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Don’t follow your passions; follow your effort. It will lead you to your passions and to success.
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Brant Cooper (The Lean Entrepreneur: How Visionaries Create Products, Innovate with New Ventures, and Disrupt Markets)
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Decades of countercultural rebellion have failed to change anything because the theory of society on which the countercultural idea rests is false. We do not live in the Matrix, nor do we live in the spectacle. The world we live in is in fact much more prosaic. It consists of billions of human beings, each pursuing more or less plausible conceptions of the good, trying to cooperate with one another, and doing so with varying degrees of success. There is no single, overarching system that integrates it all. The culture cannot be jammed because there is no such thing as "the culture" or "the system". There is only a hodge-podge of social institutions, most tentatively thrown together, which distribute the benefits and burdens of social cooperation in ways that sometimes we recognize to be just, but that are usually manifestly inequitable. In a world of this type, countercultural rebellion is not just unhelpful, it is positively counterproductive. Not only does it distract energy and effort away from the sort of initiatives that lead to concrete improvements in people's lives, but it encourages wholesale contempt for such incremental changes.
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Joseph Heath; Andrew Potter (Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture)
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As a woman in the business world, I kept seeing other women make the same mistakes over and over again. Telling their coworkers they wanted to be promoted. Asking their managers for more money. Bringing visibility to their work, leading meetings, talking in meetings, looking around in meetings, and breathing in meetings. Seeing this, I knew my calling was to write a book that would stop the frustration of making an effort. I learned many of these tips while I was working in the male-dominated world of tech.
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Sarah Cooper (How to Be Successful without Hurting Men's Feelings: Non-threatening Leadership Strategies for Women)
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Is it possible nevertheless that our consumer culture does make good on its promises, or could do so? Might these, if fulfilled, lead to a more satisfying life? When I put the question to renowned psychologist Tim Krasser, professor emeritus of psychology at Knox College, his response was unequivocal. "Research consistently shows," he told me, "that the more people value materialistic aspirations as goals, the lower their happiness and life satisfaction and the fewer pleasant emotions they experience day to day. Depression, anxiety, and substance abuse also tend to be higher among people who value the aims encouraged by consumer society."
He points to four central principles of what he calls ACC — American corporate capitalism: it "fosters and encourages a set of values based on self-interest, a strong desire for financial success, high levels of consumption, and interpersonal styles based on competition."
There is a seesaw oscillation, Tim found, between materialistic concerns on the one hand and prosocial values like empathy, generosity, and cooperation on the other: the more the former are elevated, the lower the latter descend. For example, when people strongly endorse money, image, and status as prime concerns, they are less likely to engage in ecologically beneficial activities and the emptier and more insecure they will experience themselves to be. They will have also lower-quality interpersonal relationships. In turn, the more insecure people feel, the more they focus on material things.
As materialism promises satisfaction but, instead, yields hollow dissatisfaction, it creates more craving. This massive and self-perpetuating addictive spiral is one of the mechanisms by which consumer society preserves itself by exploiting the very insecurities it generates.
Disconnection in all its guises — alienation, loneliness, loss of meaning, and dislocation — is becoming our culture's most plentiful product. No wonder we are more addicted, chronically ill, and mentally disordered than ever before, enfeebled as we are by such malnourishment of mind, body and soul.
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Gabor Maté (The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture)
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Lack of harmony and cooperation between the railroad management and the workers has made it necessary for the railroads to increase their freight and passenger rates, and this, in turn, has increased the cost of life's necessities to almost unbearable proportions. Here, again, lack of cooperation between a few leads to hardship for millions of people.
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Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich / The Law of Success)
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The new type of capitalists - the industrial leader - develops new talents with his new function in economic life and, above all, a new discipline and evaluation of labour. He allows commercial interests to recede to a certain extent and concentrates on the internal organization of his factory. The principle of expediency, methodical planning and calculability, which had become very important in the economy in the leading countries since the fifteenth century, now becomes all-powerful. The employer disciplines himself just as ruthless as he does his workmen and employees, and becomes just as much the slave of his concern as his staff. The raising of labour to the level of the ethical force, its glorification and adoration, is fundamentally nothing but the ideological transfiguration of the striving for success and profit and an attempt to stimulate even those elements who share least in the fruits of their labour into enthusiastic co-operation. The idea of freedom is part of the same ideology.
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Arnold Hauser (The Social History of Art Volume 3: Rococo, Classicism and Romanticism)
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For bonobos, a turbocharged sexuality utterly divorced from reproduction is a central feature of social interaction and group cohesion. Anthropologist Marvin Harris argues that bonobos get a “reproductive payoff that compensates them for their wasteful approach to hitting the ovulatory target.” The payoff is “a more intense form of social cooperation between males and females” leading to “a more intensely cooperative social group, a more secure milieu for rearing infants, and hence a higher degree of reproductive success for sexier males and females.”3 The bonobo’s promiscuity, in other words, confers significant evolutionary benefits on the apes.
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Christopher Ryan (Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships)
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Child Whisperer Tip: Their quick movement from idea to idea often earns these children the label of “childish” or “silly.” So Type 1 children long to be respected as they grow up. In order to be taken seriously, they commonly attempt to slow down their energy and change who they are. Take your Type 1 child’s thought process seriously and listen to what they have to say, no matter how scattered it may appear at times. Their brains work quickly and their language has a hard time keeping up with how quickly thoughts move through their mind. Be willing to just try to make the jump from thought to thought with them sometimes. When it comes to a Type 1s feelings, everything is larger than life. Little joys are huge delights. Hurt feelings can lead to bursts of emotion. Both expressions may sound quite loud, as they express their emotions vocally, especially as young children. Type 1 toddlers are either screaming in delight or screaming in frustration. The highest squeal you hear from teenage girls is most likely to come from a Type 1.
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Carol Tuttle (The Child Whisperer: The Ultimate Handbook for Raising Happy, Successful, Cooperative Children)
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Roughly 25 percent of humanity is Muslim. For every Jew, there are roughly one hundred twenty-five Muslims. Judaism is about 2500 years older than Islam, and yet it has not been able to attract nearly as many followers. If we construe religions as memeplexes (a collection of interconnected memes), to borrow Richard Dawkin's term, the Islamic memeplex has been extraordinarily more successful than its Jewish counterpart (from an epidemiological perspective, that is). Why is that? To answer this important question, we must look at the contents of the two respective memeplexes to examine why one is more "infectious" than the other. Let us explore the rules for converting into the two religions and apostatizing out of them. In Judaism, the religious process for conversion is onerous, requiring several years of commitment and an absence of ulterior motive. (For example, converting to Judaism because you are marrying a Jewish person is considered an ulterior motive). Not surprisingly, given the barriers to entry, relatively few people convert to Judaism. On the other hand, to convert to Islam simply requires that one proclaim openly the sentence, the shahada (the testimony): "There is no true god but Allah, and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah." It does not require a sophisticated epidemiological model to predict which memeplex will spread more rapidly. Let us now suppose that one wishes to leave the religion. While the Old Testament does mention the death penalty for apostasy, it has seldom been applied throughout Jewish history, whereas to this day apostasy from Islam does lead to the death penalty in several Islamic countries. But perhaps the most important difference is that Judaism does not promote or encourage proselytizing, whereas it is a central religious obligation in Islam. According to Islam, the world is divided into dar al-hard (the house of war) and dar al-Islam (the house of Islam). Peace will arrive when the entire world is united under the flag of Allah. Hence, it is imperative to Islamize the nations within dar al-harb. There is only one Jewish country in the world, Israel, and it has a sizeable non-Jewish minority. But there are fifty-seven member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
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Gad Saad (Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense)
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Imagine the following. Three groups of ten individuals are in a park at lunchtime with a rainstorm threatening. In the first group, someone says: “Get up and follow me.” When he starts walking and only a few others join in, he yells to those still seated: “Up, I said, and now!” In the second group, someone says: “We’re going to have to move. Here’s the plan. Each of us stands up and marches in the direction of the apple tree. Please stay at least two feet away from other group members and do not run. Do not leave any personal belongings on the ground here and be sure to stop at the base of the tree. When we are all there . . .” In the third group, someone tells the others: “It’s going to rain in a few minutes. Why don’t we go over there and sit under that huge apple tree. We’ll stay dry, and we can have fresh apples for lunch.” I am sometimes amazed at how many people try to transform organizations using methods that look like the first two scenarios: authoritarian decree and micromanagement. Both approaches have been applied widely in enterprises over the last century, but mostly for maintaining existing systems, not transforming those systems into something better. When the goal is behavior change, unless the boss is extremely powerful, authoritarian decree often works poorly even in simple situations, like the apple tree case. Increasingly, in complex organizations, this approach doesn’t work at all. Without the power of kings and queens behind it, authoritarianism is unlikely to break through all the forces of resistance. People will ignore you or pretend to cooperate while doing everything possible to undermine your efforts. Micromanagement tries to get around this problem by specifying what employees should do in detail and then monitoring compliance. This tactic can break through some of the barriers to change, but in an increasingly unacceptable amount of time. Because the creation and communication of detailed plans is deadly slow, the change produced this way tends to be highly incremental. Only the approach used in the third scenario above has the potential to break through all the forces that support the status quo and to encourage the kind of dramatic shifts found in successful transformations. (See figure 5–1.) This approach is based on vision—a central component of all great leadership.
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John P. Kotter (Leading Change)
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Picture a group where people express their views vigorously and passionately, even arguing with one another. If the group performs well, participants might reasonably look back and say that open and forthright expressions of opinion were a key reason for success. They’ll say: We were honest, we didn’t hold back—and that’s why we did so well! We had a good process! But what if the group’s performance turned out to be poor? Now people might recall things differently. We argued and fought. We were dysfunctional. Next time we should follow a respectful and disciplined process. But now imagine a group where people are calm, polite, and respectful of one another. They speak quietly and in turn. If the group does well, participants might look back and credit their courteous and cooperative nature. We respected one another. We didn’t fight. We had a good process! But if the same group’s performance was poor, people might say: We were too polite. We censored ourselves. Next time, we should be more direct and open, not so concerned about one another’s feelings. The fact is, a wide variety of behaviors can lead to good decisions. There’s no precise way to engineer an “optimal” discussion process. We may try to avoid extremes, sure, but between those extremes is a wide range of behavior that might be conducive to success. And because we really don’t know what makes an optimal decision process, we tend to make attributions based on other things that are relevant and seemingly objective—namely, what we’re told about performance outcomes.
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Philip M. Rosenzweig (The Halo Effect: ... and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers (A Must-Read Guide for Managers))
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An implicit assumption in many normative debates is that private solutions cannot be relied upon for complex problems. Can private governance facilitate cooperation in sophisticated transactions, in large groups, in heterogeneous populations, under conditions of anonymity, or across long distances? Or will problems such as free riding and prisoners’ dilemmas lead to market failure? All of these are empirical questions whose answers are usually assumed rather than investigated. Yet mechanisms of private governance are far more ubiquitous and far more powerful than commonly assumed. Mechanisms of private governance work in small and large groups, among friends and strangers, in ancient and modern societies, and for simple and extremely complex transactions. They often exist alongside, and in many cases in spite of, government legal efforts, and most of the time they are totally missed. The more that private governance solves problems behind the scenes, the more people overlook it and misattribute order to the state. Milton Friedman, for example, recognizes that private rule enforcement could work, but considers it rare: “I look over history, and outside of perhaps Iceland, where else can you find any historical examples of that kind of a system developing?” (Doherty and Friedman, 1995).3 After reading this book, I hope Friedman would answer instead that private order is all around us. Private governance is everywhere and responsible for creating order not just in basic markets but also in the world’s most sophisticated markets, including futures and advanced derivatives markets. If the success of private governance were limited to the examples in this book, the track record should be rated superb. Yet they are a fraction of what has worked and will work in the future. I hope this research inspires others to document some of the countless mechanisms that have made markets as robust as they are. Research in private governance not only
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Edward P. Stringham (Private Governance: Creating Order in Economic and Social Life)
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Suppose you entered a boat race. One hundred rowers, each in a separate rowboat, set out on a ten-mile race along a wide and slow-moving river. The first to cross the finish line will win $10,000. Halfway into the race, you’re in the lead. But then, from out of nowhere, you’re passed by a boat with two rowers, each pulling just one oar. No fair! Two rowers joined together into one boat! And then, stranger still, you watch as that rowboat is overtaken by a train of three such rowboats, all tied together to form a single long boat. The rowers are identical septuplets. Six of them row in perfect synchrony while the seventh is the coxswain, steering the boat and calling out the beat for the rowers. But those cheaters are deprived of victory just before they cross the finish line, for they in turn are passed by an enterprising group of twenty-four sisters who rented a motorboat. It turns out that there are no rules in this race about what kinds of vehicles are allowed. That was a metaphorical history of life on Earth. For the first billion years or so of life, the only organisms were prokaryotic cells (such as bacteria). Each was a solo operation, competing with others and reproducing copies of itself. But then, around 2 billion years ago, two bacteria somehow joined together inside a single membrane, which explains why mitochondria have their own DNA, unrelated to the DNA in the nucleus.35 These are the two-person rowboats in my example. Cells that had internal organelles could reap the benefits of cooperation and the division of labor (see Adam Smith). There was no longer any competition between these organelles, for they could reproduce only when the entire cell reproduced, so it was “one for all, all for one.” Life on Earth underwent what biologists call a “major transition.”36 Natural selection went on as it always had, but now there was a radically new kind of creature to be selected. There was a new kind of vehicle by which selfish genes could replicate themselves. Single-celled eukaryotes were wildly successful and spread throughout the oceans.
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Jonathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion)
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In a typical crash, for example, the weather is poor—not terrible, necessarily, but bad enough that the pilot feels a little bit more stressed than usual. In an overwhelming number of crashes, the plane is behind schedule, so the pilots are hurrying. In 52 percent of crashes, the pilot at the time of the accident has been awake for twelve hours or more, meaning that he is tired and not thinking sharply. And 44 percent of the time, the two pilots have never flown together before, so they’re not comfortable with each other. Then the errors start—and it’s not just one error. The typical accident involves seven consecutive human errors. One of the pilots does something wrong that by itself is not a problem. Then one of them makes another error on top of that, which combined with the first error still does not amount to catastrophe. But then they make a third error on top of that, and then another and another and another and another, and it is the combination of all those errors that leads to disaster. These seven errors, furthermore, are rarely problems of knowledge or flying skill. It’s not that the pilot has to negotiate some critical technical maneuver and fails. The kinds of errors that cause plane crashes are invariably errors of teamwork and communication. One pilot knows something important and somehow doesn’t tell the other pilot. One pilot does something wrong, and the other pilot doesn’t catch the error. A tricky situation needs to be resolved through a complex series of steps—and somehow the pilots fail to coordinate and miss one of them. “The whole flight-deck design is intended to be operated by two people, and that operation works best when you have one person checking the other, or both people willing to participate,” says Earl Weener, who was for many years chief engineer for safety at Boeing. “Airplanes are very unforgiving if you don’t do things right. And for a long time it’s been clear that if you have two people operating the airplane cooperatively, you will have a safer operation than if you have a single pilot flying the plane and another person who is simply there to take over if the pilot is incapacitated.
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Malcolm Gladwell (Outliers: The Story of Success)
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THE MAJOR ATTRIBUTES OF LEADERSHIP The following are important factors of leadership:- 1. UNWAVERING COURAGE based upon knowledge of self, and of one's occupation. No follower wishes to be dominated by a leader who lacks self-confidence and courage. No intelligent follower will be dominated by such a leader very long. 2. SELF-CONTROL. The man who cannot control himself, can never control others. Self-control sets a mighty example for one's followers, which the more intelligent will emulate. 3. A KEEN SENSE OF JUSTICE. Without a sense of fairness and justice, no leader can command and retain the respect of his followers. 4. DEFINITENESS OF DECISION. The man who wavers in his decisions, shows that he is not sure of himself. He cannot lead others successfully. 5. DEFINITENESS OF PLANS. The successful leader must plan his work, and work his plan. A leader who moves by guesswork, without practical, definite plans, is comparable to a ship without a rudder. Sooner or later he will land on the rocks. 6. THE HABIT OF DOING MORE THAN PAID FOR. One of the penalties of leadership is the necessity of willingness, upon the part of the leader, to do more than he requires of his followers. 7. A PLEASING PERSONALITY. No slovenly, careless person can become a successful leader. Leadership calls for respect. Followers will not respect a leader who does not grade high on all of the factors of a Pleasing Personality. 8. SYMPATHY AND UNDERSTANDING. The successful leader must be in sympathy with his followers. Moreover, he must understand them and their problems. 9. MASTERY OF DETAIL. Successful leadership calls for mastery of details of the leader's position. 10. WILLINGNESS TO ASSUME FULL RESPONSIBILITY. The successful leader must be willing to assume responsibility for the mistakes and the shortcomings of his followers. If he tries to shift this responsibility, he will not remain the leader. If one of his followers makes a mistake, and shows himself incompetent, the leader must consider that it is he who failed. 11. COOPERATION. The successful leader must understand, and apply the principle of cooperative effort and be able to induce his followers to do the same. Leadership calls for POWER, and power calls for COOPERATION. There are two forms of Leadership. The first, and by far the most effective, is LEADERSHIP BY CONSENT of, and with the sympathy of the followers. The second is LEADERSHIP BY FORCE, without the consent and sympathy of the followers.
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Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich [Illustrated & Annotated])
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We believe that the human capacity to live in larger scale forms of tribal social organization evolved through a coevolutionary ratchet generated by the interaction of genes and culture. Rudimentary cooperative institutions favored genotypes that were better able to live in more cooperative groups. Those individuals best able to avoid punishment and acquire the locally-relevant norms were more likely to survive. At first, such populations would have been only slightly more cooperative than typical nonhuman primates. However, genetic changes, leading to moral emotions like shame, and a capacity to learn and internalize local practices, would allow the cultural evolution of more sophisticated institutions that in turn enlarged the scale of cooperation. These successive rounds of coevolutionary change continued until eventually people were equipped with capacities for cooperation with distantly related people, emotional attachments to symbolically marked groups, and a willingness to punish others for transgression of group rules.
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Robert Boyd, Peter J. Richerson (The Origin and Evolution of Cultures (Evolution and Cognition))
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Is there an evolutionary consequence to this distinctive quality of story? Researchers have imagined so. We prevailed, in large part, because we are an intensely social species. We are able to live and work in groups. Not in perfect harmony, but with sufficient cooperation to thoroughly upend the calculus of survival. It is not just safety in numbers. It is innovate, participate, delegate, and collaborate in numbers. And essential to such successful group living are the very insights into the variety of human experience we’ve absorbed through story. As psychologist Jerome Bruner noted, “We organize our experience and our memory of human happenings mainly in the form of narrative,”37 leading him to doubt that “such collective life would be possible were it not for our human capacity to organize and communicate experience in narrative form.”38 Through narrative we explore the range of human behavior, from societal expectation to heinous transgression. We witness the breadth of human motivation, from lofty ambition to reprehensible brutality. We encounter the scope of human disposition from triumphant victory to heartrending loss. As literary scholar Brian Boyd has emphasized, narratives thus make “the social landscape more navigable, more expansive, more open with possibilities,” instilling in us a “craving for understanding our world not only in terms of our own direct experience, but through the experiences of others—and not only real others.”39 Whether told through myths, stories, fables, or even embellished accounts of daily events, narratives are the key to our social nature. With math we commune with other realities; with story we commune with other minds.
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Brian Greene (Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe)
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The Major Attributes of Leadership. The following are important factors of leadership:— 1. Unwavering courage based upon knowledge of self, and of one’s occupation. No follower wishes to be dominated by a leader who lacks self-confidence and courage. No intelligent follower will be dominated by such a leader very long. 2. Self-control. The man who cannot control himself can never control others. Self-control sets a mighty example for one’s followers, which the more intelligent will emulate. 3. A keen sense of justice. Without a sense of fairness and justice, no leader can command and retain the respect of his followers. 4. Definiteness of decision. The man who wavers in his decisions, shows that he is not sure of himself, cannot lead others successfully. 5. Definiteness of plans. The successful leader must plan his work, and work his plan. A leader who moves by guesswork, without practical, definite plans, is comparable to a ship without a rudder. Sooner or later he will land on the rocks. 6. The habit of doing more than paid for. One of the penalties of leadership is the necessity of willingness, upon the part of the leader, to do more than he requires of his followers. 7. A pleasing personality. No slovenly, careless person can become a successful leader. Leadership calls for respect. Followers will not respect a leader who does not grade high on all of the factors of a pleasing personality. 8. Sympathy and understanding. The successful leader must be in sympathy with his followers. Moreover, he must understand them and their problems. 9. Mastery of detail. Successful leadership calls for mastery of the details of the leader’s position. 10. Willingness to assume full responsibility. The successful leader must be willing to assume responsibility for the mistakes and the shortcomings of his followers. If he tries to shift this responsibility, he will not remain the leader. If one of his followers makes a mistake, and shows himself incompetent, the leader must consider that it is he who failed. 11. Cooperation. The successful leader must understand and apply the principle of cooperative effort and be able to induce his followers to do the same. Leadership calls for power, and power calls for cooperation. There are two forms of leadership. The first, and by far the most effective, is leadership by consent of, and with the sympathy of the followers. The second is leadership by force, without the consent and sympathy of the followers. History is filled with evidences that leadership by force cannot endure. The downfall and disappearance of dictators and kings is significant. It means that people will not follow forced leadership indefinitely. Napoleon, Mussolini, Hitler, were examples of leadership by force. Their leadership passed. Leadership-by-consent of the followers is the only brand which can endure! Men may follow the forced leadership temporarily, but they will not do so willingly.
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Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich)
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Fitness is essentially a ratio, with the numerator reflecting the success of genes in projecting copies of themselves into the future and the denominator, the success of alternative genes. Since a gene (or an individual, a population, even—in theory—a species) maximizes its success by producing the largest such ratio, it can do so either by reducing the denominator or increasing the numerator. Most creatures, most of the time, find it easier to do the latter than the former, which is why living things generally are more concerned with feathering their nests than de-feathering those of others.
Because of natural selection, human beings have a capacity to be peaceful and warlike, cooperative and competitive, loving and violent . . . depending upon conditions. Those conditions include but are not limited to the amount and nature of resources available (such as food, mates, living and breeding space), the nature of social expectation, cultural traditions and indoctrination, degree of embeddedness among kin and other reciprocating individuals, and so forth. Like the proverbial cartoon in which both an angel and a devil perch upon each person’s shoulder, whispering in her ears and vying for attention, our evolutionary heritage offers different routes for future behavior, without necessarily predisposing us in any one direction.
Although it is definitely worthwhile to interrogate our evolutionary background for indications as to our predilections, the answer leads us to Jean-Paul Sartre’s famous formulation that human beings are “condemned to be free.” Whether devotees of peace choose to be relieved to learn that we are not biologically obliged to war, or to be distraught that by the same token, we are not unilaterally predisposed, through our biology, to peace, we are all stuck with an obligation (if not necessarily a predisposition) to respond to Sartre’s simple, daunting, existentialist challenge: “You are free. Choose.
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David P. Barash
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All modern manufacturing disciplines have roots in preindustry except software, whose unique medium appeared well after industrialization was a fait accompli. Only programming comes directly from academia, where there are no time limits on research, student power is dirt cheap, profit is against the rules, and a failing program can be considered a very successful experiment. It's not a coincidence that Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, and other leading software companies reside in "campuses." Universities never have to make money, hit deadlines, or build desirable, useful products.
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Alan Cooper (The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity)
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Knowledge is only the first step. It is the foundation of further learning processes.”
– Inez De Florio, Effective Teaching and Successful Learning, p. 102
“Students engage in learning when two conditions are fulfilled. The goals, standards, or objectives must be of value for them. But it is not sufficient that they attribute personal value to the goal: They must be convinced that they can reach it.”
– Inez De Florio, Effective Teaching and Successful Learning, p. 108
“The expertise of a teacher does not consist only of his ability to plan a lesson or a comprehensive teaching unit and put it into practice; at least as important as these basic tools of the teaching profession are knowledge and flexibility regarding how to surmount unexpected difficulties.”
– Inez De Florio, Effective Teaching and Successful Learning, p. 119
“When planning a teaching intervention, the most important question often remains unasked: In what ways does the chosen learning content or skill refer to the needs and interests of the students?”
– Inez De Florio, Effective Teaching and Successful Learning, p. 122
“Teaching is more effective and learning more successful when students participate in planning and starting the lesson.”
– Inez De Florio, Effective Teaching and Successful Learning, p. 136
“What is a good explanation? Explanations should be clear and well-structured. They should take students’ age and their prior knowledge into account. They are supposed to correspond to the interests of the learners.”
– Inez De Florio, Effective Teaching and Successful Learning, p. 144
“There is an unjustified differentiation between tasks for learning and tasks for testing.
• First, all tasks should be meaningful and motivating, not only those destined for classroom practice. …
• Second, all tasks have to contribute to an improvement of learning.”
– Inez De Florio, Effective Teaching and Successful Learning, p. 159
“Deepening the learning processes during independent practice should at least prepare the transfer of new concepts or schemata to other situations than those in which the new content first occurred.”
– Inez De Florio, Effective Teaching and Successful Learning, p. 172
“Cooperative learning and problem-/project-based approaches aim at further deepening the new learning content. They offer the learners multiple and motivating opportunities to lead to automaticity of knowledge and skills, and to promote the desired attitudes.”
– Inez De Florio, Effective Teaching and Successful Learning, p. 176
“During the lesson, feedback should have three directions: from teachers to students, among the learners, and from students to teachers.”
– Inez De Florio, Effective Teaching and Successful Learning, p. 199
“During work in small groups, teachers cannot eliminate peer feedback. It occurs as such because feedback is frequent in the life contexts of children, adolescents and adults. Therefore adequate training is of utmost importance not only for classroom learning but also with regard to future professional and private requirements.”
– Inez De Florio, Effective Teaching and Successful Learning, p. 210
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Inez De Florio (Effective Teaching and Successful Learning: Bridging the Gap between Research and Practice)
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The United Nations and the U.S. government were also deeply involved. But early on, they had little success transferring “production technology from the industrialized temperate zones to the tropics and sub tropics.” This is why, according to Borlaug, the cooperative Mexican government–Rockefeller Foundation model “ultimately proved to be superior” to “public sector foreign technical assistance programs.... ”114 By the time the Green Revolution really took off, these national and supranational bodies had recognized the success of the foundation-pioneered model and supported it, as demonstrated by USAID’s commitment of funds to the international centers.115 The Green Revolution would not have been possible without earlier scientific breakthroughs. Dr. Borlaug estimates that fully 40 percent of the world’s current population would not be alive today were it not for the Haber-Bosch ammonia-synthesizing process.116 The spread of Mexican dwarf wheat and IR8 rice (and their continually improving offspring) would have been impossible without such breakthroughs in fertilizer technology. But that is the nature of progress. Scientific achievement is not diminished by its debt to the work of previous generations. It has been argued that the Green Revolution produced negative side effects commensurate with its benefits. Critics point out that, in some parts of the world, the greatest benefits of new seed varieties and agricultural technologies have flowed more to well-off rather than poor farmers. They also claim that the irrigation needs of high-yield agriculture drain local water resources. And fertilizer use, essential if high-yield crops are to reach their full potential, can lead to runoff that pollutes streams and rivers. Observers have also worried that, by enabling the developing world to feed more and more of its people, the Green Revolution has been a disincentive for them to get serious about population control. But population growth historically levels out in developed nations, and it is impossible to make the leap from developing to developed without an adequate supply of food.
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Joel L. Fleishman (The Foundation: A Great American Secret; How Private Wealth is Changing the World)
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(Be a Servant Leader: Mt 20:26-28; Lk 9:46-48; 22:24-27; Jn 12:24) Christ has given to every man his work, and we are to acknowledge the wisdom of the plan He has made for us by a hearty cooperation with Him. It is in a life of service only that true happiness is found. He who lives a useless, selfish life is miserable. He is dissatisfied with himself and with everyone else. True, unselfish, consecrated workers gladly use their highest gifts in the lowliest service. They realize that true service means to see and to perform the duties that God points out. There are many who are not satisfied with the work that God has given them. They are not satisfied to serve Him pleasantly in the place that He has marked out for them, or to do uncomplainingly the work that He has placed in their hands. It is right for us to be dissatisfied with the way in which we perform duty, but we are not to be dissatisfied with the duty itself, because we would rather do something else. In His providence God places before human beings service that will be as medicine to their diseased minds. Thus He seeks to lead them to put aside the selfish preferences which, if cherished, would disqualify them for the work He has for them. If they accept and perform this service, their minds will be cured. But if they refuse it, they will be left at strife with themselves and with others. The Lord disciplines His workers, so that they will be prepared to fill the places appointed them. He desires to mold their minds in accordance with His will. For this purpose He brings to them test and trial. Some He places where relaxed discipline and over-indulgence will not become their snare, where they are taught to appreciate the value of time, and to make the best and wisest use of it. There are some who desire to be a ruling power, and who need the sanctification of submission. God brings about a change in their lives, and perhaps places before them duties that they would not choose. If they are willing to be guided by Him, He will give them grace and strength to perform the objectionable duties in a spirit of submission and helpfulness. They are being qualified to fill places where their disciplined abilities will make them of the greatest service. Some God trains by bringing to them disappointment and apparent failure. It is His purpose that they shall learn to master difficulty. He inspires them with a determination to make every apparent failure prove a success. Often men pray and weep because of the perplexities and obstacles that confront them. But if they will hold the beginning of their confidence steadfast unto the end, He will make their way clear. Success will come to them as they struggle against apparently insurmountable difficulties; and with success will come the greatest joy. Many are ignorant of how to work for God, not because they need to be ignorant, but because they are not willing to submit to His training process. -8MR 422, 423 • TMK 44-The Pattern Man; UL 62-A Living Connection With the Living God
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Ellen Gould White (Sabbath School Lesson Comments By Ellen G. White - 2nd Quarter 2015 (April, May, June 2015 Book 32))
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As the leader of a group, your success is going to depend, not only upon yourself, but on the cooperation of every person, working with you. If they do not cooperate, you will not accomplish anything, no matter how brilliant you may prove to be.
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J. Vernon Jacobs
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The Linux world behaves in many respects like a free market or an ecology, a collection of selfish agents attempting to maximize utility which in the process produces a self-correcting spontaneous order more elaborate and efficient than any amount of central planning could have achieved. Here, then, is the place to seek the “principle of understanding”. The “utility function” Linux hackers are maximizing is not classically economic, but is the intangible of their own ego satisfaction and reputation among other hackers. (One may call their motivation “altruistic”, but this ignores the fact that altruism is itself a form of ego satisfaction for the altruist). Voluntary cultures that work this way are not actually uncommon; one other in which I have long participated is science fiction fandom, which unlike hackerdom has long explicitly recognized “egoboo” (ego-boosting, or the enhancement of one’s reputation among other fans) as the basic drive behind volunteer activity. Linus, by successfully positioning himself as the gatekeeper of a project in which the development is mostly done by others, and nurturing interest in the project until it became self-sustaining, has shown an acute grasp of Kropotkin’s “principle of shared understanding”. This quasi-economic view of the Linux world enables us to see how that understanding is applied. We may view Linus’s method as a way to create an efficient market in “egoboo” — to connect the selfishness of individual hackers as firmly as possible to difficult ends that can only be achieved by sustained cooperation. With the fetchmail project I have shown (albeit on a smaller scale) that his methods can be duplicated with good results. Perhaps I have even done it a bit more consciously and systematically than he. Many people (especially those who politically distrust free markets) would expect a culture of self-directed egoists to be fragmented, territorial, wasteful, secretive, and hostile. But this expectation is clearly falsified by (to give just one example) the stunning variety, quality, and depth of Linux documentation. It is a hallowed given that programmers hate documenting; how is it, then, that Linux hackers generate so much documentation? Evidently Linux’s free market in egoboo works better to produce virtuous, other-directed behavior than the massively-funded documentation shops of commercial software producers. Both the fetchmail and Linux kernel projects show that by properly rewarding the egos of many other hackers, a strong developer/coordinator can use the Internet to capture the benefits of having lots of co-developers without having a project collapse into a chaotic mess. So to Brooks’s Law I counter-propose the following: Provided the development coordinator has a communications medium at least as good as the Internet, and knows how to lead without coercion, many heads are inevitably better than one.
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Eric S. Raymond (The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary)
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The Major Attributes of Leadership The following are important factors of leadership: 1. UNWAVERING COURAGE based upon knowledge of self and of one’s occupation. No follower wishes to be dominated by a leader who lacks self-confidence and courage. No intelligent follower will be dominated by such a leader for very long. 2. SELF-CONTROL. People who cannot control themselves can never control others. Self-control sets a mighty example for one’s followers, which the more intelligent will emulate. 3. A KEEN SENSE OF JUSTICE. Without a sense of fairness and justice, no leader can command and retain the respect of his or her followers. 4. DEFINITENESS OF DECISION. People who waver in decisions show that they are not sure of themselves. They cannot lead others successfully. 5. DEFINITENESS OF PLANS. The successful leader must plan the work, and work the plan. A leader who moves by guesswork without practical, definite plans is comparable to a ship without a rudder. Sooner or later it will land on the rocks. 6. THE HABIT OF DOING MORE THAN PAID FOR. One of the penalties of leadership is the necessity of willingness, upon the part of the leaders, to do more than they require of their followers. 7. A PLEASING PERSONALITY. No slovenly, careless person can become a successful leader. Leadership calls for respect. Followers will not respect leaders who do not score highly on all factors of a pleasing personality. 8. SYMPATHY AND UNDERSTANDING. Successful leaders must be in sympathy with their followers. Moreover, they must understand them and their problems. 9. MASTERY OF DETAIL. Successful leadership calls for mastery of details of the leader’s position. 10. WILLINGNESS TO ASSUME FULL RESPONSIBILITY. Successful leaders must be willing to assume responsibility for the mistakes and shortcomings of their followers. If they try to shift this responsibility, they will not remain leaders. If followers make mistakes and become incompetent, it is the leader who has failed. 11. COOPERATION. Successful leaders must understand and apply the principle of cooperative effort and be able to induce followers to do the same. Leadership calls for power, and power calls for cooperation.
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Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich)
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....Therefore, it becomes clear that this desired goal which leads to true success, as has been mentioned, is only possible through the seeking of beneficial knowledge, meaning Sharee’ah knowledge, from its carriers- the scholars. Similarly, what is meant by the term ‘scholars’ are those people of knowledge from the saved and victorious group of Muslims who have always remained upon the guidance of the Messenger, may Allaah’s praise and His salutations be upon him and his Companions, inwardly and outwardly, in every generation and age. They are the people of true guidance, the well-grounded scholars of Ahlus-Sunnah wa al-Jama’ah from the early generations, the later generations, and our present day scholars.
We must recognize them and affirm their position, defend their honor, and strive to assist and cooperate with them because they carry and preserve the inheritance of the Messenger of Allaah, may Allaah’s praise and salutations be upon him.
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Abu Sukhailah Khalil Ibn-Abelahyi al-Amreekee (Statements of the Guiding Scholars of Our Age Regarding Books and Their Advice to the Beginner Seeker of Knowledge)
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We can now apply our lessons from our discussion of multilevel selection: if there are two levels of selection operating on a moral rule, then the strength of the different selective pressures will be critical in determining which of the two is more influential. If cultural competition decreases or moderates, then we can expect INDIVIDUAL-level selection to be a much stronger determinant. An interesting hypothesis thus emerges: if cultural evolution is genuinely multilevel in this way, then in eras of decreased GROUP competition, public justification of a rule should be a much stronger force in a rule's selection as it is competing for individual agents' endorsement against alternative rules. On the other hand, in eras of intense inter-group competition, we should expect that rules are not well-aligned with the moral commitment of individuals, but which are selected at the group level, may predominate.
This in turn, leads to another important point. In multilevel analysis, effective high-level GROUP selection inherently restraints lower-level INDIVIDUAL selection. There really is no point to invoking higher-level selection if it does not. In the evolution of cooperation literature, the point of invoking a GROUP-level selection is to restrain the success of INDIVIDUAL (selfish) agents so that within-group less adaptive, cooperative agents can thrive. A mammal can be seen as a case of GROUP-level selection, insofar as the possible strategies of individual cells are constrained by the adaptive needs of the GROUP (individual mammal). A cancer cell is precisely a part that has broken free of these restraints, and because of this threatens ultimately system collapse. We might say, in a rough and ready way, that restricting the social influence of INDIVIDUAL-level preferences (in which a rule's within group fitness is determined by its attractiveness to individuals) in order to secure system-wide functionality is precisely what GROUP selection accomplishes. If GROUP-level pressures are great, the rules will be less responsive to the aims of the INDIVIDUAL agents, and indeed significantly restricting their actions will be critical to the culture's success. When GROUP-level selection is strong, it is entirely appropriate to call a culture a 'superorganism.' In such a culture, rules will tend to be more restrictive, and public justification may be less important
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Gerald F. Gaus (The Open Society and Its Complexities (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics))
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The mission describes the business problem and its solution. For example, “The operations lead will create and manage a world-class department that will support every team member by providing the environment, information, tools, training, and habits they need to succeed in their role and make the company a massive success.” • The outcomes are what the person must get done. There should be three to eight outcomes (target is five) ranked by order of importance. They should be measurable and have an accomplish-by date. For example, “Turn every team member into a ninja user of our internal tools (Asana, Salesforece, Notion) and methodologies (GTD, Inbox Zero, management by objectives, active listening) by October 31.” • The competencies are the traits or habits that are required to succeed in the role and fit in at the company. They are the how—the behaviors that someone must exhibit in order to achieve the outcomes. Here are some examples: ○ Organized: Follows the GTD method and stays well aware of all to-dos and events ○ Innovative: Seeks to make process improvements to make their role and the team more efficient going forward ○ Collaborative: Reaches out to peers and cooperates with managers to establish an overall collaborative environment ○ Persuasive: Is able to convince others to pursue a course of action ○ Coachable: Wants to improve and is open to feedback and acts on that feedback
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Matt Mochary (The Great CEO Within: The Tactical Guide to Company Building)
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IN MANY RESPECTS, modern-day India counted as a success story, having survived repeated changeovers in government, bitter feuds within political parties, various armed separatist movements, and all manner of corruption scandals. The transition to a more market-based economy in the 1990s had unleashed the extraordinary entrepreneurial talents of the Indian people—leading to soaring growth rates, a thriving high-tech sector, and a steadily expanding middle class. As a chief architect of India’s economic transformation, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seemed like a fitting emblem of this progress: a member of the tiny, often persecuted Sikh religious minority who’d risen to the highest office in the land, and a self-effacing technocrat who’d won people’s trust not by appealing to their passions but by bringing about higher living standards and maintaining a well-earned reputation for not being corrupt. Singh and I had developed a warm and productive relationship. While he could be cautious in foreign policy, unwilling to get out too far ahead of an Indian bureaucracy that was historically suspicious of U.S. intentions, our time together confirmed my initial impression of him as a man of uncommon wisdom and decency; and during my visit to the capital city of New Delhi, we reached agreements to strengthen U.S. cooperation on counterterrorism, global health, nuclear security, and trade.
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Barack Obama (A Promised Land)
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The Major Attributes of Leadership. The following are important factors of leadership:— 1. Unwavering courage based upon knowledge of self, and of one’s occupation. No follower wishes to be dominated by a leader who lacks self-confidence and courage. No intelligent follower will be dominated by such a leader very long. 2. Self-control. The man who cannot control himself can never control others. Self-control sets a mighty example for one’s followers, which the more intelligent will emulate. 3. A keen sense of justice. Without a sense of fairness and justice, no leader can command and retain the respect of his followers. 4. Definiteness of decision. The man who wavers in his decisions, shows that he is not sure of himself, cannot lead others successfully. 5. Definiteness of plans. The successful leader must plan his work, and work his plan. A leader who moves by guesswork, without practical, definite plans, is comparable to a ship without a rudder. Sooner or later he will land on the rocks. 6. The habit of doing more than paid for. One of the penalties of leadership is the necessity of willingness, upon the part of the leader, to do more than he requires of his followers. 7. A pleasing personality. No slovenly, careless person can become a successful leader. Leadership calls for respect. Followers will not respect a leader who does not grade high on all of the factors of a pleasing personality. 8. Sympathy and understanding. The successful leader must be in sympathy with his followers. Moreover, he must understand them and their problems. 9. Mastery of detail. Successful leadership calls for mastery of the details of the leader’s position. 10. Willingness to assume full responsibility. The successful leader must be willing to assume responsibility for the mistakes and the shortcomings of his followers. If he tries to shift this responsibility, he will not remain the leader. If one of his followers makes a mistake, and shows himself incompetent, the leader must consider that it is he who failed. 11. Cooperation. The successful leader must understand and apply the principle of cooperative effort and be able to induce his followers to do the same. Leadership calls for power, and power calls for cooperation.
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Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich)
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we WEIRD ones typically practise what is known as ‘strong reciprocity’: we are conditional cooperators (tending to cooperate so long as others do too) but also altruistic punishers (ready to punish defectors and free riders even if it costs us personally). And it is the combination of these two traits that leads to the success of large-scale cooperation in society.
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Kate Raworth (Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist)
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[Warren] Harding diligently worked the knots of America's body politic from the moment he took office, soothing conservatives by resizing the federal government for peacetime and adopting a pro-business outlook, soothing his Republican base by raising tariffs and lowering taxes, soothing the left by releasing from prison the socialist icon Eugene Debs and other radicals rounded up during Palmer's Red Scare, soothing the battered farm belt with an emergency tariff and federal protection for farm cooperatives, soothing labor with public works programs to ease unemployment and by cajoling the steel industry into abandoning its inhumane practice of twelve-hour shifts. Harding soothed the isolationist and nativist majority in America with tighter immigration policies and a foreign policy emphasizing legitimate national interests over crusading idealism. He soothed international tensions by normalizing relations with Germany and other former enemy states, and by convincing the world's leading naval powers to reduce tonnage at his Washington Disarmament Conference, the first gathering of its kind and a remarkable, unexpected success.
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Kenneth Whyte (Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times)
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Laszlo Bock, Work Rules (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2015) David Brooks, The Social Animal (New York: Random House, 2011) Arie de Geus, The Living Company (Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2002) Angela Duckworth, Grit: The Power of Perseverance and Passion (New York: Scribner, 2016) Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business (New York: Random House, 2012) Amy Edmondson, Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the Knowledge Economy (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Pfeiffer, 2012) Adam Grant, Give and Take (New York: Viking, 2013) Richard Hackman, Leading Teams (Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2002) Chip and Dan Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard (New York: Broadway Books, 2010) Sebastian Junger, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging (New York: HarperCollins, 2016) James Kerr, Legacy (London: Constable & Robinson, 2013) Patrick Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002) Stanley McChrystal, Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World (New York: Portfolio, 2015). Mark Pagel, Wired for Culture (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012) Daniel Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (New York: Riverhead Books, 2009) Amanda Ripley, The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013) Edgar H. Schein, Helping (Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2009) Edgar H. Schein, Humble Inquiry (Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2013) Peter M. Senge, The Fifth Discipline (New York: Doubleday Business, 1990) Michael Tomasello, Why We Cooperate (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009)
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Daniel Coyle (The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups)
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THE MAJOR ATTRIBUTES OF LEADERSHIP The following are important factors of leadership:— 1. UNWAVERING COURAGE based upon knowledge of self, and of one’s occupation. No follower wishes to be dominated by a leader who lacks self-confidence and courage. No intelligent follower will be dominated by such a leader very long. 2. SELF-CONTROL. The man who cannot control himself, can never control others. Self-control sets a mighty example for one’s followers, which the more intelligent will emulate. 3. A KEEN SENSE OF JUSTICE. Without a sense of fairness and justice, no leader can command and retain the respect of his followers. 4. DEFINITENESS OF DECISION. The man who wavers in his decisions, shows that he is not sure of himself. He cannot lead others successfully. 5. DEFINITENESS OF PLANS. The successful leader must plan his work, and work his plan. A leader who moves by guesswork, without practical, definite plans, is comparable to a ship without a rudder. Sooner or later he will land on the rocks. 6. THE HABIT OF DOING MORE THAN PAID FOR. One of the penalties of leadership is the necessity of willingness, upon the part of the leader, to do more than he requires of his followers. 7. A PLEASING PERSONALITY. No slovenly, careless person can become a successful leader. Leadership calls for respect. Followers will not respect a leader who does not grade high on all of the factors of a Pleasing Personality. 8. SYMPATHY AND UNDERSTANDING. The successful leader must be in sympathy with his followers. Moreover, he must understand them and their problems. 9. MASTERY OF DETAIL. Successful leadership calls for mastery of details of the leader’s position. 10. WILLINGNESS TO ASSUME FULL RESPONSIBILITY. The successful leader must be willing to assume responsibility for the mistakes and the shortcomings of his followers. If he tries to shift this responsibility, he will not remain the leader. If one of his followers makes a mistake, and shows himself incompetent, the leader must consider that it is he who failed. 11. COOPERATION. The successful leader must understand, and apply the principle of cooperative effort and be able to induce his followers to do the same. Leadership calls for POWER, and power calls for COOPERATION.
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Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich: The Original, an Official Publication of The Napoleon Hill Foundation)