Tools Shape Us

I recently read a quote "First we shape our tools, then they shape us." (Marshall McLuhan)

So is the case with organizations. Every tool/technology/structure process that gets implemented impacts the organization in ways that usually wasn't the original intent.



- From a blog

Why Hierarchies are Bad

Hierarchies systematically suppress negative feedback on the results of their policies. As R.A. Wilson said, nobody tells the truth to a man with a gun. Hierarchies are very good at telling naked emperors how good their clothes look.

Hierarchies also systematically suppress critical thinking ability in their members. Psychological studies have found that people in positions of authority become less likely to evaluate communications based on their internal logic, and instead evaluate them based on the authority of the source.

 - From a blog

Knowing Is Not Enough

Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

What Great and Small Minds Do

Great minds talk about ideas, average minds talk about events, and small minds talk about people.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

Too Cheap to Meter

Too cheap to meter describes a concept in which a commodity is so inexpensive that it is more cost-effective and less bureaucratic to simply provide it for a flat fee or even free and make a profit from associated services.

- From Wikipedia

Generalizations

Generalizing is very dangerous, of course. I could say that generalizing is always dangerous but I will not, because it could be already a generalization... and you got the point anyway.

- From a blog

Red Queen Effect

It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.

- From Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass

Choice Overload

...Psychologists have a term for this - choice overload. In the presence of an abundance of information or too many choices, people often become overwhelmed and frozen. Those individuals inevitably revert to what is easiest, effectively making no decision at all. That can be dangerous in business and in life. One study showed that when presented with many products (jelly, in this case), most consumers tend to default to the easiest choice: buying nothing at all. Good thing there is only one type of air.

- Jeff Stibel, in a Harvard Business Review blog

Loneliness and Powerlessness of Wisdom

The worst pain a man can suffer: to have insight into much and power over nothing.

- Herodotus, Greek author (5th century BC), quoted in a blog post

The Top Idea in Your Mind

It's hard to do a really good job of anything you don't think about in the shower.

I think most people have one top idea in their mind at any given time. That's the idea their thoughts will drift toward when they're allowed to drift freely. And this idea will thus tend to get all the benefit of that type of thinking, while others are starved of it. Which means it's a disaster to let the wrong idea become the top one in your mind.

I'd noticed startups got way less done when they started raising money, but it was not till we ourselves raised money that I understood why. The problem is not the actual time it takes to meet with investors. The problem is that once you start raising money, raising money becomes the top idea in your mind. That becomes what you think about when you take a shower in the morning. And that means other questions aren't.

I've found there are two types of thoughts especially worth avoiding. One: thoughts about money. Getting money is almost by definition an attention sink. The other is disputes. These too are engaging in the wrong way: they have the same velcro-like shape as genuinely interesting ideas, but without the substance. So avoid disputes if you want to get real work done.

Turning the other cheek turns out to have selfish advantages. Someone who does you an injury hurts you twice: first by the injury itself, and second by taking up your time afterward thinking about it. If you learn to ignore injuries you can at least avoid the second half. I've found I can to some extent avoid thinking about nasty things people have done to me by telling myself: this doesn't deserve space in my head. I'm always delighted to find I've forgotten the details of disputes, because that means I hadn't been thinking about them. My wife thinks I'm more forgiving than she is, but my motives are purely selfish.

I suspect a lot of people aren't sure what's the top idea in their mind at any given time. I'm often mistaken about it. I tend to think it's the idea I'd want to be the top one, rather than the one that is. But it's easy to figure this out: just take a shower. What topic do your thoughts keep returning to? If it's not what you want to be thinking about, you may want to change something.

- From the Net

Nirmala Palaniappan's comment on the above article:

“The most distinguishing feature of winners is their intensity of purpose.” - Alymer Letterman

Honestly, I think this article explains why some of us don't do what we don't do. Who said we procrastinate? Utter gibberish. We simply are so obsessed with some of our ideas that we ignore everything else in the world... If we want to be winners at something in life, then we may definitely have to learn to ignore a lot of other things.

Bad System and Good Person

A bad system will defeat a good person every time.

- Deming

Easily Available Is Not Valued

People do not notice nor give value to those things that are always available or always around them all the time — air to breathe, solid ground beneath their feet, the local culture, being alive, the support of a loved one — until those things are taken away from them, or seriously threatened to be taken away from them. It is paradoxical: anything that is omnipresent tends to escape our notice. Consequently, we fail to appreciate it.

People who had looked at Death face-to-face — for example, people who survived a life-threatening illness, or an accident that was fatal for many companions, or any event where they thought they would die — are people who afterwards better saw how precious Life is and who thereafter lived Life more fully. Like young children, they listened, experienced and savored life more intensely. I know, because I survived an illness that threatened my life for nearly four years.
Take your local or national culture. You grew up within it. It is around you all the time. You never even knew what it consists of — until you leave your town or your country and travel to another culture. It is when you are outside your culture and you are confronted with an alien, strange or different culture that you begin to be aware of your own culture!

- From a blog

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.

- Thomas Paine, 'The American Crisis'

...यह इंसानी फितरत है कि जिस चीज को वह पा लेता है उसकी अहमियत खत्म हो जाती है। 

- उषा चौधरी की कहानी 'प्रवासी पाखी' से ('सहारा समय', 21 जनवरी, 2006)

We never know the worth of water till the well is dry.

- Thomas Fuller

दुनिया जिसे कहते हैं जादू का ख़िलौना है

मिल जाये तो मिट्टी हैं खो जाये तो सोना है

- निदा फ़ाज़ली

You Were My Crush... Till You Said You Love Me.

- Title of a book 

Maturity

A mature person is one who does not think only in absolutes, who is able to be objective even when deeply stirred emotionally, who has learned that there is both good and bad in all people and all things, and who walks humbly and deals charitably with the circumstances of life, knowing that in this world no one is all-knowing and therefore all of us need both love and charity.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

Life's about Randomness, Unpredictability, Ephemerality and Transience

Watched the German film Run Lola Run (with English subtitles) at Bosch office some days ago.

From different reviews on the Net:

The film is an existential take on life. It shows how the tiniest choices we make become life altering (or sometimes life ending) decisions - the so-called butterfly effect, and that there is a fine line between fortune and misfortune.

Life is lot more random than most people appreciate.

Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.

- Gilda Radner, American actress, who died of cancer at 43 

It is so hard for us little human beings to accept this deal that we get. It's really crazy, isn't it? We get to live, then we have to die. What we put into every moment is all we have… What spirit human beings have! It is a pretty cheesy deal — all the pleasures of life, and then death.

 - Gilda Radner

I really liked books "Fooled by Randomness" and "Black Swan".

Are those people who make it to the top smart, hard-working, and risk-taking? Yes!

Do all smart, hard working, risk-taking people make it to the top? No!

Some just do well in life, that's all.

-

- From a Linkedin Answer

New Experiences are Eye-opening

Subjecting oneself to a different experience is almost always eye-opening if not enlightening.

 - From Nimmy's blog

No Advice is Right for All

…the advice out there is good for someone, maybe a certain piece of advice is not good for you at this particular point in your life, but your life is just that... Your Life. If you need it, take it, if not, leave it for someone else.

There is no need to tell the world that the advice that doesn't work for you will not work for anyone. Think about it; it is actually a pretty arrogant thought, isn't it?

World's Treatment of a Good Person

Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are a good person is a little like expecting a bull not to attack you because you are a vegetarian.

 - Dennis Wholey

Reflect to Be in Charge of Your Destiny

The ability to reflect makes living a conscious process, which puts you in charge.

- From a blog

Thorny Path of Virtue

The easy, gentle, and sloping path... is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road.

- Michel de Montaigne

Pitfalls of Success

The Success Trap
Few businesses are able to avoid the “success ruins everything” syndrome… lose sight of their quality and performance standards in the push to grow quickly. Some companies respond to success by resting on their laurels and ceasing to innovate. The complacency that often comes with success provides a window of opportunity for underdogs and upstarts.

And it’s not just companies that suffer from success. So, too, do personal relationships. When a group achieves great success, it can split apart with jealousy as individuals each seek credit and a disproportionate share of the resources from their collective accomplishments.

“When you’re climbing up the mountain, that’s when you really need each other. Then, when you get near the top, it’s over.”

… maintaining focus and discipline in the face of success is difficult.

- Jeffrey Pfeffer, professor of organizational behavior at Stanford

Nothing Fails Like Success

Richard Carrion, the CEO of Puerto Rico’s top bank, once shared a line with me that I’ll never forget: “Robin, nothing fails like success.” Powerful thought. You, as well as your organization, are most vulnerable when you are most successful. Success actually breeds complacency, inefficiency and worst of all, arrogance. When people and businesses get really successful, they often fall in love with themselves. They stop innovating, working hard, taking risks and begin to rest on their laurels. They go on the defensive, spending their energy protecting their success rather than staying true to the very things that got them to the top.

- Robin Sharma, 'The Greatness Guide'

History is filled with instances of these pitfalls trapping individuals, companies, societies, countries and civilizations. Zeniths of success give way to an inevitable decline. The reasons are mostly internal and sometimes external. The internal reasons are complacency and arrogance that success breeds. The external reason is the circumstances that cause the success changing with time.

- RKP

Is Experience Necessary for Insight?

What percentage of management gurus and/or motivational speakers have actual, meaningful management experience?

- Linkedin question

Excerpts from answers:

1
I think what managers are looking for is someone who has the time to focus on an issue, then bring a new view to it without the "distraction" of managing.

2
I have also encountered a number of these people who talk the talk extremely well, but have never really walked the walk. Or, they have walked it poorly.

3
...some are more adept at teaching/observing/coaching/consulting than they are at "doing." Some are better at studying and researcing high performance and then putting those principles into usable and teachable formats than those who actually lead organizations.

4
There are many examples of people with years of experience, but little high value insight.

5
Real world owners of companies turn to consultants to get an outsider's view of within.


A quotation from Samuel Johnson:

You may abuse a tragedy, though you cannot write one. You may scold a carpenter who has made you a bad table, though you cannot make a table. It is not your trade to make tables.

From a blog:

One of the disadvantages to experience is that it can lead to being too skeptical. It's that "been there, done that" attitude. The problem is, it comes across as being close-minded and not open to change. Phrases like "we tried that and it didn't work", or "that's just a newer version of an old idea" may be true, but they can take the wind out of the sails of creativity and engagement and inhibit our learning.

- From a blog

Measure to Make It Happen

If something is not measured, tracked, and rewarded, it does not get done… however much you emphasize and reinforce it.

Please share your thoughts and comments.

- My question on Linkedin

Excerpt from an answer:

One tack that I would like to bring to attention, though, is the fact that what is measured is often what can be measured. This fact alone often skews priorities and can lead to failure precisely because what can be measured may not be mission critical.

Excerpt from another answer:

I noticed that when we measure some tasks and not others, the unmeasured tasks get much less attention and resources and are completed at a much lesser rate than the measured tasks, regardless of who we assign them to.

Excerpt from the blog of an instructional designer:

... the first thing to be sacrificed at the altar of business is "good". Good is a subjective, an often intangible measure. Fast is measurable... Quality, in spite of all the parameters, remains largely unmeasurable.

 - ID and Other Reflections

Peer Conformance

In the late 1970s, University of Illinois researcher Leann Lipps Birch conducted a series of experiments on children to see what would get them to eat vegetables they disliked. This is a high bar. We're not talking about simply eating more vegetables. We're talking about eating specific vegetables, the ones they didn't like.

You could tell the children you expect them to eat their vegetables. And reward them with ice cream if they did. You could explain all the reasons why eating their vegetables is good for them. And you could eat your own vegetables as a good role model. Those things might help.

But Birch found one thing that worked predictably. She put a child who didn't like peas at a table with several other children who did. Within a meal or two, the pea-hater was eating peas like the pea-lovers.

Peer pressure.

We tend to conform to the behavior of the people around us.

- From a Harvard Business Review blog

Leadership Lesson from Randy Pausch

Pausch did a great job in elucidating the fact that a good leader understands the subtleties of his/her actions and the impact of the responses that are elicited from those actions.

One example of this was, quite simply, a day he had planned to spend with his niece and nephew. He picked them up in a brand new car and his sister gave her kids a stern reminder not to get the car dirty. Randy proceeded to open up a can of pop and poured it on one of the back seats. He then told his companions for the day, that they had nothing to worry about, because the damage had already been done. The kids and Randy had a great day because the focus was on productivity (having fun) and not on avoiding a negative event.

The point he obviously was making, was that just a few words from a leader can either set us up for failure (or tenative thinking, at best), or free-up the person to perform at a high level. In the kids case, they had a high level of fun.

- From a Linkedin discussion