Audit Work Quotes

The idealized market was supposed to deliver ‘friction free’ exchanges, in which the desires of consumers would be met directly, without the need for intervention or mediation by regulatory agencies. Yet the drive to assess the performance of workers and to measure forms of labor which, by their nature, are resistant to quantification, has inevitably required additional layers of management and bureaucracy. What we have is not a direct comparison of workers’ performance or output, but a comparison between the audited representation of that performance and output. Inevitably, a short-circuiting occurs, and work becomes geared towards the generation and massaging of representations rather than to the official goals of the work itself. Indeed, an anthropological study of local government in Britain argues that ‘More effort goes into ensuring that a local authority’s services are represented correctly than goes into actually improving those services’. This reversal of priorities is one of the hallmarks of a system which can be characterized without hyperbole as ‘market Stalinism’. What late capitalism repeats from Stalinism is just this valuing of symbols of achievement over actual achievement. […] It would be a mistake to regard this market Stalinism as some deviation from the ‘true spirit’ of capitalism. On the contrary, it would be better to say that an essential dimension of Stalinism was inhibited by its association with a social project like socialism and can only emerge in a late capitalist culture in which images acquire an autonomous force. The way value is generated on the stock exchange depends of course less on what a company ‘really does’, and more on perceptions of, and beliefs about, its (future) performance. In capitalism, that is to say, all that is solid melts into PR, and late capitalism is defined at least as much by this ubiquitous tendency towards PR-production as it is by the imposition of market mechanisms.

But sometimes things happen that no one hopes for. Events that cause everything you've worked towards, the life you've carefully constructed piece by piece, to come tumbling down all around you. No one is to blame, but you're left with a wound you can't heal on your own and can't believe you'll ever learn to accept, so you struggle to escape the pain. Only time can heal wounds as deep as that - a lot of time - and all you can really do is place yourself in its hands and try to consider the passing of each day a victory. You tough it out moment by moment, hour by hour, and after some weeks or months you begin to see signs of recovery. Slowly the wound heals into a scar.

I hover over myself Watching. Mind and body separated, Each in control As though there are two puppeteers Working the strings of my marionette self.

You can surrender your day-to-day and the potential of your work to the burdens that surround you. Or, you can audit the way you work and own the responsibility of fixing it.

Learn to love being single and being alone. It can be tough, but it can also be brilliant. It's down to you to make it work. If you don't love yourself, you're going to spend the rest of your life auditioning people to do it for you. We all know how crazy it is to leave your emotions in someone else's hands.

Most of all, there is this truth: No matter how great your teachers may be, and no matter how esteemed your academy’s reputation, eventually you will have to do the work by yourself. Eventually, the teachers won’t be there anymore. The walls of the school will fall away, and you’ll be on your own. The hours that you will then put into practice, study, auditions, and creation will be entirely up to you.

Yet the drive to assess the performance of workers and to measure forms of labor which, by their nature, are resistant to quantification, has inevitably required additional layers of management and bureaucracy. What we have is not a direct comparison of workers’ performance or output, but a comparison between the audited representation of that performance and output. Inevitably, a short-circuiting occurs, and work becomes geared towards the generation and massaging of representations rather than to the official goals of the work itself.

Company engineers helped to design Westborough, and they made it functional and cheap. One contractor who did some work for Data General was quoted in Fortune as saying, “What they call tough auditing, we call thievery.

But as Nesi learns, sometimes you just need to act, weather you're ready or not. Sometimes, you build your own tomorrow, and if you're lucky and work hard and remember to chuckle once in a while, you can even get there.

I appreciate you. If you have somebody else who has a Facebook ad account, I'd be happy to give them a free account audit. This audit will give that person a couple of ways to improve their ads. Usually we can save them 10-20% of their cost in just 10 minutes. There's no obligation. If they want to work with us, we will work hard

Almost every job I have ever gotten was due to someone knowing my work or seeing me in something else. I was in UCB and Andy Richter suggested I do stuff for Conan. Being on Conan helped me land a part in Deuce Bigalow. My UCB television show and friends helped me get an audition for SNL; my SNL connections resulted in Parks and Recreation. See, years and years of hard work and little bits of progress isn’t nearly as entertaining as imagining me telling a joke in a Boston food court when suddenly Lorne Michaels walks up and says, “I must have you for a little show I do.

My name is Linda Symcox—and I’m a lie-oholic. I came to Hollywood to work as an actress, but soon found out that I couldn’t get a decent audition, let alone a job. It seems I didn’t stand out enough.

I see that you have come to the last stage of human life; you are close upon your hundreth year, or even beyond: come now, hold an audit of your life. Reckon how much of your time has been taken up by a money-lender, how much by a mistress, a patron, a client, quarreling with your wife, punishing your slaves, dashing about the city on your social obligations. Consider also the diseases which we have brought on ourselves, and the time too which has been unused. You will find that you have fewer years than you reckon. Call to mind when you ever had a fixed purpose; how few days have passed as you had planned; when you were ever at your own disposal; when your face wore its natural expression; when your mind was undisturbed; what work you have achieved in such a long life; how many have plundered your life when you were unaware of your losses; how much you have lost through groundless sorrow, foolish joy, greedy desire, the seductions of society; how little of your own was left to you. You will realize that you are dying prematurely.

As much as I'd dreamed of being a part of Peter's tight-knit family, I realize now I'd also never cried in front of them, never complained about work or opened up about how hard I found it to trust new people. I'd never even used a curse word in front of them. Their perfection hadn't drawn me in– it had intimidated me. I spent our whole relationship auditioning, the same way I I always feel when I'm with Dad, praying I'm doing enough to make the cut.

The wealthy have also fought to underfund and defang the Internal Revenue Service, so it doesn’t have the resources to audit or fight dubious deductions. Only about 6 percent of tax returns of those with income of more than $1 million are audited, along with 0.7 percent of business tax returns. Meanwhile, there is one group that the IRS scrutinizes rigorously: the working poor with incomes below $20,000 a year who receive the Earned Income Tax Credit. More than one-third of all tax audits are focused on that group struggling to make ends meet, even as the agency cuts back on audits of the wealthy—while the top 5 percent of taxpayers account for more than half of all underreported income.

A couple days later, I was at the studio for a screen test, not to be confused with auditions—more like camera tests. You show up to work as if it is a regular day. You head to hair and makeup, discuss looks, what to start with, the character arcs and whatnot.

But sometimes things happen that no one hopes for. Events that cause everything you’ve worked towards, the life you’ve carefully constructed piece by piece, to come tumbling down all around you. No one is to blame, but you’re left with a wound you can’t heal on your own and can’t believe you’ll ever learn to accept, so you struggle to escape the pain. Only time can heal wounds as deep as that – a lot of time – and all you can really do is place yourself in its hands and try to consider the passing of each day a victory.

TRY THIS: AUDIT YOUR TIME Spend a week tracking how much time you devote to the following: family, friends, health, and self. (Note that we’re leaving out sleeping, eating, and working. Work, in all its forms, can sprawl without boundaries. If this is the case for you, then set your own definition of when you are “officially” at work and make “extra work” one of your categories.) The areas where you spend the most time should match what you value the most. Say the amount of time that your job requires exceeds how important it is to you. That’s a sign that you need to look very closely at that decision. You’re deciding to spend time on something that doesn’t feel important to you. What are the values behind that decision? Are your earnings from your job ultimately serving your values?

When did pursuing your ambitions cross the line from brave into foolhardy? How did you know when to stop? In earlier, more rigid, less encouraging (and ultimately, more helpful) decades, things would be much clearer: you would stop when you turned forty, or when you got married, or when you had kids, or after five years, or ten years, or fifteen. And then you would go get a real job, and acting and your dreams for a career in it would recede into the evening, a melting into history as quiet as a briquette of ice sliding into a warm bath. But these were days of self-fulfillment, where settling for something that was not quite your first choice of a life seemed weak-willed and ignoble. Somewhere, surrendering to what seemed to be your fate had changed from being dignified to being a sign of your own cowardice. There were times when the pressure to achieve happiness felt almost oppressive, as if happiness were something that everyone should and could attain, and that any sort of compromise in its pursuit was somehow your fault. Would Willem work for year upon year at Ortolan, catching the same trains to auditions, reading again and again and again, one year maybe caterpillaring an inch or two forward, his progress so minute that it hardly counted as progress at all? Would he someday have the courage to give up, and would he be able to recognize that moment, or would he wake one day and look in the mirror and find himself an old man, still trying to call himself an actor because he was too scared to admit that he might not be, might never be? According

CHRIS PRATT (ANDY DWYER): Chris had the best audition I had ever seen. No one knew his work and he came in and crushed. He is a comedy savant and a natural actor in a way I have never really seen. Each take is different and hilarious and completely unexpected. His character was only supposed to be on the show for six episodes, which seems ridiculous now.

Measuring requires, first and foremost, analytical ability. But it also demands that measurement be used to make self-control possible rather than abused to control people from the outside and above—that is, to dominate them. It is the common violation of this principle that largely explains why measurement is the weakest area in the work of the manager today. As long as measurements are abused as a tool of control (for instance, as when measurements are used, as a weapon of an internal secret police that supplies audits and critical appraisals of a manager’s performance to the boss without even sending a carbon copy to the manager himself) measuring will remain the weakest area in the manager’s performance.2

sometimes things happen that no one hopes for. Events that cause everything you’ve worked toward, the life you’ve carefully constructed piece by piece, to come tumbling down all around you. No one is to blame, but you’re left with a wound you can’t heal on your own and can’t believe you’ll ever learn to accept, so you struggle to escape the pain. Only time can heal wounds as deep as that

He had, for a few days, forgotten that wherever he traveled, he must take his own familiar self along, and that that self would loom up between him and new skies, however rosy. It was a good self. He liked it, for he had worked with it. Perhaps it could learn things. But would it learn any more here, where it was chilled by the unfamiliarity, than in his quiet library, in solitary walks, in honestly auditing his life, back in Zenith?

You didn't call me last night." "Was I supposed to?" He looked down. "Just figured now that you had my number...Kept my phone on all night, just in case." He laughed. "I started to worry that it didn't work. Actually went out to a pay phone to test it." "You could have called me. That way you left me after lunch on Saturday, I figured..." I ended there and shrugged, not wanting to be mad at him or get into any kind of argument. "Anyway, after auditions I went to the gym with Steph, and I'm so behind in my homework it's not even funny." Of course I'd punched in his number about eighteen times without actually ever calling him. I wasn't sure what I'd say, and worried about how I'd feel if he didn't answer. "I shouldn't have left like that on Saturday." "Yeah, well." I waved my hands. "Don't worry about it. I have to finish getting ready. There's cereal and stuff...just make yourself at home.

For example, in 2009 the British Government published, online, 700,000 individual documents that related to the expenses of British MPs. In response, the Guardian newspaper built an online platform to host these documents, and asked readers collectively to sift through them, a task too large for one person alone, and flag those that might be of interest, adding analysis if need be. A community of over 20,000 individuals engaged in what was, in effect, a public audit.

This fusion of flower power and processor power, enlightenment and technology, was embodied by Steve Jobs as he meditated in the mornings, audited physics classes at Stanford, worked nights at Atari, and dreamed of starting his own business. “There was just something going on here,” he said, looking back at the time and place. “The best music came from here—the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Joan Baez, Janis Joplin—and so did the integrated circuit, and things like the Whole Earth Catalog.

But sometimes things happen that no one hpes for. Events that cause everything you've worked toward, the life you've carefully constructed piece by piece, to come tumbling down all around you. No one is to blame, but you're left with a wound you can't heal on your own and can't believe you'll ever learn to accept, so you struggle to escape the pain. Only time can heal wounds as deep as that - a lot of time - and all you can really do is place yourself in its hands and try to consider the passing of each day as a victory.

It did not matter, to Trump or his followers, that not one independent authority, not one judge, not one prosecutor, not one election agency, not one official who was not a Trump partisan ever found widespread fraud. None. Even an audit in Arizona sponsored by Trump allies only confirmed the result. A federal judge described the effort to overturn the election as a “coup in search of a legal theory” and opined that Trump most likely committed conspiracy to defraud the United States and obstruct the work of Congress. A bipartisan House investigating committee concluded that Trump had committed a crime.

Poor is relative, of course. None of you were rich or had any dreams of being rich or even knew anyone rich. But the widest gulf in the world is the distance between getting by and not quite getting by. Crossing that gap can happen in a hundred ways, almost all by accident. Bad day at work and/or kid has a fever and/or miss the bus and consequently ten minutes late to the audition which equals you don’t get to play the part of Background Oriental with Downtrodden Face. Which equals, stretch the dollar that week, boil chicken bones twice for a watery soup, make the bottom of the bag of rice last another dinner or three.

What I like to see is when actors use their celebrity in an interesting way. Some of them have charitable foundations, they do things like try to bring attention to the plight of women and girls in Afghanistan, or they're trying to save the White African Rhino, or they discover a passion for adult literacy, or what have you. All worthy causes, of course, and I knowtheir fame helps to get the word put. But let's be honest here.None of them went into the entertainment industry because they wanted to do good in the world. Speaking for myself, I didn't even think about until I was already successful. Before they were famous, my actor friends were just going to auditions and struggling to be noticed, taking any work they could find, acting for free in friends movies, working in restaurants or as caterers, just trying to get by. They acted because they loved acting, but also, let's be honest here, to be noticed. All they wantedf was to be seen. I've been thinking lately about immortality. What it means to be remembered, what I want to be remembered for, certainquestions concerning memory and fame. I love watching old movies. I watch the faces of long-dead actors on the screen, and I think about how they'll never truly die. I know that's a cliche but it happens to be true. Not just the famous ones who everyone knows, but the bit players, the maid carrying the tray, the butler, the cowboys in the bar, the third girl from the left in the night-club. They're all immortal to me. First we only want to be seen, but once we're seen, that's not enough anymore. Afterthat, we want to be remembered.

Hope, though; now there’s a real pest. Hope doesn’t just nibble your cheese and chew holes in your skirting boards. Hope keeps you plodding on when it really is time to call it quits. Hope drags you to sixteen auditions in a single day, when there’s a nice job in your brother-in-law’s tannery just waiting for you. Hope keeps you going in Old Stairs or Paradise, even though there’s no money and nothing to eat and the landlord just took your chair and your chamber pot. Personally, I can see no great merit in simply being alive if you’re miserable and in pain, but Hope won’t let you go. She’s a tease, like bad children teasing a dumb animal, and I’ve made a point of avoiding her whenever I can. Still, sometimes she runs you down and there’s nowhere left for you to go. You can turn and fight her and lose, or let her scoop you up and turn your brain to mush. Hope against hope. We had human chains shifting those blocks with levers and rollers, through the narrow alleys where carts couldn’t go. We had shifts digging the ditch by lamplight, in the rain. And in every working party there was at least one man who cheerfully announced that it wasn’t going to work, the whole idea was stupid, the enemy’ll find a way round this in two shakes, just you see; and even he didn’t really believe it, because of Hope. Hope turns a hundred men and women ripping the skin off their hands on a coarse hemp rope into a street party. Someone tells a joke, or clowns around, or starts singing a favourite song from one of the shows, and Hope bursts through, like sappers, and next thing you know she’s everywhere, like smoke, or floodwater, or rats. We’re going to beat Ogus, she whispers in every ear, and this time it’ll be different.

Darwin’s Bestiary PROLOGUE Animals tame and animals feral prowled the Dark Ages in search of a moral: the canine was Loyal, the lion was Virile, rabbits were Potent and gryphons were Sterile. Sloth, Envy, Gluttony, Pride—every peril was fleshed into something phantasmic and rural, while Courage, Devotion, Thrift—every bright laurel crowned a creature in some mythological mural. Scientists think there is something immoral in singular brutes having meat that is plural: beasts are mere beasts, just as flowers are floral. Yet between the lines there’s an implicit demurral; the habit stays with us, albeit it’s puerile: when Darwin saw squirrels, he saw more than Squirrel. 1. THE ANT The ant, Darwin reminded us, defies all simple-mindedness: Take nothing (says the ant) on faith, and never trust a simple truth. The PR men of bestiaries eulogized for centuries this busy little paragon, nature’s proletarian— but look here, Darwin said: some ants make slaves of smaller ants, and end exploiting in their peonages the sweating brows of their tiny drudges. Thus the ant speaks out of both sides of its mealy little mouth: its example is extolled to the workers of the world, but its habits also preach the virtues of the idle rich. 2. THE WORM Eyeless in Gaza, earless in Britain, lower than a rattlesnake’s belly-button, deaf as a judge and dumb as an audit: nobody gave the worm much credit till Darwin looked a little closer at this spaghetti-torsoed loser. Look, he said, a worm can feel and taste and touch and learn and smell; and ounce for ounce, they’re tough as wrestlers, and love can turn them into hustlers, and as to work, their labors are mythic, small devotees of the Protestant Ethic: they’ll go anywhere, to mountains or grassland, south to the rain forests, north to Iceland, fifty thousand to every acre guzzling earth like a drunk on liquor, churning the soil and making it fertile, earning the thanks of every mortal: proud Homo sapiens, with legs and arms— his whole existence depends on worms. So, History, no longer let the worm’s be an ignoble lot unwept, unhonored, and unsung. Moral: even a worm can turn. 3. THE RABBIT a. Except in distress, the rabbit is silent, but social as teacups: no hare is an island. (Moral: silence is golden—or anyway harmless; rabbits may run, but never for Congress.) b. When a rabbit gets miffed, he bounds in an orbit, kicking and scratching like—well, like a rabbit. (Moral: to thine own self be true—or as true as you can; a wolf in sheep’s clothing fleeces his skin.) c. He populates prairies and mountains and moors, but in Sweden the rabbit can’t live out of doors. (Moral: to know your own strength, take a tug at your shackles; to understand purity, ponder your freckles.) d. Survival developed these small furry tutors; the morals of rabbits outnumber their litters. (Conclusion: you needn’t be brainy, benign, or bizarre to be thought a great prophet. Endure. Just endure.) 4. THE GOSSAMER Sixty miles from land the gentle trades that silk the Yankee clippers to Cathay sift a million gossamers, like tides of fluff above the menace of the sea. These tiny spiders spin their bits of webbing and ride the air as schooners ride the ocean; the Beagle trapped a thousand in its rigging, small aeronauts on some elusive mission. The Megatherium, done to extinction by its own bigness, makes a counterpoint to gossamers, who breathe us this small lesson: for survival, it’s the little things that count.

But these were days of self-fulfillment, where settling for something that was not quite your first choice of a life seemed weak-willed and ignoble. Somewhere, surrendering to what seemed to be your fate had changed from being dignified to being a sign of your own cowardice. There were times when the pressure to achieve happiness felt almost oppressive, as if happiness were something that everyone should and could attain, and that any sort of compromise in its pursuit was somehow your fault. Would Willem work for year upon year at Ortolan, catching the same trains to auditions, reading again and again and again, one year maybe caterpillaring an inch or two forward, his progress so minute that it hardly counted as progress at all? Would he someday have the courage to give up, and would he be able to recognize that moment, or would he wake one day and look in the mirror and find himself an old man, still trying to call himself an actor because he was too scared to admit that he might not be, might never be?

Indeed, equal amounts of research support both assertions: that mentorship works and that it doesn’t. Mentoring programs break down in the workplace so often that scholarly research contradicts itself about the value of mentoring at all, and prompts Harvard Business Review articles with titles such as “Why Mentoring Doesn’t Work.” The mentorship slip is illustrated well by family businesses: 70 percent of them fail when passed to the second generation. A business-owner parent is in a perfect spot to mentor his or her child to run a company. And yet, sometime between mentorship and the business handoff, something critical doesn’t stick. One of the most tantalizing ideas about training with a master is that the master can help her protégé skip several steps up the ladder. Sometimes this ends up producing Aristotle. But sometimes it produces Icarus, to whom his father and master craftsman Daedalus of Greek mythology gave wings; Icarus then flew too high too fast and died. Jimmy Fallon’s mentor, one of the best-connected managers Jimmy could have for his SNL dream, served him up on a platter to SNL auditions in a fraction of the expected time it should take a new comedian to get there. But Jimmy didn’t cut it—yet. There was still one more ingredient, the one that makes the difference between rapid-rising protégés who soar and those who melt their wings and crash. III.

Thakur’s findings were not news to Ranbaxy’s top executives. Just ten months earlier, in October 2003, outside auditors started investigating Ranbaxy facilities worldwide. In this case, the audits had been ordered up by Ranbaxy itself. This was a common industry practice: drug companies often hired consultants to audit their facilities as a dry run to see how visible their problems were. If the consultants could find it, they reasoned, then most likely regulators could too. The fact-finding mission by Lachman Consultant Services left Ranbaxy officials under no illusion as to the extent of the company’s failings. At Ranbaxy’s Princeton, New Jersey, facility, auditors found that the company’s Patient Safety Department barely functioned and training was essentially “non-existent.” The staff had no written protocols for investigating patient complaints, which piled up in boxes, uncategorized and unreported. They had no clerical help for basic tasks like mailing out the patients’ samples for testing. “I don’t think there’s the same medicine in this medicine,” was a common refrain from patients. Even when there were investigations, they were so perfunctory and half-hearted that expiration dates were listed as “unknown,” even when they could easily have been found from a product’s lot number. An audit of Ranbaxy’s main U.S. manufacturing plant, Ohm Laboratories in New Jersey, found that the company, though required to report adverse events to the FDA, rarely did so. There was no system to capture patient complaints after hours, and no global medical officer to ensure that any potential negative consequences for patients were being monitored. The consultants from Lachman urged Ranbaxy to address these problems globally. Ranbaxy’s initial reaction to the findings was to question the number of hours, and the resulting invoice, that Lachman had sent for its work.

Found a startup society. This is simply an online community with aspirations of something greater. Anyone can found one, just like anyone can found a company or cryptocurrency.2 And the founder’s legitimacy comes from whether people opt to follow them. Organize it into a group capable of collective action. Given a sufficiently dedicated online community, the next step is to organize it into a network union. Unlike a social network, a network union has a purpose: it coordinates its members for their mutual benefit. And unlike a traditional union, a network union is not set up solely in opposition to a particular corporation, so it can take a variety of different collective actions.3 Unionization is a key step because it turns an otherwise ineffective online community into a group of people working together for a common cause. Build trust offline and a cryptoeconomy online. Begin holding in-person meetups in the physical world, of increasing scale and duration, while simultaneously building an internal economy using cryptocurrency. Crowdfund physical nodes. Once sufficient trust has been built and funds have been accumulated, start crowdfunding apartments, houses, and even towns to bring digital citizens into the physical world within real co-living communities. Digitally connect physical communities. Link these physical nodes together into a network archipelago, a set of digitally connected physical territories distributed around the world. Nodes of the network archipelago range from one-person apartments to in-person communities of arbitrary size. Physical access is granted by holding a web3 cryptopassport, and mixed reality is used to seamlessly link the online and offline worlds. Conduct an on-chain census. As the society scales, run a cryptographically auditable census to demonstrate the growing size of your population, income, and real-estate footprint. This is how a startup society proves traction in the face of skepticism. Gain diplomatic recognition. A startup society with sufficient scale should eventually be able to negotiate for diplomatic recognition from at least one pre-existing government, and from there gradually increased sovereignty, slowly becoming a true network state.

The game had only two rules. The first was that every statement had to have at least two words in which the first letters were switched. “You’re not my little sister,” Shawn said. “You’re my sittle lister.” He pronounced the words lazily, blunting the t’s to d’s so that it sounded like “siddle lister.” The second rule was that every word that sounded like a number, or like it had a number in it, had to be changed so that the number was one higher. The word “to” for example, because it sounds like the number “two,” would become “three.” “Siddle Lister,” Shawn might say, “we should pay a-eleven-tion. There’s a checkpoint ahead and I can’t a-five-d a ticket. Time three put on your seatbelt.” When we tired of this, we’d turn on the CB and listen to the lonely banter of truckers stretched out across the interstate. “Look out for a green four-wheeler,” a gruff voice said, when we were somewhere between Sacramento and Portland. “Been picnicking in my blind spot for a half hour.” A four-wheeler, Shawn explained, is what big rigs call cars and pickups. Another voice came over the CB to complain about a red Ferrari that was weaving through traffic at 120 miles per hour. “Bastard damned near hit a little blue Chevy,” the deep voice bellowed through the static. “Shit, there’s kids in that Chevy. Anybody up ahead wanna cool this hothead down?” The voice gave its location. Shawn checked the mile marker. We were ahead. “I’m a white Pete pulling a fridge,” he said. There was silence while everybody checked their mirrors for a Peterbilt with a reefer. Then a third voice, gruffer than the first, answered: “I’m the blue KW hauling a dry box.” “I see you,” Shawn said, and for my benefit pointed to a navy-colored Kenworth a few cars ahead. When the Ferrari appeared, multiplied in our many mirrors, Shawn shifted into high gear, revving the engine and pulling beside the Kenworth so that the two fifty-foot trailers were running side by side, blocking both lanes. The Ferrari honked, weaved back and forth, braked, honked again. “How long should we keep him back there?” the husky voice said, with a deep laugh. “Until he calms down,” Shawn answered. Five miles later, they let him pass. The trip lasted about a week, then we told Tony to find us a load to Idaho. “Well, Siddle Lister,” Shawn said when we pulled into the junkyard, “back three work.” — THE WORM CREEK OPERA HOUSE announced a new play: Carousel. Shawn drove me to the audition, then surprised me by auditioning himself. Charles was also there, talking to a girl named

I’m having my lunch when I hear a familiar hoarse shout, ‘Oy Tony!’ I whip round, damaging my neck further, to see Michael Gambon in the lunch queue. … Gambon tells me the story of Olivier auditioning him at the Old Vic in 1962. His audition speech was from Richard III. ‘See, Tone, I was thick as two short planks then and I didn’t know he’d had a rather notable success in the part. I was just shitting myself about meeting the Great Man. He sussed how green I was and started farting around.’ As reported by Gambon, their conversation went like this: Olivier: ‘What are you going to do for me?’ Gambon: ‘Richard the Third.’ Olivier: ‘Is that so. Which part?’ Gambon: ‘Richard the Third.’ Olivier: ‘Yes, but which part?’ Gambon: ‘Richard the Third.’ Olivier: ‘Yes, I understand that, but which part?’ Gambon: ‘Richard the Third.’ Olivier: ‘But which character? Catesby? Ratcliffe? Buckingham’s a good part …’ Gambon: ‘Oh I see, beg your pardon, no, Richard the Third.’ Olivier: ‘What, the King? Richard?’ Gambon: ‘ — the Third, yeah.’ Olivier: “You’ve got a fucking cheek, haven’t you?’ Gambon: ‘Beg your pardon?’ Olivier: ‘Never mind, which part are you going to do?’ Gambon: ‘Richard the Third.’ Olivier: ‘Don’t start that again. Which speech?’ Gambon: ‘Oh I see, beg your pardon, “Was every woman in this humour woo’d.”‘ Olivier: ‘Right. Whenever you’re ready.’ Gambon: ‘ “Was ever woman in this humour woo’d –” ‘ Olivier: ‘Wait. Stop. You’re too close. Go further away. I need to see the whole shape, get the full perspective.’ Gambon: ‘Oh I see, beg your pardon …’ Gambon continues, ‘So I go over to the far end of the room, Tone, thinking that I’ve already made an almighty tit of myself, so how do I save the day? Well I see this pillar and I decide to swing round it and start the speech with a sort of dramatic punch. But as I do this my ring catches on a screw and half my sodding hand gets left behind. I think to myself, “Now I mustn’t let this throw me since he’s already got me down as a bit of an arsehole”, so I plough on … “Was ever woman in this humour woo’d –”‘ Olivier: ‘Wait. Stop. What’s the blood?’ Gambon: ‘Nothing, nothing, just a little gash, I do beg your pardon …’ A nurse had to be called and he suffered the indignity of being given first aid with the greatest actor in the world passing the bandages. At last it was done. Gambon: ‘Shall I start again?’ Olivier: ‘No. I think I’ve got a fair idea how you’re going to do it. You’d better get along now. We’ll let you know.’ Gambon went back to the engineering factory in Islington where he was working. At four that afternoon he was bent over his lathe, working as best as he could with a heavily bandaged hand, when he was called to the phone. It was the Old Vic. ‘It’s not easy talking on the phone, Tone. One, there’s the noise of the machinery. Two, I have to keep my voice down ’cause I’m cockney at work and posh with theatre people. But they offer me a job, spear-carrying, starting immediately. I go back to my work-bench, heart beating in my chest, pack my tool-case, start to go. The foreman comes up, says, “Oy, where you off to?” “I’ve got bad news,” I say, “I’ve got to go.” He says, “Why are you taking your tool box?” I say, “I can’t tell you, it’s very bad news, might need it.” And I never went back there, Tone. Home on the bus, heart still thumping away. A whole new world ahead. We tend to forget what it felt like in the beginning.

The Seventh Central Pay Commission was appointed in February 2014 by the Government of India (Ministry of Finance) under the Chairmanship of Justice Ashok Kumar Mathur. The Commission has been given 18 months to make its recommendations. The terms of reference of the Commission are as follows:  1. To examine, review, evolve and recommend changes that are desirable and feasible regarding the principles that should govern the emoluments structure including pay, allowances and other facilities/benefits, in cash or kind, having regard to rationalisation and simplification therein as well as the specialised needs of various departments, agencies and services, in respect of the following categories of employees:-  (i) Central Government employees—industrial and non-industrial; (ii) Personnel belonging to the All India Services; (iii) Personnel of the Union Territories; (iv) Officers and employees of the Indian Audit and Accounts Department; (v) Members of the regulatory bodies (excluding the RBI) set up under the Acts of Parliament; and (vi) Officers and employees of the Supreme Court.   2. To examine, review, evolve and recommend changes that are desirable and feasible regarding the principles that should govern the emoluments structure, concessions and facilities/benefits, in cash or kind, as well as the retirement benefits of the personnel belonging to the Defence Forces, having regard to the historical and traditional parties, with due emphasis on the aspects unique to these personnel.   3. To work out the framework for an emoluments structure linked with the need to attract the most suitable talent to government service, promote efficiency, accountability and responsibility in the work culture, and foster excellence in the public governance system to respond to the complex challenges of modern administration and the rapid political, social, economic and technological changes, with due regard to expectations of stakeholders, and to recommend appropriate training and capacity building through a competency based framework.   4. To examine the existing schemes of payment of bonus, keeping in view, inter-alia, its bearing upon performance and productivity and make recommendations on the general principles, financial parameters and conditions for an appropriate incentive scheme to reward excellence in productivity, performance and integrity.   5. To review the variety of existing allowances presently available to employees in addition to pay and suggest their rationalisation and simplification with a view to ensuring that the pay structure is so designed as to take these into account.   6. To examine the principles which should govern the structure of pension and other retirement benefits, including revision of pension in the case of employees who have retired prior to the date of effect of these recommendations, keeping in view that retirement benefits of all Central Government employees appointed on and after 01.01.2004 are covered by the New Pension Scheme (NPS).   7. To make recommendations on the above, keeping in view:  (i) the economic conditions in the country and the need for fiscal prudence; (ii) the need to ensure that adequate resources are available for developmental expenditures and welfare measures; (iii) the likely impact of the recommendations on the finances of the state governments, which usually adopt the recommendations with some modifications; (iv) the prevailing emolument structure and retirement benefits available to employees of Central Public Sector Undertakings; and (v) the best global practices and their adaptability and relevance in Indian conditions.   8. To recommend the date of effect of its recommendations on all the above.

This game is likewise fantastic for study hall educating. Instructors can draw in understudies in a study hall jargon or sentence structure audit. Jed Fernandez is appropriate for middle of the road and progressed esl students. It very well may be utilized to invigorate a dull class, to audit work that was done or essentially as a compensation for good study hall work. Have some good times educating and learning English.

thought about how I could take initiative to move my career forward every day. I asked more experienced brokers if I could shadow them for a day or run one of their open houses. I put more ads on Craigslist. I worked to be less shy. Soon I started to feel less weird about not going to auditions, and more excited about selling. It was a slow, steady process. There were occasional bumps, big and small, but I kept going. At first, I was fueled by fear and the scary thoughts of returning home to Colorado a failure.

Contingent upon the setting of the audit, numerous entrepreneurs can cause more mischief by reacting to a negative survey than not, in particular in light of the fact that there are such countless potential snares to fall into when reacting to an irritated client. In this way, as opposed to quickly replying, make a stride back and ensure you have a methodology for reacting. Stage one is evaluating the audit. It is vital to survey the audit cautiously and carefully. A few analysts are searching for a reaction immediately on the grounds that they really need a response to a worry which they express inside their survey. These audits ought to be reacted to immediately with an answer that tends to the issue straightforwardly with an answer if there is one. Image for post The survey reaction will live everlastingly and will be seen by many individuals (not simply the commentator), so it needs to ponder emphatically the business. We suggest the accompanying structure: Say thanks to them by name for setting aside the effort to leave criticism Recognize the particular circumstance (you don’t need it to appear to be a nonexclusive reaction) Apologize for their negative insight Express that what they encountered isn’t the means by which the business works Clarify any means you will take to guarantee that no one has that experience once more Welcome them to reach you straightforwardly as you’d like a chance to make it right Give your name and an immediate telephone number and additionally email Attempt to utilize your regular voice and be certified and legit. Official-sounding PR articulations simply don’t work in survey reactions; putting on a show of being a genuine human does.

True to her word, Iris began getting me meatier auditions. Working in Romania had given me a taste of what it was like to make a movie; I hoped it would be the start of something more. With that expectation came a lot of scary internal pressure. I was shocked to realize how much more pleasant it was to feel like an underdog.

We are connected, members of a shared nation and a shared economy, where the advantages of the rich often come at the expense of the poor. But that arrangement is not inevitable or permanent. It was made by human hands and can be unmade by them. We can fashion a new society, starting with our own lives. Where we decide to work and live, what we buy, how we vote, and where we put our energies as citizens all have consequences for poor families. Becoming a poverty abolitionist, then, entails conducting an audit of our lives, personalizing poverty by examining all the ways we are connected to the problem—and to the solution.

Brittney, our firstborn, is married with three children. My husband and I are extroverts, and Brittney is an introvert. At first, I wasn’t sure what to do with her. She was shy, and I wondered how much to push her socially. My instincts told me she would eventually grow out of her shyness, and I wasn’t going to make a problem out of something that really wasn’t one. I regularly engaged her in conversation, encouraged her to talk about her ideas, her interests, her feelings, and what was going on inside, but I tried not to push. We did the things that happened naturally for our family. She attended classes once a week at a homeschool co-op, we went to church, and we got together with friends. I modeled what good conversation looks like, but I never really made it a topic of conversation because I felt it might make her self-conscious. Brittney made friends along the way. She loved drama class, and one of the reasons she enrolled in it was because she wanted to challenge herself to grow. When she was fifteen, she auditioned for and got the lead role in the spring play. Suddenly, she blossomed and took on a leadership role that defied all evidence she was an introvert at heart. She’s never been the same. She continued to grow in confidence and is a strong, gracious soul who isn’t afraid to say what she thinks when the situation calls for it. As a thirty-year-old mom who is homeschooling her kids, she tells me that pushing an introvert is the worst thing a parent can do. She believes she would never have grown so naturally into her own skin if we had not given her permission to do so at her own pace. After high school, she worked as a receptionist at a doctor’s office, and the patients there loved her. Not only can Brittney easily talk with people her own age, but with anyone she meets regardless of their age.

It is worth noting here that, at Amazon, even the most senior executives review the full WBR deck of metrics, including all the inputs and outputs. Metrics—as well as anecdotes about the customer experience—are the area where the leadership principle Dive Deep is most clearly demonstrated by senior leaders. They carefully examine the trends and changes in the metrics; audit incidents, failures, and customer anecdotes; and consider whether the input metrics should be updated in some way to improve the outputs.

It’s astonishing, he said. What is? The things that happen down there. I have no idea what you’re talking about. He couldn’t begin to tell her. Life. Four billion years of chance had written a score of inconceivable intricacy into every living cell. And every cell was a variation on that same first theme, splitting and copying itself without end through the world. All those sequences, gigabits long, were just waiting to be auditioned, transcribed, arranged, tinkered with, added to by the same brains that those scores assembled. A person could work in such a medium—wild forms and fresh sonorities. Tunes for forever, for no one.

Thousands of girls are here in L.A. doing the same thing I’m doing. Working in crappy restaurants. Dodging lechers at auditions. Catching buses late at night because they are hungry. They want their big break just like I do, and are willing to pay their dues.” “And I don’t give a damn about them!” He plows a hand through the hair dipping to the crinkled line of his eyebrows. “I care about you. Only you.

Quincy, I’m, I’m . . . not prepared to do an audition,” I stammered. “I didn’t know, when you called, you know, what we were doing and all that.” “It’s only a couple of scenes. I got some people out there who will read with you. You just gotta be you and have fun.” “Quincy, I can not do an audition in the middle of a party. I need to prepare, I just need some time, to work on it.” “OK, I hear that—how much time you need?” Quincy asked. “I mean, just, uh, give me a week, and I’ll find an acting coach, and I can study it, so I can do it, not just read it.” Quincy considered my words. “OK, so you need a week?” “Yes, a week, a week is perfect!” “OK, so you know what’s gonna happen in a week?” Quincy asked. But before I could answer, he said, “Brandon Tartikoff is going to have an emergency on one of his shows and he’s gonna have to fly to Kansas to fire somebody. Then he’s gonna have to reschedule for the following week.” “Oh, cool, cool! Two weeks would be even better,” I said, missing the subtleties of Quincy’s point. “Right, two weeks. Then Warren Littlefield is gonna have something at his kids’ elementary school that he forgot was on the schedule he can’t get out of because his wife’s going to tear him a new one if he doesn’t show up. And he’s gonna have to reschedule for two weeks after that.

Identify Your Strengths With Strengths Finder 2.0 One tool that can help you remember your achievements is the ‘Strengths Finder’ "assessment. The father of Strengths Psychology, Donald O. Clifton, Ph.D, along with Tom Rath and a team of scientists at The Gallup Organization, created StrengthsFinder. You can take this assessment by purchasing the Strengths Finder 2.0 book. The value of SF 2.0 is that it helps you understand your unique strengths. Once you have this knowledge, you can review past activities and understand what these strengths enabled you to do. Here’s what I mean, in the paragraphs below, I’ve listed some of the strengths identified by my Strengths Finder assessment and accomplishments where these strengths were used. “You can see repercussions more clearly than others can.” In a prior role, I witnessed products being implemented in the sales system at breakneck speed. While quick implementation seemed good, I knew speed increased the likelihood of revenue impacting errors. I conducted an audit and uncovered a misconfigured product. While the customer had paid for the product, the revenue had never been recognized. As a result of my work, we were able to add another $7.2 million that went straight to the bottom line. “You automatically pinpoint trends, notice problems, or identify opportunities many people overlook.” At my former employer, leadership did not audit certain product manager decisions. On my own initiative, I instituted an auditing process. This led to the discovery that one product manager’s decisions cost the company more than $5M. “Because of your strengths, you can reconfigure factual information or data in ways that reveal trends, raise issues, identify opportunities, or offer solutions.” In a former position, product managers were responsible for driving revenue, yet there was no revenue reporting at the product level. After researching the issue, I found a report used to process monthly journal entries which when reconfigured, provided product managers with monthly product revenue. “You entertain ideas about the best ways to…increase productivity.” A few years back, I was trained by the former Operations Manager when I took on that role. After examining the tasks, I found I could reduce the time to perform the role by 66%. As a result, I was able to tell my Director I could take on some of the responsibilities of the two managers she had to let go. “You entertain ideas about the best ways to…solve a problem.” About twenty years ago I worked for a division where legacy systems were being replaced by a new company-wide ERP system. When I discovered no one had budgeted for training in my department, I took it upon myself to identify how to extract the data my department needed to perform its role, documented those learnings and that became the basis for a two day training class. “Sorting through lots of information rarely intimidates you. You welcome the abundance of information. Like a detective, you sort through it and identify key pieces of evidence. Following these leads, you bring the big picture into view.” I am listing these strengths to help you see the value of taking the Strengths Finder Assessment.

PERSONAL IDENTITY AUDIT How do you think the world views you? How do you view yourself? How is the “public you” different from the “private you”? What conditions produce the BEST VERSION OF YOU? (The version of you who competes and gets the highest results.) Competition Fear of loss A setback A victory Having someone believe in you A point to prove Name a ninety-day period of your career during which you were the hungriest to succeed. What drove you? How do you handle a public loss? Do you feel you’re entitled to things without earning them? How difficult a personality do you have? Do you have a tendency of blaming others for your lack of effort or discipline? If yes, why? Very difficult Difficult Somewhat difficult Easygoing Very easygoing Do you get along with people like yourself or can there be only one of you in the room? Who do you speak to the most when you’re losing? People ahead of you People at the same level as you People not yet at your level No one Who are you secretly envious of that no one knows about?Don’t worry about writing this one down. No one will know youranswer but you. How is your relationship with the person you’remost envious of? How much of that envy is due to your not willing to do the work that the other individual is willing to do? What type of people annoy you the most and why? What type of people do you like the most and why? Who do you collaborate with the most? What qualities and traits do you admire most in others? How do you handle pressure? How often do you challenge your own vision to help improve your perspective? What brings out the worst side of you? Why? What brings out the best side of you? Why? What do you value the most in business and in life? What do you fear the most in your line of business? What accomplishment are you most proud of and why? Who do you want to be? What kind of life do you want to live?

We can’t leave it up to the goodwill of companies and government agencies to do the hard work of auditing and refining their algorithms while shielded from public view. Instead, we need to create an expectation that they will do so, transparently, as part of a new era of algorithmic accountability. Many decisions that impact our lives will depend on it.

Finding the Right Accounting Firm Near You Choosing the right accounting firm is crucial for managing your financial records and ensuring compliance with regulations. Whether you’re a small business owner or an individual in need of tax services, working with a local accounting firm can provide personalized support and expertise. By finding a firm near you, you can establish a close working relationship and enjoy the convenience of in-person consultations, making it easier to address your specific financial needs. Benefits of Working with a Local Accounting Firm One of the main advantages of working with a local accounting firm is the ability to meet face-to-face. This personal interaction helps build trust and fosters a stronger understanding of your financial situation. Local firms are also more familiar with regional tax laws, regulations, and business practices, allowing them to offer tailored solutions that align with your needs. Additionally, local firms often provide quicker response times and more personalized services compared to larger, national firms, which can be beneficial for small businesses and individuals. Services Offered by Accounting Firms Near You Most local accounting firms provide a wide range of services that cater to both businesses and individuals. These services include bookkeeping, tax preparation, payroll management, auditing, and financial consulting. For businesses, accounting firms offer valuable assistance with tax compliance, budgeting, and cash flow management. Individuals can also benefit from services such as personal tax filing, retirement planning, and estate management. Many firms also offer specialized services tailored to specific industries, ensuring that they meet the unique needs of their clients. How to Choose the Best Local Accounting Firm When searching for the best accounting firm near you, it’s important to consider factors like experience, reputation, and the range of services offered. Start by looking for firms that specialize in your industry or financial needs. Additionally, check reviews and ask for recommendations from local businesses or colleagues. It’s also a good idea to schedule an initial consultation to assess the firm’s approach and ensure it aligns with your financial goals. Conclusion In conclusion, finding the right accounting firm near you can significantly enhance your financial management. By working with a local firm, you benefit from personalized services, in-depth regional knowledge, and a close working relationship. With the right partner, you can ensure that your financial records are accurate, compliant, and aligned with your long-term goals.

Tax Service Near Me: Your Solution for Hassle-Free Tax Management Are you searching for reliable tax services near you? Managing taxes can be a daunting task, especially with ever-changing laws and regulations. Luckily, local tax service providers offer professional help that can make your tax process stress-free and efficient. Why Choose a Local Tax Service? Choosing a tax service near you has numerous benefits. First and foremost, they are familiar with the specific tax laws and regulations of your area. This localized knowledge ensures that you receive the most accurate and beneficial tax solutions. Additionally, being close by means you can easily meet face-to-face for consultations, which provides a personal touch often lacking with online-only services. Comprehensive Services Offered Local tax services typically provide a wide range of solutions, from personal tax filing to complex business tax management. They also offer tax planning to help you minimize your tax liability in future years. Moreover, many of these providers can assist with tax audits, ensuring you are well-prepared in case of an IRS inquiry. How to Find the Best Tax Service Near You When looking for a tax service, consider their experience, customer reviews, and service offerings. You can start by searching online for "tax service near me" or asking friends and family for recommendations. Once you narrow down your options, it’s wise to schedule a consultation to see if their expertise aligns with your needs. Conclusion In conclusion, working with a local tax service can simplify your tax responsibilities. By choosing professionals with expertise in your area, you can confidently navigate your tax season without worry. If you're feeling overwhelmed by taxes, don’t hesitate to contact a trusted local provider today.

One of the people leading the field in algorithmic auditing is Cathy O’Neil, the author of Weapons of Math Destruction. Her book is one of the catalysts for the entire movement for algorithmic accountability. O’Neil’s consulting company, O’Neil Risk Consulting & Algorithmic Auditing (ORCAA), does bespoke auditing to help companies and organizations manage and audit their algorithmic risks. I have had the good fortune to consult with ORCAA. When ORCAA considers an algorithm, they start by asking two questions: What does it mean for this algorithm to work? How could this algorithm fail, and for whom? One thing ORCAA does is what’s called an internal audit, which means they ask these questions directly of companies and other organizations, focusing on algorithms as they are used in specific contexts.

The job interview is perhaps the most obvious example of this sort of unpaid emotional labour: here the candidate must appear sufficiently confident and enthusiastic to satisfy a selection panel assessing "presentation" and "personality", as if these were objective scientific criteria. So the interview, regardless of the job, becomes a kind of talent show audition hinging on generic questions about change, teamwork etc. (the equivalents of the standard repertoire of X Factor ballads), while the interviewee must project an all-purpose positivity by extemporising around this script without revealing its artificiality. The candidate must project the right image and hit the right notes, and must put his 'heart and soul' into every performance, even for the most dreary role.

I became friendly with [a] bass player. . . . He told me about this place called the Berklee College of Music, and said that you didn’t have to audition. . . . They had a summer session you could attend; that was “Come one, come all.” So I went there and it opened a lot of doors for me. First of all, the ear training—to work on your ear and learn to hear things you’d heretofore not been able to ascertain, individual instruments, chords and where they went, and remember melodies better . . . I’d just thought, either you could do it or you couldn’t. That plus learning about chord progressions and music theory, and which chords sound good going into other chords . . . that was really a revelation. . . . So I started applying that to writing songs. Which were all terrible. But you do it enough, and you get better at it.

When I turned twenty-one, having hardly started working as an actor, I was asked to do a reading with Elia Kazan, practically the biggest director in the world in both stage and screen, for a new movie he was casting. It was called America, America, and it was going to tell the story of a young Greek man’s journey to the States. They were trying to find a young actor, relatively unknown, probably ethnic looking, to play the lead role. I thought I had a shot at it. I don’t know if I would have excelled at it, but I felt I had a real chance because I fit the description. But I was late and I missed the audition. I went there and they were gone and it was over. They got somebody else.

One of my incidental tasks at the radio station was to hire talent to build up the programs. One evening a couple of fellows who called themselves Sam and Henry came in to audition. They gave me their routine, a few songs and vaudevillian patter. Their singing was lousy but the jokes weren’t too bad, so I hired them for five dollars apiece. They kept working on their characters and developed a Southern Negro dialogue that was a huge success. That team went on to make show business history, later changing the name of their act to Amos and Andy.

And so the politicians know who is doing the criticizing, and with whom to settle scores. Former Senator John Kerry made sure that Sam Fox never got his ambassadorship to Belgium. Fox was disciplined for having donated to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. The government subjected Frank VanderSloot and Catherine Engelbrecht to multiple audits as punishment for their conservative work. The IRS segregated out Tea Party applications and put them on hold as a penalty for opposing Barack Obama.

I’ve come face-to-face with these two questions countless times as a writer, an entrepreneur, a painter, a musician, and even a lawyer. On a more immediate level, the questions relate to the project you’re working on. If you’re a painter creating a collection of work, you may start to feel the questions arise as you explore whether a canvas or the collection is taking shape as you have envisioned it. On a more expansive level, the question emerges in the context of whether you should even be a painter or a writer, a coder, an entrepreneur, a CEO. I’ve seen actors struggle to build careers for decades, never coming close to earning enough to cover their bills. Yet they keep on keeping on, because their big break could be one audition away. And this is what they feel called to do. These are some of the most difficult and defining moments every creator faces. I’ve been told by legendary entrepreneurs, “If you have to ask, assume it’s resistance and soldier on.” They claim that you just know whether or not a project is meant to be. But I’ve witnessed countless people commit to perpetually unsuccessful projects or careers or, on the other side of the spectrum, come a breath away from what would’ve been breakthrough success had they just held on a bit longer. So I began to explore a more systematic process, a set of benchmarks, tests, and questions that might better guide these moments and help people decide whether to keep leaning into the journey, alter their course, or walk away and do something entirely different. We start by asking, “What was your inciting motivation?” What made you undertake this endeavor to begin with. Was it, in some form, the expression of a calling? Was it something to keep you busy? Was it about serving a group of people, solving a problem, or serving up a delight? Was it about money or doing anything you could to get your parents off your back and avoid grad school? Begin by going back to the time surrounding your decision to create whatever it is you’re creating and answer this question. Then move on to the next question. In light of the information and experiences you’ve had along the journey to date, does that original motive still hold true? Are you still equally or even more determined to make it happen? And given what you now know, do you believe you can make it happen?

TIME TO OPTIMIZE We need to rethink our workflow from the ground up. Paradoxically, you hold both the problem and the solution to your day-to-day challenges. No matter where you work or what horrible top-down systems plague your work, your mind and energy are yours and yours alone. You can surrender your day-to-day and the potential of your work to the burdens that surround you. Or, you can audit the way you work and own the responsibility of fixing it. This

Caitlin Ross was a pretty blonde white girl in a room full of pretty blonde white girls. She looked over the sea of heart-shaped faces and sighed. Every open call was the same, a swarm of female actors putting the lie to all of her father’s ungrammatical assurances that Caitlin was “very unique.” The audition was for an all-white musical adaptation of A Raisin in the Sun, which the producers were re-titling Caucrasian. It would undoubtedly be horrible and it didn’t pay, but Caitlin hadn’t been working lately and was getting desperate to appear in something. When she had emailed the company her headshot and résumé she had claimed that a reviewer had once described her as “like a young, white Debbie Allen,” and almost immediately she was asked to come in and read for the part of Beneatha. She

Jimmy’s goal since childhood, he explained to Siegel, had been to join the cast of Saturday Night Live. He was endearing. After a two-hour call, Siegel offered to represent him. She had one question, however. “Why don’t you stay and graduate?” Jimmy was a semester shy of a degree. Siegel suggested that they get started in the summer, so he’d have a bachelor’s degree to fall back on, just in case. “No, no,” Jimmy insisted. “I need to get on Saturday Night Live, and you’re going to make it happen, because you know Adam Sandler! I don’t want to do anything else.” Siegel knew this was a long shot—and a long-term endeavor—especially for an out-of-town kid with zero acting credits. But for some reason, she couldn’t turn him down; she had never met someone as focused and passionate about a single dream as this grinning bumpkin from the tiny town of Saugerties, New York. And though his skills were rough, given some time in the industry, she thought he might just make it. “OK, let’s do this,” she said. So, in January 1996 Jimmy quit college and moved to Los Angeles. For six months, Siegel booked him gigs on small, local stand-up comedy stages. Then, without warning, SNL put a call out for auditions; three cast members would be leaving the show. Having worked with one of the departing actors, David Spade, Siegel pulled a few strings and arranged a Hail Mary for the young Jimmy Fallon: an audition at The Comic Strip. SO HERE HE WAS. Fresh-faced, sweating in his light shirt, holding his Troll doll. In front of Lorne Michaels and a phalanx of Hollywood shakers. When Jimmy ended his three-minute bit, the audience clapped politely. True to his reputation, Michaels didn’t laugh. Not once. Jimmy went home and awaited word. Finally, the results came: SNL had invited Tracy Morgan, Ana Gasteyer, and Chris Kattan, each of whom had hustled in the comedy scene for years, to join the cast. Jimmy—the newbie whose well-connected manager had finagled an invite—was crushed. “Was he completely raw? A hundred percent,” Siegel says. But, the SNL people said, “Let’s keep an eye on him.

At the age of only 14, I was my mother’s employer. She worked for me, in a twisted order of hierarchy. Professionally, I told her what I wanted and didn’t want. I expected her to handle my appearances, schedule my auditions and manage my money. I know that to most, having some kind of authority over one’s parents sounds like a dream come true. “Here’s how it’s gonna go down, Ma.” But it wasn’t at all. I wasn’t comfortable being my mom’s boss or with the daily flip-flop of authority. I was supposed to be her employer on the set and her kid once I walked through the front door of our house. The power shifts were freaky and hurt my brain a little.

deliberate practice” to describe this style of serious study, defining it formally as an “activity designed, typically by a teacher, for the sole purpose of effectively improving specific aspects of an individual’s performance.”4 As hundreds of follow-up studies have since shown, deliberate practice provides the key to excellence in a diverse array of fields, among which are chess, medicine, auditing, computer programming, bridge, physics, sports, typing, juggling, dance, and music.

Under Grossman’s Regulation 2.0 scheme, government regulatory agencies would operate quite differently from the way they do today. Rather than establishing rules of market access, their primary job would be to establish and enforce requirements for after-the-fact transparency. Grossman imagines a city government responding to the arrival of Uber by passing an ordinance that states: “Anyone offering for-hire vehicle services may opt out of existing regulations as long as they implement mobile dispatch, e-hailing, and e-payments, 360-degree peer-review of drivers and passengers, and provide an open data API for public auditing of system performance with regards to equity, access, performance, and safety.”54

I wince, thinking about how this will tie up even more of our guys, doing menial work that the broken application should be doing. Nothing worries auditors more than direct edits of data without audit trails and proper controls.

All that self-indulgent whining she used to do: I’m a working mother with two small children! Woe is me! There just aren’t enough hours in my day! In fact, there were plenty more hours in the day if you just slept less. Now she went to bed at midnight instead of 10 P.M., and got up at five instead of seven. Living on less sleep gave her a not-unpleasant, mildly sedated feeling. She felt detached from all aspects of her life. She had no time anymore to feel. All that time she used to waste feeling, and analyzing her feelings, as if they were a matter of national significance. Clementine feels extremely nervous about her upcoming audition! Clementine doesn’t know if she’s good enough. Well, hooly-dooly, stop the presses, let’s research audition nerves, let’s talk earnestly with musician friends, let’s get constant reassurance.

Those women who fought the original battles suffer more than most. Hated and opposed when originally pushing down the barriers, they now often have to face contempt from a society which takes for granted their achievements. At a recent party I witnessed one such woman being challenged by a young man who had no sense of feminism's history or her involvement in it. 'Do you really call yourself a feminist?' he asked belligerently. 'Yes,' she answered rather wistfully, 'I'd still call myself that.' 'But what on earth does it mean?' he continued. 'I mean, is there really any need for it? Isn't it just part of the way we are, part of our unconscious?' It was a difficult and poignant moment for me, because it encapsulated both sides of my relationship with feminism. I greatly respected the woman for what she had achieved and deplored the man's lack of respect for why she had placed herself as she did. In such circumstances, no wonder she dug her heels in. This continuing lack of credibility and acceptance explains why feminists react badly when the fundamental tenets of the movement are challenged. But when I began to examine feminist ideas critically and challenge the idea that nothing had changed, I too met with resistance. There is a real reluctance to submit feminism's fundamental assumptions to an audit to see just how relevant they are to changing realities. The problem is that, by and large, I also agreed with what the man at that party said. Somewhere along the line something remarkable has happened. Individual feminists still meet with resistance and problems, but feminism as a movement has been extraordinarily successful; it has sunk into our unconscious. Our contemporary social world — and the way the sexes interact in it — is radically different from the one in which modern feminism emerged. Many of feminism's original objectives have been met, including the principle of equal pay for equal work, and the possibility of financial independence. Girls now are growing up in a world radically different from the one described by the early feminists. Feminism no longer has to be reiterated but simply breathed.

For example, there’s an uncharacteristic explosion of creativity among accountants. Yes, accountants: Groups like the Thriveal C.P.A. Network and the VeraSage Institute are leading that profession from its roots in near-total risk aversion to something approaching the opposite. Computing may have commoditized much of the industry’s everyday work, but some enterprising accountants are learning how to use some of their biggest assets — the trust of their clients and access to financial data — to provide deep insights into a company’s business. They’re identifying which activities are most profitable, which ones are wasteful and when the former become the latter. Accounting once was entirely backward-looking and, because no one would pay for an audit for fun, dependent on government regulation. It was a cost. Now real-time networked software can make it forward-looking and a source of profit. It’s worth remembering, though, that this process never ends: As soon as accountants discover a new sort of service to provide their customers, some software innovator will be seeking ways to automate it, which means those accountants will work to constantly come up with even newer ideas. The failure loop will

She flips to the second page. “The projects seem to fall into the following categories: replacing fragile infrastructure, vendor upgrades, or supporting some internal business requirement. The rest are a hodgepodge of audit and security work, data center upgrade work, and so forth.

for an individual/HUF having income as a proprietor or a working partner from a business or profession whose accounts are required to be audited, the due date of filing the return is September 30.

most of the NRIs are not a working partner or a proprietor of an audited business, the due date would be July 31 of the assessment year. Thus, for

In order for a person to work at a church legally as an independent contractor, we believe it is prudent to consider the following guidelines:   ·       The church cannot substantially direct the person’s duties; the church can only give them overall tasks to complete.   ·       The church cannot control or set their hours that they work.   ·       Since their “company” provides the service, they can send anyone to do the job.   ·       They cannot have an office at the church that is their primary office.   ·       It cannot be their only source of income.   ·       The church needs to have a written contract in place including cost, delivery of Services, duration (i.e. six months, one year, etc.) and a termination clause.   ·       They cannot participate in any employee benefits plans (insurance, retirement plans, etc).   ·       The contractor must provide annual proof of worker’s comp and liability insurance naming the church as additionally insured or the church could be held liable in the event of a claim.   ·       The church must issue a 1099 at the end of the year for all contract wages paid if the total amount for the year exceeds $600.00 to one contractor. We strongly recommend that no payments are made until an accurate and fully completed W-9 is completed by the contractor and on file at the church.        Given these requirements, many workers such as those in the nursery, kitchens, and other service areas are not 1099 contractors, but employees.     Regarding interim pastors, there is disagreement over whether they should receive a W-2 or 1099. Factors such as length of service, who supervises them, and whether they are a contractor, come into play in the decision on how to report their salary. For the best practice we recommend always using the W-2 to report salaries, but seeking tax and legal counsel would be wise to avoid any future IRS issues.      While there are advantages to the church to pay independent contractors who regularly work for the church such as avoiding the need to pay the employer's part of the FICA tax and the ease of terminating their services, we would recommend against their regular use.      We recommend against the use of independent contractors (that regularly work at the church) because we believe it can create the following problems for the church:   ·       Less control over the position   ·       Leaves the church open to an IRS challenge, which the church only has a 50/50 chance of defending, not to mention the cost and hassle of litigation   ·       In the event of insurance claims, the church may encounter issues with worker’s compensation coverage or liability insurance coverage such as sexual misconduct, etc.   ·       The church is open to contract disputes with the independent contractor   ·       Based on how the individual/company is filing their taxes, it could bring an unwanted tax audit to the church        Our conclusion is that we do not see enough cost-saving advantages for the church to move in this direction. It also creates unnecessary red flags for the IRS. The other looming question is, why is this such an important issue for such a small incremental (if any) tax break for the individual? Because the independent contractor will have to pay employer FICA, we don’t see any large tax advantage for this shift. They can claim mileage and some home office expense (maybe), but it just does not amount to enough to place the church at risk.      Here are some detailed guidelines

… Le Bouddha ne fut tout d’abord figuré que par des empreintes de pieds, ou par des symboles tels que l’arbre ou la roue (et il est remarquable que, de la même façon, le Christ aussi ne fut représenté pendant plusieurs siècles que par des figurations purement symboliques) ; comment et pourquoi en vint-on à admettre par la suite une image anthropomorphique ? Il faut voir là comme une concession aux besoins d’une époque moins intellectuelle, où la compréhension doctrinale était déjà affaiblie ; les « supports de contemplation », pour être aussi efficaces que possible, doivent en effet être adaptés aux conditions de chaque époque ; mais encore convient-il de remarquer que l’image humaine elle-même, ici comme dans le cas des « déités » hindoues, n’est réellement « anthropomorphique » que dans une certaine mesure, en ce sens qu’elle n’est jamais « naturaliste » et qu’elle garde toujours, avant tout et dans tous ses détails, un caractère essentiellement symbolique. Cela ne veut d’ailleurs point dire qu’il s’agisse d’une représentation « conventionnelle » comme l’imaginent les modernes, car un symbole n’est nullement le produit d’une invention humaine ; « le symbolisme est un langage hiératique et métaphysique, non un langage déterminé par des catégories organiques ou psychologiques ; son fondement est dans la correspondance analogique de tous les ordres de réalité, états d’être ou niveaux de référence ». La forme symbolique « est révélée » et « vue » dans le même sens que les incantations vêdiques ont été révélées et « entendues », et il ne peut y avoir aucune distinction de principe entre vision et audition, car ce qui importe n’est pas le genre de support sensible qui est employé, mais la signification qui y est en quelque sorte « incorporée ». L’élément proprement « surnaturel » est partie intégrante de l’image, comme il l’est des récits ayant une valeur « mythique », au sens originel de ce mot ; dans les deux cas, il s’agit avant tout de moyens destinés, non à communiquer, ce qui est impossible, mais à permettre de réaliser le « mystère », ce que ne saurait évidemment faire ni un simple portrait ni un fait historique comme tel. C’est donc la nature même de l’art symbolique en général qui échappe inévitablement au point de vue « rationaliste » des modernes, comme lui échappe, pour les mêmes raisons, le sens transcendant des « miracles » et le caractère « théophanique » du monde manifesté lui-même ; l’homme ne peut comprendre ces choses que s’il est à la fois sensitif et spirituel, et s’il se rend compte que « l’accès à la réalité ne s’obtient pas en faisant un choix entre la matière et l’esprit supposés sans rapports entre eux, mais plutôt en voyant dans les choses matérielles et sensibles une similitude formelle des prototypes spirituels que les sens ne peuvent atteindre directement » ; il s’agit là « d’une réalité envisagée à différents niveaux de référence, ou, si l’on préfère, de différents ordres de réalité, mais qui ne s’excluent pas mutuellement.

He turns around and resumes his pace, saying over his shoulder, “Tell me. All those projects that Jimmy your CISO is pushing. Do they increase the flow of project work through the IT organization?” “No,” I quickly answer, rushing to catch up again. “Do they increase operational stability or decrease the time required to detect and recover from outages or security breaches?” I think a bit longer. “Probably not. A lot of it is just more busywork, and in most cases, the work they’re asking for is risky and actually could cause outages.” “Do these projects increase Brent’s capacity?” I laugh humorlessly. “No, the opposite. The audit issues alone could tie up Brent for the next year.” “And what would doing all of Jimmy’s projects do to WIP levels?” he asks, opening the door

Around eighteen, Dinah suddenly became interested in acting. I worked with her on This Property Is Condemned, a Tennessee Williams one-act, for her audition for the Actors Studio. Then came Marty Maraschino in Grease, then a running part in Soap, a hot TV series. Then the lead in Neil Simon’s play I Ought to Be in Pictures. She was accepted by the Studio and quickly hired by Robert Redford as the girl in Ordinary People who commits suicide.

Lenin’s and Stalin’s form of communism is gone, yet its trappings have been expropriated by mega-corporations. We have companies featuring central planning by troikas, mission statements crafted by apparatchiks, five-year plans, no right to choose leaders in companies, no democracy in the workplace, a clear distinction between intelligentsia and peasants (top CEOs make 152 times the median salary and enjoy company dachas, jets, and limos), and state monitoring (time clocks, dress codes, drug screening, “employee assistance” plans, e-mail monitoring, no smoking, and other personal conduct rules, as well as family-life audits).

A liberal front group called Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) actually sent a letter to the head of the FCC asking for Fox’s broadcast licenses to be revoked.16 Do we have any other examples of the Obama administration using a supposedly neutral government agency to go after its critics and political opponents? That’s right: President Obama’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has clearly gone after groups that worked against the administration’s agenda—and individuals, too! I myself got an audit in 2011, which I’m sure had nothing at all to do with my frequent statements on television opposing President Obama’s reelection.

In the early '90s a beautiful young Russian soprano who loved music was studying opera at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. She told us how despite her single-minded focus on developing her voice, her teachers thought that perhaps, at best, one day she could sing in a chorus somewhere. But the soprano wasn't going to let her teachers' low opinion of her stop her from achieving her goal. While becoming a part-time janitor may not seem like a brilliant career move for an aspiring opera star, she took a job mopping floors at St. Petersburg's Kirov Opera, the greatest opera company in Russia. Still working hard in the conservatory, she earned the chance to audition for the Kirov and was accepted into the ensemble. During rehearsals, when the lead singer became ill, the stage director asked the soprano if she knew the part. "Of course I knew it", she told us. "I knew all the parts. I was ready." She had worked hard; she had worked smart by putting herself in the right place at the right time. And she performed well. Her once-skeptical teachers never could have imagined the career that the soprano, Anna Netrebko, would go on to have, becoming an operatic superstar and the reigning diva of the twenty-first century.

Take whatever job you can at one of those companies. Don’t worry too much about the title—focus on the work. If you get a foot in the door at a growing company, you’ll find opportunities to grow, too. Just whatever you do, don’t become a “management consultant” at a behemoth like McKinsey or Bain or one of the other eight consultancies that dominate the industry. They all have thousands upon thousands of employees and work almost exclusively with Fortune 5000 companies. These corporations, typically led by tentative, risk-averse CEOs, call in the management consultants to do a massive audit, find the flaws, and present leadership with a new plan that will magically “fix” everything. What a fairy tale—don’t get me started. But to many new grads, it sounds perfect: you get paid incredibly well to travel around the world, work with powerful companies and executives, and learn exactly how to make a business successful. It’s an alluring promise. Parts of it are even true. Yes, you get a nice paycheck. And yes, you get plenty of practice pitching important clients. But you don’t learn how to build or run a company. Not really. Steve Jobs once said of management consulting, “You do get a broad cut at companies but it’s very thin. It’s like a picture of a banana: you might get a very accurate picture but it’s only two dimensions, and without the experience of actually doing it you never get three dimensional. So you might have a lot of pictures on your walls, you can show it off to your friends—I’ve worked in bananas, I’ve worked in peaches, I’ve worked in grapes—but you never really taste it.” If you do choose to go that route and find yourself at one of the Big Four or the other top six firms, then that is of course your choice. Just know before you go what you want to learn and the experiences you need for your next chapter. Don’t get stuck. Management consulting should never be your endpoint—it should be a way station, a brief pause on your journey to actually doing something. Making something. To do great things, to really learn, you can’t shout suggestions from the rooftop then move on while someone else does the work. You have to get your hands dirty. You have to care about every step, lovingly craft every detail. You have to be there when it falls apart so you can put it back together. You have to actually do the job. You have to love the job.

The more ambitious the OKR, the greater the risk of overlooking a vital criterion. To safeguard quality while pushing for quantitative deliverables, one solution is to pair key results, to measure both effect and counter effect, as Grove wrote in High Output Management. When key results focus on output, Grove noted, 'the paired counterparts should stress the quality of work, thus in Accounts Payable, the number of vouchers processed should be paired with the number of errors found either by auditing or by our suppliers. For another example, the number of square feet cleaned by a custodial group should be paired with by rating of the quality of work as assessed by a senior manager with an office in that building.' -- Let the quantity goal be three new features, the paired quality goal will be fewer than 5 bugs per feature in quality assurance testing. The result - developers will write cleaner code. If the quantity goal is 50 million dollars in Q1 sales, the quality goal can be 10 million dollars in maintenance contracts, because sustained retention by sales professionals will increase customer success and satisfaction.

Everything I was going through boiled down to fear. Fear of trying and failing. . . . If you go to an audition and don’t really try, if you’re not really prepared, if you didn’t work as hard as you could have and you don’t win, you have an excuse. . . . Nothing is harder than saying, ‘I gave it my all and it wasn’t good enough.

So if we need to be intentional about the liturgies of Christian worship in the congregation, we should be equally intentional about the liturgies of the household.5 More specifically, we should be attentive to the rhythms and rituals that constitute the background hum of our families and should consider the telos toward which these activities are oriented. The frenetic pace of our lives means we often end up falling into routines without much reflection. We do what we think “good parents” do. And we might think these are just “things that we do” without recognizing that they may also be doing something to us. This chapter is an invitation to take a kind of liturgical audit of our households, recognizing their power to calibrate our hearts and acknowledging that our domestic rituals might need to be recalibrated as a result of our auditing work.

Dive Deep. Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and are skeptical when metrics and anecdotes differ. No task is beneath them. Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit. Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly. Deliver Results. Leaders focus on the key inputs for their business and deliver them with the right quality and in a timely fashion. Despite setbacks, they rise to the occasion and never settle.

Don’t let your pride, status and ego cost you opportunities , because your pride could not allow you to stand in a line, to apply, to audition, to go for an interview, to ask for help, to apologize, to work for your friends or with your friends. To be seen or associated with someone and to work with smaller brands or businesses.

When I returned to CreativeLive as its CEO after a couple of years away from daily operations at the company, a tidal wave of meetings crashed through my calendar, obliterating my daily creative practice. I gave up a lot of freedom in order to learn the creative skill of building a business at scale. As soon as I could catch my breath, though, I had to do exactly what I’m prescribing here. I had to audit my schedule and realign it with my ambitions and values.

Because sole proprietors report their business profits and losses to the IRS on Schedule C, there is a much higher risk of IRS audit. Schedule C returns are audited at a five times greater rate than corporate tax returns.

Why mobile app hosting is fundamental for your versatile application? Portable application hosting is fundamental for your site? Also, why it is compulsory to work? To lay it out plainly, you have constructed a versatile application. What would be the best next step? Fostering an application isn't generally so direct as tossing it in the air; it needs a spot to live, or all the more precisely, a hosting supplier. It's better assuming it's done on an outside server since your gadget won't deal with the power. An application that crashes each time won't acquire large number of clients, which youthful new businesses need. Versatile app hosting services is fundamental, with a powerful server is the best arrangement. We'll take a gander at how portable applications create and why composing code isn't the entire story. How would you foster a portable application? It's more convoluted than you likely suspect. It comprises of two sections. Utilizing a telephone or tablet, the client can explore the application's front end by clicking buttons and moving sliders. The server-side, nonetheless, should be answerable for showing buttons and sliders. When you click on the button, a data demand is shipped off the server. Subsequent to handling, you will figure out the outcomes. You ought to have another screen stacked in practically no time, so you will not lose significant clients pausing. Is it important to have a versatile application? Versatile application improvement requires something other than composing code. The client's gadget will clearly contain the whole backend if the application resembles a mini-computer with just rudimentary capacities. Notwithstanding, a backend should exist that offers more complicated capacities, and something should empower solicitations to be satisfied there. In this manner, App Hosting is fundamental. It alludes to introducing an application on the server of a supplier, like Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Google Cloud Platform (GCP). These suppliers put the application on their servers. There are basically no distinctions between Mobile App Hosting and hosting sites. In like manner, the versatile application hosting server processes a solicitation sent by the client. The client makes a move or sends a solicitation. So what precisely is Code Push? It would assist with fixing bugs when they happen toward the front. In AppStore and Google Play, an update requires an audit each time it is made. The interaction requires 30 minutes for Android and could take more time to a day for iOS. You can robotize this and pass the survey by transferring updates to Code Push. Designers can without much of a stretch update their React Native applications utilizing the App Center. Applications can demand refreshes utilizing the gave client SDK from the focal vault, which is a focal store for refreshes. Mechanizing refreshes permits us to fix blunders quicker, setting aside us time and cash. How do these administrations vary? Cloud hosting is one model. It's something we've utilized ourselves first. Then, at that point, on the grounds that a ton of organizations use it, Whence comes this? Rather than regular hosting, cloud hosting utilizes only one server rather than different servers. A virtual and actual organization of cloud servers has the application or site. How much is portable application hosting fundamental in the cloud? Reliability You would lose your item assuming something happened to the server it was facilitated. Another situation includes many machines that are associated. Information will stay on the organization regardless of whether it vanishes from one server. Efficiencies Dissimilar to a normal server, cloud hosting can increment framework assets. This is on the grounds that the server's ability should be expanded assuming the quantity of clients increments abruptly. Assuming you utilize a devoted server, the cycle is more adaptable.

At many companies, when the senior leadership meets, they tend to focus more on big-picture, high-level strategy issues than on execution. At Amazon, it’s the opposite. Amazon leaders toil over the execution details and regularly embody the Dive Deep leadership principle, which states: “Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and are skeptical when metrics and anecdotes differ. No task is beneath them.

Among socialists only Saint Simon realized to some extent the position of the entrepreneurs in the capitalistic economy. As a result he is often denied the name of Socialist. The others completely fail to realize that the functions of entrepreneurs in the capitalist order must be performed in a socialist community also. This is reflected most clearly in the writings of Lenin. According to him the work performed in a capitalist order by those whom he refused to designate as ‘working’ can be boiled down to ‘Auditing of Production and Distribution’ and ‘keeping the records of labour and products’. This could easily be attended to by the armed workers, ‘by the whole of the armed people’.1 Lenin quite rightly separates these functions of the ‘capitalists and clerks’ from the work of the technically trained higher personnel, not however missing the opportunity to take a side thrust at scientifically trained people by giving expression to that contempt for all highly skilled work which is characteristic of Marxian proletarian snobbishness. ‘This recording, this exercise of audit,’ he says, ‘Capitalism has simplified to the utmost and has reduced to extremely simple operations of superintendence and book-entry within the grasp of anyone able to read and write. To control these operations a knowledge of elementary arithmetic and the drawing of correct receipts is sufficient.’2 It is therefore possible straisrhtwav to enable all members of society to do these things for themselves.3 This is all, absolutely all that Lenin had to say on this problem; and no socialist has a word more to say. They have no greater perception of the essentials of economic life than the errand boy, whose only idea of the work of the entrepreneur is that he covers pieces of paper with letters and figures.

The use of anecdotes and exception reporting has enabled leaders to audit at scale in a very detailed way.

Take a look at your calendar and write down your role in meetings. This goes for explicit roles, like owning a meeting’s agenda, and also for more nuanced roles, like being the first person to champion others’ ideas, or the person who is diplomatic enough to raise difficult concerns. Take a second pass on your calendar for non-meeting stuff, like interviewing and closing candidates. Look back over the past six months for recurring processes, like roadmap planning, performance calibrations, or head count decisions, and document your role17 in each of those processes. For each of the individuals you support, in which areas are your skills and actions most complementary to theirs? How do you help them? What do they rely on you for? Maybe it’s authorization, advice navigating the organization, or experience in the technical domain. Audit inbound chats and emails for requests and questions coming your way. If you keep a to-do list, look at the categories of the work you’ve completed over the past six months, as well as the stuff you’ve been wanting to do but keep putting off. Think through the external relationships that have been important for you in your current role. What kinds of folks have been important, and who are the strategic partners that someone needs to know?

The Dive Deep leadership principle states, “Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and are skeptical when metrics and anecdotes differ. No task is beneath them.

Just whatever you do, don’t become a “management consultant” at a behemoth like McKinsey or Bain or one of the other eight consultancies that dominate the industry. They all have thousands upon thousands of employees and work almost exclusively with Fortune 5000 companies. These corporations, typically led by tentative, risk-averse CEOs, call in the management consultants to do a massive audit, find the flaws, and present leadership with a new plan that will magically “fix” everything. What a fairy tale—don’t get me started.

Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and are skeptical when metrics and anecdotes differ. No task is beneath them.

But never mind about his love life—we had known Said for many years and it was always the same thing, too dull to relate much less live through, I didn’t know how he did it—how is the new work?

The BCCI has repeatedly shied away from disclosure, citing itself as a private entity. However, it isn't completely private either, especially since it has monopoly rights over something consumed by a large number of people. It earns from franchise owners and television networks. They, in turn, recover their money from advertisers, who ultimately pass on advertising costs to consumers, built into the price products. Thus, the consumers, we Indians, pay for the BCCI. And since it is a monopoly, we have every right to question their finances. How does the BCCI price its rights? Where is the BCCI money going? The media and lawmakers have a chance to go after this completely feudal and archaic way of managing something as pure and simple as sport. Individuals are less important than changing the way things work. What needs to be at the forefront is sport; are we using the money to help develop it in the country? We don't have to turn Indian cricket into a non-commercial NGO, for that is doomed to fail. It is fine to commercially harness he game. However, if you exploit a national passion, funded by the common man, it only makes sense that the money is accounted for and utilized for the best benefit of sport in the country. For, if there is less opaqueness, there won't be any need to make influential calls or petty factors like personality clashes affecting the outcome of any bidding process. If we know where the money is going, there is less chance of murkiness entering the picture. Accountability does not mean excessive regulation or a lack of autonomy. It simply means proper audited accounts, disclosures, corporate governance practices, norms to regulate the monopoly and even specific data on the improvement in sporting standards achieved in the country. If a young child grows up seeing cricket as yet another example of India's rich and powerful treating the country as their fiefdom, it won't be a good thing. Let's clean up the mess and treat cricket as it is supposed to be: a good sport. Game of a Clean-up, page 50 and 51

Tiffany rarely went on auditions anymore. It had been ages since she’d really worked. I hadn’t considered that there’d come a time when she wouldn’t act at all, and I was alarmed to see show business evaporating from her life, which I hadn’t thought possible for either of us. Riding felt like the last thing we shared.