“
In short, physicians are getting more and more data, which requires more sophisticated interpretation and which takes more time. AI is the solution, enhancing every stage of patient care from research and discovery to diagnosis and therapy selection. As a result, clinical practice will become more efficient, convenient, personalized, and effective.
”
”
Ronald M. Razmi (AI Doctor: The Rise of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare - A Guide for Users, Buyers, Builders, and Investors)
“
All my means are sane, my motive and my object mad.
”
”
Herman Melville (Moby-Dick or, The Whale)
“
Perfectly Imperfect
We have all heard that no two snowflakes are alike. Each snowflake takes the perfect form for the maximum efficiency and effectiveness for its journey. And while the universal force of gravity gives them a shared destination, the expansive space in the air gives each snowflake the opportunity to take their own path. They are on the same journey, but each takes a different path.
Along this gravity-driven journey, some snowflakes collide and damage each other, some collide and join together, some are influenced by wind... there are so many transitions and changes that take place along the journey of the snowflake. But, no matter what the transition, the snowflake always finds itself perfectly shaped for its journey.
I find parallels in nature to be a beautiful reflection of grand orchestration. One of these parallels is of snowflakes and us. We, too, are all headed in the same direction. We are being driven by a universal force to the same destination. We are all individuals taking different journeys and along our journey, we sometimes bump into each other, we cross paths, we become altered... we take different physical forms. But at all times we too are 100% perfectly imperfect. At every given moment we are absolutely perfect for what is required for our journey. I’m not perfect for your journey and you’re not perfect for my journey, but I’m perfect for my journey and you’re perfect for your journey. We’re heading to the same place, we’re taking different routes, but we’re both exactly perfect the way we are.
Think of what understanding this great orchestration could mean for relationships. Imagine interacting with others knowing that they too each share this parallel with the snowflake. Like you, they are headed to the same place and no matter what they may appear like to you, they have taken the perfect form for their journey. How strong our relationships would be if we could see and respect that we are all perfectly imperfect for our journey.
”
”
Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)
“
Champions never sleep, the eternal spirit keep them alert and awake.
”
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Amit Ray (Enlightenment Step by Step)
“
Be a worthy worker and work will come.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
Your employees shouldn’t be scared of being let go but you should be scared of them leaving you.
”
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Pooja Agnihotri (17 Reasons Why Businesses Fail :Unscrew Yourself From Business Failure)
“
It is not over. Champions extend their limits and make things happen.
”
”
Amit Ray
“
The profit motive is the most potent source of collective motivation and the most efficient means for society to solve its problems. Anywhere you insert a profit motive - people will self assemble groups, leverage resources, and implement processes all in the effort to satisfy that profit motive.
”
”
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
“
While spirituality provides an efficient and endless fuel for your mind and body, you must burn that fuel with human action towards your goals, dreams, and desires.
”
”
Steve Maraboli (Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience)
“
We may be little, insignificant servants in the eyes of a world motivated by efficiency, control and success. But when we realize that God has chosen us from all eternity, sent us into the world as the blessed ones, handed us over to suffering, can't we, then, also trust that our little lives will multiply themselves and be able to fulfill the needs of countless people?
”
”
Henri J.M. Nouwen (Life of the Beloved: Spiritual Living in a Secular World)
“
As I see it, if you work more hours than somebody else, during those hours you learn more about your craft. That can make you more efficient, more able, even happier. Hard work is like compounded interest in the bank. The rewards build faster.
”
”
Randy Pausch (The Last Lecture)
“
At home I am a man, at work I am a machine.
”
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Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
Profit is good.
Profit motivates businesses to be:
(a) efficient - to do more with less, to consume fewer resources, to reduce and reuse waste.
(b) productive - to allow for bigger profit margins.
(c) Valuable - income, and therefore profit is only possible when we add value to our customers lives. When the value of our product or service is worth more to them than what it cost us to provide it, we profit.
”
”
Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
“
If you have talented and motivated people, they should be encouraged to work alone when creativity or efficiency is the highest priority.
”
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Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
“
For a lot of people, finding a method that bypasses the most executive functioning barriers or that makes a task a little less intolerable is better than what’s “quickest.” In the end, the approach that you are motivated to do and enjoy doing is the most “efficient,” because you are actually doing it and not avoiding it.
”
”
K.C. Davis (How to Keep House While Drowning)
“
Studies have shown that performance gets worse as group size increases: groups of nine generate fewer and poorer ideas compared to groups of six, which do worse than groups of four. The “evidence from science suggests that business people must be insane to use brainstorming groups,” writes the organizational psychologist Adrian Furnham. “If you have talented and motivated people, they should be encouraged to work alone when creativity or efficiency is the highest priority.” The one exception to this is online brainstorming.
”
”
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
“
To gain your energy from the right sources means you gain more energy from less; reducing the retarding factors means you have less friction that wastes your energy; focusing your motive power towards the direction of the collective human movement means you use others’ energy to boost your energy.
Gain more energy, waste less energy, spend the energy so next time you’ll need less to achieve more. Increase human mass, reduce retarding force, and increase the force accelerating the human mass. Follow this process with reason.
Gain more, waste less, spend efficiently, learn.
”
”
Nikola Tesla (Problem of Increasing Human Energy)
“
All success comes down to this . . . action
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”
Rob Liano
“
The march of history is that of the human race obeying the mantra of the motivational triad—attempting to attain more pleasure, for less pain, with ever-greater efficiency.
”
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Douglas J. Lisle (Pleasure Trap, the: Mastering the Hidden Force that Undermines Health and Happiness)
“
If you have talented and motivated people, they should be encouraged to work alone when creativity or efficiency is the highest priority.
”
”
Adrian Furnham
“
... In a ROWE* people don't have schedules.
They show up when they want.
They don't have to be in the office at certain time, or anytime.
They just have to get their work done.
How they do it ?
When they do it ?
Where they do it ?
It's totally up to them.
Meetings & this kind of environments are Optional.
What happens ... ?
Almost across the board !
- Productivity goes up
- Worker Engagement goes up
- Worker Satisfaction goes up
- Turnovers goes down
- Autonomy .. Mastery .. Purpose -
these are the building blocks of new way of doing things."
______________________________________________________________
*ROWE: results-only work environment
”
”
Daniel H. Pink
“
The God of St. Thomas and Dante is a God Who loves, the god of Aristotle is a god who does not refuse to be loved; the love that moves the heavens and the stars in Aristotle is the love of the heavens and the stars for god, but the love that moves them in St. Thomas and Dante is the love of God for the world; between these two motive causes there is all the difference between an efficient cause on the one hand, and a final cause on the other.
”
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Étienne Gilson
“
To create success in your business, you have to protect your capacity to serve others by learning to work efficiently and effectively.
”
”
Jeffrey Shaw (The Self-Employed Life: Business and Personal Development Strategies That Create Sustainable Success)
“
Minutes may seem as worthless as pennies until you add them up. Neither should be wasted.
”
”
Richelle E. Goodrich (Being Bold: Quotes, Poetry, & Motivations for Every Day of the Year)
“
By doing ordinary actions efficiently you will become the best among ordinary, but you will not be an extraordinary.
”
”
Amit Kalantri
“
The greatest leaders in the world fight cognitive bias by developing 'rules to live by' and carefully following predetermined routines to maximize efficiency and control of their environment
”
”
Spencer Fraseur (The Irrational Mind: How To Fight Back Against The Hidden Forces That Affect Our Decision Making)
“
The “evidence from science suggests that business people must be insane to use brainstorming groups,” writes the organizational psychologist Adrian Furnham. “If you have talented and motivated people, they should be encouraged to work alone when creativity or efficiency is the highest priority.
”
”
Susan Cain (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking)
“
The profit motive is powerful. It incentivizes people to be valuable, efficient and productive. Because profit cannot be sustainability obtained without first being valuable, efficient and productive.
”
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Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr.
“
We cannot deal with the increasing maldistribution of wealth, the increasing alienation of millions, or the lack of a unified purpose and goal by increasing the efficiency of production, increasing the automation of industry, accelerating our technology, or increasing our reliance on the profit motives of multinational corporations.
”
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Carl R. Rogers (A Way of Being)
“
In the United States I saw how the market liberates the individual and allows people to be free to make personal choices. But the biggest drawback was that the market always pushes things to the side of the powerful. I thought the poor should be able to take advantage of the system in order to improve their lot.
Grameen is a private-sector self-help bank, and as its members gain personal wealth they acquire water-pumps, latrines, housing, education, access to health care, and so on.
Another way to achieve this is to let abusiness earn profit that is then txed by the government, and the tax can be used to provide services to the poor. But in practice it never works that way. In real life, taxes only pay for a government bureaucracy that collects the tax and provides little or nothing to the poor. And since most government bureaucracies are not profit motivated, they have little incentive to increase their efficiency. In fact, they have a disincentive: governments often cannot cut social services without a public outcry, so the behemoth continues, blind and inefficient, year after year.
”
”
Muhammad Yunus (Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty)
“
certain hallmarks of her legal writing and thought—her care in choosing words, her wariness of politically motivated prosecution, her concern that shortcuts in the name of efficiency often reduce effectiveness in the long run, and her unswerving commitment to individual rights and the presumption of innocence—shone through even in that first letter to her college newspaper.
”
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Ruth Bader Ginsburg (My Own Words)
“
Here was a stupendous possibility of achievement. If we could produce electric effects of the required quality, this whole planet and the conditions of existence on it could be transformed. The sun raises the water of the oceans and winds drive it to distant regions where it remains in a state of most delicate balance. If it were in our power to upset it when and wherever desired, this mighty life-sustaining stream could be at will controlled. We could irrigate arid deserts, create lakes and rivers and provide motive power in unlimited amounts. This would be the most efficient way of harnessing the sun to the uses of man. The consummation depended on our ability to develop electric forces of the order of those in nature.
”
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Nikola Tesla (My Inventions)
“
Traditional corporations, particularly large-scale service and manufacturing businesses are organized for efficiency. Or consistency. But not joy. Joy comes from surprise and connection and humanity and transparency and new...If you fear special requests, if you staff with cogs, if you have to put it all in a manual, then the chances of amazing someone are really quite low. These organizations have people who will try to patch problems over after the fact, instead of motivated people eager to delight on the spot.
The alternative, it seems, is to organize for joy. These are the companies that give their people the freedom (and the expectation) that they will create, connect and surprise. These are the organizations that embrace someone who make a difference, as opposed to searching the employee handbook for a rule that was violated.
”
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Seth Godin (Poke the Box)
“
Make it your sole intention to be part of the solution. When you learn how to efficiently solve problems, you will attract many opportunities.
”
”
Gift Gugu Mona (The Extensive Philosophy of Life: Daily Quotes)
“
Good managers don't set a goal to increase efficiency, but rather an implementation of business process improvements that result in higher efficiency as well.
”
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Eraldo Banovac
“
As the state of mind, as the efficiency. Time is only a relative factor
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Rajasaraswathii (I Want to be a Millionaire)
“
The art of lateral thinking in a team is key, in order to gain a competitive advantage.
”
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Wayne Chirisa
“
Conflict can become genocidal when powerful groups think that the most efficient means to get what they want is to eliminate those in the way. It can become equally or more murderous when the motive is revenge, and descend to the worst levels of slaughter when there is great fear that the survival of the enemy group might endanger the survival of one’s own group.
”
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Daniel Chirot (Why Not Kill Them All?: The Logic and Prevention of Mass Political Murder)
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Only a visionary leadership that can motivate "the better angels of our nature," as Lincoln said, and activate possibilities for a freer, more efficient, and stable America -- only that leadership deserves cultivation and support. / This new leadership must be grounded in grassroots organizing that highlights democratic accountability. Whoever our leaders will be as we approach the twenty-first century, their challenge will be to help Americans determine whether a genuine multiracial democracy can be created and sustained in an era of global economy and a moment of xenophobic frenzy.
”
”
Cornel West (Race Matters)
“
The moment you start to resent a person,
you become his or her slave.
He controls your dreams, absorbs your thoughts,
robs you of your peace of mind,
and takes away the pleasure of your life.
You can never have efficiency or happiness.
He influences even the tone of your voice.
So, if you want to be a slave, harbor your resentments.
and don't want to Forgive and have Peace of Mind.
The choice is yours !
”
”
Sham Hinduja
“
When you’re thinking like a Scientist—self-aware, free of bias, unattached to any particular ideas, motivated entirely by truth and continually willing to revise your beliefs—your brain is a hyper-efficient learning machine.
”
”
Tim Urban (What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies)
“
Environmental influences also affect dopamine. From animal studies, we know that social stimulation is necessary for the growth of the nerve endings that release dopamine and for the growth of receptors that dopamine needs to bind to in order to do its work. In four-month-old monkeys, major alterations of dopamine and other neurotransmitter systems were found after only six days of separation from their mothers.
“In these experiments,” writes Steven Dubovsky, Professor of Psychiatry and Medicine at the University of Colorado, “loss of an important attachment appears to lead to less of an important neurotransmitter in the brain. Once these circuits stop functioning normally, it becomes more and more difficult to activate the mind.”
A neuroscientific study published in 1998 showed that adult rats whose mothers had given them more licking, grooming and other physical-emotional contact during infancy had more efficient brain circuitry for reducing anxiety, as well as more receptors on nerve cells for the brain’s own natural tranquilizing chemicals. In other words, early interactions with the mother shaped the adult rat’s neurophysiological capacity to respond to stress.
In another study, newborn animals reared in isolation had reduced dopamine activity in their prefrontal cortex — but not in other areas of the brain. That is, emotional stress particularly affects the chemistry of the prefrontal cortex, the center for selective attention, motivation and self-regulation. Given the relative complexity of human emotional interactions, the influence of the infant-parent relationship on human neurochemistry is bound to be even stronger.
In the human infant, the growth of dopamine-rich nerve terminals and the development of dopamine receptors is stimulated by chemicals released in the brain during the experience of joy, the ecstatic joy that comes from the perfectly attuned mother-child mutual gaze interaction. Happy interactions between mother and infant generate motivation and arousal by activating cells in the midbrain that release endorphins, thereby inducing in the infant a joyful, exhilarated state. They also trigger the release of dopamine. Both endorphins and dopamine promote the development of new connections in the prefrontal cortex.
Dopamine released from the midbrain also triggers the growth of nerve cells and blood vessels in the right prefrontal cortex and promotes the growth of dopamine receptors. A relative scarcity of such receptors and blood supply is thought to be one of the major physiological dimensions of ADD. The letters ADD may equally well stand for Attunement Deficit Disorder.
”
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Gabor Maté (Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates and What You Can Do About It)
“
The idea of self-denial for the sake of posterity, of practicing present economy for the sake of debtors yet unborn, of planting forests that our descendants may live under their shade … never I suppose, efficiently takes place among publicly recognized motives of exertion. Yet these are not the less our duties; nor is our part fitly sustained upon the earth, unless the range of our intended and deliberate usefulness include, not only the companions but the successors of our pilgrimage. God has lent us the earth for our life; it is a great entail. It belongs as much to those who are to come after us … as to us; we have no right, by anything that we do or neglect, to involve them in unnecessary penalties, or deprive them of benefits which it was in our power to bequeath.
”
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John Ruskin (The Seven Lamps of Architecture (Dover Architecture))
“
My general approach is very simple – one step at a time. Break the process down into smaller pieces and then focus in on each one of those steps. By definition, if you make every one of those steps the most efficient it can be, then your journey as a whole will be much more productive
”
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David Coulthard (The Winning Formula: Leadership, Strategy and Motivation The F1 Way)
“
efficiently means providing slots in our schedules where we can maintain an attentional set for an extended period. This allows us to get more done and finish up with more energy. Related to the manager/worker distinction is that the prefrontal cortex contains circuits responsible for telling us whether we’re controlling something or someone else is. When we set up a system, this part of the brain marks it as self-generated. When we step into someone else’s system, the brain marks it that way. This may help explain why it’s easier to stick with an exercise program or diet that someone else sets up: We typically trust them as “experts” more than we trust ourselves. “My trainer told me to do three sets of ten reps at forty pounds—he’s a trainer, he must know what he’s talking about. I can’t design my own workout—what do I know?” It takes Herculean amounts of discipline to overcome the brain’s bias against self-generated motivational systems. Why? Because as with the fundamental attribution error we saw in Chapter 4, we don’t have access to others’ minds, only our own. We are painfully aware of all the fretting and indecision, all the nuances of our internal decision-making process that led us to reach a particular conclusion. (I really need to get serious about exercise.) We don’t have access to that (largely internal) process in others, so we tend to take their certainty as more compelling, in many cases, than our own. (Here’s your program. Do it every day.)
”
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Daniel J. Levitin (The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload)
“
Countless self-management workshops, motivational retreats, and seminars on personality or mental training promise boundless self-optimization and heightened efficiency. They are steered by neoliberal techniques of domination, which aim to capitalize not just on working time but on the person themselves.
”
”
Byung-Chul Han (Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power)
“
Go back to where you came from," muttered a man in Italian, glancing from Magnus's Indonesian to Shinyun's Korean face. He moved to shove past them, but Shinyun held up a hand. The man froze.
"I've always wondered what that saying is about," Magnus said casually. "I wasn't born in Italy, but many people are who don't fit your idea of what people born here look like. Is it that you think their parents weren't from here, or their grandparents? Why do people say it? Is the idea that everyone should go back to the very first place their ancestors came from?"
Shinyun stepped up to the man, who remained fixed in place, his eyeballs twitching.
"Wouldn't that mean," Magnus asked, "that ultimately, we all have to go back to the water?"
Shinyun flicked a finger, and the man was flung with a brief squeak into the Tiber. Magnus made sure he fell without injury and drifted him to the riverside. The man climbed out and sat down on the bank with a squelch. Magnus hoped he would think about his choices.
"I was only going to make him think I would drop him in the water," Magnus clarified. "I understand the impulse, but just making him afraid of us . . ." He trailed off and sighed. "Fear isn't a very efficient motivator."
"Fear is all some people understand," Shinyun said.
They were standing close together. Magnus could feel the tension running through Shinyun's body. He took her hand and gave it a brief, friendly squeeze before he dropped it. He felt a faint pressure of her fingers in return, as if she'd wanted to squeeze back.
I did this to her, he thought, as he always did, the five small words that circled in his mind repeatedly when he was around Shinyun.
"I prefer to believe that people can understand a lot, when offered the opportunity," said Magnus. "I like your enthusiasm, but let's not drown anyone."
"Spoilsport," said Shinyun, but her tone was friendly.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (The Red Scrolls of Magic (The Eldest Curses, #1))
“
Two powerful factors drive avoidance of activities: 1An immediate sense of relief from dodging what we think will be difficult 2Not experiencing the reward from engaging in the activity, thereby further diminishing our motivation for it Behavioral activation is designed to break these patterns. Lead with Action Like Beth, many of us are waiting to feel better so we can get back to the things we used to enjoy. However, it’s much more efficient to gradually start doing rewarding activities, even if we don’t feel like it. The interest in the activities will follow. This approach is the foundation of behavioral activation for depression.
”
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Seth J. Gillihan (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Made Simple: 10 Strategies for Managing Anxiety, Depression, Anger, Panic, and Worry)
“
Do you know novelty can not only keep us engaged, but also serve as a source of motivation? When we are exposed to novelty, the dopamine pathway (the “pleasure/reward center” in our brain) is activated. Our brain is stimulated with a little rush of motivation, since it anticipates a potential reward and wants to explore further.
”
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Jennifer April (What Everyone Should Know About Super-efficient Learning)
“
All of this suggests that we reconsider our huge subsidies and encouragements of school. Yes, there are benefits to credentialing and sorting students—namely, the economic efficiency that results from getting higher-skilled workers into more important jobs. But the benefits seem to pale next to the enormous monetary, psychic, and social waste of the education tournament.19
”
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Kevin Simler (The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life)
“
This is the time to trade in hope. Buy, sell, barter, distribute, exchange & spread hope. Promote so much hope that even the hope start hoping to establish a permanent residence in our minds.
Remember, the markets are under siege by armies of disbelief, distrust, doubt, fear, hopelessness, despair, discouragement & pessimism. The most efficient weapon & shield against this enemy is "the hope.
”
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Shahenshah Hafeez Khan
“
FEASIBILITY: The ability to begin turning the idea into action in a short period of time PROFITABILITY: The potential to make money from this idea, also in a short period of time PERSUASION: Not only is this a good idea, it’s a good idea now To narrow our list even further, let’s add two more qualities to the mix: EFFICIENCY: How quickly can this be executed? MOTIVATION: How excited are you about this idea?
”
”
Chris Guillebeau (Side Hustle: From Idea to Income in 27 Days)
“
The notion that racial caste systems are necessarily predicated on a desire to harm other racial groups, and that racial hostility is the essence of racism, is fundamentally misguided. Even slavery does not conform to this limited understanding of racism and racial caste. Most plantation owners supported the institution of black slavery not because of a sadistic desire to harm blacks but instead because they wanted to get rich, and black slavery was the most efficient means to that end. By and large, plantation owners were indifferent to the suffering caused by slavery; they were motivated by greed. Preoccupation with the role of racial hostility in earlier caste systems can blind us to the ways in which every caste system, including mass incarceration, has been supported by racial indifference – a lack of caring and compassion for people of other races.
”
”
Michelle Alexander (The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness)
“
Somehow it was not the fault of the born adventurers, of those who by their very nature dwelt outside society and outside all political bodies, that they found in imperialism a political game that was endless by definition; they were not supposed to know that in politics an endless game can end only in catastrophe and that political secrecy hardly ever ends in anything nobler than the vulgar duplicity of a spy. The joke on these players of the Great Game was that their employers knew what they wanted and used their passion for anonymity for ordinary spying. But this triumph of the profit-hungry investors was temporary, and they were duly cheated when a few decades later they met the player of the game of totalitarianism, a game played without ulterior motives like profit and therefore played with such murderous efficiency that it devoured even those who financed it.
”
”
Hannah Arendt (The Origins of Totalitarianism)
“
Sheepwalking I define “sheepwalking” as the outcome of hiring people who have been raised to be obedient and giving them a brain-dead job and enough fear to keep them in line. You’ve probably encountered someone who is sheepwalking. The TSA “screener” who forces a mom to drink from a bottle of breast milk because any other action is not in the manual. A “customer service” rep who will happily reread a company policy six or seven times but never stop to actually consider what the policy means. A marketing executive who buys millions of dollars’ worth of TV time even though she knows it’s not working—she does it because her boss told her to. It’s ironic but not surprising that in our age of increased reliance on new ideas, rapid change, and innovation, sheepwalking is actually on the rise. That’s because we can no longer rely on machines to do the brain-dead stuff. We’ve mechanized what we could mechanize. What’s left is to cost-reduce the manual labor that must be done by a human. So we write manuals and race to the bottom in our search for the cheapest possible labor. And it’s not surprising that when we go to hire that labor, we search for people who have already been trained to be sheepish. Training a student to be sheepish is a lot easier than the alternative. Teaching to the test, ensuring compliant behavior, and using fear as a motivator are the easiest and fastest ways to get a kid through school. So why does it surprise us that we graduate so many sheep? And graduate school? Since the stakes are higher (opportunity cost, tuition, and the job market), students fall back on what they’ve been taught. To be sheep. Well-educated, of course, but compliant nonetheless. And many organizations go out of their way to hire people that color inside the lines, that demonstrate consistency and compliance. And then they give these people jobs where they are managed via fear. Which leads to sheepwalking. (“I might get fired!”) The fault doesn’t lie with the employee, at least not at first. And of course, the pain is often shouldered by both the employee and the customer. Is it less efficient to pursue the alternative? What happens when you build an organization like W. L. Gore and Associates (makers of Gore-Tex) or the Acumen Fund? At first, it seems crazy. There’s too much overhead, there are too many cats to herd, there is too little predictability, and there is way too much noise. Then, over and over, we see something happen. When you hire amazing people and give them freedom, they do amazing stuff. And the sheepwalkers and their bosses just watch and shake their heads, certain that this is just an exception, and that it is way too risky for their industry or their customer base. I was at a Google conference last month, and I spent some time in a room filled with (pretty newly minted) Google sales reps. I talked to a few of them for a while about the state of the industry. And it broke my heart to discover that they were sheepwalking. Just like the receptionist at a company I visited a week later. She acknowledged that the front office is very slow, and that she just sits there, reading romance novels and waiting. And she’s been doing it for two years. Just like the MBA student I met yesterday who is taking a job at a major packaged-goods company…because they offered her a great salary and promised her a well-known brand. She’s going to stay “for just ten years, then have a baby and leave and start my own gig.…” She’ll get really good at running coupons in the Sunday paper, but not particularly good at solving new problems. What a waste. Step one is to give the problem a name. Done. Step two is for anyone who sees themselves in this mirror to realize that you can always stop. You can always claim the career you deserve merely by refusing to walk down the same path as everyone else just because everyone else is already doing it.
”
”
Seth Godin (Whatcha Gonna Do with That Duck?: And Other Provocations, 2006-2012)
“
The key trait of a Sperm Pirate is that she is not driven by desperation. Escaping poverty or hardship is not her motive. She usually has a good education and access to the same opportunities as the man she tries to trap. However, she understands that it is more efficient to enjoy a lavish lifestyle through the sweat of another’s labour. But the Sperm Pirate is acutely aware that the infatuation of a hormonal man has a brief shelf life. This poor collateral must be cashed in before it expires. A pregnancy is the best way to convert this volatile resource into a stable asset. Babies are reliable insurance policies. They create legal obligations for financial support, even when the sweet milk of passion turns sour.
”
”
Taona Dumisani Chiveneko (The Hangman's Replacement: Sprout of Disruption)
“
It truly is a team sport, and we have the best team in town. But it’s my relationship with Ilana that I cherish most. We have such a strong partnership and have learned how we work most efficiently: I need coffee, she needs tea. When we’re stressed, I pace around and use a weird neck massager I bought online that everyone makes fun of me for, and she knits. When we’re writing together she types, because she’s faster and better at grammar. We actually FaceTime when we’re not in the same city and are constantly texting each other ideas for jokes or observations to potentially use (I recently texted her from Asheville: girl with flip-flops tucked into one strap of tank top). Looking back now at over ten years of doing comedy and running a business with her I can see how our collaboration has expanded and contracted. But it’s the problem-solving aspect of this industry, the producing, the strategy, the realizing that we could put our heads together and figure out the best solution, that has made our relationship and friendship what it is. Because that spills into everything. We both have individual careers now, but those other projects have only been motivating and inspiring to each other and the show. We bring back what we’ve learned on the other sets, in the other negotiations, in the other writers’ rooms or press situations. I’m very lucky to have jumped into this with Ilana Rose Glazer, the ballsy, curly-haired, openhearted, nineteen-year-old girl that cracked me up that night at the corner of the bar at McManus. So many wonderful things have happened since we began working together, but there are a lot of confusing, life-altering things in there too, and it’s such a relief to have someone who completely understands the good and the bad.
”
”
Abbi Jacobson (I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff)
“
And consider flesh too, if it comes to that. Who could have dreamed up such stuff? It's flabby and it stinks as often as not or it bulges and develops knobs and is covered with horrible hair and blotches. The internal combustion engine is at least more efficient, or take the piston rods on a loco-motive, and it's quite easy to oil them too. While keeping flesh in decent condition is almost impossible even leaving aside the obscene process of ageing and the fact that half the world starves. What a planet. And take eating, if you're lucky enough to do any. Stuffing pieces of dead animals into a hole in your face.
Then munch, munch, munch. If there's anybody watching they must be dying of laughter. And the shape of the human body. Who but a thoroughly imcompetent craftsman or else some sort of practical joker could have invented this sort of moon on two sticks? Legs are a bad joke. Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle.
”
”
Iris Murdoch (A Fairly Honourable Defeat)
“
In contemporary American self-help literature, the magic word is healing. The term refers to self-optimization that is supposed to therapeutically eliminate any and all functional weakness or mental obstacle in the name of efficiency and performance. Yet perpetual self-optimization, which coincides point-for-point with the optimization of the system, is proving destructive. It is leading to mental collapse. Self-optimization, it turns out, amounts to total self-exploitation.
The neoliberal ideology of self-optimization displays religious - indeed, fanatical - traits. It entails a new form of subjectivation. Endlessly working at self-improvement resembles the self-examination and self-monitoring of Protestantism, which represents a technology of subjectivation and domination in its own right. Now, instead of searching out sins, one hunts down negative thoughts. The ego grapples with itself as an enemy. Today, even fundamentalist preachers act like managers and motivational trainers, proclaiming the new Gospel of limitless
achievement and optimization.
”
”
Byung-Chul Han (Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power)
“
Rule by decree has conspicuous advantages for the domination of far-flung territories with heterogeneous populations and for a policy of oppression. Its efficiency is superior simply because it ignores all intermediary stages between issuance and application, and because it prevents political reasoning by the people through the withholding of information. It can easily overcome the variety of local customs and need not rely on the necessarily slow process of development of general law. It is most helpful for the establishment of a centralized administration because it overrides automatically all matters of local autonomy. If rule by good laws has sometimes been called the rule of wisdom, rule by appropriate decrees may rightly be called the rule of cleverness. For it is clever to reckon with ulterior motives and aims, and it is wise to understand and create by deduction from generally accepted principles.
Government by bureaucracy has to be distinguished from the mere outgrowth and deformation of civil services which frequently accompanied the decline of the nation-state—as, notably, in France. There the administration has survived all changes in regime since the Revolution, entrenched itself like a parasite in the body politic, developed its own class interests, and become a useless organism whose only purpose appears to be chicanery and prevention of normal economic and political development. There are of course many superficial similarities between the two types of bureaucracy, especially if one pays too much attention to the striking psychological similarity of petty officials. But if the French people have made the very serious mistake of accepting their administration as a necessary evil, they have never committed the fatal error of allowing it to rule the country—even though the consequence has been that nobody rules it. The French atmosphere of government has become one of inefficiency and vexation; but it has not created and aura of pseudomysticism.
And it is this pseudomysticism that is the stamp of bureaucracy when it becomes a form of government. Since the people it dominates never really know why something is happening, and a rational interpretation of laws does not exist, there remains only one thing that counts, the brutal naked event itself. What happens to one then becomes subject to an interpretation whose possibilities are endless, unlimited by reason and unhampered by knowledge. Within the framework of such endless interpretive speculation, so characteristic of all branches of Russian pre-revolutionary literature, the whole texture of life and world assume a mysterious secrecy and depth. There is a dangerous charm in this aura because of its seemingly inexhaustible richness; interpretation of suffering has a much larger range than that of action for the former goes on in the inwardness of the soul and releases all the possibilities of human imagination, whereas the latter is consistently checked, and possibly led into absurdity, by outward consequence and controllable experience.
”
”
Hannah Arendt (The Origins of Totalitarianism)
“
The efficient or motive principle, which is not
merely the analysis but the production of the several elements
of the universal, I call dialectic. Dialectic is not that process in
which an object or proposition, presented, to feeling or the
direct consciousness, is analysed, entangled, taken hither and
thither, until at last its contrary is derived. Such a merely
negative method appears frequently in Plato. It may fix the
opposite of any notion, or reveal the contradiction contained
in it, as did the ancient scepticism, or it may in a feeble way
consider an approximation to truth, or modern half-and-half
attainment of it, as its goal. But the higher dialectic of the
conception does not merely apprehend any phase as a limit
and opposite, but produces out of this negative a positive
content and result. Only by such a course is there
development and inherent progress. Hence this dialectic is
not the external agency of subjective thinking, but the private
soul of the content, which unfolds its branches and fruit
organically. Thought regards this development of the idea
and of the peculiar activity of the reason of the idea as only
subjective, but is on its side unable to make any addition. To
consider anything rationally is not to bring reason to it from
the outside, and work it up in this way, but to count it as itself
reasonable. Here it is spirit in its freedom, the summit of selfconscious reason, which gives itself actuality, and produces
itself as the existing world. The business of science is simply
to bring the specific work of the reason, which is in the thing,
to consciousness
”
”
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
“
Foreign nongovernment organizations (NGOs) that support Russian democratic civic groups are a particular target of Russian accusations of foreign economic intrigue. In 2004, President Putin accused Russian NGOs of pursuing "dubious group and commercial interests" for taking foreign money. FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev told the Russian State Duma in 2005 that the FSB had uncovered spies working in foreign-sponsored NGOs. He further claimed, "Foreign secret services are ever more actively using non-traditional methods for their work and, with the help of different NGOs educational programs, are propagandizing their interests, particularly in the former Soviet Union." Patrushev accused the United States of placing spies undercover within the Peace Corps, which was expelled from Russia in 2002, the Saudi Red Crescent, and the Kuwaiti NGO Society for Social Reform. Patrushev attributed an economic motive to these perceived foreign plots, alleging that industrialized states did not want "a powerful economic competitor like Russia." Echoing Soviet-era accusations of nefarious Western economic intent, he claimed that Russia had lost billions of dollars per year due to U.S., EU, and Canadian "trade discrimination. Pushing for stronger regulation of NGOs, Patrushev said, "The imperfectness of legislation and lack of efficient mechanisms for state oversight creates a fertile ground for conducting intelligence operations under the guise of charity and other activities. In 2012, Putin signed the "foreign agent law," which ordered Russian civil rights organizations that received any foreign funding to register as "foreign agents.
”
”
Kevin P. Riehle (Russian Intelligence: A Case-based Study of Russian Services and Missions Past and Present)
“
I am passionate about... Doing the impossible, taking on big challenges Creating new structures to achieve big results Solving problems, removing obstacles Getting the best out of people I really like ... Working with very bright people who have good values Working with companies that are respected or where respect can be created Building a culture that will succeed and be a place where people can grow and enjoy work My greatest contribution is ... Being able to do many different things well Accomplishing the mission, exceeding expectations Building an organization from scratch Saving the day—taking dire situations, fixing them, and turning them into winners I am particularly good at... Taking things that look like failures and making them into exceptional successes Developing people—getting them to be creative, committed, and accountable Getting the job done quickly with practical, interesting solutions I am known for ... Creative leadership Overcoming challenging obstacles Rising to the occasion Seeing the core issues, problems, solutions Getting to the heart of the matter quickly, and intuitively analyzing the situation I have exceptional ability to ... Devise straightforward solutions that are efficient and practical Take complex problems and quickly develop elegant solutions Create solutions that get the job done Exercise: Passions and Gifts (Downloadable) Now it �s your turn. Complete the following sentences. You may list multiple answers for each of the items below. Keep your responses focused on the career and work aspects of your life. I feel passionate about ... What I really like is... My greatest contribution is... I am particularly good at... I am known for... I have an exceptional ability to... Colleagues often ask for my help with... What motivates me most is... I would feel disappointed, frustrated, or sad if I couldn�t do...
”
”
Anonymous
“
ON THE MODUS OPERANDI OF OUR CURRENT PRESIDENT, DONALD J. TRUMP
"According to a new ABC/Washington Post poll, President Trump’s disapproval rating has hit a new high."
The President's response to this news was "“I don’t do it for the polls. Honestly — people won’t necessarily agree with this — I do nothing for the polls,” the president told reporters on Wednesday. “I do it to do what’s right. I’m here for an extended period of time. I’m here for a period that’s a very important period of time. And we are straightening out this country.” - Both Quotes Taken From Aol News - August 31, 2018
In The United States, as in other Republics, the two main categories of Presidential motivation for their assigned tasks are #1: Self Interest in seeking to attain and to hold on to political power for their own sakes, regarding the welfare of This Republic to be of secondary importance. #2: Seeking to attain and to hold on to the power of that same office for the selfless sake of this Republic's welfare, irregardless of their personal interest, and in the best of cases going against their personal interests to do what is best for this Republic even if it means making profound and extreme personal sacrifices. Abraham Lincoln understood this last mentioned motivation and gave his life for it.
The primary information any political scientist needs to ascertain regarding the diagnosis of a particular President's modus operandi is to first take an insightful and detailed look at the individual's past. The litmus test always being what would he or she be willing to sacrifice for the Nation. In the case of our current President, Donald John Trump, he abandoned a life of liberal luxury linked to self imposed limited responsibilities for an intensely grueling, veritably non stop two
year nightmare of criss crossing this immense Country's varied terrain, both literally and socially when he could have easily maintained his life of liberal leisure.
While my assertion that his personal choice was, in my view, sacrificially done for the sake of a great power in a state of rapid decline can be contradicted by saying it was motivated by selfish reasons, all evidence points to the contrary. For knowing the human condition, fraught with a plentitude of weaknesses, for a man in the end portion of his lifetime to sacrifice an easy life for a hard working incessant schedule of thankless tasks it is entirely doubtful that this choice was made devoid of a special and even exalted inspiration to do so.
And while the right motivations are pivotal to a President's success, what is also obviously needed are generic and specific political, military and ministerial skills which must be naturally endowed by Our Creator upon the particular President elected for the purposes of advancing a Nation's general well being for one and all. If one looks at the latest National statistics since President Trump took office, (such as our rising GNP, the booming market, the dramatically shrinking unemployment rate, and the overall positive emotive strains in regards to our Nation's future, on both the left and the right) one can make definitive objective conclusions pertaining to the exceptionally noble character and efficiency of the current resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And if one can drown out the constant communicative assaults on our current Commander In Chief, and especially if one can honestly assess the remarkable lack of substantial mistakes made by the current President, all of these factors point to a leader who is impressively strong, morally and in other imperative ways. And at the most propitious time.
For the main reason that so many people in our Republic palpably despise our current President is that his political and especially his social agenda directly threatens their licentious way of life. - John Lars Zwerenz
”
”
John Lars Zwerenz
“
Focus intently and beat procrastination. Use the Pomodoro Technique (remove distractions, focus for 25 minutes, take a break). Avoid multitasking unless you find yourself needing occasional fresh perspectives. Create a ready-to-resume plan when an unavoidable interruption comes up. Set up a distraction-free environment. Take frequent short breaks. Overcome being stuck. When stuck, switch your focus away from the problem at hand, or take a break to surface the diffuse mode. After some time completely away from the problem, return to where you got stuck. Use the Hard Start Technique for homework or tests. When starting a report or essay, do not constantly stop to edit what is flowing out. Separate time spent writing from time spent editing. Learn deeply. Study actively: practice active recall (“retrieval practice”) and elaborating. Interleave and space out your learning to help build your intuition and speed. Don’t just focus on the easy stuff; challenge yourself. Get enough sleep and stay physically active. Maximize working memory. Break learning material into small chunks and swap fancy terms for easier ones. Use “to-do” lists to clear your working memory. Take good notes and review them the same day you took them. Memorize more efficiently. Use memory tricks to speed up memorization: acronyms, images, and the Memory Palace. Use metaphors to quickly grasp new concepts. Gain intuition and think quickly. Internalize (don’t just unthinkingly memorize) procedures for solving key scientific or mathematical problems. Make up appropriate gestures to help you remember and understand new language vocabulary. Exert self-discipline even when you don’t have any. Find ways to overcome challenges without having to rely on self-discipline. Remove temptations, distractions, and obstacles from your surroundings. Improve your habits. Plan your goals and identify obstacles and the ideal way to respond to them ahead of time. Motivate yourself. Remind yourself of all the benefits of completing tasks. Reward yourself for completing difficult tasks. Make sure that a task’s level of difficulty matches your skill set. Set goals—long-term goals, milestone goals, and process goals. Read effectively. Preview the text before reading it in detail. Read actively: think about the text, practice active recall, and annotate. Win big on tests. Learn as much as possible about the test itself and make a preparation plan. Practice with previous test questions—from old tests, if possible. During tests: read instructions carefully, keep track of time, and review answers. Use the Hard Start Technique. Be a pro learner. Be a metacognitive learner: understand the task, set goals and plan, learn, and monitor and adjust. Learn from the past: evaluate what went well and where you can improve.
”
”
Barbara Oakley (Learn Like a Pro: Science-Based Tools to Become Better at Anything)
“
Performance measure. Throughout this book, the term performance measure refers to an indicator used by management to measure, report, and improve performance. Performance measures are classed as key result indicators, result indicators, performance indicators, or key performance indicators. Critical success factors (CSFs). CSFs are the list of issues or aspects of organizational performance that determine ongoing health, vitality, and wellbeing. Normally there are between five and eight CSFs in any organization. Success factors. A list of 30 or so issues or aspects of organizational performance that management knows are important in order to perform well in any given sector/ industry. Some of these success factors are much more important; these are known as critical success factors. Balanced scorecard. A term first introduced by Kaplan and Norton describing how you need to measure performance in a more holistic way. You need to see an organization’s performance in a number of different perspectives. For the purposes of this book, there are six perspectives in a balanced scorecard (see Exhibit 1.7). Oracles and young guns. In an organization, oracles are those gray-haired individuals who have seen it all before. They are often considered to be slow, ponderous, and, quite frankly, a nuisance by the new management. Often they are retired early or made redundant only to be rehired as contractors at twice their previous salary when management realizes they have lost too much institutional knowledge. Their considered pace is often a reflection that they can see that an exercise is futile because it has failed twice before. The young guns are fearless and precocious leaders of the future who are not afraid to go where angels fear to tread. These staff members have not yet achieved management positions. The mixing of the oracles and young guns during a KPI project benefits both parties and the organization. The young guns learn much and the oracles rediscover their energy being around these live wires. Empowerment. For the purposes of this book, empowerment is an outcome of a process that matches competencies, skills, and motivations with the required level of autonomy and responsibility in the workplace. Senior management team (SMT). The team comprised of the CEO and all direct reports. Better practice. The efficient and effective way management and staff undertake business activities in all key processes: leadership, planning, customers, suppliers, community relations, production and supply of products and services, employee wellbeing, and so forth. Best practice. A commonly misused term, especially because what is best practice for one organization may not be best practice for another, albeit they are in the same sector. Best practice is where better practices, when effectively linked together, lead to sustainable world-class outcomes in quality, customer service, flexibility, timeliness, innovation, cost, and competitiveness. Best-practice organizations commonly use the latest time-saving technologies, always focus on the 80/20, are members of quality management and continuous improvement professional bodies, and utilize benchmarking. Exhibit 1.10 shows the contents of the toolkit used by best-practice organizations to achieve world-class performance. EXHIBIT 1.10 Best-Practice Toolkit Benchmarking. An ongoing, systematic process to search for international better practices, compare against them, and then introduce them, modified where necessary, into your organization. Benchmarking may be focused on products, services, business practices, and processes of recognized leading organizations.
”
”
Douglas W. Hubbard (Business Intelligence Sampler: Book Excerpts by Douglas Hubbard, David Parmenter, Wayne Eckerson, Dalton Cervo and Mark Allen, Ed Barrows and Andy Neely)
“
THE CODE OF A GOOD TRAINING PARTNER I will show up on time for every workout, and if I can’t avoid missing one, I’ll let my partner know as soon as I know. I will come to the gym to train—not to chat. When we’re in the gym, we focus on our workouts, we’re always ready to spot each other, and we get our work done efficiently. I will train hard to set a good example for my partner. I will push my partner to do more than she thinks she can. It’s my job to motivate her to do more weight and more reps than she believes possible. I will be supportive of my partner and will compliment her on her gains. I won’t let my partner get out of a workout easily. I will reject any excuses that are short of an actual emergency or commitment that can’t be rescheduled, and I will insist that she comes and trains. In the case where there’s a valid excuse, I’ll offer to train at a different time so we can get our workout in (if at all possible).
”
”
Michael Matthews (Thinner Leaner Stronger: The Simple Science of Building the Ultimate Female Body)
“
At the same time, however, the necessity for economic change in our countries has led us to conceive laws and accept traditions often at the expense of the individual person. Just when many are becoming conscious of the fundamental heritage of the Judeo-Christian tradition to respect each human person, friend or foe, within the actual structure of our society to apply this truth. The very efficiency demanded by our technocratic industrial society renders the life of the old, the unstable and the handicapped almost impossible. as the values of efficiency, individualism, and wealth become the only motivations, they tend to stifle the profound aspirations of man so that little by little he loses all sense of fellowship and community.
”
”
Jean Vanier (Eruption to Hope)
“
Given the proper motivation, you can make it so learning and knowledge isn’t a chore, and is rather a rung on the ladder to your overall goal and sense of gratification. What’s more important when you have a bigger goal is that you focus on efficiently making something work. You might not be worried about the specifics as much, but you will probably have the same end result. From there, you have the choice to start deliberate practice, rehearsal, and fine-tuning everything, but simply having the right motivation this will get you to a point of competency and even make you stand out.
”
”
Peter Hollins (Learn Like Einstein: Memorize More, Read Faster, Focus Better, and Master Anything With Ease… Become An Expert in Record Time (Accelerated Learning) (Learning how to Learn Book 12))
“
Working out with a bad partner sucks. It drains your energy and motivation and can even cause you to lose enthusiasm for working out altogether. On the other hand, working out with a good partner can go far in keeping you on track and making progress. He helps keep you accountable and wanting to show up every day, and having a spot on certain exercises helps push you for another rep and encourages you to move up in weight as you should. These things can make a big difference as time goes on. Those workouts, additional reps, and progressions in weight that wouldn’t have happened if you were solo add up to real gains. So, I recommend that you find someone to work out with before you start, and the two of you should agree to the following code. 1. I will show up on time for every workout, and if I can’t avoid missing one, I’ll let my partner know as soon as I know. 2. I won’t let my partner get out of a workout easily. I will reject any excuses that are short of an actual emergency or commitment that can’t be rescheduled, and I will insist that he comes and trains.
In the case where there’s a valid excuse, if at all possible, I’ll offer to train at a different time so we can get our workout in. 3. I will come to the gym to train—not to chat. When we’re in the gym, we focus on our workouts, we’re always ready to spot each other, and we get our work done efficiently. 4. I will train hard to set a good example for my partner. 5. I will push my partner to do more than he thinks he can. It’s my job to motivate him to do more weight and more reps than he believes possible. 6. I will be supportive of my partner and will compliment him on his gains.
”
”
Michael Matthews (Bigger Leaner Stronger: The Simple Science of Building the Ultimate Male Body)
“
The clearer you are about your motivations and aspirations, the more effectively and efficiently you can bring about the change you seek to make.
”
”
Scott Perry (Endeavor: Thrive Through Work Aligned with Your Values, Talents, and Tribe)
“
In good organizations, people can focus on their work and have confidence that if they get their work done, good things will happen for both the company and them personally. It is a true pleasure to work in an organization such as this. Every person can wake up knowing that the work they do will be efficient, effective, and make a difference for the organization and themselves. These things make their jobs both motivating and fulfilling.
“In a poor organization, on the other hand, people spend much of their time fighting organizational boundaries, infighting, and broken processes. They are not even clear on what their jobs are, so there is no way to know if they are getting the job done or not. In the miracle case that they work ridiculous hours and get the job done, they have no idea what it means for the company or their careers. To make it all much worse and rub salt in the wound, when they finally work up the courage to tell management how fucked-up their situation is, management denies there is a problem, then defends the status quo, then ignores the problem.
”
”
Ben Horowitz (The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers)
“
Your actions prove you efficiency and your lip service proves your inability.
”
”
G.K. Dutta
“
Your actions prove your efficiency and your lip service proves your inability.
”
”
G.K. Dutta
“
In good organizations, people can focus on their work and have confidence that if they get their work done, good things will happen for both the company and them personally. It is a true pleasure to work in an organization such as this. Every person can wake up knowing that the work they do will be efficient, effective, and make a difference for the organization and themselves. These things make their jobs both motivating and fulfilling. “In a poor organization, on the other hand, people spend much of their time fighting organizational boundaries, infighting, and broken processes. They are not even clear on what their jobs are, so there is no way to know if they are getting the job done or not. In the miracle case that they work ridiculous hours and get the job done, they have no idea what it means for the company or their careers. To make it all much worse and rub salt in the wound, when they finally work up the courage to tell management how fucked-up their situation is, management denies there is a problem, then defends the status quo, then ignores the problem.
”
”
Ben Horowitz (The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers)
“
When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier or healthier or safer or better, and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly, the way everything should be done but so seldom is — you’re participating more full in the whole grand human drama.
”
”
Phil Knight (Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike)
“
This book is a compilation of interesting ideas that have strongly influenced my thoughts and I want to share them in a compressed form. That ideas can change your worldview and bring inspiration and the excitement of discovering something new. The emphasis is not on the technology because it is constantly changing. It is much more difficult to change the accompanying circumstances that affect the way technological solutions are realized. The chef did not invent salt, pepper and other spices. He just chooses good ingredients and uses them skilfully, so others can enjoy his art. If I’ve been successful, the book creates a new perspective for which the selection of ingredients is important, as well as the way they are smoothly and efficiently arranged together.
In the first part of the book, we follow the natural flow needed to create the stimulating environment necessary for the survival of a modern company. It begins with challenges that corporations are facing, changes they are, more or less successfully, trying to make, and the culture they are trying to establish. After that, we discuss how to be creative, as well as what to look for in the innovation process.
The book continues with a chapter that talks about importance of inclusion and purpose. This idea of inclusion – across ages, genders, geographies, cultures, sexual orientation, and all the other areas in which new ways of thinking can manifest – is essential for solving new problems as well as integral in finding new solutions to old problems. Purpose motivates people for reaching their full potential. This is The second and third parts of the book describes the areas that are important to support what is expressed in the first part. A flexible organization is based on IT alignment with business strategy. As a result of acceleration in the rate of innovation and technological changes, markets evolve rapidly, products’ life cycles get shorter and innovation becomes the main source of competitive advantage.
Business Process Management (BPM) goes from task-based automation, to process-based automation, so automating a number of tasks in a process, and then to functional automation across multiple processes andeven moves towards automation at the business ecosystem level. Analytics brought us information and insight; AI turns that insight into superhuman knowledge and real-time action, unleashing new business models, new ways to build, dream, and experience the world, and new geniuses to advance humanity faster than ever before.
Companies and industries are transforming our everyday experiences and the services we depend upon, from self-driving cars, to healthcare, to personal assistants. It is a central tenet for the disruptive changes of the 4th Industrial Revolution; a revolution that will likely challenge our ideas about what it means to be a human and just might be more transformative than any other industrial revolution we have seen yet. Another important disruptor is the blockchain - a distributed decentralized digital ledger of transactions with the promise of liberating information and making the economy more democratic.
You no longer need to trust anyone but an algorithm. It brings reliability, transparency, and security to all manner of data exchanges: financial transactions, contractual and legal agreements, changes of ownership, and certifications. A quantum computer can simulate efficiently any physical process that occurs in Nature. Potential (long-term) applications include pharmaceuticals, solar power collection, efficient power transmission, catalysts for nitrogen fixation, carbon capture, etc. Perhaps we can build quantum algorithms for improving computational tasks within artificial intelligence, including sub-fields like machine learning. Perhaps a quantum deep learning network can be trained more efficiently, e.g. using a smaller training set. This is still in conceptual research domain.
”
”
Tomislav Milinović
“
It is your responsibility to work on redeeming the time and the Lord will do His part. Just like the wise, be diligent and efficient in using the remaining time of your life.
”
”
Gift Gugu Mona (The Precious Gift of Time: Inspirational Quotes and Sayings)
“
Reducing batch sizes reduces cycle times and variability in flow, accelerates feedback, reduces risk and overhead, improves efficiency, increases motivation and urgency, and reduces costs and schedule growth
”
”
Nicole Forsgren (Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations)
“
Roland Bainton in his effort to make the best of Luther declared that Luther's view of the Jews "was entirely religious and by no means racial."'`' True; the crackpot version of social Darwinism that gave rise to "racial" anti-Semitism was a creation of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Luther hated the Jews because they rejected Christ. But his fury was no less cruel and vicious because its underlying motives were different or because his suggestions for carrying his cruelty to some final solution were less comprehensive and efficient.
His fury culminated in his vicious book of 1543, On the Jews and Their Lies. In late 1542 Pope Paul III had issued a call for the great reforming council to assemble at Trent beginning in 1545. It was to become a Catholic and papal triumph. What Trent would become was unclear in 1542, but Luther could see clearly enough that it represented a defeat for the evangelical cause. Through these years his attacks on foes of all kinds became even more vulgar and inflammatory because, as Heiko Oberman has said, he felt his work threatened on every
Personal issues may also have been an influence. His beloved daughter
Magdalena died in his arms on September 20, 1542. Afterward his grief was intense, and he spoke feelingly of the terror before death while affirming his trust in Christ.-'' This combination of woes may have driven him to lash out at someone, and the Jews were there, testifying to his worst fear, that Jesus had not risen from the dead, and that Chrisitians would enjoy no victory over the grave. Whatever the cause, his outrageous attack in On the Jews and Their Lies represents one of those rhetorical horrors that may be explained in the various ways that we explain the cruelties that human beings inflict on others when the tormentors feel their own place in the universe threatened with annihilation. Yet explanation cannot finally excuse the horror.
After raging against the Jews for dozens of pages of tedious vehemence, Luther recommended what should be done with them: Their synagogues should be burned down; their books should be taken from them, "not leaving them one leaf"; they should be "forbidden on pain of death to praise God, to give thanks, to pray, and to teach publicly among us and in our country"; and they should "be forbidden to utter the name of God within our hearing."22 Christians were guilty for not taking vengeance against the Jews for having killed Christ and for having killed innocent Christians for three hundred years after the Crucifixion, for not "striking them to death."23
”
”
Richard Marius (Martin Luther: The Christian between God and Death)
“
...one great advantage of scale taught in all of the business schools of the world is cost reductions along the so called experience curve. Just doing something complicated in more and more volume enables human beings, who are trying to improve and are motivated by the incentives of capitalism, to do it more and more efficiently. The very nature of things is that if you get a whole lot of volume through your operation, you get better at processing that volume. That's an enormous advantage. And it has a lot to do with which businesses succeed and fail.
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Charlie Munger, "Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger"
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Let me break it down for you. In good organizations, people can focus on their work and have confidence that if they get their work done, good things will happen for both the company and them personally. It is a true pleasure to work in an organization such as this. Every person can wake up knowing that the work they do will be efficient, effective, and make a difference for the organization and themselves. These things make their jobs both motivating and fulfilling. “In a poor organization, on the other hand, people spend much of their time fighting organizational boundaries, infighting, and broken processes. They are not even clear on what their jobs are, so there is no way to know if they are getting the job done or not. In the miracle case that they work ridiculous hours and get the job done, they have no idea what it means for the company or their careers. To make it all much worse and rub salt in the wound, when they finally work up the courage to tell management how fucked-up their situation is, management denies there is a problem, then defends the status quo, then ignores the problem.
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Ben Horowitz (The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers)
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The Practising Manager’s Growth Mantra
-Growth in an enterprise is created through remarkable achievements, not incremental achievements like efficiency or effectiveness.
-Remarkable achievements are possible only in complexity.
-Only volitional engagement can work in complexity. Luckily, there is no certainty in complexity. Hence, motivational engagement cannot work.
-People who make choices based on the purpose can only be volitionally engaged—they are the growth managers, the leaders.
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Amit Chatterjee (Ascent: A Practising Manager’s Growth Mantra)
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designing educational experiences without knowledge about how human brains learn naturally and most efficiently can be compared to designing a glove without any knowledge of the human hand.
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Gayle Gregory (The Motivated Brain: Improving Student Attention, Engagement, and Perseverance)
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Over those nine months in 1999, when we were rushing to reboot this broken film, the Braintrust would evolve into an enormously beneficial and efficient entity. Even in its earliest meetings, I was struck by how constructive the feedback was. Each of the participants focused on the film at hand and not on some hidden personal agenda. They argued—sometimes heatedly—but always about the project. They were not motivated by the kinds of things—getting credit for an idea, pleasing their supervisors, winning a point just to say you did—that too often lurk beneath the surface of work-related interactions. The members saw each other as peers. The passion expressed in a Braintrust meeting was never taken personally because everyone knew it was directed at solving problems. And largely because of that trust and mutual respect, its problem-solving powers were immense.
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Ed Catmull (Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration)
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Physical activity promotes high productivity.
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Lailah Gifty Akita (Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind)
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Think of Type X behavior as coal and Type I behavior as the sun. For most of recent history, coal has been the cheapest, easiest, most efficient resource. But coal has two downsides. First, it produces nasty things like air pollution and greenhouse gases. Second, it’s finite; getting more of it becomes increasingly difficult and expensive each year. Type X behavior is similar. An emphasis on rewards and punishments spews its own externalities (as enumerated in Chapter 2). And “if-then” motivators always grow more expensive. But Type I behavior, which is built around intrinsic motivation, draws on resources that are easily replenished and inflict little damage. It is the motivational equivalent of clean energy: inexpensive, safe to use, and endlessly renewable.
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Daniel H. Pink (Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us)
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Waiting to be happy limits our brain’s potential for success, whereas cultivating positive brains makes us more motivated, efficient, resilient, creative, and productive, which drives performance upward.
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Shawn Achor (The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology That Fuel Success and Performance at Work)
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Motivation + preparation and training has given me the ability to hit my flow easily and efficiently. It's real, tangible, and available to you, too.
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Monica Leonelle (Write Better, Faster: How To Triple Your Writing Speed and Write More Every Day)
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In sum, where capitalism prospered, it established three main canons for successful economic enterprise: the calculation of quantity, the observation and regimentation of time ('Time is Money'), and the concentration on abstract pecuniary rewards. Its ultimate values-Power, Profit, Prestige-derive from these sources and all of them can be traced back, under the flimsiest of disguises, to the Pyramid Age. The first produced the universal accountancy of profit and loss; the second ensured productive efficiency in men as well as machines; the third introduced a driving motive into daily life, equivalent on its own base level to the monk's search for an eternal reward in Heaven. The pursuit of money became a passion and an obsession: the end to which all other ends were means.
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Lewis Mumford (Technics and Human Development (The Myth of the Machine, Vol 1))
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Following the crowd is not an action that is simply fueled by a need to keep up with the Joneses. It is more fundamental than that, striking at the heart of three simple, yet powerful, underlying human motivations: the motivation to make accurate decisions as efficiently as possible, the motivation to affiliate with and to gain the approval of others, and the motivation to see oneself in a positive light.
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Steve J. Martin (The small BIG: small changes that spark big influence)
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The most effective and efficient means of maintaining high standards of performance on a team is peer pressure. More than any policy or system, there is nothing like the fear of letting down respected teammates to motivate people to improve their performance.
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Patrick Lencioni (The Five Dysfunctions of a team Summarized for Busy People)
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With highly motivated developers who have fun doing what they do and who are constantly looking outside their own cubicles, companies could benefit immensely from all the innovations and efficiencies they would bring.
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Sandro Mancuso (Software Craftsman, The: Professionalism, Pragmatism, Pride (Robert C. Martin Series))
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Keeping things clean, simple and well-lit can do wonders for your mental state, and help you increase your focus, optimism and efficiency. For
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A.J. Winters (The Motivation Switch: 77 Ways to Get Motivated, Avoid Procrastination, and Achieve Success)
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To serve our earthly superiors is to serve our heavenly Superior; therefore, our attention, efficiency, and diligence are to be motivated not by whether the boss shows enough respect for our work, but by the fact that God our heavenly Father is pleased when we help build a good car or house, use our time at work efficiently, or read and pray with our family. We can endure many of the frustrations of working conditions when we realize that the dignity of our work is measured by God’s satisfaction, not merely by our employer’s.
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Michael Scott Horton (The Law of Perfect Freedom: Relating to God and Others through the Ten Commandments)
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Media mix emphasizes the distribution of media that will communicate the message to the target most efficiently. It is effective in achieving breadth of communication. The key to Cross Communication is using a Core Idea to create a scenario for effectively moving the target to action. Cross Communication becomes necessary when the company needs to motivate consumers to voluntarily launch themselves toward the brand| 9 3
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Anonymous
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To make matters worse, most companies use the same standards for evaluating both routine and innovative work. They use conventional idea #6: Reward success, punish failure and inaction. This is fine for routine tasks. When known procedures are used by well-trained people, failure does signal improper training, weak motivation, or poor leadership. But applying this standard to innovative work stifles intelligent risks. The usual reward scheme means that, because people who do routine work succeed most of the time, they are glorified as winners. In contrast, people who do innovative work fail a lot. So they not only get few rewards, they may be denigrated as losers. In many companies, people who do routine work complain that “if those creative types just acted more like us, they would be more efficient and wouldn’t make all those mistakes!
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Robert I. Sutton (Weird Ideas That Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation)
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In many ways, the U.S. bureaucracy has moved away from the Weberian ideal of an energetic and efficient organization staffed by people chosen for their ability and technical knowledge. The system as a whole is less merit-based: rather than coming from top schools, 45 percent of recent new hires to the federal service are veterans, as mandated by Congress. And a number of surveys of the federal work force paint a depressing picture. According to the scholar Paul Light, “Federal employees appear to be more motivated by compensation than mission, ensnared in careers that cannot compete with business and nonprofits, troubled by the lack of resources to do their jobs, dissatisfied with the rewards for a job well done and the lack of consequences for a job done poorly, and unwilling to trust their own organizations.
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Anonymous
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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.
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Matt Williams (EXERCISE CHANGE: Build, Strengthen & Maintain Motivation to Exercise. Learn about the Mystery/Magic of Change; Take Action/Control of ... loss. Fast, efficient, effective exercise))
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Leadership Puzzle solved. One more time, you need to focus on processes, first making them efficient, then spending time on the people and personalities
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William Miller (ProActive Sales Management: How to Lead, Motivate, and Stay Ahead of the Game)