Joining A New Team Quotes

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It wasn’t that I didn’t understand Jeremy getting a new band while I was missing/dead/etc. I was sure I would have done the same thing in his position. Well, I would have started one, not joined one, because I don’t really like team sports unless I’ve invented both the team and the sport.
Maggie Stiefvater (Sinner (The Wolves of Mercy Falls, #4))
Being a leader is like being a parent, and the company is like a new family to join. One that will care for us like we are their own . . . in sickness and in health.
Simon Sinek (Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't)
But you’ll always find people telling stories about supposedly better days. You watch. A man joins a new team of soldiers, and the first thing he’ll do is talk about how wonderful his old team was. We remember the good times and the bad ones, forgetting that most times are neither good nor bad. They just are.” He
Brandon Sanderson (The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive, #1))
every new hire should “raise the bar,” that is, be better in one important way (or more) than the other members of the team they join. The theory held that by raising the bar with each new hire, the team would get progressively stronger and produce increasingly powerful results.
Colin Bryar (Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon)
Building an exceptional team or institution starts with a founder. But being a founder doesn’t mean starting a new company. It is within anyone’s grasp to be the founder and culture-creator of their own team, whether you are the first employee or joining a company that has existed for decades.
Laszlo Bock (Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead)
By tracing the early history of USCYBERCOM it is possible to understand some of the reasons why the military has focused almost completely on network defense and cyber attack while being unaware of the need to address the vulnerabilities in systems that could be exploited in future conflicts against technologically capable adversaries. It is a problem mirrored in most organizations. The network security staff are separate from the endpoint security staff who manage desktops through patch and vulnerability management tools and ensure that software and anti-virus signatures are up to date. Meanwhile, the development teams that create new applications, web services, and digital business ventures, work completely on their own with little concern for security. The analogous behavior observed in the military is the creation of new weapons systems, ISR platforms, precision targeting, and C2 capabilities without ensuring that they are resistant to the types of attacks that USCYBERCOM and the NSA have been researching and deploying. USCYBERCOM had its genesis in NCW thinking. First the military worked to participate in the information revolution by joining their networks together. Then it recognized the need for protecting those networks, now deemed cyberspace. The concept that a strong defense requires a strong offense, carried over from missile defense and Cold War strategies, led to a focus on network attack and less emphasis on improving resiliency of computing platforms and weapons systems.
Richard Stiennon (There Will Be Cyberwar: How The Move To Network-Centric Warfighting Has Set The Stage For Cyberwar)
Comparing marriage to football is no insult. I come from the South where football is sacred. I would never belittle marriage by saying it is like soccer, bowling, or playing bridge, never. Those images would never work, only football is passionate enough to be compared to marriage. In other sports, players walk onto the field, in football they run onto the field, in high school ripping through some paper, in college (for those who are fortunate enough) they touch the rock and run down the hill onto the field in the middle of the band. In other sports, fans cheer, in football they scream. In other sports, players ‘high five’, in football they chest, smash shoulder pads, and pat your rear. Football is a passionate sport, and marriage is about passion. In football, two teams send players onto the field to determine which athletes will win and which will lose, in marriage two families send their representatives forward to see which family will survive and which family will be lost into oblivion with their traditions, patterns, and values lost and forgotten. Preparing for this struggle for survival, the bride and groom are each set up. Each has been led to believe that their family’s patterns are all ‘normal,’ and anyone who differs is dense, naïve, or stupid because, no matter what the issue, the way their family has always done it is the ‘right’ way. For the premarital bride and groom in their twenties, as soon as they say, “I do,” these ‘right’ ways of doing things are about to collide like two three hundred and fifty pound linemen at the hiking of the ball. From “I do” forward, if not before, every decision, every action, every goal will be like the line of scrimmage. Where will the family patterns collide? In the kitchen. Here the new couple will be faced with the difficult decision of “Where do the cereal bowls go?” Likely, one family’s is high, and the others is low. Where will they go now? In the bathroom. The bathroom is a battleground unmatched in the potential conflicts. Will the toilet paper roll over the top or underneath? Will the acceptable residing position for the lid be up or down? And, of course, what about the toothpaste? Squeeze it from the middle or the end? But the skirmishes don’t stop in the rooms of the house, they are not only locational they are seasonal. The classic battles come home for the holidays. Thanksgiving. Which family will they spend the noon meal with and which family, if close enough, will have to wait until the nighttime meal, or just dessert if at all? Christmas. Whose home will they visit first, if at all? How much money will they spend on gifts for his family? for hers? Then comes for many couples an even bigger challenge – children of their own! At the wedding, many couples take two candles and light just one often extinguishing their candle as a sign of devotion. The image is Biblical. The Bible is quoted a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one. What few prepare them for is the upcoming struggle, the conflict over the unanswered question: the two shall become one, but which one? Two families, two patterns, two ways of doing things, which family’s patterns will survive to play another day, in another generation, and which will be lost forever? Let the games begin.
David W. Jones (The Enlightenment of Jesus: Practical Steps to Life Awake)
You Are Not Your Jersey “Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.” - Colin Powell The New Zealand All Blacks (national rugby team) have a mantra: “Leave the jersey in a better place”. It means, this is not your jersey, you are part of something bigger but do your best while you wear the jersey. It provides a valuable lesson about enjoying your moment in the sun but letting go to pursue another one once your time ends. When I played in Toulouse they had the same mindset. The club only contracted a certain number of players each year and there was a set number of locker spaces. Each locker was numbered in such a way that was not associated with a jersey number and that was also the number you wore on your club sportswear. Some numbers were 00, others were 85 and mine was 71. When I joined the coach explained to me in French that this was not my number, but I was part of a tradition that spanned decades. My interpretation still remains, “You are not your jersey.
Aidan McCullen (Undisruptable: A Mindset of Permanent Reinvention for Individuals, Organisations and Life)
The essence of Roosevelt’s leadership, I soon became convinced, lay in his enterprising use of the “bully pulpit,” a phrase he himself coined to describe the national platform the presidency provides to shape public sentiment and mobilize action. Early in Roosevelt’s tenure, Lyman Abbott, editor of The Outlook, joined a small group of friends in the president’s library to offer advice and criticism on a draft of his upcoming message to Congress. “He had just finished a paragraph of a distinctly ethical character,” Abbott recalled, “when he suddenly stopped, swung round in his swivel chair, and said, ‘I suppose my critics will call that preaching, but I have got such a bully pulpit.’ ” From this bully pulpit, Roosevelt would focus the charge of a national movement to apply an ethical framework, through government action, to the untrammeled growth of modern America. Roosevelt understood from the outset that this task hinged upon the need to develop powerfully reciprocal relationships with members of the national press. He called them by their first names, invited them to meals, took questions during his midday shave, welcomed their company at day’s end while he signed correspondence, and designated, for the first time, a special room for them in the West Wing. He brought them aboard his private railroad car during his regular swings around the country. At every village station, he reached the hearts of the gathered crowds with homespun language, aphorisms, and direct moral appeals. Accompanying reporters then extended the reach of Roosevelt’s words in national publications. Such extraordinary rapport with the press did not stem from calculation alone. Long before and after he was president, Roosevelt was an author and historian. From an early age, he read as he breathed. He knew and revered writers, and his relationship with journalists was authentically collegial. In a sense, he was one of them. While exploring Roosevelt’s relationship with the press, I was especially drawn to the remarkably rich connections he developed with a team of journalists—including Ida Tarbell, Ray Stannard Baker, Lincoln Steffens, and William Allen White—all working at McClure’s magazine, the most influential contemporary progressive publication. The restless enthusiasm and manic energy of their publisher and editor, S. S. McClure, infused the magazine with “a spark of genius,” even as he suffered from periodic nervous breakdowns. “The story is the thing,” Sam McClure responded when asked to account for the methodology behind his publication. He wanted his writers to begin their research without preconceived notions, to carry their readers through their own process of discovery. As they educated themselves about the social and economic inequities rampant in the wake of teeming industrialization, so they educated the entire country. Together, these investigative journalists, who would later appropriate Roosevelt’s derogatory term “muckraker” as “a badge of honor,” produced a series of exposés that uncovered the invisible web of corruption linking politics to business. McClure’s formula—giving his writers the time and resources they needed to produce extended, intensively researched articles—was soon adopted by rival magazines, creating what many considered a golden age of journalism. Collectively, this generation of gifted writers ushered in a new mode of investigative reporting that provided the necessary conditions to make a genuine bully pulpit of the American presidency. “It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the progressive mind was characteristically a journalistic mind,” the historian Richard Hofstadter observed, “and that its characteristic contribution was that of the socially responsible reporter-reformer.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism)
Ever since the 1960s, upon the urging of Dr. T. Berry Brazelton and the all-knowing Dr. Spock,* mothers have been encouraged to read to their children at a very early age. For toddlers and preschoolers who relish this early diet of literacy, libraries become a second home, story hour is never long enough, and parents can’t finish a book without hearing a little voice beg, “Again… again.” For most literary geek girls, it’s at this age that they discover their passion for reading. Whether it’s Harold and the Purple Crayon or Strega Nona, books provide the budding literary she-geek with a glimpse into an all-new world of magic and make-believe—and once she visits, she immediately wants to apply for full-time citizenship. “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” —author Joan Didion, in The White Album While some children spend their summers sweating on community sports teams or learning Indigo Girls songs at sleep-away camp, our beloved bookworms are more interested in joining their local library’s summer reading program, completing twenty-five books during vacation, and earning a certificate of recognition signed by their city’s mayor. (Plus, that Sony Bloggie Touch the library is giving away to the person who logs the most hours reading isn’t the worst incentive, either. It’ll come in handy for that book review YouTube channel she’s been thinking about starting!) When school starts back up again, her friends will inevitably show off their tan lines and pony bead friendship bracelets, and our geek girl will politely oblige by oohing and aahing accordingly. But secretly she’s bursting with pride over her summer’s battle scars—the numerous paper cuts she got while feverishly turning the pages of all seven Harry Potter books.
Leslie Simon (Geek Girls Unite: Why Fangirls, Bookworms, Indie Chicks, and Other Misfits Will Inherit the Earth)
Bell resisted selling Texas Instruments a license. “This business is not for you,” the firm was told. “We don’t think you can do it.”38 In the spring of 1952, Haggerty was finally able to convince Bell Labs to let Texas Instruments buy a license to manufacture transistors. He also hired away Gordon Teal, a chemical researcher who worked on one of Bell Labs’ long corridors near the semiconductor team. Teal was an expert at manipulating germanium, but by the time he joined Texas Instruments he had shifted his interest to silicon, a more plentiful element that could perform better at high temperatures. By May 1954 he was able to fabricate a silicon transistor that used the n-p-n junction architecture developed by Shockley. Speaking at a conference that month, near the end of reading a thirty-one-page paper that almost put listeners to sleep, Teal shocked the audience by declaring, “Contrary to what my colleagues have told you about the bleak prospects for silicon transistors, I happen to have a few of them here in my pocket.” He proceeded to dunk a germanium transistor connected to a record player into a beaker of hot oil, causing it to die, and then did the same with one of his silicon transistors, during which Artie Shaw’s “Summit Ridge Drive” continued to blare undiminished. “Before the session ended,” Teal later said, “the astounded audience was scrambling for copies of the talk, which we just happened to bring along.”39 Innovation happens in stages. In the case of the transistor, first there was the invention, led by Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain. Next came the production, led by engineers such as Teal. Finally, and equally important, there were the entrepreneurs who figured out how to conjure up new markets. Teal’s plucky boss Pat Haggerty was a colorful case study of this third step in the innovation process.
Walter Isaacson (The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution)
SCULLEY. Pepsi executive recruited by Jobs in 1983 to be Apple’s CEO, clashed with and ousted Jobs in 1985. JOANNE SCHIEBLE JANDALI SIMPSON. Wisconsin-born biological mother of Steve Jobs, whom she put up for adoption, and Mona Simpson, whom she raised. MONA SIMPSON. Biological full sister of Jobs; they discovered their relationship in 1986 and became close. She wrote novels loosely based on her mother Joanne (Anywhere but Here), Jobs and his daughter Lisa (A Regular Guy), and her father Abdulfattah Jandali (The Lost Father). ALVY RAY SMITH. A cofounder of Pixar who clashed with Jobs. BURRELL SMITH. Brilliant, troubled hardware designer on the original Mac team, afflicted with schizophrenia in the 1990s. AVADIS “AVIE” TEVANIAN. Worked with Jobs and Rubinstein at NeXT, became chief software engineer at Apple in 1997. JAMES VINCENT. A music-loving Brit, the younger partner with Lee Clow and Duncan Milner at the ad agency Apple hired. RON WAYNE. Met Jobs at Atari, became first partner with Jobs and Wozniak at fledgling Apple, but unwisely decided to forgo his equity stake. STEPHEN WOZNIAK. The star electronics geek at Homestead High; Jobs figured out how to package and market his amazing circuit boards and became his partner in founding Apple. DEL YOCAM. Early Apple employee who became the General Manager of the Apple II Group and later Apple’s Chief Operating Officer. INTRODUCTION How This Book Came to Be In the early summer of 2004, I got a phone call from Steve Jobs. He had been scattershot friendly to me over the years, with occasional bursts of intensity, especially when he was launching a new product that he wanted on the cover of Time or featured on CNN, places where I’d worked. But now that I was no longer at either of those places, I hadn’t heard from him much. We talked a bit about the Aspen Institute, which I had recently joined, and I invited him to speak at our summer campus in Colorado. He’d be happy to come, he said, but not to be onstage. He wanted instead to take a walk so that we could talk. That seemed a bit odd. I didn’t yet
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
Argentine national football player from FC Barcelona. Positions are attacks. He is the greatest player in the history of the club, as well as the greatest player in the history of the club, as well as the greatest player in history, most of whom are Pele and Diego Maradona [9] Is one of the best players in football history. 저희는 7가지 철칙을 바탕으로 거래를 합니다. 고객들과 지키지못할약속은 하지않습니다 1.정품보장 2.총알배송 3.투명한 가격 4.편한 상담 5.끝내주는 서비스 6.고객님 정보 보호 7.깔끔한 거래 신용과 신뢰의 거래로 많은VIP고객님들 모시고 싶은것이 저희쪽 경영 목표입니다 믿음과 신뢰의 거래로 신용성있는 비즈니스 진행하고있습니다 비즈니스는 첫째로 신용,신뢰 입니다 믿고 주문하시는것만큼 저희는 확실한제품으로 모시겠습니다 제품구입후 제품이 손상되거나 혹은 효과못보셨을시 저희가 1차재배송 2차 100%환불까지 해드리고있습니다 후회없는 선택 자신감있는 제품으로 언제나 모시겠습니다 텔레【KC98K】카톡【ACD5】라인【SPR331】 ◀경영항목▶ 수면제,여성최음제,여성흥분제,남성발기부전치유제,비아그라,시알리스,88정,드래곤,99정,바오메이,정력제,남성성기확대제,카마그라젤,비닉스,센돔,꽃물,남성조루제,네노마정 등많은제품 판매중입니다 2. Childhood [edit] He was born on June 24, 1987 in Rosario, Argentina [10] [11]. His great-grandfather Angelo Messi moved to Argentina as an Italian, and his family became an Argentinean. His father, Jorge Orashio Messi, was a steel worker, and his mother, Celia Maria Quatini, was a part-time housekeeper. Since he was also coach of the local club, Gland Dolley, he became close to football naturally since he was a child, and he started playing soccer at Glendale's club when he was four years old. In 1995, he joined Newsweek's Old Boys Youth team at age six, following Rosario, and soon became a prospect. However, at the age of 11, she is diagnosed with GHD and experiences trials. It took $ 90 to $ 100 a month to cure it, and it was a big deal for his parents to make a living from manual labor. His team, New Wells Old Boys, was also reluctant to spend this amount. For a time, even though the parents owed their debts, they tried to cure the disorder and helped him become a football player, but it could not be forever. [12] In that situation, the Savior appeared. In July 2000, a scouting proposal came from FC Barcelona, ​​where he saw his talent. He was also invited to play in the Argentinian club CA River Plate. The River Plate coach who reported the test reported the team to the club as a "must-have" player, and the reporter who watched the test together was sure to be talented enough to call him "the new Maradona." However, River Plate did not give a definite answer because of the need to convince New Wells Old Boys to recruit him, and the fact that the cost of the treatment was fixed in addition to lodging. Eventually Messi and his father crossed to Barcelona in response to a scouting offer from Barcelona. After a number of negotiations between the Barcelona side and Messi's father, the proposal was inconceivable to pay for Meshi's treatment.
Lionell Messi
Never treat your launch team like a core group. It’s not. Your launch team is a time-limited, purpose-driven team. It ends with the debriefing session following your launch. At that meeting, release the launch team members to join a ministry team of their choice. Your launch team will not stay with you over the long haul. Many church planters make the mistake of thinking that the people from their launch team (whom they have grown to love) will be the same people who will grow the church with them in the long term. That is seldom, if ever, the case. While it’s sad to see people go, it’s part of God’s process in growing your church. So, expect it, be prepared for it, and be thankful that you have the opportunity to serve with so many different people at different points along the journey. Preparing a launch team to maximize your first service is first and foremost a spiritual enterprise. Pray and fast—a lot. Don’t be fooled into thinking that being a solid leader undermines the spirit of teamwork. You can lead a team, hold people accountable and ensure that things get done in a way that fosters teamwork and gives glory to God. So get ready. show people your heart before you ask for their hand. People want to know that you care, and they want to be part of something bigger than themselves. If you can articulate your vision in a way that excites people, they’ll want to be on your team. The launch team is not a democracy. Don’t vote. You are the leader. Lead. While it’s true that you want to share the gospel with as many people as possible, you will need to develop a clear picture of the specific demographic your new church is targeting in order to effectively reach the greatest number of people. Diffused light has little impact, but focused light has the ability to cut through steel. Take time to focus so that you are able to reach the specific people God has called you to. 1. Who Are the Key Population Groups Living in My Area? 2. What Population Group Is Not Being Reached Effectively? 3. What Population Group Do I Best Relate To? Healthy organisms grow, and that includes your church. If you feel stagnation setting in, your job is not to push growth any way you can but to identify the barriers that are hindering you and remove them. The only people who like full rooms are preachers and worship leaders. If you ignore this barrier, your church will stop growing. Early on, it’s best to remain flexible. The last thing you want to do is get in a position in which God can’t grow you because you aren’t logistically prepared. What if twice as many people showed up this Sunday? Would you be ready? When a lead pastor isn’t growing: The church stops growing, the sermons are stale, The staff and volunteers stop growing, The passion for ministry wanes. Keeping your church outwardly focused is just as important now as it was during your prelaunch stage. Make sure that you are continually working to expand God’s kingdom, not building your own. A healthy launch is the single greatest indicator of future church health.
Nelson Searcy (Launch: Starting a New Church from Scratch)
When artificial-intelligence guru Andrew Ng joined Chinese Internet pioneer Baidu Baidu last May as chief scientist, he was a little cagey about what he and his team might work on at a newly opened lab in Sunnyvale, Calif. But he couldn’t help revealing better speech recognition as a key area of interest in the age of the smartphone. Today, Baidu, often called China’s Google Google, unveiled the first results of what the former Google researcher, Stanford professor and Coursera cofounder had in mind. In a paper published today on Cornell University Library’s arXiv.org site, Ng and 10 members of his Baidu Research team led by research scientist Awni Hannun said they’ve come up with a new method of more accurately recognizing speech, an increasingly important feature used in Apple's Apple's Siri and Dictation services as well as Google’s voice search.
Anonymous
A man joins a new team of soldiers, and the first thing he'll do is talk about how wonderful his old team was. We remember the good times and the bad ones, forgetting that most times are neither good nor bad. They just are.
Brandon Sanderson (The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive, #1))
When I left Google to join Facebook, as a percentage of my team, fewer women tried to follow me. As they had been all along, the men were more interested in new and, as we say in tech, higher beta opportunities—where the risks were great but the potential rewards even greater.
Sheryl Sandberg (Lean In: For Graduates)
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After a crushing loss to the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Trump tried to boost his team’s spirits. As they were driving back to New York, he told a teammate to pull over at a Montgomery Ward department store, where Donald bought golf clubs, tees, and dozens of balls, which they took to a bluff overlooking Chesapeake Bay. Trump grabbed a club and hit a few balls into the water, inspiring his teammates to join in. After all the balls were gone, Trump and his teammates got back into the car, leaving the golf clubs on the side of the road. Yet,
Michael Kranish (Trump Revealed: The Definitive Biography of the 45th President)
How did Facebook successfully overcome the growth limiter of operational scalability? On the technology side, one of the philosophies that helped Facebook become successful was its famous motto “Move fast and break things.” This emphasis on speed, which came directly from Mark Zuckerberg, allowed Facebook to achieve rapid product development and continuous product improvement. Even today, every new software engineer who joins Facebook is asked to make a revision to the Facebook codebase (potentially affecting millions or even billions of users) on his or her first day of work. However, as Facebook’s user base and engineering team grew to a massive size, Mark had to change the philosophy to “Move fast and break things with stable infrastructure.
Reid Hoffman (Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies)
change. I’m sure we’ll need your help from time to time, and maybe one of these days we’ll be able to return the favor.” Higgins felt that bubble of word vomit rise in his throat and spill out of his mouth before he could help himself. “Beirut,” he said. There was a change in the atmosphere as soon as the word slipped out, but he hammered on. “You lost a lot of Marines.” “Higgins.” Zyga’s voice was sharp. Stokes’ voice was colored with sadness as he said, “I keep telling myself we could’ve done something to prevent it.” “That’s why you’re here,” Higgins said. “When Director Thatcher told me about this program, I jumped at the chance to help build a better relationship between the Marine Corps and the CIA. My colleagues aren’t thrilled at the idea of getting into bed with your lot, but I have a great deal of respect for what you do. That’s why I’m here. Like the CIA, some of us in the Marine Corps are planning for the future. Terrorism will only grow in the coming years. Beirut was just the beginning. Lucky for me, your bosses and I agree.” He looked from one team member to another. “I heard about your first mission, and I’m glad it was a success. I’m glad you all made it out of there alive.” “Major Stokes will be stopping by every so often to check on our progress and offer additional advice and support,” Decker said. “I know it’s a bit unorthodox, but this man has seen it all. Don’t let his dumb grunt act fool you. His help will be invaluable to us as we move forward.” “Now we just need to get the Feds on board.” Stokes laughed, and the room joined him. “Good luck with that,” Abrams called out. “They hate us more than you do.” “That they do,” Stokes said. “They’ve been working on their program since the late ‘70s. Same sort of deal. If you can get into the mind of a killer, really understand how your enemy works, then you have a better chance of catching him before he hurts anyone else. We’re usually sent in after it’s too late. I want to change that.” “Might put you out of a job,” Higgins joked. Stokes laughed again. “Honestly, I don’t think that’d be so bad. Maybe I’ll join up with you. Maybe in a perfect world.” “In a perfect world, there wouldn’t be a need for any of us,” Higgins said. “You’re exactly right, Mr. Higgins.” “Doctor,” Higgins corrected automatically. His face flushed. “Ignore him,” Abrams said, reaching across Spencer to whack Higgins in the stomach. “He thinks just because he has two doctorates that he’s better than us.” “I do not,” Higgins mumbled. He felt his face grow even hotter. Stokes held up a hand in surrender. “You earned those degrees, Dr. Higgins. Wear them with pride.” Higgins shot a look at Abrams while the rest of the room continued to chuckle. Thatcher looked down at his watch. “It seems my time is up here,” he said. “I assume you can find your way back, Major?” “I’ll try not to steal any secrets on the way out.” “See that you don’t,” Thatcher said, shaking Stokes’s hand again before exiting the room. Everyone took their turn introducing themselves to Major Stokes, except Higgins, who hung back to observe how this new player interacted with everyone in the room. Where Higgins lacked interpersonal skills, Stokes excelled in the area. He could joke with Abrams in one breath and rein it in to speak in serious undertones with Spencer in the next. He and Johnson exchanged battle scars, and when it came to York, Stokes found a fellow intellectual to converse with. Higgins detected no condescension or disrespect in his voice even though she was the only woman in the room. As the personal introductions were finishing up, Stokes broke off from the group and walked over to where Higgins was still seated at the front of the room and sat down next to him. “More of an observer than a talker, right?” “You could say that.” “Should I be worried?” Higgins smiled.
C.G. Cooper (Higgins (The Interrogators, #1))
My dad who has a voice so loud I've nicknamed him Mr. Boom Boom is on his way home. Mom says when he gets home, we're all going to pick up a surprise dad has organized. Dad's previous surprises have included me joining a soccer team and doing a two-day circus trapeze course. You can understand why I feel a little nervous.
Bill Campbell (My New Buddy (Diary of an Almost Cool Girl #4))
investigators had identified Baxter’s heparin as the source of the contamination, and the Changzhou plant as deficient, neither the FDA nor Baxter could find any contaminant in the heparin. Urgently needing help to figure out what was wrong with its own product, Baxter reached out to Dr. Robert Linhardt, a chemist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, who had been studying heparin for years. He promptly sidelined his other work to dig into the mystery, and his laboratory joined several others working on the crisis. Stumped, the research teams finally turned to sophisticated nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy machines, which revealed evidence of a contaminant: a synthetic substance called oversulfated chondroitin sulfate (OSCS). The ingredient mimicked heparin, was almost impossible to detect, and produced life-threatening reactions. The FDA formally named OSCS as a likely contaminant in March 2008 and concluded that it had been added, somewhere along the supply chain, to increase the yield, and profitability, of the drug. The contamination exposed perilous gaps in the FDA’s oversight and intensified the long-simmering conflict between Congress and the agency.
Katherine Eban (Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom)
● Developing your first-ever leadership strategy and don't know where to start? ● Are you stuck with a particular phase of leadership strategy? ● Having a tough time achieving corporational milestones with your robust strategy? If you're facing these questions and confused regarding canvassing a robust leadership strategy, this article can help you solve these queries. Several factors affect the development of a leadership strategy, such as the influence of decision-making processes for leadership/management, the personnel brought on board for strategy development and the resources involved. There are specific "keys" to effective leadership that help in efficient development and deployment of strategies. Professionals who want to develop robust strategies and move up in their leadership career can opt for online strategy courses. These courses aim to build concepts from the grass-root level, such as what defines a strategy leadership and others. What is a Leadership Strategy? Leadership is required for leading organisational growth by optimising the resources and making the company's procedures more efficient. A leadership strategy explicitly enlists the number of leaders required, the tasks they need to perform, the number of employees, team members and other stakeholders required, and the deadlines for achieving each task. Young leaders who have recently joined the work-force can take help of programs offered by reputable institutes for deepening their knowledge about leadership and convocating successful strategies. Various XLRI leadership and management courses aim to equip new leaders with a guided step-by-step pedagogy to canvass robust leadership strategies. What it Takes to Build a Robust Leadership Strategy: Guided Step-By-Step Pedagogy The following steps go into developing an effective and thriving leadership strategy:- ● Step 1 = Identify Key Business Drivers The first step involves meeting with the senior leaders and executives and identifying the business's critical drivers. Determining business carriers is essential for influencing the outcome of strategies. ● Step 2 = Identifying the Different Leadership Phases Required This step revolves around determining the various leadership processes and phases. Choosing the right techniques from hiring and selection, succession planning, training patterns and others is key for putting together a robust strategy. ● Step 3 = Perform Analysis and Research Researching about the company's different leadership strategies and analysing them with the past and present plans is vital for implementing future strategies. ● Step 4 = Reviewing and Updating Leadership Strategic Plan Fourth step includes reviewing and updating the strategic plan in accordance with recent developments and requirements. Furthermore, performing an environmental scan to analyse the practices that can make strategies long-lasting and render a competitive advantage. All it Takes for Building a Robust Leadership Strategy The above-mentioned step by step approach helps in auguring a leadership strategy model that is sustainable and helps businesses maximise their profits. Therefore, upcoming leaders need to understand the core concepts of strategic leadership through online strategy courses. Moreover, receiving sound knowledge about developing strategies from XLRI leadership and management courses can help aspiring leaders in their careers.
Talentedge
Humor Humor is a great social lubricator—it can make interacting go more smoothly. If you are good at telling jokes, try a few. Telling jokes is risky, however; do not tell ethnic, racist, or off-color jokes. And as always, pay careful attention to interactive chemistry. One high school student who attended my program reported that, although he tried to become part of a popular social group at his new school, playing on the football team and joining several clubs, he was not invited to socialize with the other kids off the field. He had become known for telling joke after joke, in vain hopes of being accepted. When we examined things more carefully, it became clear that his style of telling jokes—sometimes irrelevant, sometimes just plain corny—was not appealing to the peer group he was associating with. Quite simply, the chemistry was off. If you wish to inject humor and levity into an interaction, it’s better to tell funny stories. If the funny stories are about yourself, great: People enjoy mildly self-deprecating humor. You can also find amusing true stories in the newspaper.
Jonathan Berent (Beyond Shyness: How to Conquer Social Anxieties)
As the 1970s drew to a close, and Commodore, Tandy, Altair, and Apple began to emerge from the sidelines, PARC director Bert Sutherland asked Larry Tesler to assess what some analysts were already predicting to be the coming era of “hobby and personal computers.” “I think that the era of the personal computer is here,” Tesler countered; “PARC has kept involved in the world of academic computing, but we have largely neglected the world of personal computing which we helped to found.”41 His warning went largely unheeded. Xerox Corporation’s parochial belief that computers need only talk to printers and filing cabinets and not to each other meant that the “office of the future” remained an unfulfilled promise, and in the years between 1978 and 1982 PARC experienced a dispersal of core talent that rivals the flight of Greek scholars during the declining years of Byzantium: Charles Simonyi brought the Alto’s Bravo text editing program to Redmond, Washington, where it was rebooted as Microsoft Word; Robert Metcalf used the Ethernet protocol he had invented at PARC to found the networking giant, 3Com; John Warnock and Charles Geschke, tiring of an unresponsive bureaucracy, took their InterPress page description language and founded Adobe Systems; Tesler himself brought the icon-based, object-oriented Smalltalk programming language with him when he joined the Lisa engineering team at Apple, and Tim Mott, his codeveloper of the Gypsy desktop interface, became one of the founders of Electronic Arts—five startups that would ultimately pay off the mortgages and student loans of many hundreds of industrial, graphic, and interaction designers, and provide the tools of the trade for untold thousands of others.
Barry M. Katz (Make It New: A History of Silicon Valley Design (The MIT Press))
Kahnawake August 1704 Temperature 75 degrees It was worth going into the water just to get away from Ruth’s nagging. Mercy waded in, appalled by how cold it was. Snow Walker towed her around for a minute and then let go. At first Mercy couldn’t take two strokes without having to stand up and reassure herself that there was a bottom, but soon she could swim ten, and then twenty, strokes. Joseph, who had been swimming with the boys, paddled over to admire her new skill. Snow Walker coaxed them to put their heads under the water and swim like fish. Mercy loved it. Wiping river water from her eyes and laughing, she shouted, “Come on in, Joanna!” In front of Snow Walker, she spoke Mohawk. “It feels so cool and slippery inside the water.” Joanna shook her head. “I can’t see where I’m going on land. I don’t want to be blind in water over my head.” “Ruth!” yelled Joseph, in English so she’d answer. “Try it. I won’t pull you under by the toes. I promise.” “Savages swim,” said Ruth. “English people walk or ride horses.” By now, Mercy had flung her tunic onto the grass and was as bare as everybody else. When Ruth scolded, Mercy ducked under the water and stayed there until the yelling was over. “Just wait till you get out, Mercy,” said Ruth. “The mosquitos are going to feast on your wet bare skin.” Mercy translated for Snow Walker, who said, “No, no. We grease to keep the mosquitos away.” Joseph, of course, had been greasing for weeks, but so far Mercy had not submitted. Ruth, unwilling to see Mercy slather bear fat over her nakedness, stalked away. “Good,” said Snow Walker, giggling. “The fire is out. We are safe now.” Mercy was startled. “I never heard you use her old name.” “I don’t call her Let the Sky In,” explained Snow Walker. “She would let nothing in but storms.” Snow Walker’s not such a fence post after all, thought Mercy. “Snow Walker, why have they given Ruth such a fine new name?” “I don’t know. One day at a feast, the story will be told.” “They’ll have to gag Ruth before they tell it,” said Joseph. “She hates her new name even more than she hated her old one.” They got out of the water, racing in circles to dry off, and then Snow Walker rubbed bear grease all over Mercy. “I can’t see you from here, Munnonock,” said Joanna, “but I can smell you.” “Want some?” said Mercy, planning to attack with a scoop of bear grease, but Joanna left for the safety of the cornfields and her mother. Snow Walker went back in to join a water ball team.
Caroline B. Cooney (The Ransom of Mercy Carter)
OLYMPICS 2012 Great Britain be proud, be blessed, be bold! Your time has come to be the host of the Massive event in the whole world, It is the time to arise from your slumber, Great Britain be proud, be blessed, be proud! The time has come to put things in order, To put aside your differences, To join hands in one accord and say, We can do this, we can win this, Build the walls of unity, peace, joy And press towards the goal. This is the time to bring back your dignity. Great Britain be proud, be blessed, be bold! This is the time to sing a new song, This is the time to pray and believe That Great Britain team will do wonders. Great Britain be proud, be blessed, be bold! Show the world what you are made of, Show them your are made of gold not of bronze. Be proud, be blessed, be bold!
Euginia Herlihy
My father, however, seemed quite content with our new life. He never hit my mother. He started working as an agricultural laborer on a cooperative. There weren’t any private farms, only cooperatives with teams. He had no choice but to also join the Agricultural Workers’ Union and attend compulsory study-meetings twice a week to explore the thoughts of Kim Il-sung and the policies of the Workers’ Party. Everyone in North Korea had to join a group affiliated with the Workers’ Party. These groups and unions didn’t produce anything. Their sole purpose was to indoctrinate members.
Masaji Ishikawa (A River in Darkness: One Man's Escape from North Korea)
PayPal’s big challenge was to get new customers. They tried advertising. It was too expensive. They tried BD [business development] deals with big banks. Bureaucratic hilarity ensued. … the PayPal team reached an important conclusion: BD didn’t work. They needed organic, viral growth. They needed to give people money. So that’s what they did. New customers got $10 for signing up, and existing ones got $10 for referrals. Growth went exponential, and PayPal wound up paying $20 for each new customer. It felt like things were working and not working at the same time; 7 to 10 percent daily growth and 100 million users was good. No revenues and an exponentially growing cost structure were not. Things felt a little unstable. PayPal needed buzz so it could raise more capital and continue on. (Ultimately, this worked out. That does not mean it’s the best way to run a company. Indeed, it probably isn’t.)2 Thiel’s account captures both the desperation of those early days and the almost random experimentation the company resorted to in an effort to get PayPal off the ground. But in the end, the strategy worked. PayPal dramatically increased its base of consumers by incentivizing new sign-ups. Most important, the PayPal team realized that getting users to sign up wasn’t enough; they needed them to try the payment service, recognize its value to them, and become regular users. In other words, user commitment was more important than user acquisition. So PayPal designed the incentives to tip new customers into the ranks of active users. Not only did the incentive payments make joining PayPal feel riskless and attractive, they also virtually guaranteed that new users would start participating in transactions—if only to spend the $10 they’d been gifted in their accounts. PayPal’s explosive growth triggered a number of positive feedback loops. Once users experienced the convenience of PayPal, they often insisted on paying by this method when shopping online, thereby encouraging sellers to sign up. New users spread the word further, recommending PayPal to their friends. Sellers, in turn, began displaying PayPal logos on their product pages to inform buyers that they were prepared to honor this method of online payment. The sight of those logos informed more buyers of PayPal’s existence and encouraged them to sign up. PayPal also introduced a referral fee for sellers, incentivizing them to bring in still more sellers and buyers. Through these feedback loops, the PayPal network went to work on its own behalf—it served the needs of users (buyers and sellers) while spurring its own growth.
Geoffrey G. Parker (Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy and How to Make Them Work for You: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy―and How to Make Them Work for You)
An exponential growth curve turns into a squiggle. Why? Because there are negative forces that appear during the late stage of a network’s life cycle. Market Saturation. Churn from early users. Bad behavior from trolls, spammers, and fraudsters. Lower-quality engagement from new users. Regulatory action. A degraded product experience, as too many users join. When users are leaving a network as fast as new users sign up, then top-line growth naturally slows. This is why the growth curves of the best products are rarely smooth. Instead, the trajectories of even the top products—Facebook, Twitch, and others—grow in fits and starts. When a ceiling is hit, product teams scramble to address the underlying causes. Ship the right innovative features, and the ceiling is pushed off—only to return again awhile later in a different form. But when teams stumble at this stage, then the entire network weakens. Network effects can unravel just as fast as they gathered, pulling down acquisition, engagement, and monetization all at once. Hitting the ceiling hurts.
Andrew Chen (The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects)
Success comes with an inevitable problem: market saturation. New products initially grow just by adding more customers—to grow a network, add more nodes. Eventually this stops working because nearly everyone in the target market has joined the network, and there are not enough potential customers left. From here, the focus has to shift from adding new customers to layering on more services and revenue opportunities with existing ones. eBay had this problem in its early years, and had to figure its way out. My colleague at a16z, Jeff Jordan, experienced this himself, and would often write and speak about his first month as the general manager of eBay’s US business. It was in 2000, and for the first time ever, eBay’s US business failed to grow on a month-over-month basis. This was critical for eBay because nearly all the revenue and profit for the company came from the US unit—without growth in the United States, the entire business would stagnate. Something had to be done quickly. It’s tempting to just optimize the core business. After all, increasing a big revenue base even a little bit often looks more appealing than starting at zero. Bolder bets are risky. Yet because of the dynamics of market saturation, a product’s growth tends to slow down and not speed up. There’s no way around maintaining a high growth rate besides continuing to innovate. Jeff shared what the team did to find the next phase of growth for the company: eBay.com at the time enabled the community to buy and sell solely through online auctions. But auctions intimidated many prospective users who expressed preference for the ease and simplicity of fixed price formats. Interestingly, our research suggested that our online auction users were biased towards men, who relished the competitive aspect of the auction. So the first major innovation we pursued was to implement the (revolutionary!) concept of offering items for a fixed price on ebay.com, which we termed “buy-it-now.” Buy-it-now was surprisingly controversial to many in both the eBay community and in eBay headquarters. But we swallowed hard, took the risk and launched the feature . . . and it paid off big. These days, the buy-it-now format represents over $40 billion of annual Gross Merchandise Volume for eBay, 62% of their total.65
Andrew Chen (The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects)
My friend Bangaly Kaba, formerly head of growth at Instagram, called this idea the theory of “Adjacent Users.” He describes his experience at Instagram, which several years post-launch was growing fast but not at rocketship speed: When I joined Instagram in 2016, the product had over 400 million users, but the growth rate had slowed. We were growing linearly, not exponentially. For many products, that would be viewed as an amazing success, but for a viral social product like Instagram, linear growth doesn’t cut it. Over the next 3 years, the growth team and I discovered why Instagram had slowed, developed a methodology to diagnose our issues, and solved a series of problems that reignited growth and helped us get to over a billion users by the time I left. Our success was anchored on what I now call The Adjacent User Theory. The Adjacent Users are aware of a product and possibly tried using it, but are not able to successfully become an engaged user. This is typically because the current product positioning or experience has too many barriers to adoption for them. While Instagram had product-market fit for 400+ million people, we discovered new groups of billions of users who didn’t quite understand Instagram and how it fit into their lives.67 In my conversations with Bangaly on this topic, he described his approach as a systematic evaluation of the network of networks that constituted Instagram. Rather than focusing on the core network of Power Users—the loud and vocal minority that often drive product decisions—instead the approach was to constantly figure out the adjacent set of users whose experience was subpar. There might be multiple sets of nonfunctional adjacent networks at any given time, and it might require different approaches to fix each one. For some networks, it might be the features of the product, like Instagram not having great support for low-end Android apps. Or it might be because of the quality of their networks—if the right content creators or celebrities hadn’t yet arrived. You fix the experience for these users, then ask yourself again, who are the adjacent users? Then repeat. Bangaly describes this approach: When I started at Instagram, the Adjacent User was women 35–45 years old in the US who had a Facebook account but didn’t see the value of Instagram. By the time I left Instagram, the Adjacent User was women in Jakarta, on an older 3G Android phone with a prepaid mobile plan. There were probably 8 different types of Adjacent Users that we solved for in-between those two points. To solve for the needs of the Adjacent User, the Instagram team had to be nimble, focusing first on pulling the audience of US women from the Facebook network. This required the team to build algorithmic recommendations that utilized Facebook profiles and connections, so that Instagram could surface friends and family on the platform—not just influencers. Later on, targeting users in Jakarta and in other developing countries might involve completely different approaches—refining apps for low-end Android phones with low data connections. As the Adjacent User changes, the strategy has to change as well.
Andrew Chen (The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects)
In a research study called “How today’s fastest growing B2B businesses found their first ten customers,” startup veteran Lenny Rachitsky interviewed early members of teams from Slack, Stripe, Figma, and Asana. In studying how these earliest companies found their first customers, it was concluded that a significant number came from the founders tapping their personal networks: Only three sourcing strategies account for every B2B company’s very early growth. [These are: Personal network, Seek out customers where they are, Get press.] Thus, your choices are easy, yet limited. Almost every B2B business both hits up their personal network and heads to the places their potential customers were spending time. The question isn’t which of these two routes to pursue, but instead how far your own network will take you before you move on. It’s a huge advantage to have a strong personal network in B2B, which you can also build by bringing a connector investor or joining an incubator such as YC. Getting press is rarely the way to get started.44 Just as Uber’s ops hustle worked for solving the city-by-city Cold Start Problem, B2B startups have an equivalent card to play: they can manually reach out and onboard teams from their friends’ startups, building atomic networks quickly, as Slack did in their early launch. Or, many productivity products begin by launching within online communities—like Twitter, Hacker News, and Product Hunt—where dense pockets of early adopters are willing to try new products. In recent years, B2B products have started to emphasize memes, funny videos, invite-only mechanics, and other tactics traditionally associated with consumer startups. I expect that this will only continue, as the consumerization of enterprise products fully embraces meme-based go-to-market early on, instead of leading with direct sales.
Andrew Chen (The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects)
...I'm not saying we should encourage defiance. But I do believe the goal is to get our headstrong toddlers to join the team... not to break their spirits.
Harvey Karp (The Happiest Toddler on the Block: The New Way to Stop the Daily Battle of Wills and Raise a Secure and Well-Behaved One- to Four-Year-Old)
Just remember that a mix is good. Decider Who makes decisions for your team? Perhaps it’s the CEO, or maybe it’s just the “CEO” of this particular project. If she can’t join for the whole time, make sure she makes a couple of appearances and delegates a Decider (or two) who can be in the room at all times. Examples: CEO, founder, product manager, head of design Finance expert Who can explain where the money comes from (and where it goes)? Examples: CEO, CFO, business development manager Marketing expert Who crafts your company’s messages? Examples: CMO, marketer, PR, community manager Customer expert Who regularly talks to your customers one-on-one? Examples: researcher, sales, customer support Tech/logistics expert Who best understands what your company can build and deliver? Examples: CTO, engineer Design expert Who designs the products your company makes? Examples: designer, product manager
Jake Knapp (Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days)
Former New York mayor and shrunken apple head Rudy Giuliani joins Trump’s legal team
Aldous J. Pennyfarthing (Dear F*cking Moron: 101 More Rude Letters to Donald Trump (101 Rude Letters to Donald Trump Book 2))
Pierce—along with a team of engineers and scientists that included Kompfner, who joined Bell Labs in 1951—spent the next thirteen years investigating, testing, and perfecting various kinds of traveling wave tubes. Pierce had been correct in some respects about the traveling wave tube’s potential. But as he came to understand, inventions don’t necessarily evolve into the innovations one might at first foresee. Humans all suffered from a terrible habit of shoving new ideas into old paradigms. “Everyone faces the future with their eyes firmly on the past,” Pierce said, “and they don’t see what’s going to happen next.
Jon Gertner (The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation)
Amazon Bar Raisers receive special training in the process. One participates in every interview loop. The name was intended to signal to everyone involved in the hiring process that every new hire should “raise the bar,” that is, be better in one important way (or more) than the other members of the team they join. The theory held that by raising the bar with each new hire, the team would get progressively stronger and produce increasingly powerful results. The Bar Raiser could not be the hiring manager or a recruiter. The Bar Raiser was granted the extraordinary power to veto any hire and override the hiring manager.
Colin Bryar (Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon)
Within 30 days of a new person joining my team, we take at least an hour to go through a document that contains the questions we look at here in a moment, helping me understand what makes them tick and setting expectations about their growth path over the next year.
Camille Fournier (97 Things Every Engineering Manager Should Know: Collective Wisdom from the Experts)
But what aren't you doing already? What more can you possibly do?’ ‘I guess he means the team stuff’, I said. ‘The bonding. The camaraderie I've never really been –‘. ‘Don't start judging yourself’, she said sharply. ‘Don't start seeing yourself in the light of those kinds of standards.’ ‘No, but it's true. There's always been the part of work I've struggled with, the unquestioning side. The feeling of joining in. I've always tried to do it at this kind of remove. Maybe what he's saying is –‘ ‘Of course you've done it at a remove. How else are you supposed to do it and still be you?’ ‘But maybe those days are gone’, I said. ‘Maybe I have to accept that. Maybe there just won't be those kind of jobs anymore - the ones where you can roll out of bed and staggering without speaking to anyone and keep your head down and just do it, you know? maybe this is what work is, now’ […] ‘Definitely. Simple tasks can be automated. They've already almost got the machine learning to do what you do. It's about what else a human can bring to the table, which is, literally, their humanity.’ It was possible, I realised, to imagine. A semi-global future in which the bulk of paid human employment would revolve not around hard skills, but around the messy, blurry business of interpersonal success. A new divide would open up, between the well liked, The easy to get along with, and the awkward, The rude, the unfriendly. I pictured the encampment on which I had lived, filled not as it was then, with migrants, unfortunates, hard drinkers, the out of luck. But instead, the abrasive, the poorly adjusted, the excessively reserved and painfully shy. (p.136-7)
Sam Byers (Come Join Our Disease)
From their hotel in Orlando, Florida, before team training on March 31, 2016, Hope Solo, Carli Lloyd, Becky Sauerbrunn, and Alex Morgan, joined by Jeffrey Kessler, spoke live with Matt Lauer over a video feed at the Today show studio in New York City. “Carli, you don’t just wake up one morning and say, We’re going to file a claim with the EEOC, and point a finger at U.S. Soccer,” Matt Lauer said to open the segment. “This has been simmering for a while. But why does it come to a head now?” “The timing is right,” Lloyd said. “We’ve proven our worth over the years, just coming off of a World Cup win, and the pay disparity between the men and women is just too large. We want to continue to fight. The generation of players before us fought, and now it is our job to keep on fighting.
Caitlin Murray (The National Team: The Inside Story of the Women Who Changed Soccer)
In 2013, on the auspicious date of April 1, I received an email from Tetlock inviting me to join what he described as “a major new research program funded in part by Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, an agency within the U.S. intelligence community.” The core of the program, which had been running since 2011, was a collection of quantifiable forecasts much like Tetlock’s long-running study. The forecasts would be of economic and geopolitical events, “real and pressing matters of the sort that concern the intelligence community—whether Greece will default, whether there will be a military strike on Iran, etc.” These forecasts took the form of a tournament with thousands of contestants; the tournament ran for four annual seasons. “You would simply log on to a website,” Tetlock’s email continued, “give your best judgment about matters you may be following anyway, and update that judgment if and when you feel it should be. When time passes and forecasts are judged, you could compare your results with those of others.” I did not participate. I told myself I was too busy; perhaps I was too much of a coward as well. But the truth is that I did not participate because, largely thanks to Tetlock’s work, I had concluded that the forecasting task was impossible. Still, more than 20,000 people embraced the idea. Some could reasonably be described as having some professional standing, with experience in intelligence analysis, think tanks, or academia. Others were pure amateurs. Tetlock and two other psychologists, Barbara Mellers (Mellers and Tetlock are married) and Don Moore, ran experiments with the cooperation of this army of volunteers. Some were given training in some basic statistical techniques (more on this in a moment); some were assembled into teams; some were given information about other forecasts; and others operated in isolation. The entire exercise was given the name Good Judgment Project, and the aim was to find better ways to see into the future. This vast project has produced a number of insights, but the most striking is that there was a select group of people whose forecasts, while they were by no means perfect, were vastly better than the dart-throwing-chimp standard reached by the typical prognosticator. What is more, they got better over time rather than fading away as their luck changed. Tetlock, with an uncharacteristic touch of hyperbole, called this group “superforecasters.” The cynics were too hasty: it is possible to see into the future after all. What makes a superforecaster? Not subject-matter expertise: professors were no better than well-informed amateurs. Nor was it a matter of intelligence; otherwise Irving Fisher would have been just fine. But there were a few common traits among the better forecasters.
Tim Harford (The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics)
In all things, don't be long where you don't belong.
Emmanuel Apetsi
But you’ll always find people telling stories about supposedly better days. You watch. A man joins a new team of soldiers, and the first thing he’ll do is talk about how wonderful his old team was. We remember the good times and the bad ones, forgetting that most times are neither good nor bad. They just are.
Brandon Sanderson (The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive, #1))
The game of football evolved and here was one cause of its evolution, a new kind of athlete doing a new kind of thing. All by himself, Lawrence Taylor altered the environment and forced opposing coaches and players to adapt. After Taylor joined the team, the Giants went from the second worst defense in the NFL to the third best. The year before his debut they gave up 425 points; his first year they gave up 257 points. They had been one of the weakest teams in the NFL and were now, overnight, a contender. Of course, Taylor wasn’t the only change in the New York Giants between 1980 and 1981. There was one other important newcomer, Bill Parcells, hired first to coach the Giants’ defense and then the entire team.
Michael Lewis (The Blind Side)
Throwing even more fuel on this fire was Alibaba’s record-breaking 2014 debut on the New York Stock Exchange. A group of Taobao sellers rang the opening bell for Alibaba’s initial public offering on September 19, just nine days after Premier Li’s speech. When the dust settled on a furious round of trading, Alibaba had claimed the title of the largest IPO in history, and Jack Ma was crowned the richest man in China. But it was about more than just the money. Ma had become a national hero, but a very relatable one. Blessed with a goofy charisma, he seems like the boy next door. He didn’t attend an elite university and never learned how to code. He loves to tell crowds that when KFC set up shop in his hometown, he was the only one out of twenty-five applicants to be rejected for a job there. China’s other early internet giants often held Ph.D.s or had Silicon Valley experience in the United States. But Ma’s ascent to rock-star status gave a new meaning to “mass entrepreneurship”—in other words, this was something that anyone from the Chinese masses had a shot at. The government endorsement and Ma’s example of internet entrepreneurship were particularly effective at winning over some of the toughest customers: Chinese mothers. In the traditional Chinese mentality, entrepreneurship was still something for people who couldn’t land a real job. The “iron rice bowl” of lifetime employment in a government job remained the ultimate ambition for older generations who had lived through famines. In fact, when I had started Sinovation Ventures in 2009, many young people wanted to join the startups we funded but felt they couldn’t do so because of the steadfast opposition of their parents or spouses. To win these families over, I tried everything I could think of, including taking the parents out to nice dinners, writing them long letters by hand, and even running financial projections of how a startup could pay off. Eventually we were able to build strong teams at Sinovation, but every new recruit in those days was an uphill battle. By 2015, these people were beating down our door—in one case, literally breaking Sinovation’s front door—for the chance to work with us. That group included scrappy high school dropouts, brilliant graduates of top universities, former Facebook engineers, and more than a few people in questionable mental states. While I was out of town, the Sinovation headquarters received a visit from one would-be entrepreneur who refused to leave until I met with him. When the staff told him that I wouldn’t be returning any time soon, the man lay on the ground and stripped naked, pledging to lie right there until Kai-Fu Lee listened to his idea.
Kai-Fu Lee (AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order)
Lori Toye founded a small publishing company in August of 1989. Lori Toye's husband joined the team to form I AM America Publishing and Distributing. I AM America Publishing and Distributing has many accomplishments. I AM America publications have been featured on NBC, FOX, UPN, London’s Carlton Television, Art Bell’s Dreamland, George Noory’s Coast to Coast, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.
Lori Toye
Ask personally rather than rely on announcements—get the first date. Remember that you’re not looking for someone “to volunteer.” You’re looking for someone to commit as a volunteer for your cause. Develop strategic recruiting partnerships—build your network or a recruiting team. Don’t go it alone. Recruit short-term project teams. The more specific the time limit, the more people you’ll likely get to join you to help with a project. And short-term commitments might open the door to longer commitments. Assume that a “no” means “not now,” or “not this position.” Think of a “no” as an open door to listen carefully to the reasons behind the “no.” Develop roles and responsibilities or a position charter for each position. Don’t fill any position until you find the person who matches what you’re looking for.
Jonathan McKee (The New Breed: Understanding & Equipping the 21st Century Volunteer)
Over the years, as it became my responsibility to evaluate and hire new people for my unit, I developed a profile of what I wanted in a profiler. At first, I went for strong academic credentials, figuring an understanding of psychology and organized criminology was most important. But I came to realize degrees and academic knowledge weren’t nearly as important as experience and certain subjective qualities. We have the facilities to fill in any educational gaps through fine programs at the University of Virginia and the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. What I started looking for was “right-brained,” creative-type thinkers. There are many positions within the FBI and law enforcement in general where engineering or accounting types do the best, but in profiling and investigative analysis, that kind of thinker would probably have some difficulty. Contrary to the impression given in such stories as The Silence of the Lambs, we don’t pluck candidates for the Investigative Support Unit right out of the Academy. Since our first book, Mindhunter was published, I’ve had many letters from young men and women who say they want to go into behavioral science in the FBI and join the profiling team at Quantico. It doesn’t work quite that way. First you get accepted by the Bureau, then you prove yourself in the field as a first-rate, creative investigator, then we recruit you for Quantico. And then you’re ready for two years of intensive, specialized training before you become a full-fledged member of the unit. A good profiler must first and foremost show imagination and creativity in investigation. He or she must be willing to take risks while still maintaining the respect and confidence of fellow agents and law enforcement officers. Our preferred candidates will show leadership, won’t wait for a consensus before offering an opinion, will be persuasive in a group setting but tactful in helping to put a flawed investigation back on track. For these reasons, they must be able to work both alone and in groups.
John E. Douglas (Journey Into Darkness (Mindhunter #2))
Nearly every organized group on Oahu staked out something to do. Boy Scouts fought fires, served coffee, ran messages. The American Legion turned out for patrol and sentry duty. One Legionnaire struggled into his 1917 uniform, had a dreadful time remembering how to wind his puttees and put on his insignia. He took it out on his wife, and she told him to leave her alone —go out and fight his old enemy, the Germans. The San Jose College football team, in town from California for a benefit game the following weekend, signed up with the Police Department for guard duty. Seven of them joined the force, and Quarterback Paul Tognetti stayed on for good, ultimately going into the dairy business. A local committee, called the Major Disaster Council, had spent months preparing for this kind of day; now their foresight was paying off. Forty-five trucks belonging to American Sanitary Laundry, New Fair Dairy, and other local companies sped off to Hickam as converted ambulances. Dr. Forrest Pinkerton dashed to the Hawaii Electric Company’s refrigerator, collected the plasma stored there by the Chamber of Commerce’s Blood Bank. He piled it in the back of his car, distributed it to various hospitals, then rushed on the air, appealing for more donors. Over 500 appeared within an hour, swamping Dr. John Devereux and his three assistants. They took the blood as fast as they could, ran out of containers, used sterilized Coca-Cola bottles.
Walter Lord (Day of Infamy)
Most important, the PayPal team realized that getting users to sign up wasn’t enough; they needed them to try the payment service, recognize its value to them, and become regular users. In other words, user commitment was more important than user acquisition. So PayPal designed the incentives to tip new customers into the ranks of active users. Not only did the incentive payments make joining PayPal feel riskless and attractive, they also virtually guaranteed that new users would start participating in transactions—if only to spend the $10 they’d been gifted in their accounts.
Geoffrey G. Parker (Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy and How to Make Them Work for You: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy―and How to Make Them Work for You)
Whenever a new manager joins my team, my favorite questions to ask a few months in are: “What turned out to be more challenging than you expected, and what was easier than you expected?
Julie Zhuo (The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You)
The term “jogging” became widely used in the United States in the late 1960s, as it was a result of a popular book with the title Jogging. Its author was University of Oregon track coach and Nike cofounder Bill Bowerman. He had been exposed to jogging while on vacation in New Zealand with his college team. He took time off and went for some easy runs with legendary running coach Arthur Lydiard, who had trained several Olympic running champions. On weekends, Lydiard would invite locals to join him for “fitness and sociability” runs, or what he called jogging. Lydiard wanted New Zealanders to stop being sedentary and get some easy, non-strenuous exercise. Bowerman enjoyed these easy runs, and lost ten pounds in the process. He was eager to spread the message about jogging to residents in Eugene, Oregon, where he lived and coached. When these jogging get-togethers became popular, Bowerman decided to broaden the message, and co-wrote the 126-page bestselling Jogging book with the help of a local cardiologist.
Hiroaki Tanaka (Slow Jogging: Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, and Have Fun with Science-Based, Natural Running)
She was built to be a part of a team. It was how she'd grown up, It had always been hr and her dad, unbreakable partners. Then she'd join forces with Liz, the two of them taking on adolescence together. Now, for better or worse -- clearly, unquestionably worse, -- she'd agreed to a new partnership... It was her job as a teammate.
Lacie Waldon (The Only Game in Town)
And when I say “story,” I don’t just mean words. Your product’s story is its design, its features, images and videos, quotes from customers, tips from reviewers, conversations with support agents. It’s the sum of what people see and feel about this thing that you’ve created. And the story doesn’t just exist to sell your product. It’s there to help you define it, understand it, and understand your customers. It’s what you say to investors to convince them to give you money, and to new employees to convince them to join your team, and to partners to convince them to work with you, and to the press to convince them to care. And then, eventually, it’s what you tell customers to convince them to want what you’re selling. And it all starts with “why.
Tony Fadell (Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making)
Both Biruté and Jane are firmly rooted in the world of human endeavor. Jane has not become a chimp; Biruté has not become an orangutan. Yet the lives of all three women have been transformed by their visions; they are inexorably linked to the other nations through which they have traveled. In a sense they are, in the words of Henry Beston, living by voices we shall never hear; they are gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained. You need only listen to Jane’s excitement at seeing “a tree laden with luscious fruit”—fruit that to human senses is so tart it prompts a grimace. You need only remember how Dian would sing to the gorillas a gorilla song—praising the taste of rotting wood. You need only imagine what goes through Biruté’s mind when she does the “fruit stare” of the orangutan. Western scientists do not like to talk about these things, for to do so is to voice what for so long has been considered unspeakable. The bonds between human and animal and the psychic tools of empathy and intuition have been “coded dark” by Western science—labeled as hidden, implicit, unspoken. The truths through which we once explained our world, the truths spoken by the ancient myths, have been hushed by the louder voice of passionless scientific objectivity. But perhaps we are rediscovering the ancient truths. In his book Life of the Japanese Monkeys, the renowned Japanese primate researcher Kawai Masao outlines a new concept, upon which his research is built: he calls it kyokan, which translates as “feel-one.” He struck upon the concept after observing a female researcher on his team interacting with female Japanese macaques. “We [males] had always found it more difficult to distinguish among female [macaques],” he wrote. “However, a female researcher who joined our study could recognize individual females easily and understood their behavior, personality and emotional life better. . . . I had never before thought that female monkeys and women could immediately understand each other,” he wrote. “This revelation made me feel I had touched upon the essence of the feel-one method.” Masao’s book, unavailable to Western readers until translated into English by Pamela Asquith in 1981, explains that kyokan means “becoming fused with the monkeys’ lives where, through an intuitive channel, feelings are mutually exchanged.” Embodied in the kyokan approach is the idea that it is not only desirable to establish a feeling of shared life and mutual attachment with the study animals—to “feel one” with them—but that this feeling is necessary for proper science, for discovering truth. “It is our view that by positively entering the group, by making contact at some level, objectivity can be established,” Masao wrote. Masao is making a call for the scientist to return to the role of the ancient shaman: to “feel one” with the animals, to travel within their nations, to allow oneself to become transformed, to see what ordinary people cannot normally see. And this, far more than the tables of data, far more than the publications and awards, is the pioneering achievement of Jane Goodall, Biruté Galdikas, and Dian Fossey: they have dared to reapproach the Other and to sanctify the unity we share with those other nations that are, in Beston’s words, “caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.
Sy Montgomery (Walking with the Great Apes: Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, Birute Galdikas)
A scouting craft soon entered our solar system. It detected several broadcast signals, and routed the strongest one (WABC-TV in New York) to a distant team of anthropologists—who then found themselves watching a first-run episode of the hit sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter (the one in which Arnold Horshack joins a zany youth cult). Before I get into what happened next, I should mention that music is the most cherished of the forty so-called Noble Arts that Refined beings revere and dedicate their lives to. It is indeed viewed as being many times Nobler than the other thirty-nine Arts combined. And remember—their music sucks. The first alien Kotter watchers initially doubted that we had music at all, because everything about the show screamed that we were cultural and aesthetic dunderheads. Primitive sight gags made them groan. Sloppy editing made them chuckle. Wardrobe choices practically made them wretch. And then, it happened. The show ended. The credits rolled, and the theme music began. And suddenly, the brainless brutes that they’d been pitying were beaming out the greatest creative achievement that the wider universe had ever witnessed. Welcome back, Welcome back, Welcome back.
Rob Reid (Year Zero)
Many who don’t face martyrdom for their faith will likely turn from their faith because they want to ‘join the winning team.’ The conversion to Islam by westerners following the 9/11 attacks has been documented. (Islam Attracts Converts by the Thousands, New York Times, October 22, 2001). This phenomenon would only increase if an entire nation falls, instead of just falling buildings. There will be millions of believers in the world after America falls. Many of these will have heeded God’s several warnings in the Bible to flee from the Daughter of Babylon to save their lives. But there will also be many nominal “Christians” in the world in the end times who will fall away from their faith, just as Jesus and Paul said they will. The future Jihadist destruction of the Daughter of Babylon is a more than plausible explanation for why so many will depart the faith, and fall away, in the end times.
John Price (The End of America: The Role of Islam in the End Times and Biblical Warnings to Flee America)
Standardization of tools and practices between teams makes it easier for new people to get up to speed regardless of what team they are joining, but every team also has the flexibility to customize as they see fit.
Jennifer Davis (Effective DevOps: Building a Culture of Collaboration, Affinity, and Tooling at Scale)
Love MINECRAFT? **Over 18,000 words of kid-friendly fun!** This high-quality fan fiction fantasy diary book is for kids, teens, and nerdy grown-ups who love to read epic stories about their favorite game! Meet the Skull Kids. They're three Minecraft players who hop from world to world, hunting zombies and searching for the elusive Herobrine--the ghost in the machine. Teleporting down into a new world, the group is surprised to find that the game has changed once again, rendering almost ALL of their technology and mods useless. And when two of the Skull Kids are starving and distracted by exploring a desert village on Day 1 of their new adventure, the whole group is in danger when the sun goes down. Will the Skull Kids survive? Thank you to all of you who are buying and reading my books and helping me grow as a writer. I put many hours into writing and preparing this for you. I love Minecraft, and writing about it is almost as much fun as playing it. It’s because of you, reader, that I’m able to keep writing these books for you and others to enjoy. This book is dedicated to you. Enjoy!! After you read this book, please take a minute to leave a simple review. I really appreciate the feedback from my readers, and love to read your reactions to my stories, good or bad. If you ever want to see your name/handle featured in one of my stories, leave a review and tell me about it in there! And if you ever want to ask me any questions, or tell me your idea for a cool Minecraft story, you can email me at steve@skeletonsteve.com. Are you on my Amazing Reader List? Find out at the end of the book! June 29th, 2016 Now I’m going to try something a little different. Tell me what you guys think! This ‘Players Series’ is going to be a continuing series of books following my new characters, the players Renzor51, Molly, and quantum_steve. Make sure to let me know if you like it or not! Would you still like to see more books about mobs? More books about Cth’ka the Creeper King? I’m planning on continuing that one. ;) Don’t forget to review, and please say hi and tell me your ideas! Thanks, Ryan Gallagher, for the ideas to continue the wolf pack book! Enjoy the story. P.S. - Have you joined the Skeleton Steve Club and my Mailing List?? You found one of my diaries!! This particular book is the continuing story of some Minecraft players—a trio of friends who leap from world to world, searching for the elusive Herobrine. They’re zombie hunters and planeswalkers. They call themselves “The Skull Kids”. Every time these Skull Kids hop into a new world, they start with nothing more than the clothes they’re wearing, and they end up dominating the realm where they decide to live. What you are about to read is the first collection of diary entries from Renzor51, the player and member of the Skull Kids who documents their adventures, from the day they landed on Diamodia and carved out their own little empire, and beyond. Be warned—this is an epic book! You’re going to care about these characters. You’ll be scared for them, feel good for them, and feel bad for them! It’s my hope that you’ll be sucked up into the story, and the adventure and danger will be so intense, you’ll forget we started this journey with a video game! With that, future readers, I present to you the tale of the Skull Kids, Book 1. The Skull Kids Ka-tet Renzor51 Renzor51 is the warrior-scribe of the group, and always documents the party’s adventures and excursions into game worlds. He’s a sneaky fighter, and often takes the role of a sniper, but can go head to head with the Skull Kids’ enemies when needed. A natural artist, Renzor51 tends to design and build many of the group’s fortresses and structures, and keeps things organized. He also focuses a lot on weapon-smithing and enchanting, always seeking out ways to improve his gear. Molly
Skeleton Steve (Diary of a Zombie Hunter Player Team - The Skull Kids, Book 1 (Diary of a Zombie Hunter Player Team - The Skull Kids, #1))
Nissan Dealer Chicago Continental Nissan is one of the most respected and trustworthy Nissan dealers in Countryside and the surrounding area. We proudly serve the western suburbs and the entire Chicagoland area, including our closest neighbors in Orland Park, Berwyn, and Cicero. In over three decades of service to our friends and your families, we have worked hard to bring an approach to the automotive business that reflects our core values of hard work and honesty. All of the members of the Continental Nissan team are taught from the first day they join us to make every experience a customer has with us the best part of their day. It doesn’t matter if you are looking for genuine Nissan OEM parts or buying a new fleet of cars. We strive to bring the best customer service to every transaction.
Continental Nissan
When Lombardi joined the Green Bay Packers in 1959, the team had gone eleven straight seasons without a winning record, and after winning only one of twelve games the previous year, the team fired Lombardi’s predecessor. Upon arriving at training camp as their new head coach, Lombardi made an immediate and indelible first impression on Bart Starr, a struggling third-string, fourth-year quarterback. After leading the players to a meeting room, Lombardi waited in front of a portable blackboard as the players sat down. He picked up a piece of chalk and began to speak. “Gentlemen,” he said, “we have a great deal of ground to cover. We’re going to do things a lot differently than they’ve been done here before . . . [We’re] going to relentlessly chase perfection, knowing full well we will not catch it, because perfection is not attainable. But we are going to relentlessly chase it because, in the process, we will catch excellence.”6 He paused and stared, his eyes moving from player to player. The room was silent. “I’m not remotely interested in being just good,” he said with an intensity that startled them all.
Ken Kocienda (Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs)
Decider Who makes decisions for your team? Perhaps it’s the CEO, or maybe it’s just the “CEO” of this particular project. If she can’t join for the whole time, make sure she makes a couple of appearances and delegates a Decider (or two) who can be in the room at all times. Examples: CEO, founder, product manager, head of design Finance expert Who can explain where the money comes from (and where it goes)? Examples: CEO, CFO, business development manager Marketing expert Who crafts your company’s messages? Examples: CMO, marketer, PR, community manager Customer expert Who regularly talks to your customers one-on-one? Examples: researcher, sales, customer support Tech/logistics expert Who best understands what your company can build and deliver? Examples: CTO, engineer Design expert Who designs the products your company makes? Examples: designer, product manager
Jake Knapp (Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days)
There are stories,” Kaladin said, “about the times of the Heraldic Epochs, when men were bound by honor. But you’ll always find people telling stories about supposedly better days. You watch. A man joins a new team of soldiers, and the first thing he’ll do is talk about how wonderful his old team was. We remember the good times and the bad ones, forgetting that most times are neither good nor bad. They just are.
Brandon Sanderson (The Way of Kings (The Stormlight Archive, #1))