How To Organise Your Quotes

Firestarters are flexible. They recognize situational needs and are able to flow into the accessible role identity most relevant to overcome emergent challenges.

Freedom in any moment is a product of two things: the autonomy you feel and the support for autonomy that the moment allows.

That’s it. Let’s go.” “Yep,” whispered Suley. He turned to leave. “This is crazy.” He had his phone in his hand. “Look, we’re still in Rowland Forest. What’s this fence doing here? How come it’s not marked?” “We’ll tell your father about it.” Saskia pulled at his arm, looking anxiously around and up. To her horror, she saw a surveillance camera mounted on an overhead tree branch. It pointed straight at them. “Merde! Suley, we’ve got to go!” she hissed, pointing to the camera. His eyes widened. Distant shouts and an engine roaring to life exploded the forest calm. Suley and Saskia bolted back the way they’d come.

Success is not only dependent on understanding your own skill-set. It’s also important to recognize the talents of others and know how to profit from them.

Belief that you can act is a powerful motivator. Belief that change can happen in a flash is an even stronger motivator.

Collaborators don’t steal others’ ideas, take advantage of people, or sit back while others accomplish their tasks for them. Collaborators take action to ensure that everyone with whom they work can enjoy the maximum potential outcome.

Virtually all organisations known to you work largely by means of your greed.

Virtually all organisations known to you work largely by means of your greed. They attract you because... they appeal to your greed.

Down here in the street, there is a lot less of the law and a lot more personalities. Everyone has found their way around the particular law that influences their endeavors. No one absolutely adheres to the guidelines of the one true law. Everyone is just trying to get by; there’s no room or time for the law or the courts; everyone finds their own way. That’s how things get done, you get yours best you can and I get mine best I can, but sometimes we can get at crossed purposes with each other and then we sort it out ourselves. We don’t call the police, we don’t file a legal suit; we negotiate, we butt heads, but we resolve the issue. That’s what you are seeing Tom, how the real world goes around. Now have a drink, relax and see our other side of life.

In fact, that particular article of clothing has already completed its role in your life, and you are free to say, "Thank you for giving me joy when I bought you," or "Thank you for teaching me what doesn't suit me," and let it go. Every object has a different role to play. Not all clothes have come to you to be worn threadbare. It is the same with people. Not every person you meet in your life will become a close friend or lover. Some you will find hard to get along with or impossible to like. But these people, too, teach you the precious lesson of who you DO like, so that you will appreciate those special people even more. When you come across something that you cannot part with, think carefully about its true purpose in your life. You'll be surprised at how many of the things you possess have already fulfilled their role. By acknowledging their contribution and letting them go with gratitude, you will be able to truly put the things you own, and your life in order. In the end, all that will remain are the things that you really treasure..p 60-61

The verdict of the coroner's inquest had been that Adrian Finn (22) had killed himself 'while the balance of his mind was disturbed.' I remember how angry that conventional phrase made me: I would have sworn on oath that Adrian's was the one mind which would never lose its balance. But in the law's view, if you killed yourself you were by definition mad, at least at the time you were committing the act. The law, and society, and religion all said it was impossible to be sane, healthy, and kill yourself. Perhaps those authorities feared that the suicide's reasoning might impugn the nature and value of life as organised by the state which paid the coroner? And then, since you had been declared temporarily mad, your reasons for killing yourself were also assumed to be mad. So I doubt anyone paid much attention to Adrian's argument, with its references to philosophers ancient and modern, about the superiority of the intervening act over the unworthy passivity of merely letting life happen to you.

Look everywhere. There are miracles and curiosities to fascinate and intrigue for many lifetimes: the intricacies of nature and everything in the world and universe around us from the miniscule to the infinite; physical, chemical and biological functionality; consciousness, intelligence and the ability to learn; evolution, and the imperative for life; beauty and other abstract interpretations; language and other forms of communication; how we make our way here and develop social patterns of culture and meaningfulness; how we organise ourselves and others; moral imperatives; the practicalities of survival and all the embellishments we pile on top; thought, beliefs, logic, intuition, ideas; inventing, creating, information, knowledge; emotions, sensations, experience, behaviour. We are each unique individuals arising from a combination of genetic, inherited, and learned information, all of which can be extremely fallible. Things taught to us when we are young are quite deeply ingrained. Obviously some of it (like don’t stick your finger in a wall socket) is very useful, but some of it is only opinion – an amalgamation of views from people you just happen to have had contact with. A bit later on we have access to lots of other information via books, media, internet etc, but it is important to remember that most of this is still just opinion, and often biased. Even subjects such as history are presented according to the presenter’s or author’s viewpoint, and science is continually changing. Newspapers and TV tend to cover news in the way that is most useful to them (and their funders/advisors), Research is also subject to the decisions of funders and can be distorted by business interests. Pretty much anyone can say what they want on the internet, so our powers of discernment need to be used to a great degree there too. Not one of us can have a completely objective view as we cannot possibly have access to, and filter, all knowledge available, so we must accept that our views are bound to be subjective. Our understanding and responses are all very personal, and our views extremely varied. We tend to make each new thing fit in with the picture we have already started in our heads, but we often have to go back and adjust the picture if we want to be honest about our view of reality as we continually expand it. We are taking in vast amounts of information from others all the time, so need to ensure we are processing that to develop our own true reflection of who we are.

I got some funny reactions, a lot of irate reactions, as if I were somehow taking people's fun away from them. I have nothing against sports. I like to watch a good basketball game and that sort of thing. On the other hand, we have to recognise that the mass hysteria about spectator sports plays a significant role. First of all, spectator sports make people more passive, because you're not doing them; you're watching somebody doing them. Secondly, they engender jingoist and chauvinist attitudes, sometimes to quite an extreme degree. I saw something in the newspapers just a day or two ago about how high-school teams are now so antagonistic and passionately committed to winning at all costs that they had to abandon the standard handshake before or after the game. These kids can't even do civil things like greeting one another because they're ready to kill one another. It's spectator sports that engender those attitudes, particularly when they're designed to organise a community to be hysterically committed to their gladiators. That's very dangerous, and it has lots of deleterious effects.

It is precisely to prevent us from thinking too much that society pressurizes us all to get out of bed. In 1993, I went to interview the late radical philosopher and drugs researcher Terence McKenna. I asked him why society doesn’t allow us to be more idle. He replied: I think the reason we don’t organise society in that way can be summed up in the aphorism, “idle hands are the devil’s tool.” In other words, institutions fear idle populations because an Idler is a thinker and thinkers are not a welcome addition to most social situations. Thinkers become malcontents, that’s almost a substitute word for idle, “malcontent.” Essentially, we are all kept very busy . . . under no circumstances are you to quietly inspect the contents of your own mind. Freud called introspection “morbid”—unhealthy, introverted, anti-social, possibly neurotic, potentially pathological. Introspection could lead to that terrible thing: a vision of the truth, a clear image of the horror of our fractured, dissonant world. The

What do you feel passionately about? What irks you the most at your office, or your campus? Create a protest around it. Ideas: Make stickers that say “FFC IS WATCHING” and place them over the mouths of sexist ads you see on the subway. Organize the women in your office to wear your bulkiest winter gear for a day—to protest how goddamn cold the air conditioning is.

Everything is argued over in this world. Apart from only one thing that is not argued over. Nobody argues about democracy. Democracy is there as if it was some sort of saint in the altar from whom miracles are no longer expected. But it’s there as a reference. A reference. Democracy. And no-one attends to the matter that the democracy in which we live is a democracy taken captive, conditioned, amputated. Because the power..the power of the citizen, the power of each one of us, is limited, in the political sphere, I repeat, in the political sphere, to remove a government that we do not like and replace it with another one that perhaps we might like in the future. Nothing else. But the big decisions are taken in a different sphere, and we all know which one that is. The big international financial organisations, the IMFs, the World Trade Organisations, the World Banks, the OECDs. All..not one of these entities is democratic. And so, how can we keep talking about democracy, if those who effectively govern the world are not chosen democratically by the people? Who chooses the representatives of each country in those organisations? Your respective peoples? No. Where then is the democracy?

Wars are not a pub brawl. They are very complex projects that require an extraordinary degree of organisation, cooperation and appeasement. The ability to maintain peace at home, acquire allies abroad, and understand what goes through the minds of other people (particularly your enemies) is usually the key to victory. Hence an aggressive brute is often the worst choice to run a war. Much better is a cooperative person who knows how to appease, how to manipulate and how to see things from different perspectives. This is the stuff empire-builders are made of. The militarily incompetent Augustus succeeded in establishing a stable imperial regime, achieving something that eluded both Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great, who were much better generals. Both his admiring contemporaries and modern historians often attribute this

Wars are not a pub brawl. They are very complex projects that require an extraordinary degree of organisation, cooperation and appeasement. The ability to maintain peace at home, acquire allies abroad, and understand what goes through the minds of other people (particularly your enemies) is usually the key to victory. Hence an aggressive brute is often the worst choice to run a war. Much better is a cooperative person who knows how to appease, how to manipulate and how to see things from different perspectives.

Wars are not a pub brawl. They are very complex projects that require an extraordinary degree of organisation, cooperation and appeasement. The ability to maintain peace at home, acquire allies abroad, and understand what goes through the minds of other people (particularly your enemies) is usually the key to victory. Hence an aggressive brute is often the worst choice to run a war. Much better is a cooperative person who knows how to appease, how to manipulate and how to see things from different perspectives. This is the stuff empire-builders are made of. The

Scientists will discover a weak correlation between A and B, assuming C under D conditions. The university PR office will then post something for immediate release: ‘Scientists Find Potential Link Between A and B (under certain conditions)’. News organisations will pick it up and publish, ‘A causes B, say scientists’, which will then be read by The Internets and turned into ‘A causes B - ALL THE TIME!’ Which will then be picked up by TV shows that run stories like ‘A ... A Killer Among Us??’ All of this eventually leads to your grandma getting all weird about A.

Our ability to tell, create and believe in stories is Homo sapiens’s most powerful weapon. It’s how we organise ourselves, how we control each other, how we justify our decisions. If we didn’t have them, we’d be like fleas or rabbits or any other member of the animal kingdom, beings just trying to get through the day. Religion is just a story. Waitrose tells a better story than Lidl. Most things you learn at school are irrelevant, but you’ve been assured they’re important. You buy your car from one company over another because a salesman told you a better tale about its gearbox or revolutions per minute.

Fifteen years ago, a business manager from the United States came to Plum Village to visit me. His conscience was troubled because he was the head of a firm that designed atomic bombs. I listened as he expressed his concerns. I knew if I advised him to quit his job, another person would only replace him. If he were to quit, he might help himself, but he would not help his company, society, or country. I urged him to remain the director of his firm, to bring mindfulness into his daily work, and to use his position to communicate his concerns and doubts about the production of atomic bombs. In the Sutra on Happiness, the Buddha says it is great fortune to have an occupation that allows us to be happy, to help others, and to generate compassion and understanding in this world. Those in the helping professions have occupations that give them this wonderful opportunity. Yet many social workers, physicians, and therapists work in a way that does not cultivate their compassion, instead doing their job only to earn money. If the bomb designer practises and does his work with mindfulness, his job can still nourish his compassion and in some way allow him to help others. He can still influence his government and fellow citizens by bringing greater awareness to the situation. He can give the whole nation an opportunity to question the necessity of bomb production. Many people who are wealthy, powerful, and important in business, politics, and entertainment are not happy. They are seeking empty things - wealth, fame, power, sex - and in the process they are destroying themselves and those around them. In Plum Village, we have organised retreats for businesspeople. We see that they have many problems and suffer just as others do, sometimes even more. We see that their wealth allows them to live in comfortable conditions, yet they still suffer a great deal. Some businesspeople, even those who have persuaded themselves that their work is very important, feel empty in their occupation. They provide employment to many people in their factories, newspapers, insurance firms, and supermarket chains, yet their financial success is an empty happiness because it is not motivated by understanding or compassion. Caught up in their small world of profit and loss, they are unaware of the suffering and poverty in the world. When we are not int ouch with this larger reality, we will lack the compassion we need to nourish and guide us to happiness. Once you begin to realise your interconnectedness with others, your interbeing, you begin to see how your actions affect you and all other life. You begin to question your way of living, to look with new eyes at the quality of your relationships and the way you work. You begin to see, 'I have to earn a living, yes, but I want to earn a living mindfully. I want to try to select a vocation not harmful to others and to the natural world, one that does not misuse resources.' Entire companies can also adopt this way of thinking. Companies have the right to pursue economic growth, but not at the expense of other life. They should respect the life and integrity of people, animals, plants and minerals. Do not invest your time or money in companies that deprive others of their lives, that operate in a way that exploits people or animals, and destroys nature. Businesspeople who visit Plum Village often find that getting in touch with the suffering of others and cultivating understanding brings them happiness. They practise like Anathapindika, a successful businessman who lived at the time of the Buddha, who with the practise of mindfulness throughout his life did everything he could to help the poor and sick people in his homeland.

Specialisation, accompanied by exchange, is the source of economic prosperity. Here, in my own words, is what a modern version of Smithism claims. First, the spontaneous and voluntary exchange of goods and services leads to a division of labour in which people specialise in what they are good at doing. Second, this in turn leads to gains from trade for each party to a transaction, because everybody is doing what he is most productive at and has the chance to learn, practise and even mechanise his chosen task. Individuals can thus use and improve their own tacit and local knowledge in a way that no expert or ruler could. Third, gains from trade encourage more specialisation, which encourages more trade, in a virtuous circle. The greater the specialisation among producers, the greater is the diversification of consumption: in moving away from self-sufficiency people get to produce fewer things, but to consume more. Fourth, specialisation inevitably incentivises innovation, which is also a collaborative process driven by the exchange and combination of ideas. Indeed, most innovation comes about through the recombination of existing ideas for how to make or organise things. The more people trade and the more they divide labour, the more they are working for each other. The more they work for each other, the higher their living standards. The consequence of the division of labour is an immense web of cooperation among strangers: it turns potential enemies into honorary friends. A woollen coat, worn by a day labourer, was (said Smith) ‘the produce of a great multitude of workmen. The shepherd, the sorter of the wool, the wool-comber or carder, the dyer, the scribbler, the spinner, the weaver, the fuller, the dresser . . .’ In parting with money to buy a coat, the labourer was not reducing his wealth. Gains from trade are mutual; if they were not, people would not voluntarily engage in trade. The more open and free the market, the less opportunity there is for exploitation and predation, because the easier it is for consumers to boycott the predators and for competitors to whittle away their excess profits. In its ideal form, therefore, the free market is a device for creating networks of collaboration among people to raise each other’s living standards, a device for coordinating production and a device for communicating information about needs through the price mechanism. Also a device for encouraging innovation. It is the very opposite of the rampant and selfish individualism that so many churchmen and others seem to think it is. The market is a system of mass cooperation. You compete with rival producers, sure, but you cooperate with your customers, your suppliers and your colleagues. Commerce both needs and breeds trust.

Appartenir à une patrie, c'est aussi s'engager pour le siècle où l'on y vit" (source: émission sur la Russie sur Arte le 28/02/2012). "L'honneur d'un peuple appartient aux morts et les vivants n'en ont que l'usufruit - Georges Bernanos - Nos démocraties ne valent que par les hommes qui les servent. Elles ne sont donc jamais parfaites mais elles reposent sur un socle inamovible , selon Gandhi : “La véritable source des droits est le devoir.” Tout le reste est une question d’organisation. "Le passé renforce le présent et les pas hésitants qui conduisent à ce présent trouvent le chemin de l'avenir..." "TELL ME WHO YOUR FRIENDS ARE AND I WILL TELL YOU HOW YOU ARE" Pour juger de la beauté d'un ouvrage, il suffit de le considérer en lui-même ; mais, pour juger du mérite de l'auteur, il faut le comparer à son siècle FONTENELLE ------------------------------------------- "La quantité de critiques reçues concernant tout sujet est inversement proportionnelle à la valeur exacte du sujet". (Louis de Potter, 1850)

We live in the society of the capitalist spectacle, mate, the more spectacular the better. Build it and they will come, as that old baseball movie says. We worship the event, the occasion, the unmissable show. We want Super Sunday, the Thriller in Manila, the showdown of the century…the things that bring the highest profits for the capitalist organisers. If you’re not at the event, you’re nobody. Life has passed you by. That’s the tyranny of the spectacle. Yet, if you think about it, the spectacle is the biggest joke of all – because all the people at the event are desperate not to be losers. Who wants to be in a collection of people fleeing from fear of failure? Losers and the spectacle go together, the winners performing and the losers watching. The spectacle is how losers numb the pain, how they crave to be part of something, on the winning side for once. The LLN have decided to harness the society of the spectacle too, but not the capitalist version where small groups perform to large groups and get paid a fortune. Instead, the LLN offer the spectacle of life. And Revolution is the greatest spectacle of all.

Where do you go to make friends when you’re an adult? No, honestly, I’m asking, where do you do this? There are no more late-night study sessions or university social events. And while meeting friends at work is the obvious answer, your options are very limited if you don’t click with your colleagues or if you’re self-employed. (Also, if you’re only friends with people at work, who do you complain about your colleagues too?) I don’t volunteer. I don’t participate in organised religion. I don’t play team sports. Where do selfish, godless, lazy people go to make friends? That’s where I need to be. Nearly all of my closest friends have been assigned to me: either via seating chats at school, university room-mates, or desk buddies at work. After taking stock, I realise that most of my friends were forced to sit one metre away from me for several hours at a time. I’ve never actively reached out to make a new friend who wasn’t within touching distance. With no helpful administrators, just how do we go about making friends as adults? Is it possible to cultivate that intense closeness without the heady combination of naivety, endless hours of free time on hand and lack of youthful inhibitions? Or is that lost for ever after we hit thirty?

for the Labour Party – splendid news. That increasingly leftward bound organisation is in process of splitting, and Shirley Williams,fn31 Roy Jenkinsfn32 etc. will found a new Social Democratic Partyfn33 (this oddly repeats events in Oxford circa 1940 when I was chairman of the leftward bound Labour Club and Roy Jenkins led a group to found a new Social Democratic Club. How right he was!). It’s a pity about the Labour Party but given the whole scene the split is best. It is now official Labour policy to leave the Common Market and NATO! And unofficially are likely to abolish the House of Lords instantly and have no second chamber, abolish private schooling etc. And of course (this is perhaps the main point) to have the leadership under the control of the executive committee (and Labour activists in the constituencies) substituting party ‘democracy’ for parliamentary democracy. I blame Denis Healey and others very much for not reacting firmly earlier against the left. A crucial move was when the parliamentary party elected Michael Foot, that wet crypto-left snake, as leader instead of Denis. Now Denis and co. are left behind, complaining bitterly, to fight the crazy left. Shirley still hasn’t resigned from the party so it’s all a bit odd! ‘On your bike, Shirl,’ the lefty trade unionists shout at her!

In 1942, Merton set out four scientific values, now known as the ‘Mertonian Norms’. None of them have snappy names, but all of them are good aspirations for scientists. First, universalism: scientific knowledge is scientific knowledge, no matter who comes up with it – so long as their methods for finding that knowledge are sound. The race, sex, age, gender, sexuality, income, social background, nationality, popularity, or any other status of a scientist should have no bearing on how their factual claims are assessed. You also can’t judge someone’s research based on what a pleasant or unpleasant person they are – which should come as a relief for some of my more disagreeable colleagues. Second, and relatedly, disinterestedness: scientists aren’t in it for the money, for political or ideological reasons, or to enhance their own ego or reputation (or the reputation of their university, country, or anything else). They’re in it to advance our understanding of the universe by discovering things and making things – full stop.20 As Charles Darwin once wrote, a scientist ‘ought to have no wishes, no affections, – a mere heart of stone.’ The next two norms remind us of the social nature of science. The third is communality: scientists should share knowledge with each other. This principle underlies the whole idea of publishing your results in a journal for others to see – we’re all in this together; we have to know the details of other scientists’ work so that we can assess and build on it. Lastly, there’s organised scepticism: nothing is sacred, and a scientific claim should never be accepted at face value. We should suspend judgement on any given finding until we’ve properly checked all the data and methodology. The most obvious embodiment of the norm of organised scepticism is peer review itself. 20. Robert K. Merton, ‘The Normative Structure of Science’ (1942), The Sociology of Science: Empirical and Theoretical Investigations (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1973): pp. 267–278.

After your email about the Late Bronze Age collapse, I became very intrigued by the idea that writing systems could be ‘lost’. In fact I wasn’t really sure what that even meant, so I had to look it up, and I ended up reading a lot about something called Linear B. Do you know all about this already? Basically, around the year 1900, a team of British excavators in Crete found a cache of ancient clay tablets in a terracotta bathtub. The tablets were inscribed with a syllabic script of unknown language and appeared to date from around 1400 BCE. Throughout the early part of the twentieth century, classical scholars and linguists tried to decipher the markings, known as Linear B, with no success. Although the script was organised like writing, no one could work out what language it transcribed. Most academics hypothesised it was a lost language of the Minoan culture on Crete, with no remaining descendants in the modern world. In 1936, at the age of eighty-five, the archaeologist Arthur Evans gave a lecture in London about the tablets, and in attendance at the lecture was a fourteen-year-old schoolboy named Michael Ventris. Before the Second World War broke out, a new cache of tablets was found and photographed – this time on the Greek mainland. Still, no attempts to translate the script or identify its language were successful. Michael Ventris had grown up in the meantime and trained as an architect, and during the war he was conscripted to serve in the RAF. He hadn’t received any formal qualifications in linguistics or classical languages, but he’d never forgotten Arthur Evans’s lecture that day about Linear B. After the war, Ventris returned to England and started to compare the photographs of the newly discovered tablets from the Greek mainland with the inscriptions on the old Cretan tablets. He noticed that certain symbols on the tablets from Crete were not replicated on any of the samples from Pylos. He guessed that those particular symbols might represent place names on the island. Working from there, he figured out how to decipher the script – revealing that Linear B was in fact an early written form of ancient Greek. Ventris’s work not only demonstrated that Greek was the language of the Mycenaean culture, but also provided evidence of written Greek which predated the earliest-known examples by hundreds of years. After the discovery, Ventris and the classical scholar and linguist John Chadwick wrote a book together on the translation of the script, entitled ‘Documents in Mycenaean Greek’. Weeks before the publication of the book in 1956, Ventris crashed his car into a parked truck and died. He was thirty-four

Management is all about focusing on how to take your organisation forward.

From 'Creating True Peace' by Thich Nhat Hanh To better understand the practise of protection, please study the Five Mindfulness Trainings in Chapter 3, particularly the third, sexual responsibility. By practising the Third Mindfulness Training, we protect ourselves, our family, and society. In addition, by observing all the trainings we learn to eat in moderation, to work mindfully, and to organise our daily life so we are there for others. This can bring us great happiness and restore our peace and balance. Expressing Sexual Feelings with Love and Compassion Animals automatically follow their instincts, but humans are different. We do not need to satisfy our cravings the way animals do. We can decide that we will have sex only with love. In this way we can cultivate the deepest love, harmony, and nonviolence. For humans, to engage only in nonviolent sexuality means to have respect for each other. The sexual act can be a sacred expression of love and responsibility. The Third Mindfulness Training teaches us that the physical expression of love can be beautiful and transcendent. If you have a sexual relationship without love and caring, you create suffering for both yourself and your partner, as well as for your family and our entire society. In a culture of peace and nonviolence, civilised sexual behaviour is an important protection. Such love is not sheer craving for sex, it is true love and understanding. Respecting Our Commitments To engage in a sexual act without understanding or compassion is to act with violence. It is an act against civilization. Many people do not know how to handle their bodies or their feelings. They do not realise that an act of only a few minutes can destroy the life of another person. Sexual exploitation and abuse committed against adults and children is a heavy burden on society. Many families have been broken by sexual misconduct. Children who grow up in such families may suffer their entire lives, but if they get an opportunity to practise, they can transform their suffering. Otherwise, when they grow up, they may follow in the footsteps of their parents and cause more suffering, especially to those they love. We know that the more one engages in sexual misconduct, the more one suffers. We must come together as families to find ways to protect our young people and help them live a civilised life. We need to show our young people that happiness is possible without harmful sexual conduct. Teenage pregnancy is a tragic problem. Teens are not yet mature enough to understand that with love comes responsibility. When a thirteen-or fourteen-year-old boy and girl come together for sexual intercourse, they are just following their natural instincts. When a girl gets pregnant and gives birth at such a young age, her parents also suffer greatly. Public schools throughout the United States have nurseries where babies are cared for while their mothers are in the classroom. The young father and mother do not even know yet how to take care of themselves - how can they take care of another human being? It takes years of maturing to become ready to be a parent.

How do you visualize the success of those parts of the world falling under your leadership? What about the success of your organisation, your family and all the people related to the two institutions? How fulfilling are the results of this personal evaluation? What can you start doing about it, today?

JANUARY IN PY7 This can be a difficult month of adjustment for those who have become addicted to continual progress. But we all must learn to accept the things we cannot change, and this is an irrevocable year of consolidation. If it be in disagreement with your wants, then examine them and act wisely, or this could become a year of significant loss for you. FEBRUARY IN PY7 If you have not yet succeeded in accepting the need to focus on stabilising this year, then quiet your mind and body, turn inward and rely on your intuition for guidance. Take time to embrace periods of silence and meditate whenever possible. Be especially attentive to stabilising your love life. MARCH IN PY7 Your level of personal understanding is strengthened during this month when the mind number 3 prevails. Things become clearer and your life becomes more readily understood, unless you refuse to accept the inevitable and choose instead to play the role of the victim. APRIL IN PY7 Those who have refused to slow down and consolidate can expect this to be a month of material sacrifice – financially and, perhaps, in health. How else will the universe teach you? Ideally, it is a month for practical organising and for discarding unwanted aspects of life. MAY IN PY7 Focus on stabilising your love life this month, not only with your partner but also with your children and or close family. Be more free with them in your personal expression – let them see how loving you really are. JUNE IN PY7 When one door closes, look for the one (or maybe two) that opens. But don’t rush in (leave that to the fools). Develop creative patience, take your time and consider all aspects before making your move, for the best might be somewhat camouflaged yet worthy of investigation.

Nimble consistently beats ‘inflexible’ because it learns, innovates and adapts faster and better in a volatile world, and it reliably trounces ‘undisciplined’ because it finds the right place between opportunity and risk. The most powerful way to prepare yourself, your team and your organisation to survive and thrive in a fast, unpredictable, competitive and complex world is to ‘first be nimble’ — in other words, to first develop the capability and resilience to adapt.

As one goes up the ranks in any organisation, success is defined more by the way you manage your teams, your people’s expectations, the way you motivate them into delivering what you expect, and how you stand by your people and lead from the front. These are things which make you stand out, rather than subject matter expertise

You only come to know these things in hindsight – when you look back and see the precarious chain of events, happenstance, and good fortune that led to wherever you are now. Before you reach that point, you have no way of predicting which idea will make a difference and which will die on the vine.

You only come to know these things in hindsight – when you look back and see the precarious chain of events, happenstance, and good fortune that led to wherever you are now. Before you reach that point, you have no way of predicting which idea will make a difference and which will die on the vine. That’s why you record them all. No matter how random, how small, how half-baked, how unfinished it may be; if you have a thought, record it right away.

It’s easier to rewrite anything, even the worst writing ever, than to write something for the first time.

They might have strong views on the wealth imbalance, and think that the rich unfairly run a system in which they accrue even more to the detriment of all others in society, but give them a glass of champagne and ask them to pose with a millionaire who might give them a job or write their organisation a cheque and they simper like the best of them.

This is years of built-up ennui, a life filled with lunches and organising staff and too much time spent on physical maintenance. Buy a candle, have a blow-dry, take a yoga class, fly to your other house and repeat the routine again and again. She filled her hours with activities, but none of them really amounted to anything. It was just a carousel of banality

Organisational Culture is the generalised mindset that guides your people to live out the company purpose. It strongly influences how your people deliver on your brand promise to internal and external customers. Because of this impact, a clear understanding of your corporate culture is vital, as it's your performance booster, or limiter, in servicing your clients.

Embrace training and explore every opportunity it opens for your mind to learn, I’m a great believer of Lifelong Learning.

Manage your energy today or have a cost to do nothing

Energy Management is a journey - Take small but important steps towards making a significant impact on your utility consumption, costs but more importantly save our planet.

2. MIGRATE YOUR PRODUCT LEK had to move away from ‘standard’ strategy towards analysis of competitors. This led to ‘relative cost position’ and ‘acquisition analysis’. Your task is to find a unique product or service, one not offered in that form by anyone else. Your raw material is, of course, what you and the rest of your industry do already. Tweak it in ways that could generate an attractive new product. The ideal product is: ★ close to something you already do very well, or could do very well; ★ something customers are already groping towards or you know they will like; ★ capable of being ‘automated’ or otherwise done at low cost, by using a new process (cutting out costly steps, such as self-service), a new channel (the phone or Internet), new lower-cost employees (LEK’s ‘kids’, highly educated people in India), new raw materials (cheap resins, free data from the Internet), excess capacity from a related industry (especially manufacturing capacity), new technology or simply new ideas; ★ able to be ‘orchestrated’ by your firm while you yourself are doing as little as possible; ★ really valuable or appealing to a clearly defined customer group - therefore commanding fatter margins; ★ difficult for any rival to provide as well or as cheaply - ideally something they cannot or would not want to do. Because you are already in business, you can experiment with new products in a way that someone thinking of starting a venture cannot do. Sometimes the answer is breathtakingly simple. The Filofax system didn’t start to take off until David Collischon provided ‘filled organisers’ - a wallet with a standard set of papers installed. What could you do that is simple, costs you little or nothing and yet is hugely attractive to customers? Ask customers if they would like something different. Mock up a prototype; show it around. Brainstorm new ideas. Evolution needs false starts. If an idea isn’t working, don’t push it uphill. If a possible new product resonates at all, keep tweaking it until you have a winner. At the same time . . .

Step 6: When Filofax grew enormously in the 1980s as an expensive, aspirational product, the absence of a generic niche description became a problem for the leader. People began to use ‘filofax’ to describe the category, which meant that every competitor could describe their product as a filofax (note the lower case f ). In 1986 David Collischon wisely coined the term ‘personal organiser’ to describe the category and encouraged everyone to use the term. Marketing experts are adamant that it is easier for us to think first about a category generally, and then about the brand. ‘I need a personal organiser to keep all my bits of paper.What brand should I ask for in the shop? Well, Filofax is the best known.’ This is an easier and more natural way of thinking than, ‘I need a Filofax.’ The clear benefit of a personal organiser was that it helped people be better organised . If the term ‘personal organiser’ had not gained widespread currency the benefit of the new category would have been much less clear, and Filofax’s brand name would have become devalued. Contrast the confusion caused in the electronic-organiser niche. When this developed in the 1990s, the leading brand was PalmPilot. But what was the category name? As Al and Laura Ries comment, ‘Some people call the Palm an electronic organiser. Others call the Palm a handheld computer. And still others, a PDA (personal digital assistant). All of these names are too long and complicated. They lack the clarity and simplicity a good category name should possess. If . . . a personal computer that fits on your lap is called a laptop computer, then the logical name for a computer that fits in the palm of your hand is a palm computer . . . Of course, Palm Computer pre-empted Palm as a brand name, leaving a nascent industry struggling to find an appropriate generic name . . . Palm Computer should have been just as concerned with choosing an appropriate generic name as it was in choosing an appropriate brand name.’9

4. MIGRATE YOUR TARGET CUSTOMER BASE Every star venture wants to end up with a unique set of customers, ideally suited to its products and DNA. To migrate towards your ideal target customers, identify: ★ suitable customers you know already or could easily access; ★ customers who are disgruntled with their existing suppliers; ★ customers who need a product you can envision, not currently being provided; ★ customers who give you pleasure; ★ customers who aren’t price-sensitive; ★ customers you know you can help most; ★ fast-growth companies; ★ big and profitable companies; ★ loyal customers, who hate to switch suppliers; ★ customers with whom you can build a ‘thick’ relationship; ★ customers who’ll recommend you to big customers; ★ people within organisations at the most senior level you can possibly reach.

Those who learn how to leverage technology and master the flow of information through their lives will be empowered to accomplish anything they set their minds to.

COLM O’GORMAN: I feel very, very strongly from my own professional perspective that if any organisation is seeking to advance the human rights of any group of individuals or population, it’s incredibly important that their positions are fully informed by an engagement with that population and with those people. So rights holders’ participation, and active rights holders’ participation, is incredibly important. And ensuring that your campaign and your calls are representative, and reflect what that rights-holder group actually want, as opposed to your assessment of it, even if you’re a member of that group, is absolutely vital. I think it’s fair to say that there was a disconnect between the case that was presented for civil partnership and the lived reality for LGBT people. Now, I don’t know if that was GLEN’s fault or even their responsibility – GLEN are GLEN, you know, they were an organisation doing a piece of work, and their structure is their structure, and their constitution is the way that they’re constituted, but I do think that there needed to be more of a considered engagement with the LGBT community in all of its diversity, you know? And it’s not white, middle-class, male, single, with concerns about pensions and inheritance and income tax and property. Those are very real concerns for people, but they’re very limited. They deny the reality of huge numbers of people. Absolutely women, and men who aren’t concerned with that. Again, it’s been really interesting in the context of the whole debate that we’ve had on prejudice [in early 2014] that you know one of the things that I think was most valuable about what Rory was certainly saying, and it’s something I feel very strongly too – prejudice is nobody’s dominion. Look at this community. Look at how this community treated lesbians. Look at the view of lesbians in this community. Or transgender people particularly. There’s no point in imagining or pretending that the LGBT community would be very different from wider society, and that power and influence wouldn’t be almost automatically in the hands of educated, middle-class, middle-aged men. That’s the way the world has been. And it’s changing thankfully, but it’s the way the world has been.

The point is to think from a position of strength, rather than focus on complaints, or behave like a victim. Not ‘If we had such and such, then you’d see how successful we could be’, but ‘Given that we don’t have such and such, or that this and that is not up to par, we’ll take this action in order to realise our goal anyway.’ Many people – and organisations – prefer to transfer responsibility onto external events, or onto others, but it is much more meaningful (and fun) to focus on your own behaviour.

Idea • Being leader of a team, department or organisation should not mean you are CPS (Chief Problem Solver). If you are, you are working one or two pay grades below what you were hired to do. Idea • Your real job is to conceive and articulate a vision for where your team, department or organisation should be heading, and, with help from your people, to work out a detailed roadmap (strategy) for how to get there. Reflection • Ask yourself and others what things you can do that will get your ‘ship’ moving toward the vision, and what among those things fall inside your Zone of Mastery.

Two of the greatest gifts you can give your organisation are clarity of strategy and an environment conducive to operational excellence. Cleaning up the change portfolio, sequencing things instead of doing them all at once, and closing down legacy projects will free up your talented people to deliver. It will release and supercharge your organisation. Staff will appreciate regaining the ability to do a good job nobody likes being forced to do a hundred things at once and doing them badly. Most people want to deliver something of quality. They derive satisfaction from that – give them back that gift.

but if you don’t have an external system to think in and organise your thoughts, ideas and collected facts, or have no idea how to embed it in your overarching daily routines, the disadvantage is so enormous that it just can’t be compensated by a high IQ.

In the past you may have been able to depend upon an organisation to plan and support your development, but in today’s fast-moving, ever-changing and far less secure world it would be irresponsible not to recognise that your development, career and life plans are your responsibility, and yours alone.

Are they organised?' Nicholas called to her. 'What's your system?' 'Right now they're grouped by how many estimated uses they have left,' Joanna said, glancing away from Collins. 'I reorganise them a lot, though, just for fun.' She was aware, too late, how extremely un-fun this made her sound, but Collins saw her face and said, 'Don't worry, Nicholas is no fun, either.' 'Well, I haven't been given much of a chance, have I?' Nicholas said, carefully putting the book back in place. 'For all we know, I might be absolutely amazing at karaoke.' 'Karaoke's fun people who suck at dancing.

Amazon follows the same fail-faster religion. Jeff Bezos, founder of the trillion-dollar e-commerce platform, sent the following memo to his shareholders when the company became the fastest ever to reach annual sales of $100 billion: One area where I think we are especially distinctive is failure. I believe we are the best place in the world to fail (we have plenty of practice!), and failure and invention are inseparable twins. To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment. Most large organisations embrace the idea of invention, but are not willing to suffer the string of failed experiments necessary to get there. Outsized returns often come from betting against conventional wisdom, and conventional wisdom is usually right. Given a 10 per cent chance of a 100 times payoff, you should take that bet every time. But you’re still going to be wrong nine times out of ten. We all know that if you swing for the fences, you’re going to strike out a lot, but you’re also going to hit some home runs. The difference between baseball and business, however, is that baseball has a truncated outcome distribution. When you swing, no matter how well you connect with the ball, the most runs you can get is four. In business, every once in a while, when you step up to the plate, you can score 1,000 runs. This long-tailed distribution of returns is why it’s important to be bold. Big winners pay for so many experiments.

HILL: Will you describe the major factors which entered into the modus operandi of Mr. Ford’s mind while he was perfecting the automobile? CARNEGIE: Yes, that will be very easy. And when I describe them, you will have a clear understanding of the working principles used by all successful men, as well as a clear picture of the Ford mind, viz.: (a) Mr. Ford was motivated by a definite purpose, which is the first step in all individual achievements. (b) He stimulated his purpose into an obsession by concentrating his thoughts upon it. (c) He converted his purpose into definite plans, through the principle of Organised Individual Endeavour, and put his plans into action with unabating persistence. (d) He made use of the Master Mind principle, first, by the harmonious aid of his wife, and second, by gaining counsel from others who had experimented with internal combustion engines and methods of power transmission. Still later, of course, when he began to produce automobiles for sale, he made a still more extensive use of the Master Mind principle by allying himself with the Dodge brothers and other mechanics and engineers skilled in the sort of mechanical problems he had to solve. (e) Back of all this effort was the power of Applied Faith, which he acquired as the result of his intense desire for achievement in connection with his Definite Major Purpose.

in terms of its utility, asking, “How is this going to help me move forward one of my current projects?

In order to manage a war, you surely need stamina, but not much physical strength or aggressiveness. Wars are not a pub brawl. They are very complex projects that require an extraordinary degree of organisation, cooperation and appeasement. The ability to maintain peace at home, acquire allies abroad, and understand what goes through the minds of other people (particularly your enemies) is usually the key to victory. Hence an aggressive brute is often the worst choice to run a war. Much better is a cooperative person who knows how to appease, how to manipulate and how to see things from different perspectives. This is the stuff empire-builders are made of.

a bottle of champagne after establishing that she does indeed want bubbles. I’ll let her enjoy a glass before I bring up the topic I know will raise a flush to the surface of that slim, golden neck. But she beats me to it, in a roundabout way, when she asks me what I actually do for a living. ‘I know about one bit, obviously.’ She looks down at her glass. ‘But I’m sure Mummy told me you were in finance.’ ‘Yeah. I definitely didn’t tell your mum I owned a sex club,’ I deadpan, and she giggles. ‘So what else do you do?’ ‘I started out in M&A. Worked my arse off. Learnt how to model a company from scratch. Then I went to a hedge fund for a while. Ran some long-short funds.’ I take a sip of champagne. ‘A few years ago, I left with some mates and we struck out on our own. Now we run our own money and we provide leverage for other people who want to do the same.’ She scrunches up her nose. ‘You mean you lend them money?’ ‘Exactly. So they can take riskier positions. We also provide their infrastructure. Trading systems. Compliance. That sort of thing.’ ‘And what do you trade?’ ‘A bit of everything. The way my mates and I have organised things, everyone has their own expertise. Mine’s equity and corporate debt. That’s what I learnt in M&A. Some of the others

The List: Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt Why: Especially because it will show you how to identify bad strategy The Five Dysnfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni Why: Learn most recognised tendencies of dysfunctional teams (in a storified format) Storyworthy by Matthew Dicks Why: Why storytelling matters in everything we do and how to tell a solid story Never Split the Difference by Christopher Voss Why: Learn the fundamentals of having a competitive edge in any discussion Understanding Michael Porter by Joan Magretta Why: The absolute fundamentals of organisational success - big or small Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore Why: If you are curious about what it takes to continue growing and scaling a technology company throughout its lifecycle 7 Powers by Hamilton Helmer Why: You can read it once every year. You can pick any failed venture/product and do a post-mortem of why it failed through the lens of this book (learning the value of building and sustaining moats) Build by Tony Fadell Why: This book can be a great friend as you navigate every fork/decision in your career Super Thinking by Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann Why: You can pick your pet mental models from this book and apply in any situation in your life; the pet mental models can keep evolving as you evolve

There is a parallel between PARA and how kitchens are organized. Everything in a kitchen is designed and organized to support an outcome—preparing a meal as efficiently as possible. The archives are like the freezer—items are in cold storage until they are needed, which could be far into the future. Resources are like the pantry—available for use in any meal you make, but neatly tucked away out of sight in the meantime. Areas are like the fridge—items that you plan on using relatively soon, and that you want to check on more frequently. Projects are like the pots and pans cooking on the stove—the items you are actively preparing right now. Each kind of food is organized according to how accessible it needs to be for you to make the meals you want to eat.

We have already explained why an individual must organise his thought power and concentrate it upon one thing at a time, for this is the way to individual self-mastery upon which personal power is based.

time. Up in the air, above the situation, he asks if it is really the end of the world if he doesn’t get the job. The answer is ‘No, it isn’t’ and although it is very disappointing, he can deal with the disappointment and consequences because he is an adult Human and not a Chimp or child. He also knows logically that he may still be able to do something about the situation and must not allow the Chimp to think catastrophically. Step 5: He now goes into Human mode and asks himself, ‘What can I do about the situation?’ He answers: ‘I can choose the emotions I want and I can choose to act like an adult. Being emotional isn’t going to help anything, least of all me. I can’t think of anything practical to do at this point in time – this I must accept. I can choose to accept the situation rather than keep on saying “what if” or “this shouldn’t have happened” or even worse, “life should be fair”.’ Step 6: Eddie decides to put his Human in charge and decides to actively change his emotional approach to the situation. On a practical point he considers his options to either wait in the hope that another bus appears or to go home and phone the interview organiser. Step 7: Despite his disappointment he might manage a smile and be thankful that the sun will still rise tomorrow. He remains focused on the solution and not the problem. Of course, you may want to react differently or deal with the situation differently if you were in his position. It is just an example of how it might go. Clearly there are endless possibilities. The main point is that he has decided to act as a Human and not as a Chimp and to choose positive emotions despite the setback. Choice despite seriousness The scenario above was not so serious but what happens if a real crisis occurs? Imagine a young man who has had an accident on a motorbike and has been left paralysed from the waist down. Sadly this is not an uncommon event. How does he deal with this type of crisis? This time when he gets up into the helicopter and tries to gain perspective the answer is not so good. His whole life has just changed and not for the better. It would be totally unreasonable for anyone to say to him get a perspective and smile. He will need to go through a grieving process. All of us respond differently to the same situation, so there are no rights or wrongs when responding to a severe crisis. It is about understanding your response and making choices about how you want to manage it. The simple steps described are helpful for minor crises and immediate and transient stress but they need modifying

The power with which we think is “mental dynamite”, and it can be organised and used constructively for the attainment of definite ends. If it is not organised and used through controlled habits, it may become a “mental explosive” that will literally blast one’s hopes of achievement and lead to inevitable failure. —Andrew Carnegie

The importance of taking this realist approach to power and politics is not only theoretical or academic, but also has practical implications. Those who wish to bring about political change cannot hope to do so if they adopt populist methods or have faith that at some point a critical mass of the public will suddenly reach a ‘tipping point’ after which elites will be inevitably toppled. Change always takes concerted organisation and cannot hope to be achieved simply by convincing the greatest number of people of your point of view. Power does not care, in the final analysis, how many likes you got on your Twitter account. In practice, the great bulk of people will adjust to new realities after the fact of change and reorient themselves to the new power structure one way or the other. In any case, ‘manufacturing consent’ can only be carried out once a group is de facto in power. A group may achieve de jure power only to find that they cannot execute or manufacture consent because they have not achieved de facto power—and, realistically, de facto power is the only power that counts.

arrived at your destination, it had evaporated. How often have you struggled to recall even one useful takeaway from a book or article you read in the past?

Creative Vision is an acquired ability through which one does two very important things, viz.: First, he becomes keenly alert in recognising opportunities favorable to the attainment of his aims and purposes; second, he develops the habit of embracing these opportunities and acting upon them through Organised Individual Endeavour.

All of man’s achievements begin in the form of thought, organised into plans, aims and purposes, and expressed in terms of action. All

For all the attacks against meritocracy, there is no other way of organising society than through meritocratic means. And if you’re inclined to disagree, think for a moment about your personal life. Ultimately, when your back is up against the wall, you will want to be operated on by a surgeon or flown by a pilot who graduated at the top of their class and achieved renown in their field through genuine merit – not through a lottery or connections. At some point, particularly when it is a matter of life and death, the buck always stops, and meritocracy always triumphs.

I have a philosophy: You don’t exist to serve your space; your space exists to serve you.

How is this going to help me move forward one of my current projects?

How can I make this as useful as possible for my future self?

the basics of personal productivity—how to keep a schedule, how to take notes in class, and how to set goals and plan their education.

people share their stories about how they track their health, productivity, mood, or behavior to learn more about themselves.

We recommend evaluating business systems and your approach to data security and how data is managed across your organisation.  We consider data access and IT policy with regards to data storage devices fixed and external.  We also give consideration to data backups and data retention within your organisation, and any external 3rd party services that store data from your organisation.  In detailing all these vital topics, we relate to the individual Articles and Recitals of the GDPR Regulation.

DevOps Evangelist An expert Consultant who can now evangelise a DevOps solution for an Enterprise. Typical tasks: Scaling DevOps capabilities across Enterprise Change Management Organisation Alignment This is a high-end Consulting role, with a heavy technology bend. At a DevOps Engineer level, it’s mostly about deep technical skills. As you evolve into a solution architect kind of role, along with the technical acumen, it’s also about leadership skills to build consensus/agreements and making a team work together.

In order to write something, you have to translate a series of connected thoughts and vague notions into a rigid, visible form which forces you to make decisions. If you want to build something, invent something, create something–or if you just have an idea or insight which you want to communicate clearly to others–the first step of making it real is making the decisions you have to make when you ‘commit’ to paper. This process allows you to freeze your thoughts and organise them and edit them as you see fit, giving you entirely new insights into what you first ventured to note down. Exactly how our tools allow us and constrain us in freezing, organising and editing shapes the space of thought.

Identify the 20% of customers who account for 80% of your sales volume and profits, and your Power 4% of customers. Using The Halo Strategy, identify what they struggle with. Organise your findings. Create your dream buyer customer.

Some Acid Tests to Be Made in Separating Facts from Mere Information or Inference Scrutinise with great care everything you read in books, regardless of who wrote them, and never accept the conclusions of any writer as being conclusive without asking the following questions and satisfying yourself as to the correctness of the answers: 1. Is the writer a recognised authority on the subject on which he writes? 2. Did the writer have an ulterior or selfish motive other than that of imparting accurate information? 3. Is the writer a paid propagandist whose profession is that of organising public opinion for a price? If he is, weigh his conclusions with unusual care. 4. Has the writer a profit interest or other personal interest in the subject on which he writes? If so, make allowance for this in the acceptance of his conclusions. 5. Is the writer a person of sound judgement, and not a fanatic on the subject on which he writes? Fanatics are inclined to exaggerate, even when stating facts, and to colour facts so they may convey misleading impressions. 6. Are there reasonably accessible sources from which the writer’s statements may be checked and verified? If so, consult them before accepting his conclusions. 7. Ascertain, also, the writer’s reputation for truth and veracity. Some writers are careless concerning the truth. Half-truths are frequently the most dangerous truths. 8. Be careful about accepting as facts the statements of overzealous persons who have the habit of allowing their imaginations to run wild. Such people are known as ‘radicals’ and their conclusions may be misleading if relied upon. 9. Learn to be cautious and to use your own judgement, no matter who is trying to influence you. If a statement does not harmonise with your own reasoning power (and you should train your reason to function clearly), if it is out of harmony with your own experience, hold it up for further examination before accepting it as fact. Falsehood has a queer way of bringing with it some warning note, perhaps in the tone of one’s voice, or in the expression on one’s face, if it comes through the spoken word. Train yourself to recognise this warning and to be guided by it. 10. In seeking facts from others, do not disclose to them what facts you expect to find, as many people have the bad habit of trying to please, even if they have to exaggerate or falsify in order to do so. 11. Science is the art of organising

I know just how devoted to this organisation you are. Draftees back in my day used to understand what they’d got themselves into, but you young ones . . .” ‘Ask not what you can do for your country, but what your country has ever done for you?’ I raise an eyebrow at him. He

So, if people don't want a war - are opposed to a war - how do you get away with it? You change public opinion and manufacture consent, that's how. You construct a carefully organised deception. A well-crafted and perfectly executed lie. Stage a false flag attacks, created by our own security services, blame it on terrorists, blow up British or US soldiers, bomb our buildings, fly planes into them, lie about weapons of mass destruction that can annihilate us in forty-five minutes flat. And bombard people with it in the media. Terrorists! Terrorism! Cells! Al-Qaeda! Isis! So every single time you turn on the new or read a paper, it's there. Despite the fact that statistically, you're more likely to be killed in a car accident or by your own bathtub than killed by a terrorist! And all the while, they're hiding the real reasons. Oil and gas. Gold. Regime change. Land. Power. Money. So they carry on until the public gets scared and angry, and yes, let's bomb these bastards! And how dare these people threaten and attack us! Then they want the war. The public are practically begging for it by then! Like George Orwell said, "The people believe what the media tells them". And if you control the media, the money, the politics, and the military, you control the whole systems.

[On action filled leadership] Telling your team what to do is showmanship. Showing people how to do it is leadership. Leading for the purpose of visual effect will not accomplish the vision.

Lead people instead of managing them and allow every brain in your organisation to innovate and help you succeed. Do not view your employees as expenses. Treat them like the assets they are and see how amazing they can be.

Once you’ve collected all your information, organise your findings into categories of comments or concerns that appear the most, noting what feelings were most dominant.

Pulling out something surprising about the topic or disagreeing with conventional wisdom. E.g. Why improving your selling skills will lose you sales. Adding some form of quantification or ranking. E.g. The top 3 reasons you’re losing sales. In this case curiosity is aroused because subscribers want to find out what you think are the top 3 reasons and whether they agree with what they’d have picked. Harnessing an emotion. E.g. 7 ways big corporates try to stop you succeeding. In this case tapping in to potential anger and suspicion about large corporates. Linking the topic to something unexpected. E.g. What Jeremy Clarkson taught me about marketing. The curiosity is in wanting to know what a TV celebrity could know about a topic they’re not usually associated with. Hooking in to news and current affairs. E.g. How to achieve Olympic performance in your organisation. Health warning: these can often go stale fast, especially if lots of people make the same analogies. If you’re linking to the news, try to make it a less common story. Name drop a known expert in your field. E.g. David Ogilvy’s best performing adverts. People are curious to see behind the scenes of what a well-known industry expert thinks and does. Admit your mistakes. E.g. My WORST sales meeting ever. A mixture of wanting to know what to avoid themselves and a little schadenfreude at hearing what you did wrong means these emails often get a very high open rate.

This book is different: it provides all the basic information you need, clear and concise examples, and direct advice on how to think about business models at your organisation.

Situational awareness and contextual intelligence will help Cs get intimate with their organisation’s resources. Knowing how to put them to best use is an act of creativity, the next step for the catalytic C, as they manage talent to facilitate thinking. Knowing the people in your organisation, matching them to task, unleashing their capabilities, and making random connections between them, all help create fresh ideas and alternative options.

The power with which we think is “mental dynamite”, and it can be organised and used constructively for the attainment of definite ends. If it is not organised and used through controlled habits, it may become a “mental explosive” that will literally blast one’s hopes of achievement and lead to inevitable failure. —Andrew

Human nature is a constant – except when it isn’t. In the future society, consciousness, the way in which people understand themselves to be people, might be very different. On the one hand, we might say that people have always fallen in love, made art, worshipped gods, fought wars and engaged in complex forms of political organisation and conflict. But our understanding of ourselves as human subjects today is profoundly different from medieval times, which, again, is profoundly different from Ancient Rome or Greece or Egypt; which, again, is profoundly different from Neolithic times… anyway, the point is, in the future, people might not share our values. Your vision of the future should reflect this and not simply reflect modern attitudes in different clothes. 6: Language shapes reality. Language changes over time. New words are coined, others fall out of use. Social and technological changes produce changes in the lexicon; styles of speaking and writing evolve, what was ‘normal’ in the eighteenth century seems obscure today – your future should reflect this, with new words, new slang, new expressions and colloquialisms, new ways of speaking and articulating. China Miéville’s Embassytown (2011) is a good example of how to do this. Building a new, tangible reality out of language will give your vision of the future a density, credibility and coherence that goes beyond the practical mechanics of story, plot and structure. Finally, be bold – the future is yours to imagine.

He’d jumped down, only to find her waiting for him. “Gave me a start,” said Nightingale, “I can tell you.” “And?” I asked. “She’s definitely a fae of some kind. Tall, slender, plenty of teeth.” “The same as your friend Molly?” “Similar,” said Nightingale. “A different tribe perhaps, or clan, or nation. We still don’t know how they organise themselves.

Where do you write? Arthur Miller wrote in a log cabin he built for himself… I just... I have a room in my house. I mean I like writing in hotels. Occasionally I’m... I just go somewhere. I need to smoke and I need room service essentially, and that’s all I need. As a matter of fact it’s much pleasanter to be at home with wife, family and so on. But… clearly… one ought to have a little more discipline than I have. Because I don’t actually shut myself away. When times are in crisis and I am up against it with a deadline, then I do. But I’m pretty slipshod about the way I organise my life. So you don’t write every day, it’s not… No. No, I don’t. I don’t write every day. And I had a friend staying with us for the weekend and he said, Yes, he writes every day. And I just think ‘Really? What happens to your in tray?’ I can’t cope with mine. You’ve commented on how much you cherish your solitude. Do you have solitude? I’ve had a lot of times on my own and I’ve never been… never felt lonely, ever. I like, I like solitude. As a writer I think a certain amount is necessary. I’m always been… bookish rather than active. So, you know, I make few demands upon the world as a writer. And I don’t really… even if I’m writing about something factual and I need to see places and do things and find out what I’m writing about, I’m fairly casual about that as well. Very often I end up looking at places, rooms, monuments which I’ve been writing about but didn’t really get to see until the play was finished. I think that’s the attraction, actually… there’s a sort of self-sufficiency about creating a play and, I guess, a film. A certain self-sufficiency… in other words it caters to ones own distaste for making sudden movements.