans in Iraq who were the terrorists.)
pg 228 Although I would love to sit down with the president, I would like even more to have half an hour with every young American who is thinking of signing up for the poverty draft. As poor and desperate as my young family was when I drove to the armed forces recruiting centre in Oklahoma in March 2002, I never would have signed up if I'd known I would be blasting into Iraqis' houses, terrorizing women and children, and detaining every man we could find - and all that for $1,200 a month as a private first class. Somehow, somewhere, I would have found a job and a way to survive. I never would have gone to war for my country if I had known what my country was going to do at war in Iraq.
29.8.07
The No Asshole Rule
Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't
by Robert I. Sutton
From the jacket... Employees who are insensitive to their colleagues...corporate bullies...bosses who just don't get it. Let's face it, every office has workers who are flat-out rude, selfish, uncivil, mean-spirited, and who really don't seem to care about whom they step on. They're the kind of people who make you exclaim in exasperation, "What an asshole!" Dr. Sutton sheds real analytical light on how this ongoing problem ruins morale, lowers productivity, and can truly devastate a company's culture. Sutton not only confronts this issue directly, but also provides extensive strategies and insights into how your company can pinpoint and eliminate this problem.
My flags...
pg 18 ...companies had learned to ignore job candidates' quirks and strange mannerisms, to downplay socially inappropriate remarks, and instead, focus on what the people could actually do. I first heard this argument from Nolan Bushnell - the founder of Atari, which was the first wildly successful gaming company. Bushnell told me that although he looked for smooth-talking marketing people, when it came to technical people, he just wanted to see their work because "the best engineers sometimes come in bodies that can't talk."
pg 25 These test imply an even more fundamental lesson that runs through this book: the difference between how a person treats the powerless versus the powerful is as good a measure of human character as I know. ... To me, when a person is persistently warm and civilized toward people who are of unknown or lower status, it means that he or she is a decent human being.
pg 40 As the late corporate quality guru W. Edwards Deming concluded long ago, when fear rears its ugly head, people focus on protecting themselves, not on helping their organizations improve.
pg 75 Despite all the trappings, some leaders do remain attuned to how people around them are really feeling, to what their employees really believe about how the organization is run, and to what customers really think about their company's products and services. ...the key things these leaders do is take potent and constant steps that dampen rather than amplify the power difference between themselves and others (both inside and outside the company).
pg 80 At Intel, the largest semiconductor maker in the world, all full-time employees are given training in "constructive confrontation", a hallmark of the company culture. ... Intel preaches that the only thing worse than too much confrontation is no confrontation at all. So the company teaches employees how to approach people and problems positively, to use evidence and logic, and to attack problems and not people.
The University of Michigan's Karl Weick advises, "Fight as if you are right; listen as though you are wrong." That is what Intel tries to teach through initial lectures, role playing, and, most essential, the ways in which managers and leaders fight. The teach people how to fight and when to fight. Their motto is "Disagree and then commit," because second-guessing, complaining, and arguing after a decision is made saps effort and attention - which obscures whether a decision is failing because it is a bad idea or is it a good idea that is implemented with insufficient energy and commitment. People are also taught to delay their arguments until all the key facts are in, because it wastes time and because taking a public stance based on incomplete information leads people to defend and publicly commit to paths that ultimately clash with the best evidence.
pg 90 Manage moments - not just practices, policies, and systems. Effective asshole management means focusing on and changing the little things that you and your people do - and big changes will follow. Reflect on what you do, watch how others respond to you and to one another, and work on "tweeking" what happens as you are interacting with the person in front of your right now.
pg 110 Again, a bit of framing can help. Tell yourself, "I have enough." Certainly, some people need more than they have, as many people on earth still need a safe place to live, enough food to eat, and other necessities. But too many of us are never satisfied and feel constantly slighted, even though - by objective standards - we have all we need to live a good life. ... These wise words provide a frame that can help you to be at peace with yourself and to treat those around you with affection and respect.
pg 113 And after Dell and Rollins began talking openly about their weaknesses, it gave other senior executives "permission" to talk about their own nastiness and insensitivity, and gave their colleagues permission to "call them" on bad behaviour. As one general manger put it, "After someone discloses that he periodically lobs grenades into meetings but intends to stop, we all have permission to call him on it. And we do."
pg 131 Physiologists have found that if you can't escape a source of stress, changing your mind-set about what is happening to you, or reframing, can help reduce the damage done to you. Some useful reframing tricks include avoiding self-blame, hoping for the best but expecting the worst, and, my favourite, developing indifference and emotional detachment. Learning when and how to simply not give a damn isn't the kind of advice you hear in most business books, but it can help you make the best of a lousy situation.
pg 137 As Walt Whitman said, "Dismiss whatever insults your soul."
pg 139 Stockdale and other prisoners survived by finding hundreds of tiny actions they could take each day to take a modicum of control over their lives - like saying a prayer, doing some push-ups, or trying to develop new ways to get a secret message to other prisoners. ... research confirms that the feeling of control - perceiving that you have the power to shape even small aspects of your fate - can have a huge impact on human well-being. Consider a compelling study by Ellen Langer and Judith Rodin with elderly patients in nursing homes. One group of patients attended a lecture about all the things that the staff could do for them; they were given a houseplant and told the staff would care for it, and they were told which night to attend movies. Patients in the other (quite similar) groups from the same nursing homes were given a "pep" talk about the importance of taking control over their lives, and asked to take care of the new houseplant in their rooms, and given choices about which nights to attend movies, when they had meals, when their phones rang, and how their furniture was arranged. These small differences had big effects. Not only did those patients with greater control engage in more recreational activities and have more positive attitudes toward life in general, an eighteen-month follow-up found that they had a 50% lower death rate.
by Robert I. Sutton
From the jacket... Employees who are insensitive to their colleagues...corporate bullies...bosses who just don't get it. Let's face it, every office has workers who are flat-out rude, selfish, uncivil, mean-spirited, and who really don't seem to care about whom they step on. They're the kind of people who make you exclaim in exasperation, "What an asshole!" Dr. Sutton sheds real analytical light on how this ongoing problem ruins morale, lowers productivity, and can truly devastate a company's culture. Sutton not only confronts this issue directly, but also provides extensive strategies and insights into how your company can pinpoint and eliminate this problem.
My flags...
pg 18 ...companies had learned to ignore job candidates' quirks and strange mannerisms, to downplay socially inappropriate remarks, and instead, focus on what the people could actually do. I first heard this argument from Nolan Bushnell - the founder of Atari, which was the first wildly successful gaming company. Bushnell told me that although he looked for smooth-talking marketing people, when it came to technical people, he just wanted to see their work because "the best engineers sometimes come in bodies that can't talk."
pg 25 These test imply an even more fundamental lesson that runs through this book: the difference between how a person treats the powerless versus the powerful is as good a measure of human character as I know. ... To me, when a person is persistently warm and civilized toward people who are of unknown or lower status, it means that he or she is a decent human being.
pg 40 As the late corporate quality guru W. Edwards Deming concluded long ago, when fear rears its ugly head, people focus on protecting themselves, not on helping their organizations improve.
pg 75 Despite all the trappings, some leaders do remain attuned to how people around them are really feeling, to what their employees really believe about how the organization is run, and to what customers really think about their company's products and services. ...the key things these leaders do is take potent and constant steps that dampen rather than amplify the power difference between themselves and others (both inside and outside the company).
pg 80 At Intel, the largest semiconductor maker in the world, all full-time employees are given training in "constructive confrontation", a hallmark of the company culture. ... Intel preaches that the only thing worse than too much confrontation is no confrontation at all. So the company teaches employees how to approach people and problems positively, to use evidence and logic, and to attack problems and not people.
The University of Michigan's Karl Weick advises, "Fight as if you are right; listen as though you are wrong." That is what Intel tries to teach through initial lectures, role playing, and, most essential, the ways in which managers and leaders fight. The teach people how to fight and when to fight. Their motto is "Disagree and then commit," because second-guessing, complaining, and arguing after a decision is made saps effort and attention - which obscures whether a decision is failing because it is a bad idea or is it a good idea that is implemented with insufficient energy and commitment. People are also taught to delay their arguments until all the key facts are in, because it wastes time and because taking a public stance based on incomplete information leads people to defend and publicly commit to paths that ultimately clash with the best evidence.
pg 90 Manage moments - not just practices, policies, and systems. Effective asshole management means focusing on and changing the little things that you and your people do - and big changes will follow. Reflect on what you do, watch how others respond to you and to one another, and work on "tweeking" what happens as you are interacting with the person in front of your right now.
pg 110 Again, a bit of framing can help. Tell yourself, "I have enough." Certainly, some people need more than they have, as many people on earth still need a safe place to live, enough food to eat, and other necessities. But too many of us are never satisfied and feel constantly slighted, even though - by objective standards - we have all we need to live a good life. ... These wise words provide a frame that can help you to be at peace with yourself and to treat those around you with affection and respect.
pg 113 And after Dell and Rollins began talking openly about their weaknesses, it gave other senior executives "permission" to talk about their own nastiness and insensitivity, and gave their colleagues permission to "call them" on bad behaviour. As one general manger put it, "After someone discloses that he periodically lobs grenades into meetings but intends to stop, we all have permission to call him on it. And we do."
pg 131 Physiologists have found that if you can't escape a source of stress, changing your mind-set about what is happening to you, or reframing, can help reduce the damage done to you. Some useful reframing tricks include avoiding self-blame, hoping for the best but expecting the worst, and, my favourite, developing indifference and emotional detachment. Learning when and how to simply not give a damn isn't the kind of advice you hear in most business books, but it can help you make the best of a lousy situation.
pg 137 As Walt Whitman said, "Dismiss whatever insults your soul."
pg 139 Stockdale and other prisoners survived by finding hundreds of tiny actions they could take each day to take a modicum of control over their lives - like saying a prayer, doing some push-ups, or trying to develop new ways to get a secret message to other prisoners. ... research confirms that the feeling of control - perceiving that you have the power to shape even small aspects of your fate - can have a huge impact on human well-being. Consider a compelling study by Ellen Langer and Judith Rodin with elderly patients in nursing homes. One group of patients attended a lecture about all the things that the staff could do for them; they were given a houseplant and told the staff would care for it, and they were told which night to attend movies. Patients in the other (quite similar) groups from the same nursing homes were given a "pep" talk about the importance of taking control over their lives, and asked to take care of the new houseplant in their rooms, and given choices about which nights to attend movies, when they had meals, when their phones rang, and how their furniture was arranged. These small differences had big effects. Not only did those patients with greater control engage in more recreational activities and have more positive attitudes toward life in general, an eighteen-month follow-up found that they had a 50% lower death rate.
25.8.07
A Year Without "Made In China"
One Family's True Life Adventure in the Global Economy
by Sara Bongiorni
The title describes it - a family embarks on a year long boycott of Chinese products. I picked up this book for two reasons 1) to ensure that out of the typical stream of books I enjoy, I also explore what else is out there for me to learn from and 2) there is a lot about China in the other book I have on the go, The World is Flat, so I thought this would be a neat real-life expedition in the realities of globalization.
However, throughout the whole book I struggled with it's premise. So too, did some of the subjects, and I don't feel it was ever cleared up:
pg 100 Like his father, Wes sees little virtue in a China boycott.
"Do we not like China?" he asks me one day.
I am alarmed by the question.
"Yes, we like China," I tell him.
He presses on.
"Are they not nice to people?"
"They are perfectly good people in China," I assure him. "No different than people anywhere else."
"Then how come we don't buy China things?" he asks.
We've been over this territory before but I stumble every time. Many days I can't quite remember myself why we are doing this, so to explain it in a way that makes sense to a four-year old is beyond my abilities. Still, I suppose it's my duty to try.
"We like China, but it's a very big place, with lots of factories, and we want to give other countries a chance to sell us things," I say.
pg 130 Today Sofie does something that no toddler in America, perhaps no toddler in the world, has ever done. She is trailing after me in the toy aisle at the market when she picks up a box, peers at the underside, mutters "China" as if reading, and then returns the box to its place on the shelf. I should have seen this coming - monkey see, monkey do, after all - but I'm blindsided by her performance. My first thought is: What have I done? My next one is: Can it be undone? What sort of mother teaches her toddler to fear Chinese toys? And if she's fearful of Chinese toys, what's next? Fear of Chinese people?
by Sara Bongiorni
The title describes it - a family embarks on a year long boycott of Chinese products. I picked up this book for two reasons 1) to ensure that out of the typical stream of books I enjoy, I also explore what else is out there for me to learn from and 2) there is a lot about China in the other book I have on the go, The World is Flat, so I thought this would be a neat real-life expedition in the realities of globalization.
However, throughout the whole book I struggled with it's premise. So too, did some of the subjects, and I don't feel it was ever cleared up:
pg 100 Like his father, Wes sees little virtue in a China boycott.
"Do we not like China?" he asks me one day.
I am alarmed by the question.
"Yes, we like China," I tell him.
He presses on.
"Are they not nice to people?"
"They are perfectly good people in China," I assure him. "No different than people anywhere else."
"Then how come we don't buy China things?" he asks.
We've been over this territory before but I stumble every time. Many days I can't quite remember myself why we are doing this, so to explain it in a way that makes sense to a four-year old is beyond my abilities. Still, I suppose it's my duty to try.
"We like China, but it's a very big place, with lots of factories, and we want to give other countries a chance to sell us things," I say.
pg 130 Today Sofie does something that no toddler in America, perhaps no toddler in the world, has ever done. She is trailing after me in the toy aisle at the market when she picks up a box, peers at the underside, mutters "China" as if reading, and then returns the box to its place on the shelf. I should have seen this coming - monkey see, monkey do, after all - but I'm blindsided by her performance. My first thought is: What have I done? My next one is: Can it be undone? What sort of mother teaches her toddler to fear Chinese toys? And if she's fearful of Chinese toys, what's next? Fear of Chinese people?
24.8.07
The Long Tail
Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More
by Chris Anderson
In a not-so-small-nutshell from the early pages: "In statistics, curves like that are called "long-tailed distributions," because the tail of the curve is very long relative to the head. So all I did was focus on the tail itself, turn it into a proper noun, and "The Long Tail" was born. It started life as slide 20 of one of my "New Rules" presentations. I think it was Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, who convinced me that I was burying my lead. By the summer of 2004 "The Long Tail" was not just the title of my speeches; I was nearly finished with an article of the same name for my own magazine.
When "The Long Tail" was published in Wired in October 2004, it quickly became the most cited article the magazine had ever run. The three main observations - 1) the tail of available variety is far longer than we realize; 2) it's now within reach economically; 3) all those niches, when aggregated, can make up a significant market - seemed indisputable, especially when backed up with heretofore unseen data."
(check out the original article here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail_pr.html)
my flags...
pg 16 People are going deep into the catalog, down the long, long list of available titles, far past what's available at Blockbuster Video and Tower Records. And the more they find, the more they like. As they wander farther from the beaten path, they discover their taste is not as mainstream as they thought (or as they had been led to believe by marketing, a hit-centric culture, and simply a lack of alternatives).
pg 22 Not only is every one of Rhapsody's top 60,000 tracks streamed at least once each month, but the same is true for its top 100,000, top 200,000, and top 400,000 - even its top 600,000, top 900,000, and beyond. As fast as Rhapsody add tracks to its library, those songs find an audience, even if it's just a handful of people every month, somewhere in the world. This is the Long Tail.
pg 23 Venture capitalist and former music industry consultant Kevin Laws puts it this way: "The biggest money is in the smallest sales."
pg 23 When you think about it, most successful Internet businesses are capitalizing on the Long Tail in one way or another. Google, for instance, makes most of its money not from huge corporate advertisers, but from small ones (the Long Tail of advertising). Ebay is mostly Tail as well - niche products from collector cars to tricked-out golf clubs. By overcoming the limitations of geography and scale, companies like these have not only expanded existing markets, but more important, they've also discovered new ones.
pg 24 But what we do know is that with the companies for which we have the most complete data - Netflix, Amazon, and Rhapsody - sales of products not offered by their bricks-and-mortar competitors amounted to between a quarter and nearly half of total revenues - and that percentage is rising each year. In other words, the fastest-growing part of their business is sales of products that aren't available in traditional, physical retail stores at all.
pg 25 One way to think of the difference between yesterday's limited choice and today's abundance is as if our culture were an ocean and the only features about the surface were islands of hits. There's a music island composed of hit albums, a movie island of blockbusters, an archipelago of popular TV shows, and so on.
Think of the waterline as being the economic threshold for that category, the amount of sales necessary to satisfy the distribution channels. The islands represent the products that are popular enough to be above that line, and thus profitable enough to be offered through distribution channels with scarce capacity, which is to say the shelf space demands of of most major retailers. Scan the cultural horizon and what stands out are these peaks of popularity rising above the waters.
However, islands are, of course, just the tip of the vast undersea mountains. When the cost of distribution falls, it's like the water level falling in the ocean. All of a sudden things are revealed that were previously hidden. ... (i.e.) More than 99 percent of music albums on the market today are not available in Wal-Mart.
pg 40 Instead of the office watercooler, which crosses cultural boundaries as only the random assortment of personalities found in the workplace can, we're increasingly forming our own tribes, groups bound together more by affinity and shared interests than by default broadcast schedules. These days our watercoolers are increasingly virtual - there are many different ones, and the people who gather around them are self-selected. We are turning from a mass market back into a niche nation, defined now not by our geography but by our interests.
pg 99 For a generation used to doing their buying research via search engine, a company's brand is not what the company says it is, but what Google says it is. The new tastemakers are us. Word of mouth is now a public conversation, carried in blog comments and customer reviews, exhaustively collated and measured. The ants have megaphones.
pg 109 In today's Long Tail markets, the main effect of filters is to help people move from the world they know ("hits") via a route that is both comfortable and tailored to their tastes. In a sense, good filters have the effect of driving demand down the tail by revealing goods and services that appeal more than the lowest-common-denominator fare that crowds the narrow channels of traditional mass-market distribution.
pg 119 If you've got help - smart search engines, recommendations, or other filters - your odds of finding something just right for you are actually greater in the tail. Best-sellers tend to appeal, at least superficially, to a broad range of taste. Niche products are meant to appeal strongly to a narrow set of tastes. That's why the filter technologies are so important. They not only drive demand down the Tail, but they can also increase satisfaction by connecting people with products that are more right for them than the broad-appeal products at the Head.
pg 167 These are some of the other mental traps we fall into because of scarcity thinking:
- everyone wants to be a star
- everyone's in it for the money
- if it isn't a hit, it's a miss
- the only success is mass success
- "direct to video" = bad
- "self-published" = bad
- "independent" = "they couldn't get a deal"
- amateur = amateurish
- low-selling = low-quality
- if it were good, it would be popular
and finally, there's the notion that "too much choice" is overwhelming, a belief so common and ill-founded that it deserves its own chapter.
pg 185 In 1958, Raymond Williams, the Marxist sociologist, wrote in Culture and Society: "There are no masses; there are only ways of seeing people as masses." He was more right than he knew.
pg 191 Fundamentally, a society that asks questions and has the power to answer them is a healthier society than the one that simply accepts what it's told from a narrow range of experts and institutions. If professional affiliation is no longer a proxy for authority, we need to develop our own gauges of quality. This encourages us to think for ourselves. Wikipedia is a starting point for exploring a topic, not the last word.
pg 196 Even for those who do own the content, releasing video in ways not anticipated at the original time of broadcast still can be remarkably difficult. Rights are a total hairball, made even more complicated by exclusive regional distribution deals (which conflict with the Internet's global nature) and syndication options. And there there's the music in the video, which is even worse. Want to know why you can't watch old WKRP in Cincinnati episodes on DVD? Because the sitcom was based in a radio station, which had loads of classic rock playing in the background. It's too expensive and difficult to license the music that was used in the show.
pg 217 The secret to creating a thriving Long Tail business can be summarized in two imperatives: 1) make everything available 2) help me find it.
pg 226 Like everything else, tomorrow's Long Tail of Things will be aggregated, efficiently stored as bits, and then delivered to your home via optical fiber. Only then will it be materialized, coming full circle to atoms again at the point of consumption. It sounds like science fiction, but then again so did having an entire music library in your pocket just a decade ago.
by Chris Anderson
In a not-so-small-nutshell from the early pages: "In statistics, curves like that are called "long-tailed distributions," because the tail of the curve is very long relative to the head. So all I did was focus on the tail itself, turn it into a proper noun, and "The Long Tail" was born. It started life as slide 20 of one of my "New Rules" presentations. I think it was Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, who convinced me that I was burying my lead. By the summer of 2004 "The Long Tail" was not just the title of my speeches; I was nearly finished with an article of the same name for my own magazine.
When "The Long Tail" was published in Wired in October 2004, it quickly became the most cited article the magazine had ever run. The three main observations - 1) the tail of available variety is far longer than we realize; 2) it's now within reach economically; 3) all those niches, when aggregated, can make up a significant market - seemed indisputable, especially when backed up with heretofore unseen data."
(check out the original article here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail_pr.html)
my flags...
pg 16 People are going deep into the catalog, down the long, long list of available titles, far past what's available at Blockbuster Video and Tower Records. And the more they find, the more they like. As they wander farther from the beaten path, they discover their taste is not as mainstream as they thought (or as they had been led to believe by marketing, a hit-centric culture, and simply a lack of alternatives).
pg 22 Not only is every one of Rhapsody's top 60,000 tracks streamed at least once each month, but the same is true for its top 100,000, top 200,000, and top 400,000 - even its top 600,000, top 900,000, and beyond. As fast as Rhapsody add tracks to its library, those songs find an audience, even if it's just a handful of people every month, somewhere in the world. This is the Long Tail.
pg 23 Venture capitalist and former music industry consultant Kevin Laws puts it this way: "The biggest money is in the smallest sales."
pg 23 When you think about it, most successful Internet businesses are capitalizing on the Long Tail in one way or another. Google, for instance, makes most of its money not from huge corporate advertisers, but from small ones (the Long Tail of advertising). Ebay is mostly Tail as well - niche products from collector cars to tricked-out golf clubs. By overcoming the limitations of geography and scale, companies like these have not only expanded existing markets, but more important, they've also discovered new ones.
pg 24 But what we do know is that with the companies for which we have the most complete data - Netflix, Amazon, and Rhapsody - sales of products not offered by their bricks-and-mortar competitors amounted to between a quarter and nearly half of total revenues - and that percentage is rising each year. In other words, the fastest-growing part of their business is sales of products that aren't available in traditional, physical retail stores at all.
pg 25 One way to think of the difference between yesterday's limited choice and today's abundance is as if our culture were an ocean and the only features about the surface were islands of hits. There's a music island composed of hit albums, a movie island of blockbusters, an archipelago of popular TV shows, and so on.
Think of the waterline as being the economic threshold for that category, the amount of sales necessary to satisfy the distribution channels. The islands represent the products that are popular enough to be above that line, and thus profitable enough to be offered through distribution channels with scarce capacity, which is to say the shelf space demands of of most major retailers. Scan the cultural horizon and what stands out are these peaks of popularity rising above the waters.
However, islands are, of course, just the tip of the vast undersea mountains. When the cost of distribution falls, it's like the water level falling in the ocean. All of a sudden things are revealed that were previously hidden. ... (i.e.) More than 99 percent of music albums on the market today are not available in Wal-Mart.
pg 40 Instead of the office watercooler, which crosses cultural boundaries as only the random assortment of personalities found in the workplace can, we're increasingly forming our own tribes, groups bound together more by affinity and shared interests than by default broadcast schedules. These days our watercoolers are increasingly virtual - there are many different ones, and the people who gather around them are self-selected. We are turning from a mass market back into a niche nation, defined now not by our geography but by our interests.
pg 99 For a generation used to doing their buying research via search engine, a company's brand is not what the company says it is, but what Google says it is. The new tastemakers are us. Word of mouth is now a public conversation, carried in blog comments and customer reviews, exhaustively collated and measured. The ants have megaphones.
pg 109 In today's Long Tail markets, the main effect of filters is to help people move from the world they know ("hits") via a route that is both comfortable and tailored to their tastes. In a sense, good filters have the effect of driving demand down the tail by revealing goods and services that appeal more than the lowest-common-denominator fare that crowds the narrow channels of traditional mass-market distribution.
pg 119 If you've got help - smart search engines, recommendations, or other filters - your odds of finding something just right for you are actually greater in the tail. Best-sellers tend to appeal, at least superficially, to a broad range of taste. Niche products are meant to appeal strongly to a narrow set of tastes. That's why the filter technologies are so important. They not only drive demand down the Tail, but they can also increase satisfaction by connecting people with products that are more right for them than the broad-appeal products at the Head.
pg 167 These are some of the other mental traps we fall into because of scarcity thinking:
- everyone wants to be a star
- everyone's in it for the money
- if it isn't a hit, it's a miss
- the only success is mass success
- "direct to video" = bad
- "self-published" = bad
- "independent" = "they couldn't get a deal"
- amateur = amateurish
- low-selling = low-quality
- if it were good, it would be popular
and finally, there's the notion that "too much choice" is overwhelming, a belief so common and ill-founded that it deserves its own chapter.
pg 185 In 1958, Raymond Williams, the Marxist sociologist, wrote in Culture and Society: "There are no masses; there are only ways of seeing people as masses." He was more right than he knew.
pg 191 Fundamentally, a society that asks questions and has the power to answer them is a healthier society than the one that simply accepts what it's told from a narrow range of experts and institutions. If professional affiliation is no longer a proxy for authority, we need to develop our own gauges of quality. This encourages us to think for ourselves. Wikipedia is a starting point for exploring a topic, not the last word.
pg 196 Even for those who do own the content, releasing video in ways not anticipated at the original time of broadcast still can be remarkably difficult. Rights are a total hairball, made even more complicated by exclusive regional distribution deals (which conflict with the Internet's global nature) and syndication options. And there there's the music in the video, which is even worse. Want to know why you can't watch old WKRP in Cincinnati episodes on DVD? Because the sitcom was based in a radio station, which had loads of classic rock playing in the background. It's too expensive and difficult to license the music that was used in the show.
pg 217 The secret to creating a thriving Long Tail business can be summarized in two imperatives: 1) make everything available 2) help me find it.
pg 226 Like everything else, tomorrow's Long Tail of Things will be aggregated, efficiently stored as bits, and then delivered to your home via optical fiber. Only then will it be materialized, coming full circle to atoms again at the point of consumption. It sounds like science fiction, but then again so did having an entire music library in your pocket just a decade ago.
20.8.07
Our Iceberg Is Melting
Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions
by John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber
From the jacket... Our Iceberg Is Melting is based on pioneering work that shows how Eight Steps produce needed change in any sort of group. It's a story that can be enjoyed by anyone while at the same time providing invaluable guidance for a world that just keeps moving faster and faster.
pg 73 Louis began the colony's assembly by saying, "Fellow penguins, as we meet this challenge - and we definitely will - it is more important than ever to remember who we really are."
The crowd looked blankly at him.
"Tell me, are we penguins who deeply respect one another?"
There was silence until someone said, "Of course." The others said, "Yes."
Nono was in the middle of the audience trying to figure out what scheme was afoot. It was not obvious yet, which he did not like.
Louis continued. "And do we strongly value discipline?" "Yes," a dozen or so of the elderly birds.
"And do we have a strong sense of responsibility, too?" It was hard to argue with that. It had been true for generations. "Yes," many now agreed.
"Above all, do we stand for brotherhood and the love of our young?" A loud "Yes!" followed.
The Head Penguin paused. "And tell me...are these beliefs and shared values linked to a large piece of ice?" "NO!"
pg 110 The scouts discussed what they had found. The Professor asked question after question after question to distinguish opinions from facts. His style did not make him popular with all the birds - he could not have cared less - but it was very effective.
pg 117 The next season, the scouts found a still better iceberg, larger and with richer fishing grounds. And through it was tempting to declare that the colony had been subjected to enough change, and should stay forever on their new home, they didn't. They moved again. It was a critical step: not becoming complacent again and not letting up.
pg 123 He talked about Fred's finding that the iceberg was melting, then how they
1) created a sense of urgency in the colony to deal with a difficult problem,
2) put a carefully selected group in charge of guiding the change,
3) found the sensible vision of a better future,
4) communicated that vision so others would understand and accept it,
5) removed as many obstacles to action as was practical,
6) created some sort of success quickly,
7) never let up until the new way of life was firmly established, and
8) finally, ensured that the changes would not be overcome by stubborn, hard-to-die traditions.
pg 133 The Role of Thinking and Feeling
Thinking differently can help change behaviour and lead to better results.
- collect data and analyze it
- present the information logically to change people's thinking
- changed thinking, in turn, can change behaviour
Feeling differently can change behaviour MORE and lead to even better results.
- create surprising, compelling, and if possible, visual experiences
- the experiences change how people feel about a situation
- a change in feelings can lead to a significant change in behaviour
pg 135 Additional Resources
Leading Change by John P Kotter
The Heart of Change by John by Kotter
http://www.ouricebergismelting.com/
http://www.theheartofchange.com/
http://www.johnkotter.com/
by John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber
From the jacket... Our Iceberg Is Melting is based on pioneering work that shows how Eight Steps produce needed change in any sort of group. It's a story that can be enjoyed by anyone while at the same time providing invaluable guidance for a world that just keeps moving faster and faster.
pg 73 Louis began the colony's assembly by saying, "Fellow penguins, as we meet this challenge - and we definitely will - it is more important than ever to remember who we really are."
The crowd looked blankly at him.
"Tell me, are we penguins who deeply respect one another?"
There was silence until someone said, "Of course." The others said, "Yes."
Nono was in the middle of the audience trying to figure out what scheme was afoot. It was not obvious yet, which he did not like.
Louis continued. "And do we strongly value discipline?" "Yes," a dozen or so of the elderly birds.
"And do we have a strong sense of responsibility, too?" It was hard to argue with that. It had been true for generations. "Yes," many now agreed.
"Above all, do we stand for brotherhood and the love of our young?" A loud "Yes!" followed.
The Head Penguin paused. "And tell me...are these beliefs and shared values linked to a large piece of ice?" "NO!"
pg 110 The scouts discussed what they had found. The Professor asked question after question after question to distinguish opinions from facts. His style did not make him popular with all the birds - he could not have cared less - but it was very effective.
pg 117 The next season, the scouts found a still better iceberg, larger and with richer fishing grounds. And through it was tempting to declare that the colony had been subjected to enough change, and should stay forever on their new home, they didn't. They moved again. It was a critical step: not becoming complacent again and not letting up.
pg 123 He talked about Fred's finding that the iceberg was melting, then how they
1) created a sense of urgency in the colony to deal with a difficult problem,
2) put a carefully selected group in charge of guiding the change,
3) found the sensible vision of a better future,
4) communicated that vision so others would understand and accept it,
5) removed as many obstacles to action as was practical,
6) created some sort of success quickly,
7) never let up until the new way of life was firmly established, and
8) finally, ensured that the changes would not be overcome by stubborn, hard-to-die traditions.
pg 133 The Role of Thinking and Feeling
Thinking differently can help change behaviour and lead to better results.
- collect data and analyze it
- present the information logically to change people's thinking
- changed thinking, in turn, can change behaviour
Feeling differently can change behaviour MORE and lead to even better results.
- create surprising, compelling, and if possible, visual experiences
- the experiences change how people feel about a situation
- a change in feelings can lead to a significant change in behaviour
pg 135 Additional Resources
Leading Change by John P Kotter
The Heart of Change by John by Kotter
http://www.ouricebergismelting.com/
http://www.theheartofchange.com/
http://www.johnkotter.com/
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