This diplomat from the East was deputed to their embassy in Washington DC, in the United States. Having come to live in a Western country for the first time, the little man decided to pick up the holy book and began studying it in hopes of getting acquainted to the new culture more thoroughly. After a while when he met with a professor of religious studies at one of the colleges in New York, the humble man pronounced his predicament that after reading through the book almost three times over, he couldn’t figure out any religion in it.Nothing could be more illuminating in terms of human mindsets. For example, to an Eastern mindset that is used to live a life with abstractions and of elemental powers, such as the dance of the Shinto priests who proudly claim to have no theology; or with millennia old traditions of having religion a part of the daily routine as naturally as sun-drying the woodblocks with Indian sandalwood to gain aroma out of stove; understandably it could be a difficult comprehension in considering a given narration about a certain ruling family of a given tribe of Levantian peoples as a dictum of mainstream and organized religious practice, with due respects that it being the most successful, loved and practiced one in our contemporary world.
). And most apparently, should sugarcoat the bitterness of the aftertaste of other fictions like iCon (try here
). Initially, the title suggested that the book is a collection of leadership lessons, if not psychological analysis, about this enigmatic personality at the helm of Apple Inc. It turned out to be a gross error of judgment: First, there cannot be leadership lessons here, for Steve is not a leader in the classical sense of modern leadership. (In the contemporary sense of classical leadership? A "Great intimidator"? Perhaps yes, like many Generals in the army with their typical command-and-control leadership). And secondly, it is most likely that any attempt of psychoanalysis would end up in a lawsuit.
to check out the book at Amazon.
” was at an arm's length at that time and was worth giving a try. Apparently, the prof was right. What follows now is a brief intro before the main business.
; his lessons in leadership
and managing change
offered a very fresh thinking; his passion towards non-profit organizations
were of a true spirit; his “predictions” of corporate events such as fall of General Motors – which he actually helped build in 1950's, make him stand ahead of his time. Same as most of visionaries, perhaps. But if one is looking, there is a pattern to be found in Drucker’s digests – the advices pertain to the fundamentals, they encompass overall entropy of the system and urged to find solutions by referring to the organism’s inherent nature, and they were kept simple, brief and generic at times by cleaver wordplay.Mushroom Management Theory: Keep employees in the dark and fearful, feed them manure and dung, watch them grow and when they grow enough, get them canned. (try here for more at urban dictionary)IN QUITE A CONTRAST TO THE PREVIOUS post on model leadership, this is not only a different type of leadership, it is found being practices widely as well. Referencing their publication for this month (June 2009), John Landry of Harvard Business Review writes that Lehman would not have happened if they would have allowed a freer flow of information, or made it easier for employees to raise their concerns. Industry observers have drawn parallels of Lehman explosion with implosions of Enron and WorldCom citing the same "keeping in dark" issues where information is not shared.
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The Future of Technology (Economist))
This book gathers together some of the best writings that has recently appeared in The Economist on the way technology and its use is developing, and is likely to develop and change in the future.
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Picked it up from the airport lounge last week -- the reviews are generally good -- some rather uncommon common-sense observations and ideas on business in hi-tech/IT industry from a Venture Capitalist pov promises this to be an interesting read.
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While discussing Taleb's ideas with an economist through his blog, he came back with this book recommendation, suggesting that The Halo Effect shall prove a worthy prequel to Taleb's work (later, Amazon book selling trends seconded this).
Many institutions, from Neolithic villages to the maniples of the Roman army, seem to be organised around the Dunbar number.This also goes on to say that if you are "in touch" with that person fairly regularly with whom you are perhaps yet to work out a one-on-one, you are better off treasuring those interactions, for you have gotten into the "core" within the Dunbar circle. At the same time, in his 2005 book —The Human Story— Dunbar quotes Bob Marley's Redemption Song (try here), suggesting not to fall pray to the omnipresent temptations of 'grooming'.
[In the modern era] An average man —one with 120 friends— generally responds to the postings of only seven of those friends by leaving comments on the posting individual's photos, status messages or "wall". An average woman is slightly more sociable, responding to ten. When it comes to two-way communication such as e-mails or chats, the average man interacts with only four people and the average woman with six. Among those Facebook users with 500 friends, these numbers are somewhat higher, but not hugely so. Men leave comments for 17 friends, women for 26. Men communicate with ten, women with 16.
Humans may be advertising themselves more efficiently. But they still have the same small circles of intimacy as ever.
The Economist argues today that the current financial crisis, and various bail-out announcements, have a direct correlation with unit sales figures and sales rank of Atlas Shrugged (see chart. source: ecomonist.com). The author attributes the pattern to mass social media -- such as Facebook, and certain user groups aiming at personifying the storytelling as if "Atlas Shrugged is happening in real life" (try here). Above all, it is believed that Alan Greenspan is a fan of Rand's work, and thus his every recent move was like a stimuli to the book's gift-wrapping counters at Amazon.com.The increased concentration among banks seems to have the effect of making financial crises less likely. But when they happen, they are more global in scale and hit us very hard. True, we now have fewer failures, but, when they occur, I shiver at the thought. -- Nassim Taleb in his book The Black Swan
[The Butterfly-effect creates turbulences] The word "turbulence" is one which actually is common to physics and to social scientists, to economics. Everything which involves turbulence is enormously more complicated --not just a little bit more complicated, not just one year more schooling-- just enormously more complicated. [...] That is not well-understood. In fact, that is misunderstood for which tools have been developed which assume that changes are always very small. If one of them comes, nothing bad happens. If several of them come together, very bad things have happened...And, so it goes.
[Steve Parry finished on the podium beside Phelps at Athens 2004. While Phelps captured Gold and set a new WR, Parry at the same time set a new Commonwealth record for the same event in aquatics. Above: Parry analyses how Phelps is 'special' in the pool.]
They also call it acting "professional".Nearly all of us will lose our jobs sometime, but is there a right way to be terminated? What differentiates fired employees who make the best of their situation from those who do not? One answer is mind-set. Many 'workers' unconsciously hold a "tenure mind-set", believing in the promise of employment security. By contrast, other workers hold an "assignment mentality", seeking each job as one in a series if impermanent, career building stepping-stones. Most corporate board members and CEO's have this later mentality and consider their executives to be terminal assignments...
When the employees who hold the tenure mind-set are suddenly laid off, they can fall into three common traps: "lost identity" trap - executives who have over-identified with their jobs and feel indispensable fall into this trap and react to termination with anger and bitterness; "lost family" trap - employees who posses tight-knit, emotional bonds with co-workers feel betrayed and rejected when fired; "lost ego" trap - some introverted executives fall into this trap and they quietly retreat without negotiating termination packages.
To prepare for the eventuality of termination it is suggested that executives adopt assignment mind-set all the times. They should keep their social network alive, include a termination clause in employment contracts, and consider hiring an agent [...] By assuming control over the way they are fired, people can gain control over their careers...
As in almost all walks of life the key has been identified as Mind Gap. The paper is very well illustrated with real-life examples and handles the delicate issues with required gentleness as well as practical wisdom. Whilst the situation of job loss is almost a daily news in the high-cost and profit-centric regions, the so called low-cost locations are also catching up, for every organization would want to replicate itself albeit at a smaller scale when it creates presence in the low-cost region, and in doing so also clones its HR policies.Jobs belong to the organizations, but careers belong to the individuals.Update: HBR ran a cover story - The layoff - in their March' 09 issue. Go here for the online copy.
It was annoying to some degree that Google has most of its products and services under Beta - and they never seem to move out of wrappers. You hardly see any changes or progress. In specifics, I was not happy at all with the tiny collection of templates that are available by default with the Blogger system (have you ever visited any of those beautiful WordPress or LiveJournal pages of your friends (or competition) that left you with the impression that they must be maintaining their own full-fledged websites?)
The concept first came with Bob Young (co-founder of Red Hat Linux) and Stephen Fraser when they founded lulu.com - winner of 2007 Web 2.0 awards, and arguably, the largest print-on-demand service for books in the world at this point.
[Above: Bob Young, Co-founder of Red Hat. Aug 2007]