Friday Reflections

The Power Curve

POINT TO PONDER

"...things have a momentum, and at a certain point you can't really tell whether you have created the momentum or it's creating you."

                                                   

                                                                        -Annie Lennox

STORY LINE

Thank you Mark Dennen for contributing to Friday Reflections last week and referencing The Power Curve. And thank you to Micro CEO, a reader, who posted the following in response to Mark’s comment about The Power Curve, attaching a reference link which I found very enlightening and worth sharing:

“One of life's under-regarded principles is called being Behind the Power Curve (or "on the back side of the power curve"). The analogy comes from aviation, and is illustrated in this graph, which all would do well to understand:….More in the link that follows……

http://sifter.org/~simon/journal/20100718.h.html

 

REFLECTION

How do you see the Power Curve applied to your work and in your life? How can we utilize the principle of the Power Curve to our advantage?

The Treasure was the Journey Itself (and the lessons learned and shared)

 

 

POINT TO PONDER

 “The treasure was the journey itself, the discoveries he made, and the wisdom he acquired.”

                                                                ~Anna Hassapi

STORY LINE Recently Mark Dennen, a good friend, retired at a young age after a very successful career in sales as an executive of a multinational company.  A day before he boarded the plane to the place of retirement, Mark was gracious enough to satisfy my curiosity by sharing his experiences, lessons learned and impart the wisdom acquired through the years. Here are a few of the many things I captured.

 

1.   Customers are looking for desired outcomes not just products. (You are not buying a drill, but a means to make a hole or perhaps fasten boards with a screw)

2.   Presentations: People come to hear me speak, not to read my slides. 

3.   Three things that helped him to be successful:   Work Hard, Be Respectful and Don’t waste money. 

4.   Why he took accounting and business classes:   In any company, it is all about making money for the stockholders. The best (most secure) jobs are those directly related to revenue generation

5.   Risk Taking: People spend too much time worrying about smallest  incidents which could impact them by $1 to $5 million, instead they should be focused on those could impact them by $5B-$10B (The Power Curve)

6.   Status: It is nice to be important, but it is more important to be nice.

7.   Appreciation: Selling is personal and small things make a big difference such as a hand written Thank You, a small gift (specialty tea, jam, or flowers for the spouse at dinner), the sharing of an article or even a personal photograph.  

8.   Ethics: It’s easy to have high ethics when you are making lots of money (it’s easy to be good with no temptations), but it is far harder when times are bad. 

9.    “If only thing you do is follow a recipe, then you are not a good cook.”

10.  During a crisis, usually the first thing to get dropped is courtesy. (Unfortunately)

11.  Read. Read. Knowledge is the differentiator. In the age of chivalry, friendly knights would greet each other by raising their visor with their right hand (the hand which normally held the sword).    The handshake probably evolved in a similar manner, to demonstrate that each person was not holding a weapon.  Today, most  business discussions (interviews, sales presentations, claim settlements, etc.)  begin with the standard handshake, but it is the short verbal handshake immediately following which can establish the tone for the success or failure of the meeting. 

Meetings are like a chess game, there are variety of openings and one can never accurately predict how they are going to start.  It could be the weather, politics, sports, medicine, finance or pets, but regardless of the topic, it would be helpful if you could engage in the discussion and establish some level of competency, thus creating a favorable impression.  The best way to do this, in my opinion, is to read from a variety of credible sources on a daily basis to improve your chances in this initial engagement. For newspapers, I like the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal and although many will have problems with their Op-Ed pages, both are well-written, very credible and cover diverse topics.  For magazines, Scientific American, the Economist and Fortune cover a variety of topics and events of interest to a variety of professionals.   Everyone will have their own preferences, but the important thing is be read, to be aware and be current. 

12.  Interview: Competing against many who want the job. What differentiates you, all happens in just a brief conversation. Once you get the position, then how you perform is all that matters. One interview: a Ph.D., from a prestigious university, when asked,  “What do you read?, answered,  “I read my phone.”  (not a good answer). 

 

REFLECTION 

Thank You Mark. “Things that are given away are never lost.”

 

Teacher's Pet

 

POINT TO PONDER

“I was taught that a reporter should use fewest words needed to tell a story so that there is room left for advertisement.”

                               -Quote from "Teacher's Pet" told to me by Mark Dennen

STORY LINE Memorable and Educational quotes from Teacher’s Pet (1958 movie starring Clark Gable and Doris Day

• James Gannon: [referring to Dr. Pine, Prof. Stone's boyfriend] So he's got more degrees than a thermometer, so he speaks seven languages, so he's read every book. So what? The important thing is he's had no experience. He didn't start at the bottom and work up. That's the only way you can learn.
• Erica Stone: As my father used to say, a reporter has to do a lot of sweating before he earns the right to perspire.
• James Gannon: How could you give up a real newspaper job for teaching? Erica Stone: Well, that's a very good question, Mr. Gallagher. Maybe for the same reason that occasionally a musician wants to be a conductor, he wants to hear a hundred people play music the way he hears it.
• Erica Stone: Newspapers can't compete in reporting what happened any more, but they can and should tell the public why it happened.

 

James Gannon: [providing an impromptu lesson to Barney] By the way, you heard about it, didn't you?

Barney Kovac: What?

James Gannon: Found him dead.

Barney Kovac: Who?

James Gannon: Boss.

Barney Kovac: No kidding. When?

James Gannon: Two minutes ago.

Barney Kovac: Where did they find him?

James Gannon: In his office.

Barney Kovac: What did happen?

James Gannon: Some dame shot him.

James Gannon: Some dame sho... Why?

James Gannon: Barney, you have just asked me six very important questions: who, what, where, when, how, and why. That's what every news story should answer.

 

 

When Preparation Meets Opportunity.

 

POINT TO PONDER

“A winning effort begins with preparation.”

                                            - Joe Gibbs

STORYLINE by Jim Mulready

Rock guitarist Ronnie Montrose grew up admiring musicians like Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Hendrix. Born in San Francisco and reared in Denver, he returned to San Francisco in 1968 to be around the “San Francisco Sound” that was becoming popular at the time. Music was his passion; he practiced in the evening and supported himself doing repair and carpentry jobs during the day. He was the kind of young man most people would think of as “just another starving musician.”

    In 1970, while doing an office remodel, he met promoter Bill Graham who introduced him to his partner and music producer, David Rubinson. Graham and Rubinson ran a small record label at the time (Fillmore Records) and after watching Montrose play with his band, Sawbuck, they signed them to a recording contract. Rubinson was so impressed with Montrose's talent and ambition that he got him some session work with the Pointer Sisters and keyboardist Herbie Hancock. Then came his big break.

    In 1971, Van Morrison was assembling a band for a new album, eventually released as Tupelo Honey. Rubinson secured Montrose an audition and he got the job. After two albums Morrison moved onto another band and Ronny got a job touring with Boz Scaggs for 3 months.

    Now established, Montrose went on to a 40+ year musical career. In addition to forming his own band several times, he played with such bright lights as Sammy Hagar, Edgar Winters, the Neville Brothers, the Beau Brummels, and many others. He continues doing session work for many other performers and recorded countless movie soundtracks.

    He continues touring until his untimely death from prostrate cancer last week, passing at the age of 64 years.

REFLECTION

At some point you will meet someone who will absolutely change the direction of your life. You won't see it coming and you probably won't even realize it while it's happening. Only in hindsight will it become obvious who that person meant. When Ronnie Montrose took that carpentry job remodeling an office, he had no idea who Bill Graham and David Rubinson were, but they saw his talent and gave him a chance.

    Ronnie took care of the preparation by being the best musician he could; Graham and Rubinson provided opportunity. Preparation + Opportunity = Success. What have you done today to prepare yourself? 

 

All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten

 

POINT TO PONDER

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.  ~Albert Einstein


STORYLINE by Rajiv Shah

Sometimes when I'm feeling nostalgic and I'm back in my hometown I'll take a walk around my old elementary school. It's like a walk back to a simpler time where lines were formed and obeyed, lunch was always served at 12:15pm, and I had a nameplate claiming a desk as my own. Walking the campus I reflect on how far I've come, how time flies and how drastically we can change. Or not change. Maybe we still grapple with trying to habituate those all important lessons they were trying to teach us in kindergarten. Below are lessons from Robert Fulghum's book, “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” which are appropriate for this week’s reflection:

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.

These are the things I learned:

• Share everything.
• Play fair.
• Don't hit people.
• Put things back where you found them.
• Clean up your own mess.
• Don't take things that aren't yours.
• Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
• Wash your hands before you eat.
• Flush.
• Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
• Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
• Take a nap every afternoon.
• When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
• Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
• Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we.
• And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.

 
REFLECTION:

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

 

[Source: "ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN" by Robert Fulghum.  See his web site at http://www.robertfulghum.com]

 

Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.

Point to Ponder:

"If you ask me how I want to be remembered, it is as a winner. You know what a winner is? A winner is somebody who has given her/his best effort, who has tried the hardest she/he possibly can, who has utilized every ounce of energy and strength within her/him to accomplish something. It does not mean s/he accomplished or failed, it means s/he has given it their best.  That is a Winner."  - Walter Payton.

 
Storyline: Originally published on November 2008 under the title "Tough times do not last, but tough people do" - Repeated with an update:

In these times of global financial crisis, stock market meltdowns, wars and employment worries, I would like to share the remarkable life story of a "common" person that has been anything but common. Her friends and relatives affectionately call her “My Lola” (Grandma). I met her during my visit to Manila in 1978 and got to know her more during my expatriate assignment in the early '80s.  Here is her story:

She was born to a Chinese father and a Filipino mother. At the age of 12, she lost both her parents and was left to take care of three younger siblings. In order to survive, she started a small business: she supported the family by selling fruits, vegetables & fish to locals in the market.

During the second world war, most of the people in her town were slaughtered by the occupying force. She escaped death only because of the kindness of one enemy soldier. After the war, she got married and started another business that provided a comfortable, middle-class living for the next 30 years.

Sadly, in the mid '70s, a fire destroyed her home and her business. Before she could launch another venture, one of her teenage sons developed a rare disease and died, after long and very expensive medical treatment which drained the family savings. A year later, another teenage son met with an accident and died, while trying to help the family. One would think that this is enough misery for one person in one lifetime.

Unfortunately, in the early '80s, her eldest son and her husband died. She was left to support the three remaining young children by herself.  She learned to read and speak English while taking care of a young boy; she would make the little one read a book, and while moving her finger on every word, listen carefully and pick up the pronunciation.

Eventually she went abroad and for the last 27 years her life has turned for the better. Last December, on her 77th birthday, I asked her for a formal interview. After recapturing many of her experiences, and her creative approaches for surviving and eventually thriving in life, I asked her the final question. “What kept you going on in life with all that has happened?”

“Hope” she answered. “I never gave up thinking that tomorrow will be better than today and kept on going. Every day was precious and I gave my best efforts.”

Personally I have not met anyone who has been through so much in one life time. But what she said in her final answer is what I witness every time I see her. Last Sunday, I chatted with her about the current global problems.  She told me, “Trust me. Things will get better.”

UPDATE: The above story was published in November 2008.  Shortly after, “My Lola” (Mrs. Lim) developed some major health issues. In past two and a half years, she defied five calls by specialists for her demise and showed remarkable recoveries each time, to the surprise of all. Her willpower was inspirational to all who were fortunate to witness it. But today, her body gave way. During her life she fought every adversity/battle hard, never gave up and came through. And her last battle was no different. She demonstrated in all conversations and actions that she was going to give every ounce of energy she had and not give up on her own.

As one care taker put it: “They leave the way they live.” 

 
Reflection: from the poem by Gene Autry:

 “Now somewhere, there stands the man/woman

       His/her duty o’er and won

       The world will ne’er forget him/her

       To him/her we say, “Well done.’” 

To live in the hearts one leaves behind is not to die.

Don’t let pride overcome you. It will cost you dearly. *

Point to Ponder: Feedback is the breakfast of champions. - Ken Blanchard.

Story Line:

One fine day in early part of my career, during a meeting, my boss told me, “You are very defensive.” And I spent the next 20 minutes explaining to him why I was not defensive and told him that his assessment was erroneous. He smiled and said, “I rest my case.”

After gaining wisdom through the years, my grey hair being a living proof of that, I still do not claim that I take all feedback well when I first hear it and neither do I claim that I have applied it all. But once I get in reflective mood, most of it makes sense - and whatever I took seriously and applied has helped me learn and get better. Without dwelling in details about my personal feedback, I like to share a few general lessons taught by The Masters.

1. Your successful path will block your vision to the future. - Joel A. Barker
2. Based on your existing paradigms, you see best what you want to see.
3. You cannot win today’s game on yesterday’s press clippings.
   http://fridayreflections.typepad.com/weblog/2007/06/you-cant-win-to.html
4. When a paradigm, company or organization direction shifts everything goes back to Zero - Joel A. Barker (apology for a little edit to the original quote)
5. If you don't get feedback from your performers and your audience, you're going to be working in a vacuum - Peter Maxwell Davies
6. When angry, count 10 before you speak; If very angry, then count 100 - Thomas Jefferson
7. Everybody needs feedback, and it's a heck of a lot cheaper than paying a trainer - Doug Lowenstein
8. “Negative feedback is better that none. I would rather have a man hate me than overlook me. As long as he hates me I make a difference” - Hugh Prather
9. "What you did yesterday is history. What you promise for tomorrow is mystery. What you can deliver today is reality."
10. “Champions know that success is inevitable; that there is no such thing as failure, only feedback. They know that the best way to forecast the future is to create it” - Michael Gelb

Reflection: Feedback is a Gift.

*Don’t let pride overcome you. It will cost you dearly. Thomas Jefferson

Your children are not your children, by Kahlil Gibran

Late this afternoon some one asked me just as our meeting was ending: " I have a two year old. do you have any tips for raising a child?" Inspired by that question, I did some pondering on the way home and remembered very enlightening Poem by Gibran and a quote I read on a friend's Facebook site.

 
Point to Ponder:

When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life. -- John Lennon
 
 

Story Line: Poem from Kahlil Gibran* about Children

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

* Kahlil Gibran was a Lebanese American artist, poet and a writer.

The most important competition is the one between you and your own imagination

"Somebody much smarter than me once said that pessimists are usually right, optimists are usually wrong, but all the great breakthroughs in history were done by optimists." - Thomas Friedman.

Storyline:

Thomas Friedman, the author of the famous book "The World Is Flat", is a real "out of the box thinking" (OBT) practitioner.  He provides excellent views about the world that should be read and pondered by any parent, teacher or manager. 

Here are some excerpts with links to the complete articles:

Friedman: I’ve added something I got from my friend Ramalinga Raju from Satyam, the Indian company. We decided that the greatest economic competition in the world going forward is not going to be between countries and countries. And it’s not going to be between companies and companies. The greatest economic competition going forward is going to be between you and your own imagination. Your ability to act on your imagination is going to be so decisive in driving your future and the standard of living in your country. So the school, the state, the country that empowers, nurtures, enables imagination among its students and citizens, that’s who’s going to be the winner.

Friedman: In the latest edition, I added a whole section on why liberal arts are more important than ever. It’s not that I don’t think math and science are important. They still are. But more than ever our secret sauce comes from our ability to integrate art, science, music and literature with the hard sciences. That’s what produces an iPod revolution or a Google.

Pink: It’s the combination of the left brain and the right brain. Left-brain thinking — rule-based, linear, SAT-style thinking — used to be enough. Now right-brain thinking — artistry, empathy, narrative, synthesis — is the big differentiator.

http://www.aasa.org/publications/saarticledetail.cfm?ItemNumber=9736&snItemNumber=950&tnItemNumber=

But where does imagination come from?  Ah, now we come back to the liberal arts.  My friend, Marc Tucker, who heads the National Center on Education and the Economy, answers the question this way: “One thing we know about creativity,” he says, “is that it typically occurs when people who have mastered two or more quite different fields use the framework in one to think afresh about the other.”  Intuitively you know this to be true.  Leonardo DaVinci, Tucker notes, was a great artist, scientist, and inventor and each of his specialties nourished the other.  He was a great lateral thinker but if you spend your whole life in one silo, you will never have either the knowledge or mental agility to do the synthesis, connect the dots, which is usually where the next great breakthrough can be found.

So I don’t know how many art, music, or literature courses you have been able to take while you have been here (in school) but I hope it was more than zero and I hope even more that after you leave here today you will expose yourself to the richness of liberal arts because the imagination that gives birth to great ideas, products, designs, and intellectual breakthroughs often happens when people who have mastered two or more quite different fields use the framework of one to think about the other.

http://www.rpi.edu/academics/commencement/address07.html

Reflection: For people who have taken "Out Of The Box Thinking" (OBT) classes or are involved in such practices will find Tom's message very familiar.  And as we all know, the best part of learning is doing, so ...........

 

Facts don't persuade, feelings do. And stories are the best way to get at those feelings.

"Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today." - Robert McKee.

 

Storyline:

It was purely by accident that I found out the power of storytelling. In the early '90s, while working for a high technology company, I was asked to substitute for a sick instructor at the last minute. The only thing that qualified me for that class was that I had taken it before, and had demonstrated good use of techniques that were taught.

With no formal training about conducting training, I was nervous about facing an audience of very smart technical and business people. To break the ice (and to also break my nervousness), I tried to explain the concepts and formulas by narrating stories and drawing analogies form real life situations.  I guess it worked so well that my sidekick (after being an engineer) after that day became a trainer too.

The subject of communication and persuasion through storytelling has gained great interest in the corporate world, and many books and executive training programs have been created on the subject. Here are some points to ponder about this subject from some well known people:
 

"Facts don't persuade, feelings do. And stories are the best way to get at those feelings"

- Tom Asacker.

"Why story telling? Nothing else worked. Charts left listeners bemused. Prose remained unread. Dialog was just too laborious and slow. Time after time, when faced with the task of persuading a group of managers or front life staff in a large organization, to get enthusiastic about a major change I found that storytelling was the only thing that worked."

- Stephen Denning in 'The Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge-Era Organizations'.

"Because there is a natural storytelling urge and ability in all human beings, even just a little nurturing of this impulse can bring about astonishing and delightful results." 

-Nancy Mellon, in 'The Art of Storytelling'.

"Why was Solomon recognized as the wisest man in the world? Because he knew more stories (proverbs) than anyone else. Scratch the surface in a typical boardroom and we're all just cavemen with briefcases, hungry for a wise person to tell us stories."

- Alan Kay, vice president at Walt Disney.

 

Reflection:  from Anthony De Mello

"It is a great mystery that though the human heart longs for Truth in which it alone it finds liberation and delight, the first reaction of human beings to Truth is one of hostility and fear. So the Spiritual Teachers of humanity created a device to circumvent the opposition of their listeners: the story.

They knew that the most entrancing words a language holds are 'Once upon a time...,' that it is common to oppose a truth but impossible to resist a story. Vyasa, the author of the Mahabharata, says that if you listen carefully to a story you will never be the same again. That is because the story will worm its way into your heart and break down the barriers to the divine.

You have to understand, my dears, that the shortest distance between truth and a human being is a story."