Centric Quotes

The same people that outlawed the practice of Native American Medicine (without a colonizer centric degree), outlawed the traditional practice of healing those that are hurt/ill without expecting anything in return. Free healthcare. The basis of community.

In fact I don't think of literature, or music, or any art form as having a nationality. Where you're born is simply an accident of fate. I don't see why I shouldn't be more interested in say, Dickens, than in an author from Barcelona simply because I wasn't born in the UK. I do not have an ethno-centric view of things, much less of literature. Books hold no passports. There's only one true literary tradition: the human.

What's the first sign of a lurking, hidden expectation you didn't know you had? Pain! People don't do what we want, things don't happen quickly enough, the weather doesn't cooperate, our bodies don't cooperate. Why are these moments so painful? Because our minds are focused on a static, unchanging, me-centric picture while the dynamic unfolding of a broader life continues around us. There is nothing wrong with expectations per se, as it's appropriate to set goals and work, properly, towards their fruition. But the instant we feel pain over life not going "my way," our expectations have clearly taken an improper turn. Any moment you feel resistance or pain, look for -- and then let go of -- the hidden expectation. Practice giving yourself over to what "you" don't want. Let the line at the store be long. Let the other person interrupt you. Let the nervousness make you shake. Be where your body is, not where your mind is trying to take you.

What your audience has to say about your product matters more than what you have to say about it.

Always remember that your audience is not made up of bots. They don’t follow fixed algorithms and make decisions based on that.

To understand who will be fit for your product, you have to first understand your ideal customers’ needs, wants and preferences.

Humans evolve with time and so do their needs.

Customers need to know that they are heard, and their opinions are respected and acknowledged.

Customer behavior is not just defined by what your customers want but also by what they believe in.

You want to become more open-minded, challenge your ideas without being offended. Don’t let your ego ruin your learning experience.

There's no narrative to your life, no arc, no reward for achieving all of the things you want. That kind of thinking is a recipe for a you-centric world view and is a very lonely road. Focus instead on the role you play in the stories of others..

Every product has its own set of audience and this audience may not coincide with the entire skincare market.

When a value is communicated well, it gives your potential customers an option to choose you over others and to stick to your brand.

Over the past 60 years, marketing has moved from being product-centric (Marketing 1.0) to being consumer-centric (Marketing 2.0). Today we see marketing as transforming once again in response to the new dynamics in the environment. We see companies expanding their focus from products to consumers to humankind issues. Marketing 3.0 is the stage when companies shift from consumer-centricity to human-centricity and where profitability is balanced with corporate responsibility.

For getting those customers, you need to first let them know about your business, your product and how your product is exactly what they are looking for. And for that very purpose, you have to advertise your product.

I sat there for several moments, trying to decide how best I should respond. None of the advice I'd gotten from the books or my friends really prepared me for how to handle discussions about alternative energy sources. One of the books - one I'd chosen not to finish - had a decidedly male-centric view that said women should always make men feel important on dates. I suspected that Kristin and Julia's advice right now would have been to laugh and toss my hair - and not let the discussion progress. But I just couldn't do that. "You're wrong," I said.

Ensuring the company's sustainable success requires a board that champions a value-centric approach to decision making.

There was another thing I heartily disbelieved in - work. Work, it seemed to me even at the threshold of life, is an activity reserved for the dullard. It is the very opposite of creation, which is play… The part of me which was given up to work, which enabled my wife and child to live in the manner which they unthinkingly demanded, this part of me which kept the wheel turning - a completely fatuous, ego-centric notion! - was the least part of me. I gave nothing to the world in fulfilling the function of breadwinner; the world exacted its tribute of me, that was all.

Listening to the audience means that they have to accept that there is something wrong with the product, which is not an easy thing, but it has the potential to save your business from failure. Anything that can grow your business (ethically) is worth considering.

To be clear, conversation-centric communication requires sacrifices. If you adopt this philosophy, you’ll almost certainly reduce the number of people with whom you have an active relationship. Real conversation takes time, and the total number of people for which you can uphold this standard will be significantly less than the total number of people you can follow, retweet, “like,” and occasionally leave a comment for on social media, or ping with the occasional text. Once you no longer count the latter activities as meaningful interaction, your social circle will seem at first to contract.

When it comes to pleasing the masses in a patriarchal society, women seeking power can’t win playing by the old man-centric rules. This is why we should stop expecting to find ourselves reflected in our country’s history and models of power, and write our own story.

Shaping the company's future requires ensuring value creation is a central theme in all board discussions and evaluations. Creating value for the customers should be at the center of every board discussion.

She drank in all their compliments and soon she was full of herself.

...we are the product of this universe and I think it can be argued that the entire cosmic code is imprinted in us. Just as our genes carry the memory of our biological ancestors, our logic carries the memory of our cosmological ancestry. We are not just imposing human-centric notions on a cosmos independent of us. We are progeny of this cosmos and our ability to understand it is an inheritance.

By equating the human experience with data patterns, Dataism undermines our main source of authority and meaning, and heralds a tremendous religious revolution, the like of which has not been seen since the eighteenth century. In the days of Locke, Hume and Voltaire humanists argued that ‘God is a product of the human imagination’. Dataism now gives humanists a taste of their own medicine, and tells them: ‘Yes, God is a product of the human imagination, but human imagination in turn is the product of biochemical algorithms.’ In the eighteenth century, humanism sidelined God by shifting from a deo-centric to a homo-centric world view. In the twenty-first century, Dataism may sideline humans by shifting from a homo-centric to a data-centric view. The

If you want to get to the truth about what makes us different, it’s this,” Bezos says, veering into a familiar Jeffism: “We are genuinely customer-centric, we are genuinely long-term oriented and we genuinely like to invent.

As a banker and investor, capital is the primary lens through which I view the world. It seems nature has this capital-centric view also.

The ethos of the Indian Ocean is a consultative one and in the long run, it is the people-centric initiatives and projects that are likely to be more sustainable.

Why are all you hets all so intercourse-centric? There's a lot more to sex than sticking it in and wiggling it around.

To paraphrase Einstein, insanity is expecting employees to do one thing while rewarding them for doing something else.

I believe that most websites suck because HiPPOs create them. HiPPO is an acronym for the “Highest Paid Person’s Opinion.

The Copernican system was not a truly heliocentric one; it was a vacuo-centric system, so to speak.

An ethical AI system must have a high level of traceability so that any damage done can be traced back to its source and rectified.

The principles of ethical AI systems are more focused on reducing carbon footprints and improving socio-environmental sustainability.

Artificial intelligence has many bigger roles to play for environmental sustainability, energy recycling, and pollution prevention.

In fact, the general model for successful tech companies, contrary to myth and legend, is that they become distribution-centric rather than product-centric. They become a distribution channel, so they can get to the world. And then they put many new products through that distribution channel.

In short, when the non-human world manifests itself to us in these ambivalent ways, more often than not our response is to recuperate that non-human world into whatever the dominant, human-centric worldview is at the time.

If you’re at all familiar with Charles Bukowski, you’ll know he was one of the last true son’s of bitches – the unapologetic epitome of gloriously arrogant self-concern and masculine independence. For what he lacked in polish he made up for in talent and a brutal honesty that could never be acknowledged in the feminine centric social order of today. In the mid 60’s he was a feral, instinctually Red Pill Man

Ethical AI systems aim to end the practice of using people from low-income backgrounds as test subjects in clinical trials and also support their equal rights in patent claims and revenue generation from the medicines.

Today, ideas need to be "you-centric," not "audience-centric." If this sounds like the opposite of everything you've ever heard about marketing, you're right.

A centric mind spins on the spot, going nowhere and only succeeding in making itself dizzy. The eccentric travels unpredictably but often towards the inspired.

How can I claim to be the center of my universe when I can’t even conceptualize that which I claim to be the center of?

We need a new paradigm that convincingly shows that humanity is inherently good and thoroughly interconnected. With that understanding, we can finally move from being ego-, family-, and ethno-centric to species-, bio-, and planet-centric.

Ethical AI system principles are more focused on lowering carbon footprints and improving socio-environmental sustainability.

Doing no harm and uplifting human freedom, values, and rights are the core aspects of ethical AI systems

Artificial intelligence has many roles to play to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, particularly in healthcare and the protection of humanity.

Business leaders should value diversity of thought and experience, just as nature thrives on diversity.

Greed is the thief of the soul.

If I think about it, I am truly a ‘self-made’ man. For in fact I’ve ‘made’ a real mess out of what God ‘made,’ and I ‘made’ that mess all by myself.

If I’m my biggest fan, the odds are I’m my only fan.

At the point that our promises have become tactics to get what we want verses commitments that we intend to keep, the only thing that we are promising is the delivery of a broken promise.

I had never before considered that people near me might have problems that were not caused by me. I had been created to please people. If the people around me weren't happy, I must be doing something wrong. Lynn helped me see that I lacked the power to make other people feel anything.

Conservatism, I argue, is a male-centric strategy shaped significantly by the struggle for dominance in within-and-between group mate competitions, while liberalism is a female-centric strategy derived from the protracted demands of rearing human offspring, among other selective pressures.

The issue is how to create a sense of identity larger than “my interests,” “my nation,” “my religion,” “my ethnic group.” A holistic world-centric view would be a tall order for much of the world. Yet terms such as “transnational,” “transcultural,” and “trans-traditional” are becoming the clarion calls of our generation.

The beauty of God is that He will always be there to pick us up after we’ve exhausted ourselves attempting to be Him.

Business leaders should embrace transparency and fairness in all interactions, just as we would with family members.

Ethics is the compass that guides artificial intelligence towards responsible and beneficial outcomes. Without ethical considerations, AI becomes a tool of chaos and harm.

If I’m my biggest fan, the only person in the stadium is probably me.

Most companies that win don't have a unique strategy; quite the opposite, they are doing what everyone else is doing but have figured out how to execute better.

Be assured that whatever it is, there will be nothing ‘in it for me’ if I approach it from the perspective of ‘what’s in it for me.

Our egos will be the death of us unless we commit to the death of our egos. In that sense, taking something to its grave is what saves us from one.

key pillars are establishing a shared long-term vision, fostering a people-centric culture, developing leaders from within, and sending people home fulfilled.

We are genuinely customer-centric, we are genuinely long-term oriented and we genuinely like to invent.

It's also why we've recently seen an avalanche of new studies, books, and video games built on the myelin-centric principle that practice staves off cognitive decline.

How many times do we have to repeat a failed strategy before it dawns on us that it’s a failed strategy? The answer, I think, depends on the size of our ego and the depth of our arrogance.

What I am saying is, alcohol is addictive to everyone. Yet we’ve created a separate disease called alcoholism and forced it upon the minority of the population who are willing to admit they can’t control their drinking, and because of that, we’ve focused on what’s wrong with those few humans rather than on what’s wrong with our alcohol-centric culture or the substance itself.

Human beings are not inevitable, and our brief existence is not preordained to be extended into the distant future. If Homo sapiens is to have a continued presence on earth, humankind will reevaluate its sense of place in the world and modify its strong species-centric stewardship of the planet. Our collective concepts of morality and ethics have a direct impact on our species’ ultimate fate.

Bitcoin isn’t a digital currency. It’s a cryptocurrency. It’s a network-centric money. I really like the idea of a network-centric money. A network that allows you to replace trust in institutions, trust in hierarchies, with trust on the network. ​The network acting as a massively diffuse arbiter of truth, resolving any disagreements about transactions and security in a way where no one has control. ​ ​

Try to be a god and see if you’ve got enough divinity within yourself to save yourself from the mess that you’ll make just by thinking about doing it, much less the mess you’ll make if you actually attempt it.

Bob is talking about alternative people. Alternative beliefs and outlooks, alternative business and politics, alternative lifestyles and healthcare. alternative foods and fabrics, alternative child-rearing and schooling, alternative fuels and energies—alternative everything, basically, but not very alternative. These are alternatives within the established paradigm. not alternatives to it: a subherd running in parallel to the main body. Rather than detaching from their ego structures, alternative people merely reshape them along more heart-felt and self-centric lines, their multivarious goals and ideals reducing to personal happiness via the removal, avoidance and denial of unhappiness.

The information technology revolution was not brought about only by the miniaturization of technologies. This was a transition from a supplier-centric, centralized information model to a user-centric, participatory information model.

A few months ago on a school morning, as I attempted to etch a straight midline part on the back of my wiggling daughter's soon-to-be-ponytailed blond head, I reminded her that it was chilly outside and she needed to grab a sweater. "No, mama." "Excuse me?" "No, I don't want to wear that sweater, it makes me look fat." "What?!" My comb clattered to the bathroom floor. "Fat?! What do you know about fat? You're 5 years old! You are definitely not fat. God made you just right. Now get your sweater." She scampered off, and I wearily leaned against the counter and let out a long, sad sigh. It has begun. I thought I had a few more years before my twin daughters picked up the modern day f-word. I have admittedly had my own seasons of unwarranted, psychotic Slim-Fasting and have looked erroneously to the scale to give me a measurement of myself. But these departures from my character were in my 20s, before the balancing hand of motherhood met the grounding grip of running. Once I learned what it meant to push myself, I lost all taste for depriving myself. I want to grow into more of a woman, not find ways to whittle myself down to less. The way I see it, the only way to run counter to our toxic image-centric society is to literally run by example. I can't tell my daughters that beauty is an incidental side effect of living your passion rather than an adherence to socially prescribed standards. I can't tell my son how to recognize and appreciate this kind of beauty in a woman. I have to show them, over and over again, mile after mile, until they feel the power of their own legs beneath them and catch the rhythm of their own strides. Which is why my parents wake my kids early on race-day mornings. It matters to me that my children see me out there, slogging through difficult miles. I want my girls to grow up recognizing the beauty of strength, the exuberance of endurance, and the core confidence residing in a well-tended body and spirit. I want them to be more interested in what they are doing than how they look doing it. I want them to enjoy food that is delicious, feed their bodies with wisdom and intent, and give themselves the freedom to indulge. I want them to compete in healthy ways that honor the cultivation of skill, the expenditure of effort, and the courage of the attempt. Grace and Bella, will you have any idea how lovely you are when you try? Recently we ran the Chuy's Hot to Trot Kids K together as a family in Austin, and I ran the 5-K immediately afterward. Post?race, my kids asked me where my medal was. I explained that not everyone gets a medal, so they must have run really well (all kids got a medal, shhh!). As I picked up Grace, she said, "You are so sweaty Mommy, all wet." Luke smiled and said, "Mommy's sweaty 'cause she's fast. And she looks pretty. All clean." My PRs will never garner attention or generate awards. But when I run, I am 100 percent me--my strengths and weaknesses play out like a cracked-open diary, my emotions often as raw as the chafing from my jog bra. In my ultimate moments of vulnerability, I am twice the woman I was when I thought I was meant to look pretty on the sidelines. Sweaty and smiling, breathless and beautiful: Running helps us all shine. A lesson worth passing along.

One reason nature is efficient is because there is no waste. Everything produced creates value for others and is consumed by others on the basis of value. What one life may discard as not valuable is consumed by another life because of its valuable. And all things produced and consumed are continually upcycled, becoming more valuable each cycle. Perhaps it’s because nature has a capital-centric view of things; everything in nature is capital and produces capital which to varying degrees provides value to all other things in nature. Imagine if economies worked like this. Imagine if investment portfolios worked like this. Imagine if businesses worked like this. What a beautiful world it would be.

We can argue about their intelligence (which we would likely define in human-centric terms anyway), their ability to understand human language, or even the extent to which they really understand and know the world around them, but there’s no argument that can convincingly show that animals don’t feel pain, and that they have no interest in avoiding that pain. If anything, animals are more sensitive to the world around them than we are, given their heightened sensory abilities.

Couples will no longer spend their nights in their houses dedicated to habitation and reception, the customary social reason for banalization. The chamber of love will be more remote from the center of the city: it will completely naturally re-create for the partners the notion of ex-centricity, in a place less open to the light, more hidden, in order to return to the atmosphere of the secret. The contrary move, the search for a center of thought, will proceed by the same technique.

Tell them,” she said, “that you really appreciate the advice but what would really help Hillary is if they could tell you the name of a woman on the world stage who does it exactly right.” No one could ever produce a name, of course. When it comes to pleasing the masses in a patriarchal society, women seeking power can’t win playing by the old man-centric rules. This is why we should stop expecting to find ourselves reflected in our country’s history and models of power, and write our own story.

It makes sense for us to want a symptom, an 'it' to go away. If we begin to sense that we are made up of many selves ... then we might instead say, 'the anxious part of me is really suffering. I wonder how we might help her'. There is often a palpable softening as we gaze on a person inside who has value apart from the distressing symptom. We also may sense more clearly that this experience isn't all of us, but belongs to a part who has had encounters that give this anxiety context and meaning. The change of pronoun, granting personhood, may move us into a more right-centric way of perceiving, which also opens us to a more both/and perspective of broad acceptance, arouses our warm curiosity, expands receptivity to the present moment. It can really be a very profound change.

My rather arrogant attitude deludes me into believing that my ability to understand something is the criteria for its legitimacy. And if there’s one thing in my life that I don’t understand yet I allow to be legitimate, thinking this way would most certainly be it.

If I’m calculating what I’m giving, I’m in fact stealing twice. First, I’m robbing the other person of all that I could give them. Second, I’m robbing myself of all the blessings inherent in the giving. Therefore, giving of this sort turns to losing of the worst sort.

Entitlement is the shovel that digs a grave of greed. And there are those of us who stand at the bottom of such a grave having thrown out the last shovel full of dirt, never realizing that the grave that we’ve dug is our own until the same shovel suddenly starts backfilling the hole.

We are committed to involving as many people as possible, as young as possible, as soon as possible. Sometimes too young and too soon! But we intentionally err on the side of too fast rather than too slow. We don’t wait until people feel “prepared” or “fully equipped.” Seriously, when is anyone ever completely prepared for ministry? Ministry makes people’s faith bigger. If you want to increase someone’s confidence in God, put him in a ministry position before he feels fully equipped. The messages your environments communicate have the potential to trump your primary message. If you don’t see a mess, if you aren’t bothered by clutter, you need to make sure there is someone around you who does see it and is bothered by it. An uncomfortable or distracting setting can derail ministry before it begins. The sermon begins in the parking lot. Assign responsibility, not tasks. At the end of the day, it’s application that makes all the difference. Truth isn’t helpful if no one understands or remembers it. If you want a church full of biblically educated believers, just teach what the Bible says. If you want to make a difference in your community and possibly the world, give people handles, next steps, and specific applications. Challenge them to do something. As we’ve all seen, it’s not safe to assume that people automatically know what to do with what they’ve been taught. They need specific direction. This is hard. This requires an extra step in preparation. But this is how you grow people. Your current template is perfectly designed to produce the results you are currently getting. We must remove every possible obstacle from the path of the disinterested, suspicious, here-against-my-will, would-rather-be-somewhere-else, unchurched guests. The parking lot, hallways, auditorium, and stage must be obstacle-free zones. As a preacher, it’s my responsibility to offend people with the gospel. That’s one reason we work so hard not to offend them in the parking lot, the hallway, at check-in, or in the early portions of our service. We want people to come back the following week for another round of offending! Present the gospel in uncompromising terms, preach hard against sin, and tackle the most emotionally charged topics in culture, while providing an environment where unchurched people feel comfortable. The approach a church chooses trumps its purpose every time. Nothing says hypocrite faster than Christians expecting non-Christians to behave like Christians when half the Christians don’t act like it half the time. When you give non-Christians an out, they respond by leaning in. Especially if you invite them rather than expect them. There’s a big difference between being expected to do something and being invited to try something. There is an inexorable link between an organization’s vision and its appetite for improvement. Vision exposes what has yet to be accomplished. In this way, vision has the power to create a healthy sense of organizational discontent. A leader who continually keeps the vision out in front of his or her staff creates a thirst for improvement. Vision-centric churches expect change. Change is a means to an end. Change is critical to making what could and should be a reality. Write your vision in ink; everything else should be penciled in. Plans change. Vision remains the same. It is natural to assume that what worked in the past will always work. But, of course, that way of thinking is lethal. And the longer it goes unchallenged, the more difficult it is to identify and eradicate. Every innovation has an expiration date. The primary reason churches cling to outdated models and programs is that they lack leadership.

In particular, interrogative e-mails like these generate an initial instinct to dash off the quickest possible response that will clear the message—temporarily—out of your inbox. A quick response will, in the short term, provide you with some minor relief because you’re bouncing the responsibility implied by the message off your court and back onto the sender’s. This relief, however, is short-lived, as this responsibility will continue to bounce back again and again, continually sapping your time and attention. I suggest, therefore, that the right strategy when faced with a question of this type is to pause a moment before replying and take the time to answer the following key prompt: What is the project represented by this message, and what is the most efficient (in terms of messages generated) process for bringing this project to a successful conclusion? Once you’ve answered this question for yourself, replace a quick response with one that takes the time to describe the process you identified, points out the current step, and emphasizes the step that comes next. I call this the process-centric approach to e-mail, and it’s designed to minimize both the number of e-mails you receive and the amount of mental clutter they generate.

Doctor's Sonnet A doctor is one who's gentle as a bird, A doctor is one who's brave as a soldier, A doctor is one who's amusing as a clown, A doctor is one who's caring as a mother. Treating the sick is not a comfort job, It is a difficult life without leisure and lure. If all you want are wealth and tranquility, Trade in your medical license for a liquor store. The world is filled with doctors most cold, Many don't practice medicine but self-centricity. Instruments and intellect don't make a doctor, Without warmth all pills lose their efficacy. Healthcare means aid first talk rules later. Better a kindhearted fool than a heartless monster.

The greatest derangement of the mind is to believe in something because one wishes it to be so. Louis Pasteur

Ethical AI systems aim to provide equal educational opportunities to students from low-income and high-income backgrounds.

We are not an end ‘in’ ourselves, but we are too often the end ‘of’ ourselves.

For the last couple of years, I've always started in the same place. It's a little room, more like a little hallway, off one of the Impressionist galleries. That always bothered me. I mean, even in my most Edward-centric moments, I knew he didn't merit a big room of his own.But to tack his work onto the wrong era, not to mention any conceivable style, always chafed.

Mind instantiates oneself into matter. In a mathematical sense, matter is an “in-formed” pattern of mind. Time is emergent, and so is space. If space-time is emergent, so is mass-energy. All interactions in our physical world is computed by the larger consciousness system. In short, mind is more fundamental than matter. All realities are observer-centric virtualities.

People think that saving their pride is worth something. But it's not. Plenty of faces have been saved at the expense of murdered hearts. You need a heart to be alive; a face can't do that for you.

The typical factory-centric organization places a premium on not-wrong, and spends no time at all weeding out those who don’t start. In the networked economy, the innovation-focused organization has no choice but to obsess about those who don’t start. Today, not starting is far, far worse than being wrong. If you start, you’ve got a shot at evolving and adjusting to turn your wrong into a right. But if you don’t start, you never get a chance.

If I see God as nothing more than a caricature of history or imagination I cannot do anything less than make myself my own ‘god’. And once I realize that in doing so my rendition of being a ‘god’ is embarrassingly inferior to the very caricature I am mimicking, I quickly come to realize that maybe the only thing that can be ‘god’ is a God. And if that is the case, I suddenly find myself hounded by the stunning reality that God is not a caricature.

Since we began with a felt sense of safety this day, several neural streams are initially supporting the renewal of our connection. In our midbrain, the energies of the SEEKING system are animating the CARE system, which can both foster the good feelings between us and support offers of repair should we have a rupture (Panksepp & Biven, 2012). Once in connection, our ventral vagal parasympathetic system is affecting the prosody of our voices, our facial mobility, and the attentiveness of our listening, maintaining social engagement (Porges, 2011). Since ventral lateralizes to the right hemisphere, we more easily stay rooted in the right-centric way of attending that keeps us in connection with this moment and with each other (McGilchrist, 2009). In this intimacy, our brains are coupling in many regions, so there is an experience of social emotional engagement and embodied communication as we become a single system in two bodies (Hasson, 2010). Because we are trustworthy partners in this healing process, social baseline theory tells us that our amygdalae are calming just because we are together (Beckes & Coan, 2011). All of this is happening without doing anything, even without saying anything, in microseconds below conscious awareness because of the safe space we have cultivated over time. We can more clearly understand why Porges says, "Safety IS the treatment".

If something was mentioned in Sanskrit texts that somehow did not fit into the Bible, it was labeled as mythology. Whatever could be made to 'fit', became the history of the Indian peoples according to Jones. In this manner, the Vedic and Puranic texts were digested into Biblical chronology. This Bible-centric framework of timescales is what led Max Müller many decades later to establish his dates for the socalled Aryan invasion of India, which influences scholars to this day.

Undoubtedly, the loneliest person on the planet is that individual who has successfully lived out their lives making their lives all about their lives. And while that might seem rather sad to most of us, at least they’ll feel that they’re in good company.

It's commonplace today to make fun of women-centric book clubs, where there's more wine drinking than book discussion, but for hundreds of years, the only place women could gather, drink, relax and socialize was in a neighbor's kitchen, surrounded by other wives and mothers. There is a long-standing tradition of driving women to some sort of behavior, then mocking them for it. (Sort of like making beauty a women's most powerful and important currency, then laughing about how long it takes her to get ready.)

Human resource managers should practice mindfulness and self-reflection, acknowledging their limitations and biases. It should not be the case that all or most human resource managers think the same way, look the same way, and decide the same way - because the inevitable result of that monotony is an even more disturbing monotony of opportunity. At scale, across millions of organizations, this creates systemic problems that eventually require drastic compensatory actions that almost have to be done by government.

The journey of a thousands suns begins today. Some may question whether the journey is worth the sacrifice and danger. To them I say that no sacrifice is too dear and no danger too great to ensure the very survival of our human species. What will we find when we arrive at our new homes? That's an open question. For a century, deep-space probes have reported alien lifeforms, but thus far none of which we recognize as intelligent beings. Are we the only biological intelligence in the universe? Perhaps our definition of intelligence is too narrow, too specio-centric. For, are not trees intelligent, who know to shed their leaves at the end of summer? Are not turtles intelligent, who know when to bury themselves in mud under ice? Is not all life intelligent, that knows how to pass its vital essence to new generations? Because half of intelligence resides in the body, be it plant or animal. I now commend these brave colonists to the galaxy, to join their minds and bodies to the community of living beings they will encounter there, and to establish our rightful place among the stars.

If Windows had been designed from the beginning with security in mind, much of the course of history would have been changed. The multi-billion dollar industry of AV vendors would have never come about. Worms, viruses, spyware, and cybercrime would never have risen to further fuel the IT security industry.

By tracing the early history of USCYBERCOM it is possible to understand some of the reasons why the military has focused almost completely on network defense and cyber attack while being unaware of the need to address the vulnerabilities in systems that could be exploited in future conflicts against technologically capable adversaries. It is a problem mirrored in most organizations. The network security staff are separate from the endpoint security staff who manage desktops through patch and vulnerability management tools and ensure that software and anti-virus signatures are up to date. Meanwhile, the development teams that create new applications, web services, and digital business ventures, work completely on their own with little concern for security. The analogous behavior observed in the military is the creation of new weapons systems, ISR platforms, precision targeting, and C2 capabilities without ensuring that they are resistant to the types of attacks that USCYBERCOM and the NSA have been researching and deploying. USCYBERCOM had its genesis in NCW thinking. First the military worked to participate in the information revolution by joining their networks together. Then it recognized the need for protecting those networks, now deemed cyberspace. The concept that a strong defense requires a strong offense, carried over from missile defense and Cold War strategies, led to a focus on network attack and less emphasis on improving resiliency of computing platforms and weapons systems.

And so, when I tell stories today about digital transformation and organizational agility and customer centricity, I use a vocabulary that is very consistent and very refined. It is one of the tools I have available to tell my story effectively. I talk about assumptions. I talk about hypotheses. I talk about outcomes as a measure of customer success. I talk about outcomes as a measurable change in customer behavior. I talk about outcomes over outputs, experimentation, continuous learning, and ship, sense, and respond. The more you tell your story, the more you can refine your language into your trademark or brand—what you’re most known for. For example, baseball great Yogi Berra was famous for his Yogi-isms—sayings like “You can observe a lot by watching” and “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” It’s not just a hook or catchphrase, it helps tell the story as well. For Lean Startup, a best-selling book on corporate innovation written by Eric Ries, the words were “build,” “measure,” “learn.” Jeff Patton, a colleague of mine, uses the phrase “the differences that make a difference.” And he talks about bets as a way of testing confidence levels. He’ll ask, “What will you bet me that your idea is good? Will you bet me lunch? A day’s pay? Your 401(k)?” These words are not only their vocabulary. They are their brand. That’s one of the benefits of storytelling and telling those stories continuously. As you refine your language, the people who are beginning to pay attention to you start adopting that language, and then that becomes your thing.