| #260: The Ten Commandments of Egoless Programming |
These are The Ten Commandments of Egoless Programming (From a classic book written in the early 1970s called, "The Psychology of Computer Programming" by Gerald Weinberg) but most of the recommendations are applicable in a wider context.
1. Understand and accept that you will make mistakes. The point is to find them early, before they make it into production. Fortunately, except for the few of us developing rocket guidance software at JPL, mistakes are rarely fatal in our industry, so we can, and should, learn, laugh, and move on.
2. You are not your code. Remember that the entire point of a review is to find problems, and problems will be found. Don't take it personally when one is uncovered.
3. No matter how much "karate" you know, someone else will always know more. Such an individual can teach you some new moves if you ask. Seek and accept input from others, especially when you think it's not needed.
4. Don't rewrite code without consultation. There's a fine line between "fixing code" and "rewriting code." Know the difference, and pursue stylistic changes within the framework of a code review, not as a lone enforcer.
5. Treat people who know less than you with respect, deference, and patience. Nontechnical people who deal with developers on a regular basis almost universally hold the opinion that we are prima donnas at best and crybabies at worst. Don't reinforce this stereotype with anger and impatience.
6. The only constant in the world is change. Be open to it and accept it with a smile. Look at each change to your requirements, platform, or tool as a new challenge, not as some serious inconvenience to be fought.
7. The only true authority stems from knowledge, not from position. Knowledge engenders authority, and authority engenders respect—so if you want respect in an egoless environment, cultivate knowledge.
9. Don't be "the guy in the room." Don't be the guy coding in the dark office emerging only to buy cola. The guy in the room is out of touch, out of sight, and out of control and has no place in an open, collaborative environment.
10. Critique code instead of people—be kind to the coder, not to the code. As much as possible, make all of your comments positive and oriented to improving the code. Relate comments to local standards, program specs, increased performance, etc.
| #259: On Managing |
#259-1. Of all the decisions an executive makes, none is as important as the decisions about people, because they determine the performance capacity of the organization.
-Peter F. Drucker
#259-2. "Management" means, in the last analysis, the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folklore and superstition, and of cooperation for force.
-Peter F. Drucker
#259-3. I believe managing is like holding a dove in your hands. If you hold it too tightly, you crush it, but if you hold it too loosely, you lose it.
-Tommy Lasorda
_____
Drucker, the original management guru, has said so many profound things in his usual sober style that are still being fully understood. People decisions—right from hiring to role allocation to promotion—make all the difference. I have always emphasized to members of interview panels that they carry a mighty responsibility on their shoulders. They are the gatekeepers who filter the quality of intake but the question is whether we take sufficient care in training them.
The application of knowledge and thinking in order to manage better sounds like common sense but he pointed it out several decades ago, before the arrival of the information age or knowledge era. In fact, he coined the term, "knowledge worker". In 1959!
The fine balance required in holding a dove is a good analogy for leadership. I think this is related to the dilemma that many leaders face, namely, how much to delegate and let go versus how much hands-on involvement one should have. The answer should be determined by results—both short-term and long-term. If I achieve a short-term objective by doing a task myself have I compromised the goal of developing my team? If I let a critical situation get out of hand by refraining from doing what I am good at, all the theories in the world would not change the fact of a leadership failure in attaining the desired result.
The analogy reminds me of another beautiful one from India’s ancient grammarian Panini (whose rules are associated with a fundamental concept of computer science, the Backus-Naur Form) where he advises correct pronunciation to be done like a tigress carrying her cub by her teeth, neither too gentle such that the cub slips and falls nor too hard, which might hurt the cub.
| #258: On Thoughts and Words |
-Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778)
#258-2. Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde, writer (1854-1900)
#258-3. A language is an exact reflection of the character and growth of its speakers.
-Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Indian independence leader and thinker (1869-1948)
____
The words we utter could be weapons, shields, masks, medicine… even unintended leaks!
The simple trick of role playing changes our thoughts and words as seen in many training programmes. It also manifests when a person takes on a new position and suddenly supports the opposite of the viewpoint that person was espousing until then!
Taking Gandhi’s view, to confirm that I am growing, I could check if there is refinement in the language I use.
| #257: Happy in the Moment |
-Alexander Graham Bell
#257-2. If all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.
-Socrates
#257-3. The man is richest whose pleasures are cheapest.
-Henry David Thoreau
_____
Even in a leisure activity, one derives maximum pleasure or relaxation when one is in the present moment rather than have the mind wander—out of habit—into the future or the past. I have observed this kind of focus in high achievers. They work hard and play hard. When we do this we are in flow state.
We have earlier discussed the universal but useless thought, "Why me/us?". Our bad luck and constraints appear significant only until we really see what other people are facing. Periodically feeling an attitude of gratitude for what good things we have, what we have achieved and the good relationships we enjoy, helps in maintaining a positive outlook. Incidentally, amongst the great Western philosophers from Greece (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle), Socrates inspires me the most as he was a hard-core believer in practical wisdom and engaging in worldly activity, while simultaneously applying his mind on deep matters. Not unlike Vivekananda.
Cheapest pleasure need not be about consuming lower quality luxuries. It could be that one enjoys the company of children, the smell of rain and many other "little pleasures" that we sometimes forget as we age. This has helped me a lot.
| #256: On Trusting Ourselves |
-Mother Teresa
#256-2. Trust yourself. you know more than you think you do.
-Anon
#256-3. The only tyrant I accept in this world is the 'still small voice' within me.
-Mahatma Gandhi
____
It is useful to believe that nothing we encounter is beyond the scope of our reasonable effort to respond. I relate to the idea of trusting our instinct and judgement, and of periodically listening to that small voice inside. These do not apply to those who do not have the humility or self-doubt to listen to anyone.
| #255: Revenge of the Right Brain |
An important point to note while reading this is that this is not the old left brain vs right brain simplistic view but Dan Pink is using the hemispheric division of the brain as a metaphor.
(Thanks to Satyen Zaveri for sharing this.)
Revenge of the Right Brain
Logical and precise, left-brain thinking gave us the Information Age. Now comes the Conceptual Age - ruled by artistry, empathy, and emotion.
By Daniel H. Pink
February 2005
From http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.02/brain.html
When I was a kid - growing up in a middle-class family, in the middle of America, in the middle of the 1970s - parents dished out a familiar plate of advice to their children: Get good grades, go to college, and pursue a profession that offers a decent standard of living and perhaps a dollop of prestige. If you were good at math and science, become a doctor. If you were better at English and history, become a lawyer. If blood grossed you out and your verbal skills needed work, become an accountant. Later, as computers appeared on desktops and CEOs on magazine covers, the youngsters who were really good at math and science chose high tech, while others flocked to business school, thinking that success was spelled MBA.
Tax attorneys. Radiologists. Financial analysts. Software engineers. Management guru Peter Drucker gave this cadre of professionals an enduring, if somewhat wonky, name: knowledge workers. These are, he wrote, "people who get paid for putting to work what one learns in school rather than for their physical strength or manual skill." What distinguished members of this group and enabled them to reap society's greatest rewards, was their "ability to acquire and to apply theoretical and analytic knowledge." And any of us could join their ranks. All we had to do was study hard and play by the rules of the meritocratic regime. That was the path to professional success and personal fulfillment.
But a funny thing happened while we were pressing our noses to the grindstone: The world changed. The future no longer belongs to people who can reason with computer-like logic, speed, and precision. It belongs to a different kind of person with a different kind of mind. Today - amid the uncertainties of an economy that has gone from boom to bust to blah - there's a metaphor that explains what's going on. And it's right inside our heads.
Scientists have long known that a neurological Mason-Dixon line cleaves our brains into two regions - the left and right hemispheres. But in the last 10 years, thanks in part to advances in functional magnetic resonance imaging, researchers have begun to identify more precisely how the two sides divide responsibilities. The left hemisphere handles sequence, literalness, and analysis. The right hemisphere, meanwhile, takes care of context, emotional expression, and synthesis. Of course, the human brain, with its 100 billion cells forging 1 quadrillion connections, is breathtakingly complex. The two hemispheres work in concert, and we enlist both sides for nearly everything we do. But the structure of our brains can help explain the contours of our times.
Until recently, the abilities that led to success in school, work, and business were characteristic of the left hemisphere. They were the sorts of linear, logical, analytical talents measured by SATs and deployed by CPAs. Today, those capabilities are still necessary. But they're no longer sufficient. In a world upended by outsourcing, deluged with data, and choked with choices, the abilities that matter most are now closer in spirit to the specialties of the right hemisphere - artistry, empathy, seeing the big picture, and pursuing the transcendent.
Beneath the nervous clatter of our half-completed decade stirs a slow but seismic shift. The Information Age we all prepared for is ending. Rising in its place is what I call the Conceptual Age, an era in which mastery of abilities that we've often overlooked and undervalued marks the fault line between who gets ahead and who falls behind.
To some of you, this shift - from an economy built on the logical, sequential abilities of the Information Age to an economy built on the inventive, empathic abilities of the Conceptual Age - sounds delightful. "You had me at hello!" I can hear the painters and nurses exulting. But to others, this sounds like a crock. "Prove it!" I hear the programmers and lawyers demanding.
OK. To convince you, I'll explain the reasons for this shift, using the mechanistic language of cause and effect.
The effect: the scales tilting in favor of right brain-style thinking. The causes: Asia, automation, and abundance.
Asia
Few issues today spark more controversy than outsourcing. Those squadrons of white-collar workers in India, the Philippines, and China are scaring the bejesus out of software jockeys across North America and Europe. According to Forrester Research, 1 in 9 jobs in the US information technology industry will move overseas by 2010. And it's not just tech work. Visit India's office parks and you'll see chartered accountants preparing American tax returns, lawyers researching American lawsuits, and radiologists reading CAT scans for US hospitals.
The reality behind the alarm is this: Outsourcing to Asia is overhyped in the short term, but underhyped in the long term. We're not all going to lose our jobs tomorrow. (The total number of jobs lost to offshoring so far represents less than 1 percent of the US labor force.) But as the cost of communicating with the other side of the globe falls essentially to zero, as India becomes (by 2010) the country with the most English speakers in the world, and as developing nations continue to mint millions of extremely capable knowledge workers, the professional lives of people in the West will change dramatically. If number crunching, chart reading, and code writing can be done for a lot less overseas and delivered to clients instantly via fiber-optic cable, that's where the work will go.
But these gusts of comparative advantage are blowing away only certain kinds of white-collar jobs - those that can be reduced to a set of rules, routines, and instructions. That's why narrow left-brain work such as basic computer coding, accounting, legal research, and financial analysis is migrating across the oceans. But that's also why plenty of opportunities remain for people and companies doing less routine work - programmers who can design entire systems, accountants who serve as life planners, and bankers expert less in the intricacies of Excel than in the art of the deal. Now that foreigners can do left-brain work cheaper, we in the US must do right-brain work better.
Automation
Last century, machines proved they could replace human muscle. This century, technologies are proving they can outperform human left brains - they can execute sequential, reductive, computational work better, faster, and more accurately than even those with the highest IQs. (Just ask chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov.)
Consider jobs in financial services. Stockbrokers who merely execute transactions are history. Online trading services and market makers do such work far more efficiently. The brokers who survived have morphed from routine order-takers to less easily replicated advisers, who can understand a client's broader financial objectives and even the client's emotions and dreams.
Or take lawyers. Dozens of inexpensive information and advice services are reshaping law practice. At CompleteCase.com, you can get an uncontested divorce for $249, less than a 10th of the cost of a divorce lawyer. Meanwhile, the Web is cracking the information monopoly that has long been the source of many lawyers' high incomes and professional mystique. Go to USlegalforms.com and you can download - for the price of two movie tickets - fill-in-the-blank wills, contracts, and articles of incorporation that used to reside exclusively on lawyers' hard drives. Instead of hiring a lawyer for 10 hours to craft a contract, consumers can fill out the form themselves and hire a lawyer for one hour to look it over. Consequently, legal abilities that can't be digitized - convincing a jury or understanding the subtleties of a negotiation - become more valuable.
Even computer programmers may feel the pinch. "In the old days," legendary computer scientist Vernor Vinge has said, "anybody with even routine skills could get a job as a programmer. That isn't true anymore. The routine functions are increasingly being turned over to machines." The result: As the scut work gets offloaded, engineers will have to master different aptitudes, relying more on creativity than competence.
Any job that can be reduced to a set of rules is at risk. If a $500-a-month accountant in India doesn't swipe your accounting job, TurboTax will. Now that computers can emulate left-hemisphere skills, we'll have to rely ever more on our right hemispheres.
Abundance
Our left brains have made us rich. Powered by armies of Drucker's knowledge workers, the information economy has produced a standard of living that would have been unfathomable in our grandparents' youth. Their lives were defined by scarcity. Ours are shaped by abundance. Want evidence? Spend five minutes at Best Buy. Or look in your garage. Owning a car used to be a grand American aspiration. Today, there are more automobiles in the US than there are licensed drivers - which means that, on average, everybody who can drive has a car of their own. And if your garage is also piled with excess consumer goods, you're not alone. Self-storage - a business devoted to housing our extra crap - is now a $17 billion annual industry in the US, nearly double Hollywood's yearly box office take.
But abundance has produced an ironic result. The Information Age has unleashed a prosperity that in turn places a premium on less rational sensibilities - beauty, spirituality, emotion. For companies and entrepreneurs, it's no longer enough to create a product, a service, or an experience that's reasonably priced and adequately functional. In an age of abundance, consumers demand something more. Check out your bathroom. If you're like a few million Americans, you've got a Michael Graves toilet brush or a Karim Rashid trash can that you bought at Target. Try explaining a designer garbage pail to the left side of your brain! Or consider illumination. Electric lighting was rare a century ago, but now it's commonplace. Yet in the US, candles are a $2 billion a year business - for reasons that stretch beyond the logical need for luminosity to a prosperous country's more inchoate desire for pleasure and transcendence.
Liberated by this prosperity but not fulfilled by it, more people are searching for meaning. From the mainstream embrace of such once-exotic practices as yoga and meditation to the rise of spirituality in the workplace to the influence of evangelism in pop culture and politics, the quest for meaning and purpose has become an integral part of everyday life. And that will only intensify as the first children of abundance, the baby boomers, realize that they have more of their lives behind them than ahead. In both business and personal life, now that our left-brain needs have largely been sated, our right-brain yearnings will demand to be fed.
As the forces of Asia, automation, and abundance strengthen and accelerate, the curtain is rising on a new era, the Conceptual Age. If the Industrial Age was built on people's backs, and the Information Age on people's left hemispheres, the Conceptual Age is being built on people's right hemispheres. We've progressed from a society of farmers to a society of factory workers to a society of knowledge workers. And now we're progressing yet again - to a society of creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers.
But let me be clear: The future is not some Manichaean landscape in which individuals are either left-brained and extinct or right-brained and ecstatic - a land in which millionaire yoga instructors drive BMWs and programmers scrub counters at Chick-fil-A. Logical, linear, analytic thinking remains indispensable. But it's no longer enough.
To flourish in this age, we'll need to supplement our well-developed high tech abilities with aptitudes that are "high concept" and "high touch." High concept involves the ability to create artistic and emotional beauty, to detect patterns and opportunities, to craft a satisfying narrative, and to come up with inventions the world didn't know it was missing. High touch involves the capacity to empathize, to understand the subtleties of human interaction, to find joy in one's self and to elicit it in others, and to stretch beyond the quotidian in pursuit of purpose and meaning.
Developing these high concept, high touch abilities won't be easy for everyone. For some, the prospect seems unattainable. Fear not (or at least fear less). The sorts of abilities that now matter most are fundamentally human attributes. After all, back on the savannah, our caveperson ancestors weren't plugging numbers into spreadsheets or debugging code. But they were telling stories, demonstrating empathy, and designing innovations. These abilities have always been part of what it means to be human. It's just that after a few generations in the Information Age, many of our high concept, high touch muscles have atrophied. The challenge is to work them back into shape.
Want to get ahead today? Forget what your parents told you. Instead, do something foreigners can't do cheaper. Something computers can't do faster. And something that fills one of the nonmaterial, transcendent desires of an abundant age. In other words, go right, young man and woman, go right.
| #254: For Busy-ness Patients |
-Anon
#254-2. It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passion, than to restrain them and direct them toward the patient labors of peace.
-Andre Gide
#254-3. How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes, packaged cake mixes, frozen dinners, and instant cameras teach patience to its young?
-Paul Sweeney
_____
Patience and priorities… A lot of people have commented on how the Internet age has led to an expectation of "instant gratification" in every sphere of life. Attention spans are decreasing, short-term thinking determines plans and road rage is rampant even in the developing world. In the business world people are questioning the obsession with quarterly results and CEOs who are one-year-wonders with a hefty severance package. A popular mail forward talks about a "slowdown culture" inspired by the Swedish.
On the other hand, this is not applicable to everyone. Instant cameras are great, frozen dinners are fantastic for some.
| #253: The Time is Now |
Leading Ideas: Be Happy Now
by Doug Sundheim at Fastcompany.com (highlights mine)
We are [repeatedly] sucked away into the future... incapable of actually living one minute of life.
-Thich Nhat Hanh, in The Miracle of Mindfulness
For so many of us, the life we want is just barely out of reach. We can see it. It's just a couple "if only's" away. We tell ourselves, "If only _____, then I'd be happy. I could relax." And so we pursue what we feel is missing—confident in the knowledge that while we're not happy right now, we will be soon. But then we achieve what we're after and yet something still feels missing. New "if only's" pop up to replace the old ones. We're caught in a race with a moving finish line. Contentment is more elusive than we had originally thought. Eventually, if we want to be happy, we must come to grips with an important fact. That we've been fooling ourselves. Contentment, it turns out, is not a destination. Rather, it's a manner of traveling. And if we can't feel it today, we won't find it tomorrow.
Consider This:
One of the most common questions I hear is, "How do I maintain a strong desire to progress/grow/achieve while also being happy where I am? They seem mutually exclusive." I point out that while this seems true on the surface, it's actually an illusion. What most people fail to realize is that if their happiness is dependent upon achieving something, when they achieve it they still won't be happy because they'll be consumed with trying to hold on to it. It comes down to the difference between commitment and attachment. If we're committed to a goal, our happiness is independent from its fulfillment. If we're attached to a goal, our happiness is dependent on its fulfillment. And we unwittingly end up a slave to the very thing we think will free us.
Try This:
1. Take 10 minutes to jot down as many of your "if only's" you can think of. Finish the sentence, "If only _____, then I'd be happy."
2. Consider how you've made your happiness dependent upon the items on the list.
3. Don't judge yourself or the list. Realize that these are deeply embedded patterns that are not likely to go away quickly (the purpose of the exercise is merely to let you know what dealing with).
4. Let the list work on you over time.
5. Recognize when one of your "if only's" is robbing you of the present moment and bring yourself back to enjoying your immediate experience.
6. Repeat daily.
____
In addition to the dimension of happiness by focusing on the moment, the above is also applicable to continued effectiveness in general. This phenomenon of postponing the start of something to a more suitable time in the future is so common, isn’t it? “When this project pressure subsides, we can look at process improvement.” “I shall organize my shelves as soon as my vacation begins.” “Let us solve the problems on hand, we will educate people on avoiding mistakes later.” Sounds familiar? It is the same pattern, I believe, that underlies mail folders containing tons of unread newsletters and articles that we hope to get to, “one day”. Highly effective people strike a judicious balance between short-term and long-term issues, they weave changes and small pleasures within the daily grind of urgent tasks.
| #252: On the Why and How of Change |
-Norm Brodsky, entrepreneur and author
#252-2. If we don't change direction soon, we'll end up where we're going.
-Irwin Corey, comedian
#252-3. The main dangers in this life are the people who want to change everything...or nothing.
–Lady Nancy Astor
____
Change is inevitable and can be deadly or full of wonderful opportunities, depending on how we look at it. Leaders cannot afford to be ignorant about the necessity of tackling this mindset issue up front—first in themselves and then in their teams. Taking an all or nothing stand is not wise.
| #251: On Leadership and Power |
-Stephen Covey, quoted in Business Standard India, Jan 2009
#251-2. To use power wisely is the final test of leadership. Thus, the first rule in the game of power (or life) and, in fact, the only hard and fast rule in the entire game is: Power must be the servant; it must not be the master!
-Thomas D. Willhite
#251-3. We in the West are just beginning to understand what globalization really means. The old lament, "When I was young, things were tougher," is, in my opinion, no longer accurate. I say: "When I was young, things were easier!"
-Marshall Goldsmith in his AskTheCoach column on Harvard Business School site, Dec 2008
____
Power is misunderstood and misused. Then it becomes an intoxicant. It provides a heady feeling for a short while with dangerous consequences later. When one wields it as one holds a new hammer—with respect for its efficacy and as a tool to achieve an intended effect—it is a great aid.
Change feels complex and difficult to those who resist it. Adaptable people perceive new opportunities and enjoy the process of figuring them out. Scaling up and maturing into a higher leadership role can also be seen as a change process.
| #250: Advice for Rebels |
-H. H. Munro
#250-2. Lots of times you have to pretend to join a parade in which you're not really interested in order to get where you're going.
-Christopher Morley
#250-3. Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
-Mark Twain
_____
In the first quote I believe the keyword is "sometimes", inaccuracy out of sloppiness or ignorance or fear of having to explain is not advised.
The second is about means and ends, putting up with a harmless cause and accomplishing a higher goal. Aimed at those who have the courage to rebel.
The third reminds us not to join and continue with the parade out of comfort and fear to rebel.
| #249: Amazing Duck Rescue Story |
On Tuesday, May 20, a Spokane man who works downtown as a loan officer at a local bank, became a hero in the eyes of his sister and many of his co-workers. What follows is his story, as told by his sister, Candace Mumm.
Something really amazing happened in Downtown Spokane this week and I had to share the story with you. Some of you may know that my brother, Joel Armstrong, is a loan officer at Sterling Bank. He works downtown in a second story office building, overlooking busy Riverside Avenue. Several weeks ago he watched a mother duck choose the cement awning outside his window as the uncanny place to build a nest above the sidewalk. The mallard laid ten eggs in a nest in the corner of the planter that is perched over 15 feet in the air. She dutifully kept the eggs warm for weeks, and Monday afternoon all ten of her ducklings hatched.
Joel worried all night how the momma duck was going to get those babies safely off their perch in a busy, downtown, urban environment to take to water, which typically happens in the first 48 hours of a duck hatching.
Tuesday morning, Joel came to work and watched the mother duck encourage her babies to the edge of the perch with the intent to show them how to jump off! The mother flew down below and started quacking to her babies above. In his disbelief Joel watched as the first fuzzy newborn toddled to the edge and astonishingly leapt into thin air, crashing onto the cement below. My brother couldn't watch how this might play out. He dashed out of his office and ran down the stairs to the sidewalk where the first obedient duckling was stuporing near its mother from the near fatal fall. Joel looked up. The second duckling was getting ready to jump! He quickly dodged out of the duckling's sight under the awning while the mother duck quacked at him and the babies above. As the second one took the plunge, Joel jumped forward and caught it with his bare hands before it hit the cement. Safe and sound, he set it by the momma and the other stunned sibling, still recovering from its painful leap.
One by one the babies continued to jump to join their anxious family below. Each time Joel hid under the awning, just to reach out in the nick of time as the duckling made its freefall. The downtown sidewalk came to a standstill. Time after time, Joel was able to catch the remaining eight and set them by their approving mother. At this point Joel realized the duck family had only made part of its dangerous journey. They had at least two full blocks to walk across traffic, crosswalks, curbs, and pedestrians to get to the closest open water, the Spokane River.
The onlooking office co-workers then joined in and hurriedly brought an empty copy paper box to collect the babies. They carefully corralled them, with the mother's approval, and loaded them up into the white cardboard container. Joel held the box low enough for the mom to see her brood. He then slowly navigated through the downtown streets toward the Spokane River, as the mother waddled behind and kept her babies in sight. They walked block by block to the water’s edge. As they reached the river, the Sterling Bank office staff then tipped the box and encouraged the younglings, quite nervous from their adventurous ride, to walk toward the water and their mother. She approached her brood and marched them to the brink, ushering them with a splash into their new watery home.
All ten darling ducklings safely made the plunge and paddled up snugly to momma duck. Joel said the mom swam in circles, looking back toward the beaming bank workers, proudly quacking as if to say, "See, we did it! Thanks for all the help!"
Photos at http://www.spokane.net/stay_connected/HotTopics_DuckHero.aspx
____
The hero’s genuine caring and willingness to act is obviously inspiring. Interesting to note how the mother duck and his co-workers responded immediately to his authentic leadership in the situation.
Other points to ponder:
-the mother duck’s determined decision making in the face of obvious risks to her children
-the trust of the newborn ducks in the mother
-which of the following would make any difference to Joel’s sense of satisfaction:
o if he received no public recognition of his kind act
o if his co-workers did not join hands
| #248: Ancient Thoughts, Practical Advice |
As your desire is, so is your will.
As your will is, so is your deed.
As your deed is, so is your destiny.
-Brihadaranyaka Upanishad c. 800BCE, IV.4.5
#248-2. Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.
-Confucius, philosopher and teacher (c. 551-478 BCE)
#248-3. A man should live with his superiors as he does with his fire: not too near, lest he burn; nor too far off, lest he freeze.
-Diogenes, philosopher (412?-323 BCE)
____
The first thing that strikes me on seeing the above is that thinkers thousands of years ago could articulate such profound and practically useful advice.
Whatever drives us, our passion areas, determine the success or failure we achieve because it impacts the intensity of our actions. What we decide to act upon is guided by our thoughts. To improve thoughts, we should be willing to spend effort in learning. We learn many things but that has to reflect in our improved judgement and action otherwise it is futile.
All the above is self-centric. In an organizational context managing the relationship with our superior is an important element that we sometimes forget to pay attention to.
Powerful metaphor for a boss—fire! Getting too close to my boss leads to the danger of confusing one’s personal equation and friendship with the professional role-driven relationship. Staying disconnected and too far from a boss with whom I do not find common ground could lead to being unnoticed—I could miss opportunities for feedback, learning, help and possibly finding common ground. Fire does not have to be likeable. One does not dislike fire for its nature, one merely understands and looks for containing its destructive power. It is needed for igniting dormant fuel.
| #247: Who Has the Answers |
The nest of young eagles hung on to every word as the Master Eagle described his exploits. This was an important day for the eaglets. They were preparing for their first solo flight from the nest. It was the confidence builder many of them needed to fulfill their destiny.
"How far can I travel?" asked one of the eaglets. "How far can you see?" responded the Master Eagle.
"How high can I fly?" quizzed the young eaglet. "How far can you stretch your wings?" asked the old eagle.
"How long can I fly?" the eaglet persisted. "How far is the horizon?" the mentor rebounded.
"How much can I achieve?" the young eagle continued. "How much can you believe?" the old eagle challenged.
Frustrated by the banter, the young eagle demanded, "Why don't you answer my questions?"
"I did."
"Yes. But you answered them with questions."
"I answered them the best I could."
"But you're the Master Eagle. You're supposed to know everything. If you can't answer these questions, who can?"
"You." The old wise eagle reassured. "Me? How?" the young eagle was confused.
"No one can tell you how high to fly or how much to dream. It's different for each eagle. Only God and you know how far you'll go. No one on this earth knows your potential or what's in your heart. You alone will answer that. The only thing that limits you is the edge of your imagination."
The young eagle, puzzled by this asked, "What should I do?"
"Look to the horizon, spread your wings, and fly."
____
How much I should aspire to need not be equal to how much I will achieve. Too large a mismatch between my assessment of potential based on circumstances and the track record of my actual accomplishments would at best be frustrating and, at worst, hinder even attainable goals. The history of visionaries teaches us not to be too realistic. A sweet spot seems to exist somewhere between pragmatism and dreams. The trick is to periodically examine our goals, direction, achievements and fine-tune as we go along.
| #246: On Anger and Self-awareness |
#246-1. If you know what you know, you are OK
If you know what you don’t know, you are better off
If you don't know what you know, you are in for surprises
If you don't know what you don’t know, you are in deep trouble.
-Anon
(Thanks to Lax for sharing this.)
#246-2. Holding anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; You are the one who gets burned.
-Anon
(Thanks to Prashant Varekar for sharing this.)
#246-3. Two ways to be happy forever:
-Never Give the Help of Tears to Your Emotions
-Never Give the Help of Your Tongue to Your Anger
-Anon
(Thanks to Nehal Shah for sharing this.)
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The first one reminds me of the JoHari window on self-awareness. More self-knowledge is generally useful.
There are many techniques to avoid acting on impulse when angry. The longer-term solution for those prone to anger is spiritual maturity. More self-acceptance and better awareness of the world reduces the frequency and intensity of anger.
| #245: On Motivation |
#245-1. Managers ask me how to motivate the people who report to them. I think that's the wrong question. Stop doing things that demotivate people, and create an environment for success.
-Esther Derby#245-2. You can buy a person's time; you can buy his physical presence in a given place; you can even buy a measured number of his skilled muscular motions per hour. But you cannot buy enthusiasm. You cannot buy initiative. You cannot buy the devotion of hearts, minds and souls. You have to earn those things.
-Clarence Francis
#245-3. The assets of most businesses walk out of the door at the end of each day. The challenge to management is to create an environment which will motivate them to want to return the next day.
-Lynn Yates
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You might wonder if managers really do things to demotivate their teams. Obviously no one sets out in the morning to think up ways to make people feel bad. It could be small, unintentional actions without sensing the reaction. For instance, a manager with a self-perception of being soft might try to be too strict on trivial matters or keep distance from subordinates. Another might spend a lot of time taking care of the star member without realizing how it is perceived by other members. The traditional employer-employee relationship has changed due to many environmental factors but mindsets take longer to accept and adapt.
| #244: Becoming Luckier |
By Professor Richard Wiseman, University of Hertfordshire, author of The Luck Factor
I set out to examine luck, 10 years ago. Why are some people always in the right place at the right time, while others consistently experience ill fortune? I placed advertisements in national newspapers asking for people who felt consistently lucky or unlucky to contact me.
Hundreds of extraordinary men and women volunteered for my research and over the years, have been interviewed by me. I have monitored their lives and had them take part in experiments. The results reveal that although these people have almost no insight into the causes of their luck, their thoughts and behaviour are responsible for much of their good and bad fortune. Take the case of seemingly chance opportunities. Lucky people consistently encounter such opportunities, whereas unlucky people do not.
I carried out a simple experiment to discover whether this was due to differences in their ability to spot such opportunities. I gave both lucky and unlucky people a newspaper, and asked them to look through it and tell me how many photographs were inside. I had secretly placed a large message halfway through the newspaper saying: 'Tell the experimenter you have seen this and win $50'.
This message took up half of the page and was written in type that was more than two inches high. It was staring everyone straight in the face, but the unlucky people tended to miss it and the lucky people tended to spot it.
Unlucky people are generally more tense than lucky people, and this anxiety disrupts their ability to notice the unexpected.
As a result, they miss opportunities because they are too focused on looking for something else. They go to parties intent on finding their perfect partner and so miss opportunities to make good friends. They look through newspapers determined to find certain types of job advertisements and miss other types of jobs.
Lucky people are more relaxed and open, and therefore see what is there rather than just what they are looking for. My research eventually revealed that lucky people generate good fortune via four principles. They are skilled at creating and noticing chance opportunities, make lucky decisions by listening to their intuition, create self-fulfilling prophesies via positive expectations, and adopt a resilient attitude that transforms bad luck into good.
I wondered towards the end of the work, whether these principles could be used to create good luck. I asked a group of volunteers to spend a month carrying out exercises designed to help them think and behave like a lucky person. Dramatic results! These exercises helped them spot chance opportunities, listen to their intuition, expect to be lucky, and be more resilient to bad luck. One month later, the volunteers returned and described what had happened. The results were dramatic: 80 per cent of people were now happier, more satisfied with their lives and, perhaps most important of all, luckier.
The lucky people had become even luckier and the unlucky had become lucky. Finally, I had found the elusive 'luck factor'. Here are four top tips for becoming lucky:
1) Listen to your gut instincts—they are normally right.
2) Be open to new experiences and breaking your normal routine.
3) Spend a few moments each day remembering things that went well.
4) Visualise yourself being lucky before an important meeting or telephone call.
Have a lucky day and work for it. The happiest people in the world are not those who have no problems, but those who learn to live with things that are less than perfect.
(Thanks to D Karthikeyan, Arvindkumar Patnam and Ambarish Kulkarni for sharing this.)
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I love the scientific spirit with which Prof. Richard Wiseman has studied a common human belief and brought out useful guidelines. As one of the email forwards puts it, luck can be seen as Labouring Under Correct Knowledge. I can choose to discard the wrong knowledge that I am especially unlucky. Perceived randomness in the universe is a fact but instead of resigning to it, one can hope to benefit by the non-finality of certain happenings. Increased understanding uncovers the patterns, principles or laws underlying apparently random occurrences.
| #243: On Discussing Effectively |
-Stanley Horowitz
#243-2. The aim of an argument or discussion should not be victory, but progress.
-Joseph Joubert
#243-3. In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.
-Anon
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Healthy debate based on principles, values, facts and logic is like oxygen for any society, including an organization. Too many people avoid arguments, and managers prevent them. One research study conducted on poorly performing teams found that there was a lot of arguments amongst members of the team. They were surprised when they found that the successful, high-performing teams also had the same characteristic! I am sure the quality of debate in the two cases would have been different—quality in terms of content, issues being debated, tone and also how members behaved after the debate.
Am glad to note that a satirical piece I posted in July 2007 on our internal PMBlog titled, “Top 10 Mistakes i-flex PMs Make” elicited positive feedback mail rather than anyone taking offence. I also followed it up with a more sober post titled, “Top 10 Qualities Needed for an i-flex PM”.
| #242: Thinking Deep and Wide |
-Anon
#242-2. Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so.
-Bertrand Russell
#242-3. I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing.
-Neil Gaiman
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A few schools in the world, thanks to Edward de Bono, actually have thinking skills taught separately as a subject. Often we think we think when we are actually quickly jumping to a prejudiced conclusion or pampering our emotions. True thinking has to be dispassionate. Continued thinking is harder than most of us admit, fatigue sets in as soon as we skim the obvious parameters in a situation and the mind goes into a loop over the same thoughts. We have to train the mind to think through, to generate a larger set of options. Expanding awareness on a variety of subjects–relevant and seemingly irrelevant—helps.
| #241: On Intelligent Thinking |
-Edward de Bono
#241-2. The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.
-Bill Gates
#241-3. Desperation is sometimes as powerful an inspirer as genius.
-Benjamin Disraeli
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Edward de Bono has written more books on teaching practical thinking than anybody else. Most of his 70+ books are boring repetitions of a few points but I recommend his “Serious Creativity” and “Lateral Thinking”. His use of the word intelligence may be unusual to some. We rarely distinguish between thinking ability and intelligence, a broader term that incorporates knowledge of facts and language skills. Concentration and practice help improve thinking. What I like to call "mental laziness" is a barrier. I find that people with above-average intelligence within their circle of acquaintances are more prone to mental laziness.
Automation (or improved efficiency) is a double-edged sword that needs to be carefully applied to an effective, correct process.
Desperation can be artificially created as Andy Grove did at Intel (he wrote, "Only the Paranoid Survive") and Bill Gates did in 1995 when Microsoft was perceived as lagging behind the Internet trend. They both believed in creating a crisis in their company when the external market or competition did not.
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