Managing Director Quotes

Effective risk management and compliance are essential for protecting the company's assets and reputation.

Fortifying the company involves assessing the vulnerabilities of critical infrastructure and implementing safeguards.

To be successful, a Board of Directors must foster a culture of respect and appreciation.

I look at the world and I see absurdity all around me. People do strange things constantly, to the point that, for the most part, we manage not to see it.

By embracing a holistic approach to risk management and conducting regular risk assessments, board members can ensure that their company is prepared to face a wide range of challenges

I don’t care how great your products or services are, if the company’s finances aren’t managed well, it’s doomed to fail.

Fortifying the company involves managing supply chain risks to ensure continuity of operations and avoid disruptions.

Fortifying the company involves incorporating risk management considerations into strategic planning and decision making processes.

Through writing, I feel power for maybe the first time in my life. I don’t have to say somebody else’s words. I can write my own. I can be myself for once. I like the privacy of it. Nobody’s watching. Nobody’s judging. Nobody’s weighing in. No casting directors or agents or managers or directors or Mom. Just me and the page. Writing is the opposite of performing to me. Performing feels inherently fake. Writing feels inherently real.

Fortifying the company may involve diversifying suppliers and establishing contingency plans to mitigate supply chain disruptions.

Once risks are identified, they must be assessed in terms of their likelihood and potential impact. This allows the company to prioritize risks and allocate resources accordingly.

The board's vision sets the standard for leadership throughout the company. By actively promoting and embodying the vision, board members hold management accountable for aligning their actions and strategies with the company's long-term aspirations.

The business environment is constantly evolving. Economic fluctuations, technological disruptions, regulatory shifts, and competitive pressures demand that companies be able to adjust their goals and strategies.

The board, in collaboration with management, crafts a strategic roadmap that defines the specific steps required to achieve the vision. This roadmap translates the company's "why" and "when" into a practical "how," outlining key milestones, resource allocation, and performance metrics.

Risk management and cybersecurity have transcended their traditional roles as mere compliance functions and have become fundamental pillars of good corporate governance.

Fortifying the company involves implementing quality control measures to ensure product safety and customer satisfaction.

By making risk management everyone's domain, companies can create a more robust defense against potential threats.

A good Board Of Directors team is one where ideas are flowing fluidly - and where each idea is met with an initial welcome, an intellectual challenge, an expression of gratitude, a rigorous scrutiny and a readiness for action.

In some cases, you can tell how somebody is being treated by their own boss from the way they are treating someone to whom they are a boss.

We rose from our chairs and bowed at each other, Japanese-style. The eight of them sat on the opposite side of the table to us, leaving the middle chair empty. All looking at us, no-one speaking a word. A long minute later, a very short, rather elderly lady – also dressed in funereal black – waddled in and seated herself in the empty chair in the middle of the row, directly facing us. She smiled; well, she attempted to twist her mouth. Too much effort. Her expression reverted to seriousness. Lin, sitting next to her, now spoke and introduced her as the Managing Director. She didn’t speak any English. Nor, it transpired, did any of the others – or if they did, we would never know, as either they weren’t brave enough to try or were inhibited by the business hierarchy. A scene that could have come out of Kafka.

Death avoidance is not an individual failing; it’s a cultural one. Facing death is not for the faint-hearted. It is far too challenging to expect that each citizen will do so on his or her own. Death acceptance is the responsibility of all death professionals—funeral directors, cemetery managers, hospital workers. It is the responsibility of those who have been tasked with creating physical and emotional environments where safe, open interaction with death and dead bodies is possible.

By actively overseeing and providing guidance on risk management and cybersecurity, the board demonstrates its commitment to protecting the company's assets, reputation, and long-term success.

In today's volatile business landscape, characterized by rapid technological advancements, geopolitical uncertainties, and evolving regulatory frameworks, companies must adopt a proactive and holistic approach to risk management and cybersecurity.

Boards should encourage management to develop scenario planning exercises that model various potential global events and their impact on the company.

The board chair should have a clear vision for the organization's future and be able to articulate it in a way that inspires and motivates the board and management.

Like the brain's command center, the board provides the highest level of cognitive function for the organization. They are the "big picture" thinkers, setting strategic direction, overseeing management, and representing the interests of shareholders and stakeholders.

Just like any team, a board needs to evaluate its effectiveness regularly. This self-assessment allows for continuous improvement. Key metrics to consider include the quality of board discussions, the effectiveness of committee structures, and the board's ability to hold management accountable.

Ethical governance fosters a culture of integrity and accountability within the organization. This can lead to improved employee engagement, reduced misconduct, and enhanced risk management.

and although the W came along in the tenth century, modern Germans still seem to manage perfectly well by using a V instead. Except when the German managing director of Aston Martin tries to say ‘vanquish’.

Get rid of all the cleaners, rubbish collectors, bus drivers, supermarket checkout staff and secretaries, for example, and society will very quickly grind to a halt. On the other hand, if we woke up one morning to find that all the highly paid advertising executives, management consultants and private equity directors had disappeared, society would go on much as it did before: in a lot of cases, probably quite a bit better. So,

A healthy, collaborative relationship between the board and management is crucial for a company's success.

Deep knowledge of the company's industry is essential for understanding the competitive landscape, regulatory environment, and emerging trends. Board members with industry experience can provide valuable insights and guidance on strategic decision-making, risk management, and growth opportunities.

Just as the universal family of gifted writers transcends national barriers, so is the gifted reader a universal figure, not subject to spatial or temporal laws. It is he—the good, the excellent reader—who has saved the artists again and again from being destroyed by emperors, dictators, priests, puritans, philistines, political moralists, policemen, postmasters, and prigs. Let me define this admirable reader. He does not belong to any specific nation or class. No director of conscience and no book club can manage his soul. His approach to a work of fiction is not governed by those juvenile emotions that make the mediocre reader identify himself with this or that character and “skip descriptions.” The good, the admirable reader identifies himself not with the boy or the girl in the book, but with the mind that conceived and composed that book. The admirable reader does not seek information about Russia in a Russian novel, for he knows that the Russia of Tolstoy or Chekhov is not the average Russia of history but a specific world imagined and created by individual genius. The admirable reader is not concerned with general ideas; he is interested in the particular vision. He likes the novel not because it helps him to get along with the group (to use a diabolical progressive-school cliche); he likes the novel because he imbibes and understands every detail of the text, enjoys what the author meant to be injoyed, beams inwardly and all over, is thrilled by the magic imageries of the master-forger, the fancy-forger, the conjuror, the artist. Indeed of all the characters that a great artist creates, his readers are the best. (“Russian Writers, Censors, and Readers”)

It’s like you said, it’s all about P.R. these days. Brand management. Social networking. The corporatization of our own experience. We’re all our very own communications directors. But what a load of bollocks it all is when you’re faced by something like this.

The key fob played the first bar of Für Elise as I locked the car up. I hoped that Beethoven's ghost was out there somewhere, making the night hideous for the managing director of Ford's.

The amount of space per employee shrank from 500 square feet in the 1970s to 200 square feet in 2010, according to Peter Miscovich, a managing director at the real estate brokerage firm Jones Lang LaSalle.

company leaders need to provide their company with a self-organizing and semi-autonomous immune system. Effective risk management isn't about a siloed approach focusing on isolated threats. We have to think more broadly. Effective risk management requires a holistic approach that transcends a siloed focus on isolated threats. In today's interconnected business landscape, risks are rarely confined to a single department or function. Instead, they often ripple across the organization, impacting multiple areas simultaneously.

The ability to facilitate productive discussions and guide the board towards consensus is essential. The board chair must be able to manage different personalities, encourage participation, and ensure that all viewpoints are considered.

The real skill is to manage and reward the people who are smarter than you in some technical area. That is why companies have a board of directors.

A strong working relationship between the board and management is essential.

Movie directors often shoot funerals in the rain. The mourners stand in their dark suits under large black umbrellas, the kind you never have handy in real life, while the rain falls symbolically all around them, on grass and tombstones and the roods of cars, generating atmostphere. What they don't show you is how the legs of your suit caked with grass clippings, cling soaked to your shins, how even under umbrellas the rain still manages to find your scalp, running down your skull and past your collar like wet slugs, so that while you're supposed to be meditating on the deceased, instead you're mentally tracking the trickle of water as it slides down your back. The movies don't convey how the soaked, muddy ground will swallow up the dress shoes of the pallbearers like quicksand, how the water, seeping into the pine coffin, will release the smell of death and decay, how the large mound of dirt meant to fill the grave will be transformed into an oozing pile of sludge that will splater with each stab of the shovel and land on the coffin with an audible splat. And instead of a slow and dignified farewell, everyone just wants to get the deceased into the ground and get the hell back into their cars.

Negotiation is a fundamental skill for board members. Whether it's negotiating with management over strategic direction, with investors over funding terms, or with stakeholders over environmental impact, the ability to negotiate effectively is essential for achieving the best possible outcomes for all parties involved.

Let the workers in these plants get the same wages -- all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers -- yes, and all generals and all admirals and all officers and all politicians and all government office holders -- everyone in the nation be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that paid to the soldier in the trenches!   Let all these kings and tycoons and masters of business and all those workers in industry and all our senators and governors and majors pay half of their monthly $30 wage to their families and pay war risk insurance and buy Liberty Bonds.   Why shouldn't they?   They aren't running any risk of being killed or of having their bodies mangled or their minds shattered. They aren't sleeping in muddy trenches. They aren't hungry. The soldiers are!   Give capital and industry and labor thirty days to think it over and you will find, by that time, there will be no war. That will smash the war racket -- that and nothing else.   Maybe

I absolutely prefer writing to acting. Through writing, I feel power for maybe the first time in my life. I don’t have to say somebody else’s words. I can write my own. I can be myself for once. I like the privacy of it. Nobody’s watching. Nobody’s judging. Nobody’s weighing in. No casting directors or agents or managers or directors or Mom. Just me and the page. Writing is the opposite of performing to me. Performing feels inherently fake. Writing feels inherently real.

Internal controls and audit oversight are indispensable pillars of sound financial management, providing a framework for safeguarding assets, ensuring the accuracy and reliability of financial reporting, and promoting operational efficiency.

Being a full prof at the University of Texas at El Paso meant living like a managing director at Barclays. Barry had always wondered why people who were just upper-middle class in New York chose to stay there, given that they could live like minor dictators in the rest of the country. “You’re negative arbing yourself,” he used to say.

On the basis of capitalist production, a new swindle with the wages of management develops in connection with joint-stock companies, in that, over and above the actual managing director, a number of governing and supervisory boards arise, for which management and supervision are in fact a mere pretext for the robbery of shareholders and their own enrichment.

The Board’s role is to pull management out of the trees to see the forest.

Board of Directors members should hold management accountable for performance and ensure the company is operating ethically and responsibly.

Money is very seductive…However much you say that you will not fall into the trap of it, you do fall into the trap of it. —Rajat Gupta, former worldwide managing director, McKinsey

There are men who carefully manoeuvre a large limousine out of the garage at eight o'clock every morning. Others leave an hour earlier, traveling in a middle-class sedan. Still others leave when it is not yet light, wearing overalls and carrying lunch boxes, to catch buses, subways, or trains to factories or building sites. By a trick of fate, it is always the latter, the poorest, who are exploited by the least attractive women. For, unlike women (who have an eye for money), men notice only woman's external appearance. Therefore, the more desirable women in their own class are always being snatched away from under their noses by men who happen to earn more. No matter what a particular man does or how he spends his day, he has one thing in common with all other men - he spends it in a degrading manner. And he himself does not gain by it. It is not his own livelihood that matters: he would have to struggle far less for that, since luxuries do not mean anything to him anyway it is the fact that he does it for others that makes him so tremendously proud. He will undoubtedly have a photograph of his wife and children on his desk, and will miss no opportunity to hand it around. No matter what a man's job may be - bookkeeper, doctor, bus driver, or managing director - every moment of his life will be spent as a cog in a huge and pitiless system - a system designed to exploit him to the utmost, to his dying day. (...) We have long ceased to play the games of childhood. As children, we became bored quickly and changed from one game to another. A man is like a child who is condemned to play the same game for the rest of his life.

Black Label–sipping Pakistani generals with London flats and daughters on Ivy League campuses had been managing jihadi guerrilla campaigns against India and in Afghanistan for two decades.

The diversity along with deep knowledge of the business will allow board directors to be real “thought partners” with senior management as they consider the longer-term goals beyond quarterly earnings.

In a world of well-defined problems, directors are required to exercise influence over volatility, manage uncertainty, simplify complexity, and resolve ambiguity in the 21st-century digital environment.

The dynamics within the boardroom are often complex and multifaceted. Strong personalities, competing interests, and high stakes can create an environment ripe for conflict. Know what I mean? But here’s the thing; when managed effectively, these dynamics can also lead to robust discussions, innovative solutions, and sound decision-making.

That decision falls to scientists, engineers, and managers—with at least the tacit approval of company officers and boards of directors. All complex technology is inseparably coupled to an equally complex team of people and systems of people who should interact with one another as smoothly and with as clear a purpose as a set of well-meshed gears.

We all need the pipe dream of writing the great novel, or winning the pools, or becoming managing director and kicking all our colleagues in the teeth. The world is deep and dark and full of tigers, and we need those shimmering white castles in the air to creep into when life gets unbearable.

Death avoidance is not an individual failing; it's a cultural one. Facing death is not for the faint-hearted. It is far too challenging to expect that each citizen will do so on his or her own. Death acceptance is the responsibility of all death professionals--funeral directors, cemetery managers, hospital workers. It is the responsibility of those who have been tasked with creating physical and emotional environments where safe, open interaction with death and dead bodies is possible. Nine years ago, when I began working with the dead, I heard other practitioners speak about holding the space for the dying person and their family. With my secular bias, "holding the space" sounded like saccharine hippie lingo. This judgment was wrong. Holding the space is crucial, and exactly what we are missing. To hold the space is to create a ring of safety around the family and friends of the dead, providing a place where they can grieve openly and honestly, without fear of being judged.

The board directors see the development of strategy as a collective effort between themselves and management, rather than a question of “us versus them.

The closest most people have ever come to understanding what an investment banker does may have been on October 24, 1995, when they heard the outrageous special interest story of the day. The wire services released the story first. It was quickly picked up and parroted by almost every major media outlet in the country as a classic example of Wall Street excess. A fifty-eight-year-old frustrated managing director from Trust Company of the West, on an airplane trip from Buenos Aires to New York City, downed an excessive number of cocktails, got out of his seat in the first-class cabin of a United Airlines flight, dropped his pants, and took a crap on the service cart. There you have it. That’s what bankers do: consume, process, and disseminate.

There can be no question that Musk has mastered the art of getting the most out of his employees. Interview three dozen SpaceX engineers and each one of them will have picked up on a managerial nuance that Musk has used to get people to meet his deadlines. One example from Brogan: Where a typical manager may set the deadline for the employee, Musk guides his engineers into taking ownership of their own delivery dates. “He doesn’t say, ‘You have to do this by Friday at two P.M.,’” Brogan said. “He says, ‘I need the impossible done by Friday at two P.M. Can you do it?’ Then, when you say yes, you are not working hard because he told you to. You’re working hard for yourself. It’s a distinction you can feel. You have signed up to do your own work.” And by recruiting hundreds of bright, self-motivated people, SpaceX has maximized the power of the individual. One person putting in a sixteen-hour day ends up being much more effective than two people working eight-hour days together. The individual doesn’t have to hold meetings, reach a consensus, or bring other people up to speed on a project. He just keeps working and working and working. The ideal SpaceX employee is someone like Steve Davis, the director of advanced projects at SpaceX. “He’s been working sixteen hours a day every day for years,” Brogan said. “He gets more done than eleven people working together.

In the workplace, Japanese women have low participation and low pay. Participation declines steeply with increasing level of responsibility. Whereas women account for 49% of Japanese university students and 45% of entry-level job holders, they account for only 14% of university faculty positions (versus 33%–44% in the U.S., United Kingdom, Germany, and France), 11% of middle-level to senior management positions, 2% of positions on boards of directors, 1% of business executive committee members, and less than 1% of CEOs. At those higher levels Japan lags behind all major industrial countries except (again) South Korea.

Of all the so-called variety meats, none presents a steeper challenge to the food persuader than the reproductive organs. Good luck to Deanna Pucciarelli, the woman who seeks to introduce mainstream America to the culinary joys of pig balls. “I am indeed working on a project on pork testicles,” said Pucciarelli, director of the Hospitality and Food Management Program at—fill my heart with joy!—Ball State University.

I had put it off and put it off and got extension after extension (all sorts of other things were going on at the time, like the stage show and the TV series), but eventually the managing director of Pan said, 'We've given you all these extensions and we have got to have it: sudden death or else, we have to have it in four weeks. Now, how far have you got with it?' I didn't like to tell him I hadn't started it; it seemed unfair on the poor chap's heart." —Douglas Adams

The key is to take a larger project or goal and break it down into smaller problems to be solved, constraining the scope of work to solving a key problem, and then another key problem. This strategy, of breaking a project down into discrete, relatively small problems to be resolved, is what Bing Gordon, a cofounder and the former chief creative officer of the video game company Electronic Arts, calls smallifying. Now a partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, Gordon has deep experience leading and working with software development teams. He’s also currently on the board of directors of Amazon and Zynga. At Electronic Arts, Gordon found that when software teams worked on longer-term projects, they were inefficient and took unnecessary paths. However, when job tasks were broken down into particular problems to be solved, which were manageable and could be tackled within one or two weeks, developers were more creative and effective.

Death avoidance is not an individual failing; it's a cultural one. Facing death is not for the faint-hearted. It is far too challenging to expect that each citizen will do so on his or her own. Death acceptance is the responsibility of all death professionals - funeral directors, cemetery managers, hospital workers. It is the responsibility of those who have been tasked with creating physical and emotional environments where safe, open interaction with death and dead bodies is possible.

managing director, the intelligent Cyrus Field, purposed even covering all the islands of Oceanica with a vast electrical network, an immense enterprise, and one worthy of American genius. To the corvette Susquehanna had been confided the first operations of sounding. It was on the night of the 11th-12th of December, she was in exactly 27@ 7’ north latitude, and 41@ 37’ west longitude, on the meridian of Washington. The moon, then in her last quarter, was beginning to rise above the horizon.

Haven’t you figured it out? Giving money away doesn’t solve anything. Asking the zottarich to redeem themselves by giving money away acknowledges that they deserve it all, should be in charge of deciding where it goes. It’s pretending that you can get rich without being a bandit. Letting them decide what gets funded declares the planet to be a giant corporation that the major shareholders get to direct. It says that government is just middle-management, hired or fired on the whim of the directors.

Entrepreneurs who kept their day jobs had 33 percent lower odds of failure than those who quit. If you’re risk averse and have some doubts about the feasibility of your ideas, it’s likely that your business will be built to last. If you’re a freewheeling gambler, your startup is far more fragile. Like the Warby Parker crew, the entrepreneurs whose companies topped Fast Company’s recent most innovative lists typically stayed in their day jobs even after they launched. Former track star Phil Knight started selling running shoes out of the trunk of his car in 1964, yet kept working as an accountant until 1969. After inventing the original Apple I computer, Steve Wozniak started the company with Steve Jobs in 1976 but continued working full time in his engineering job at Hewlett-Packard until 1977. And although Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin figured out how to dramatically improve internet searches in 1996, they didn’t go on leave from their graduate studies at Stanford until 1998. “We almost didn’t start Google,” Page says, because we “were too worried about dropping out of our Ph.D. program.” In 1997, concerned that their fledgling search engine was distracting them from their research, they tried to sell Google for less than $2 million in cash and stock. Luckily for them, the potential buyer rejected the offer. This habit of keeping one’s day job isn’t limited to successful entrepreneurs. Many influential creative minds have stayed in full-time employment or education even after earning income from major projects. Selma director Ava DuVernay made her first three films while working in her day job as a publicist, only pursuing filmmaking full time after working at it for four years and winning multiple awards. Brian May was in the middle of doctoral studies in astrophysics when he started playing guitar in a new band, but he didn’t drop out until several years later to go all in with Queen. Soon thereafter he wrote “We Will Rock You.” Grammy winner John Legend released his first album in 2000 but kept working as a management consultant until 2002, preparing PowerPoint presentations by day while performing at night. Thriller master Stephen King worked as a teacher, janitor, and gas station attendant for seven years after writing his first story, only quitting a year after his first novel, Carrie, was published. Dilbert author Scott Adams worked at Pacific Bell for seven years after his first comic strip hit newspapers. Why did all these originals play it safe instead of risking it all?

Imperial is like Robert Caro’s The Power Broker with the attitude of Mike Davis’s City of Quartz, if Robert Caro had been raised in an abandoned grain silo by a band of feral raccoons, and if Mike Davis were the communications director of a heavily armed libertarian survivalist cult, and if the two of them had somehow managed to stitch John McPhee’s cortex onto the brain of a Gila monster, which they then sent to the Mexican border to conduct ten years of immersive research, and also if they wrote the entire manuscript on dried banana leaves with a toucan beak dipped in hobo blood, and then the book was line-edited during a 36-hour peyote séance by the ghosts of John Steinbeck, Jack London, and Sinclair Lewis, with 200 pages of endnotes faxed over by Henry David Thoreau’s great-great-great-great grandson from a concrete bunker under a toxic pond behind a maquiladora, and if at the last minute Herman Melville threw up all over the manuscript, rendering it illegible, so it had to be re-created from memory by a community-theater actor doing his best impression of Jack Kerouac. With photographs by Dorothea Lange. (Viking has my full blessing to use that as a blurb.)

How long to see results?” Diomedes asked. “I can’t answer that,” I said. “You know that as well as I do. It takes as long as it takes. Six months. A year. Probably longer—it could be years.” “You have six weeks.” Stephanie drew herself up and crossed her arms. “I am the manager of this unit, and I simply cannot allow—” “I am clinical director of the Grove. This is my decision, not yours. I take full responsibility for any injuries incurred upon our long-suffering therapist here,” Diomedes said, winking at me. Stephanie didn’t say anything further. She glared at Diomedes, then at me. She turned and walked out. “Oh, dear,” Diomedes said. “You appear to have made an enemy of Stephanie. How unfortunate.” He shared a smile with Indira, then gave me a serious look. “Six weeks. Under my supervision. Understand?” I agreed—I had no choice but to agree. “Six weeks.” “Good.” Christian stood up, visibly annoyed. “Alicia won’t talk in six weeks, or sixty years. You’re wasting your time.” He walked out. I wondered why Christian was so positive I would fail. But it made me even more determined to succeed. CHAPTER SIX I ARRIVED HOME, FEELING EXHAUSTED. Force of habit made me flick on the light in the hallway, even though the bulb had gone.

Amid the wreckage of their relationship there are still friends who feel that the rage and jealousy Diana feels towards her husband is reflection of her innermost desire to win him back. Those observers are in a minority. Most are deeply pessimistic about the future. Oonagh Toffolo notes: “I had great hopes until a year ago, now I have no hope at all. It would need a miracle. It is a great pity that these two people with so much to give to the world can’t give it together.” A similar conclusion has been reached by a friend, who has discussed Diana’s troubles with her at length. She says: “If he had done the work in the early days and forgotten about Camilla, they would have so much more going for them. However they have now reached a point of no return.” The words “there is no hope” are often repeated when friends talk about the Wales’s life together. As one of her closest friends says: “She has conquered all the challenges presented to her within the profession and got her public life down to a fine art. But the central issue is that she is not fulfilled as a woman because she doesn’t have a relationship with her husband.” The continual conflict and suspicion in their private life inevitably colours their public work. Nominally the Prince and Princess are a partnership, in reality they act independently, rather like the managing directors of rival companies. As one former member of the Wales’s Household said: “You very quickly learn to choose whose side you are on--his or hers. There is no middle course. There is a magic line that courtiers can cross once or twice. Cross it too often and you are out. That is not a basis for a stable career.

With his eyes shut tight he said: “Oh, God, we have asked Thee this morning to bring comfort to those who have lost a husband, a father, a son, especially our sister in the Lord Mrs. Evans, and we pray that the bereaved will open their hearts to receive Thy benison.” This had been said by others. Billy paused, then went on: “And now, Lord, we ask for one more gift: the blessing of understanding. We need to know, Lord, why this explosion have took place down the pit. All things are in Thy power, so why didst Thou allow firedamp to fill the Main Level, and why didst Thou permit it to catch alight? How come, Lord, that men are set over us, directors of Celtic Minerals, who in their greed for money become careless of the lives of Thy people? How can the deaths of good men, and the mangling of the bodies Thou didst create, serve Thy holy purpose?” He paused again. He knew it was wrong to make demands of God, as if negotiating with the management, so he added: “We know that the suffering of the people of Aberowen must play a part in Thy eternal plan.” He thought he should probably leave it there, but he could not refrain from adding: “But, Lord, we can’t see how, so please explain it to us.” He finished: “In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.” The congregation said: “Amen.

In some organizations, they can succeed if they are simply good at making presentations to the board of directors or writing strategies or plans. The tragedy is that these talents mask real deficiencies in overall management capabilities. These talented performers run for cover when grubby operating decisions must be made and often fail miserably when they are charged with earning a profit, getting things done and moving an organization forward.

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.

REINHOLD JOBS. Wisconsin-born Coast Guard seaman who, with his wife, Clara, adopted Steve in 1955. REED JOBS. Oldest child of Steve Jobs and Laurene Powell. RON JOHNSON. Hired by Jobs in 2000 to develop Apple’s stores. JEFFREY KATZENBERG. Head of Disney Studios, clashed with Eisner and resigned in 1994 to cofound DreamWorks SKG. ALAN KAY. Creative and colorful computer pioneer who envisioned early personal computers, helped arrange Jobs’s Xerox PARC visit and his purchase of Pixar. DANIEL KOTTKE. Jobs’s closest friend at Reed, fellow pilgrim to India, early Apple employee. JOHN LASSETER. Cofounder and creative force at Pixar. DAN’L LEWIN. Marketing exec with Jobs at Apple and then NeXT. MIKE MARKKULA. First big Apple investor and chairman, a father figure to Jobs. REGIS MCKENNA. Publicity whiz who guided Jobs early on and remained a trusted advisor. MIKE MURRAY. Early Macintosh marketing director. PAUL OTELLINI. CEO of Intel who helped switch the Macintosh to Intel chips but did not get the iPhone business. LAURENE POWELL. Savvy and good-humored Penn graduate, went to Goldman Sachs and then Stanford Business School, married Steve Jobs in 1991. GEORGE RILEY. Jobs’s Memphis-born friend and lawyer. ARTHUR ROCK. Legendary tech investor, early Apple board member, Jobs’s father figure. JONATHAN “RUBY” RUBINSTEIN. Worked with Jobs at NeXT, became chief hardware engineer at Apple in 1997. MIKE SCOTT. Brought in by Markkula to be Apple’s president in 1977 to try to manage Jobs.

I applied for a job as the night box office manager of a small theater company in Boystown. The job paid about five dollars an hour for a four-hour shift, so I was surprised to find that it required a lengthy interview with the artistic director of the theater. I had a degree in drama, I explained. We talked (meaning she talked) about playwrights we (she) liked. It was between me and another girl for the job, and she needed to know what I had to offer the Tiny Pretentious Theater Company because “We

I’ll never forget when I was a vocation director, and a college student asked me, ‘What do you do when you get an urge?’ as if no one else would control it but a priest,” Burns said. “Everyone is called to holiness, particularly in their sexual life. How do we manage our sexual desires? By being people of integrity, with respect for other people’s sexuality, and for our own sexuality. Celibacy is a gift we give, in order to live out a service of life for others. It is a call from God. We are meant to be celibate men, working to build a Kingdom, here and now.

It takes an army to make a movie. Camera crews, lighting crews, wardrobe crews, makeup crews, hair crews, painters, builders (called grips), a crew to provide the props, a crew to provide the furnishings (the art department), electricians, special-effects people, stunt performers, stand-ins, the accountant, scheduling and finance (called the unit production manager), catering and someone to provide snacks and drinks (called craft service), and the team of walkie-talkie-armed Gestapo that police the second-by-second momentum of shooting: the assistant director staff.

A good way to figure out how likely it is that the directors are sucking money out of a company is to draw a chart with each director's name in a box. Read through the Management section, and each time you identify a professional or personal connection between two directors, connect their boxed with a line. If you also happen to know about other relationships between directors, for instance one director is married to the other director's daughter, or one director is an old college buddy of another director, you can draw a line in there as well. If, upon completion, the chart looks like a spider web then hold on to your wallet.

Since Modi's Mumbai sign-off, much commentary has been focused on the brand-dilution potential inherent in its scandals. MS Dhoni doesn't think we should worry: 'IPL as a brand can survive on its own.' Shilpa Shetty, 'brand ambassador' of the Rajasthan Royals, tweets that we should: 'Custodians of Cricket must not hamper d Brandvalue of this viable sport.' Hampering d Brandvalue, insists new IPL boss Chirayu Amin, is the furthest thing from his mind: 'IPL's brand image is strong and nobody can touch that.' Harsha Bhogle, however, frets for the nation: 'Within the cricket world, Brand India will take a hit.' Not much more than a week after Modi's first tell-all tweets, the media was anxiously consulting Brand Finance's managing director, Unni Krishnan. Had there been any brand dilution yet? It was, said the soothsayer gravely, 'too early to say'. He could, however, confirm the following: 'The wealth that can be created by the brand is going to be substantially significant for many stakeholders. A conducive ecosystem has to be created to move the brand to the next level… We have to build the requisite bandwidth to monetise these opportunities.' Er, yeah… what he said. Anyway, placing a value on the IPL brand has clearly been quite beneficial to Brand Finance's brand.

If you were to assume that many experts use their information to your detriment, you’d be right. Experts depend on the fact that you don’t have the information they do. Or that you are so befuddled by the complexity of their operation that you wouldn’t know what to do with the information if you had it. Or that you are so in awe of their expertise that you wouldn’t dare challenge them. If your doctor suggests that you have angioplasty — even though some current research suggests that angioplasty often does little to prevent heart attacks — you aren’t likely to think that the doctor is using his informational advantage to make a few thousand dollars for himself or his buddy. But as David Hillis, an interventional cardiologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, explained to the New York Times, a doctor may have the same economic incentives as a car salesman or a funeral director or a mutual fund manager: “If you’re an invasive cardiologist and Joe Smith, the local internist, is sending you patients, and if you tell them they don’t need the procedure, pretty soon Joe Smith doesn’t send patients anymore.” Armed with information, experts can exert a gigantic, if unspoken, leverage: fear. Fear that your children will find you dead on the bathroom floor of a heart attack if you do not have angioplasty surgery. Fear that a cheap casket will expose your grandmother to a terrible underground fate. Fear that a $25,000 car will crumple like a toy in an accident, whereas a $50,000 car will wrap your loved ones in a cocoon of impregnable steel.

Trump wanted to know what the new individual income tax rates would be. “I like these big round numbers,” he said. “Ten percent, 20 percent, 25 percent.” Good, solid numbers that would be easy to sell. Mnuchin, Cohn and Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said there needed to be analysis, study and discussion on the impact on revenue, the deficit and the relation to expected federal spending. “I want to know what the numbers are going to be,” Trump said, throwing out numbers again. “I think they ought to be 10, 20 and 25.” He dismissed any effort to crunch the numbers. A small change in rates could have a surprising impact on taxes collected by the U.S. Treasury. “I don’t care about any of that,” Trump said. Solid, round numbers were key. “That’s what people can understand,” he said. “That’s how I’m going to sell it.

As director Brad Bird sees it, every creative organization-be it an animation studio or a record label-is an ecosystem. 'You need all the seasons,' he says. 'You need storms. It's like an ecology. To view lack of conflict as optimum is like saying a sunny day is optimum. A sunny day is when the sun wins out over the rain. There's no conflict. You have a clear winner. But if every day is sunny and it doesn't rain, things don't grow. And if it's sunny all the time-if, in fact, we don't even have night-all kinds of things don't happen and the planet dries up. The key is to view conflict as essential, because that's how we know the best ideas will be tested and survive. You know, it can't only be sunlight.' It is management's job to figure out how to help other see conflict as healthy-as a route to balance, which benefits us all in the long run.

This is related to the phenomenon of the Professional Smile, a national pandemic in the service industry; and noplace in my experience have I been on the receiving end of as many Professional Smiles as I am on the Nadir, maître d’s, Chief Stewards, Hotel Managers’ minions, Cruise Director—their P.S.’s all come on like switches at my approach. But also back on land at banks, restaurants, airline ticket counters, on and on. You know this smile—the strenuous contraction of circumoral fascia w/ incomplete zygomatic involvement—the smile that doesn’t quite reach the smiler’s eyes and that signifies nothing more than a calculated attempt to advance the smiler’s own interests by pretending to like the smilee. Why do employers and supervisors force professional service people to broadcast the Professional Smile? Am I the only consumer in whom high doses of such a smile produce despair? Am I the only person who’s sure that the growing number of cases in which totally average-looking people suddenly open up with automatic weapons in shopping malls and insurance offices and medical complexes and McDonald’ses is somehow causally related to the fact that these venues are well-known dissemination-loci of the Professional Smile? Who do they think is fooled by the Professional Smile? And yet the Professional Smile’s absence now also causes despair. Anybody who’s ever bought a pack of gum in a Manhattan cigar store or asked for something to be stamped FRAGILE at a Chicago post office or tried to obtain a glass of water from a South Boston waitress knows well the soul-crushing effect of a service worker’s scowl, i.e. the humiliation and resentment of being denied the Professional Smile. And the Professional Smile has by now skewed even my resentment at the dreaded Professional Scowl: I walk away from the Manhattan tobacconist resenting not the counterman’s character or absence of goodwill but his lack of professionalism in denying me the Smile. What a fucking mess.

I can hardly believe that our nation’s policy is to seek peace by going to war. It seems that President Donald J. Trump has done everything in his power to divert our attention away from the fact that the FBI is investigating his association with Russia during his campaign for office. For several weeks now he has been sabre rattling and taking an extremely controversial stance, first with Syria and Afghanistan and now with North Korea. The rhetoric has been the same, accusing others for our failed policy and threatening to take autonomous military action to attain peace in our time. This gunboat diplomacy is wrong. There is no doubt that Secretaries Kelly, Mattis, and other retired military personnel in the Trump Administration are personally tough. However, most people who have served in the military are not eager to send our young men and women to fight, if it is not necessary. Despite what may have been said to the contrary, our military leaders, active or retired, are most often the ones most respectful of international law. Although the military is the tip of the spear for our country, and the forces of civilization, it should not be the first tool to be used. Bloodshed should only be considered as a last resort and definitely never used as the first option. As the leader of the free world, we should stand our ground but be prepared to seek peace through restraint. This is not the time to exercise false pride! Unfortunately the Trump administration informed four top State Department management officials that their services were no longer needed as part of an effort to "clean house." Patrick Kennedy, served for nine years as the “Undersecretary for Management,” “Assistant Secretaries for Administration and Consular Affairs” Joyce Anne Barr and Michele Bond, as well as “Ambassador” Gentry Smith, director of the Office for Foreign Missions. Most of the United States Ambassadors to foreign countries have also been dismissed, including the ones to South Korea and Japan. This leaves the United States without the means of exercising diplomacy rapidly, when needed. These positions are political appointments, and require the President’s nomination and the Senate’s confirmation. This has not happened! Moreover, diplomatically our country is severely handicapped at a time when tensions are as hot as any time since the Cold War. Without following expert advice or consent and the necessary input from the Unites States Congress, the decisions are all being made by a man who claims to know more than the generals do, yet he has only the military experience of a cadet at “New York Military Academy.” A private school he attended as a high school student, from 1959 to 1964. At that time, he received educational and medical deferments from the Vietnam War draft. Trump said that the school provided him with “more training than a lot of the guys that go into the military.” His counterpart the unhinged Kim Jong-un has played with what he considers his country’s military toys, since April 11th of 2012. To think that these are the two world leaders, protecting the planet from a nuclear holocaust….

I do not believe in supporting bailouts without strong ramifications. It is a fool’s fantasy to think we can live in a globally connected economy and never have a situation arise where the government prudently steps in to prevent a failure that might lead to catastrophic ramifications. In most cases, I believe it would be much better to let bailed-out companies fail when they have mismanaged themselves, rather than waste taxpayer money propping up greedy idiots who are trying to salvage their own bonuses; however, there are exceptions to almost every rule. The wiser course would be to penalize the CEO or board of directors who drove the company to the brink of failure. The most obvious punishment would be the elimination of any “golden parachutes” or bonuses for the executive and seizure of all company-derived assets, including any attempts to hide company assets in the spouse’s name. When C-level executives come to the realization that managing a company is not a game and that there are serious consequences for their actions, we will see fewer instances of requests for bailouts.

I didn’t want you to apply just because I’m going to be in New York. Or hell, even worse, not apply because I’m going to be there. I was going to tell you in person. And then the scout shows up at the game tonight, and what was I supposed to do? My mom is freaking out; you’re freaking out.” He throws his hands in the air in frustration. “I’ve totally fucked this up.” It hits me then, the truth of the situation. He made his decision about Columbia on his own, and he wanted me to be able to do the same. Of course. Hell, if it hadn’t been for the storm bringing us together like it did, I probably would have turned down NYU rather than risk going off to New York with him, and that’s the truth. I drop my gaze to the ground and take a deep breath, cursing myself for being such an idiot. “No, you haven’t,” I say at last, raising my eyes to meet his confused ones. “Haven’t what?” “Fucked it up.” I take a tentative step toward him. “I get it now. God, Ryder. Why do you have to be so perfect?” “Perfect? I’ve been in love with you for so long now, and I’ve never managed to get it right, not once.” I have to bite my lip to keep from grinning. “News flash--I think you’ve finally got it this time.” His smile makes my heart leap. “Do you have any idea what was going through my head when you first told me about NYU? I couldn’t believe it. It was like…like a gift fell right into my lap. Like winning the lottery. All this time I thought going off to New York would mean leaving you behind. And now--” “Now we both better get in,” I finish for him, though it probably wasn’t what he was going to say. I mean, he’s a shoo-in for Columbia. Perfect grades, high SATs, and a superstar quarterback the likes of which the Ivy League rarely sees. He’s every college admissions director’s dream. But me? If I get into NYU, it’ll be by the skin of my teeth. Because they want geographic diversity or something lame like that. I’m nothing special. “Where will you go if you don’t get into NYU?” he asks. “Where else?” I say. “Ole Miss, with Lucy and Morgan.” “Then Ole Miss is my backup too. Here’s the thing, Jem. I’m going wherever you’re going--whether it’s New York or Oxford. I’m not missing my chance this time.

Thirty-nine-year-old moderately successful Human Resources Director. Interests include regency romances, reality TV, and baking large novelty birthday cakes for other people’s children. Hobbies include drinking Tia Maria and eating Turkish delight in the bath and dining out with her mum and dad. Wanted to be a ballerina but didn’t end up with a ballerina body; however, has been told she is an impressive dirty dancer when drunk. Knows her wine, so please just hand the wine list over. Godmother to nine children, member of two book clubs, Social Club Manager for the Australian Payroll Officers’ Association. Suffers from a severe blushing problem but is not shy and will probably end up better friends with your friends than you, which you’ll find highly irritating after we break up. Has recently become so worried about meeting the love of her life and having children before she reaches menopause that she has cried piteously in the middle of the night. But otherwise is generally quite cheerful and has on at least three separate occasions that she knows of been described as ‘Charming’. Yep, that about summed it up. What a catch.

This scene came from the writing I did with Bill in New York, working out of an office in the Director’s Guild building. I generally came in early and worked for a couple of hours before Bill arrived. He would then spend about an hour puttering around the office and smoking cheroots, then would eventually settle in next to me at the desk, read what I had written, and begin offering suggestions and improvements. Sometimes I would print out a scene and then mark it up—as with the scene above—as Bill tried out Phil’s dialogue, and we tweaked lines accordingly. Our afternoons were often spent walking around New York running Bill’s errands while talking about general script issues. He was a warm and wonderful host to me during my New York visit. There was an afternoon where he and Tom Davis paired up against me and Dan Aykroyd in a spontaneous basketball game, the four of us sneakerless and slipping around in our socks. I made my bones with Bill that day when he hurled a basketball at my head and I managed to duck. “Good reflexes,” he said. I think of these two weeks with Bill as one of the more surreal and memorable experiences of my writer’s life.

When they were first casting for my part in the movie, the producers asked if I had any suggestions. “I’ll tell you what I don’t want,” I said. “I don’t want someone in their early twenties who’s never had any heartbreak or gone through anything difficult.” I heard later that Clint thought he’d have a hard time casting me. I hope that was because I’m such a complex but soulful person, though you never know. When he settled on Sienna Miller, he hit it on the head. The first time I talked to her, it felt like I was speaking to an old girlfriend. She got everything. Whether I explained how it felt the first time Chris kissed me, or how it felt when he held me, she completely understood. She’s a woman with deep empathy as well as a great actor. My part--her part--in the movie isn’t very big, but it’s important, and I felt it was in good hands. She knows what it’s like to be a mom, and she knows how it feels to worry about someone and to live through situations you can’t control. Still, I remained nervous: What if, despite all their efforts, they didn’t manage to convey what Chris was all about? The director, the actors, they were all at the top of their field, but that was no guarantee that they could pull it off.

Director, I know you're my boss, at least for the time being," vampire agent Ken White told Tony. "But I don't think you know who you were talking to, just then." Ken was driving away from the airport, Tony in the passenger seat. "Who was I talking to?" Tony turned listlessly to agent White. "Merrill is a legend among my race," Ken said. "The rumors are that he's the most powerful vampire that exists. The other one that Lissa is engaged to? That's Gavin, the Council's elite Assassin. Wlodek is Head of the Council, as you know. You've managed to piss off three of the most powerful vampires ever. And if you throw Lissa into that mix, because I have to tell you, she can do things I've never seen or heard of before, well, I wouldn't be looking for favors from any of my kind. In fact, depending on how Wlodek reacts and what he says in that phone call you're going to get, he may pull all the vamps out of the Department." "He can't do that," Tony huffed. "He can. And if we want to keep on living, we'll do as he says," Ken added. "And since it's Lissa, all she has to do is make a call to the Grand Master and your wolves will be gone, too. You fucked up, boss." "Yeah. I won't argue with you over that." Tony rubbed a hand over his face.

After a series of promotions—store manager at twenty-two, regional manager at twenty-four, director at twenty-seven—I was a fast-track career man, a personage of sorts. If I worked really hard, and if everything happened exactly like it was supposed to, then I could be a vice president by thirty-two, a senior vice president by thirty-five or forty, and a C-level executive—CFO, COO, CEO—by forty-five or fifty, followed of course by the golden parachute. I’d have it made then! I’d just have to be miserable for a few more years, to drudge through the corporate politics and bureaucracy I knew so well. Just keep climbing and don't look down. Misery, of course, encourages others to pull up a chair and stay a while. And so, five years ago, I convinced my best friend Ryan to join me on the ladder, even showed him the first rung. The ascent is exhilarating to rookies. They see limitless potential and endless possibilities, allured by the promise of bigger paychecks and sophisticated titles. What’s not to like? He too climbed the ladder, maneuvering each step with lapidary precision, becoming one of the top salespeople—and later, top sales managers—in the entire company.10 And now here we are, submerged in fluorescent light, young and ostensibly successful. A few years ago, a mentor of mine, a successful businessman named Karl, said to me, “You shouldn’t ask a man who earns twenty thousand dollars a year how to make a hundred thousand.” Perhaps this apothegm holds true for discontented men and happiness, as well. All these guys I emulate—the men I most want to be like, the VPs and executives—aren’t happy. In fact, they’re miserable.  Don’t get me wrong, they aren’t bad people, but their careers have changed them, altered them physically and emotionally: they explode with anger over insignificant inconveniences; they are overweight and out of shape; they scowl with furrowed brows and complain constantly as if the world is conspiring against them, or they feign sham optimism which fools no one; they are on their second or third or fourth(!) marriages; and they almost all seem lonely. Utterly alone in a sea of yes-men and women. Don’t even get me started on their health issues.  I’m talking serious health issues: obesity, gout, cancer, heart attacks, high blood pressure, you name it. These guys are plagued with every ailment associated with stress and anxiety. Some even wear it as a morbid badge of honor, as if it’s noble or courageous or something. A coworker, a good friend of mine on a similar trajectory, recently had his first heart attack—at age thirty.  But I’m the exception, right?

FOCUS ON GENERATING REVENUE THE DOJ FOUND THAT virtually every branch and tributary of the city’s bureaucracy—the mayor, city council, city manager, finance director, municipal court judge, municipal court prosecutor, court clerk, assistant clerks, police chief—all were enmeshed in an unending race to raise revenue through municipal fines and fees:            City officials routinely urge Chief [Tom] Jackson to generate more revenue through enforcement. In March 2010, for instance, the City Finance Director wrote to Chief Jackson that “unless ticket writing ramps up significantly before the end of the year, it will be hard to significantly raise collections next year. . . . Given that we are looking at a substantial sales tax shortfall, it’s not an insignificant issue.” Similarly, in March 2013, the Finance Director wrote to the City Manager: “Court fees are anticipated to rise about 7.5%. I did ask the Chief if he thought the PD [police department] could deliver 10% increase. He indicated they could try.” The importance of focusing on revenue generation is communicated to FPD officers. Ferguson police officers from all ranks told us that revenue generation is stressed heavily within the police department, and that the message comes from City leadership. The evidence we reviewed supports this perception.

In the wake of the Cognitive Revolution, gossip helped Homo sapiens to form larger and more stable bands. But even gossip has its limits. Sociological research has shown that the maximum ‘natural’ size of a group bonded by gossip is about 150 individuals. Most people can neither intimately know, nor gossip effectively about, more than 150 human beings. Even today, a critical threshold in human organisations falls somewhere around this magic number. Below this threshold, communities, businesses, social networks and military units can maintain themselves based mainly on intimate acquaintance and rumour-mongering. There is no need for formal ranks, titles and law books to keep order. 3A platoon of thirty soldiers or even a company of a hundred soldiers can function well on the basis of intimate relations, with a minimum of formal discipline. A well-respected sergeant can become ‘king of the company’ and exercise authority even over commissioned officers. A small family business can survive and flourish without a board of directors, a CEO or an accounting department. But once the threshold of 150 individuals is crossed, things can no longer work that way. You cannot run a division with thousands of soldiers the same way you run a platoon. Successful family businesses usually face a crisis when they grow larger and hire more personnel. If they cannot reinvent themselves, they go bust. How did Homo sapiens manage to cross this critical threshold, eventually founding cities comprising tens of thousands of inhabitants and empires ruling hundreds of millions? The secret was probably the appearance of fiction. Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. Any large-scale human cooperation – whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe – is rooted in common myths that exist only in people’s collective imagination. Churches are rooted in common religious myths. Two Catholics who have never met can nevertheless go together on crusade or pool funds to build a hospital because they both believe that God was incarnated in human flesh and allowed Himself to be crucified to redeem our sins. States are rooted in common national myths. Two Serbs who have never met might risk their lives to save one another because both believe in the existence of the Serbian nation, the Serbian homeland and the Serbian flag. Judicial systems are rooted in common legal myths. Two lawyers who have never met can nevertheless combine efforts to defend a complete stranger because they both believe in the existence of laws, justice, human rights – and the money paid out in fees.

Coley and I had to separate to get around a girl who was mostly eclipsed by the size of the poster she was carrying, some sort of project about World War Two—a picture of Hitler doing his mustachioed Sieg heil, a gaunt concentration-camp victim, a couple of American soldiers smoking cigarettes and scowling at the camera, the captions beneath each photo in glitter-bubble letters. If this had been the movie version of my life, I knew, somebody who did teenage stuff well, some director, would have lingered on that poster and maybe even have swelled some sort of poignant music, put us in slow motion as the hallway continued on at regular speed around us, backlit the three of us—Coley and the posterboard chick and me—and in doing so tried to make some statement about teenage frivolity and prom season as it stacked up against something authentic and horrible like war. But if renting all those movies had taught me anything more than how to lose myself in them, it was that you only actually have perfectly profound little moments like that in real life if you recognize them yourself, do all the fancy shot work and editing in your head, usually in the very seconds that whatever is happening is happening. And even if you do manage to do so, just about never does anyone else you’re with at the time experience that exact same kind of moment, and it’s impossible to explain it as it’s happening, and then the moment is over.

Modern culture rejects this belief in a great cosmic plan. We are not actors in any larger-than-life drama. Life has no script, no playwright, no director, no producer – and no meaning. To the best of our scientific understanding, the universe is a blind and purposeless process, full of sound and fury but signifying nothing. During our infinitesimally brief stay on our tiny speck of a planet, we fret and strut this way and that, and then are heard of no more. Since there is no script, and since humans fulfil no role in any great drama, terrible things might befall us and no power will come to save us or give meaning to our suffering. There won’t be a happy ending, or a bad ending, or any ending at all. Things just happen, one after the other. The modern world does not believe in purpose, only in cause. If modernity has a motto, it is ‘shit happens’. On the other hand, if shit just happens, without any binding script or purpose, then humans too are not confined to any predetermined role. We can do anything we want – provided we can find a way. We are constrained by nothing except our own ignorance. Plagues and droughts have no cosmic meaning – but we can eradicate them. Wars are not a necessary evil on the way to a better future – but we can make peace. No paradise awaits us after death – but we can create paradise here on earth and live in it for ever, if we just manage to overcome some technical difficulties.

1. Linus Malthus "Winning is just the snow that came down yesterday"   Founder of total football. Tactical revolutionary who created the foundation of modern football  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 [경영항목] 엑스터시,신의눈물,lsd,아이스,캔디,대마초,떨,마리화나,프로포폴,에토미데이트,해피벌륜등많은제품판매하고있습니다 믿고 주문해주세요~저희는 제품판매를 고객님들과 신용과신뢰의 거래로 하고있습니다. 제품효과 못보실 그럴일은 없지만 만의하나 효과못보시면 저희가 1차재발송과 2차 환불까지 약속합니다 텔레【KC98K】카톡【ACD5】라인【SPR331】 The only winner in the international major tournament, Holland, the best soccer line of football 2. Sir Alex Ferguson Mr.Man Utd   The Red Boss The best director in soccer history (most of the past soccer coach rankings are the top picks) It is the most obvious that shows how important the director is in football.   Manchester United's 27-year-old championship, the spiritual stake of all United players and fans, Manchester United itself 3. Theme Mourinho "I do not pretend to be arrogant, because I'm all true, I am a European champion, I am not one of the cunning bosses around, I think I am Special One." The Special One The cost of counterattack after a player Charming world with charisma and poetry The director who has the most violent career of soccer directors 4. Pep Guardiola A man who achieved the world's first and only six treasures beyond treble. Make a team with a page of football history 5. Ottmar Hitzfeld Borussia Dortmund and Bayern are the best directors in Munich history. Legendary former football manager of Germany Sir Alex Ferguson's rival

The key to preventing this is balance. I see the give and take between different constituencies in a business as central to its success. So when I talk about taming the Beast, what I really mean is that keeping its needs balanced with the needs of other, more creative facets of your company will make you stronger. Let me give you an example of what I mean, drawn from the business I know best. In animation, we have many constituencies: story, art, budget, technology, finance, production, marketing, and consumer products. The people within each constituency have priorities that are important—and often opposing. The writer and director want to tell the most affecting story possible; the production designer wants the film to look beautiful; the technical directors want flawless effects; finance wants to keep the budgets within limits; marketing wants a hook that is easily sold to potential viewers; the consumer products people want appealing characters to turn into plush toys and to plaster on lunchboxes and T-shirts; the production managers try to keep everyone happy—and to keep the whole enterprise from spiraling out of control. And so on. Each group is focused on its own needs, which means that no one has a clear view of how their decisions impact other groups; each group is under pressure to perform well, which means achieving stated goals. Particularly in the early months of a project, these goals—which are subgoals, really, in the making of a film—are often easier to articulate and explain than the film itself. But if the director is able to get everything he or she wants, we will likely end up with a film that’s too long. If the marketing people get their way, we will only make a film that mimics those that have already been “proven” to succeed—in other words, familiar to viewers but in all likelihood a creative failure. Each group, then, is trying to do the right thing, but they’re pulling in different directions. If any one of those groups “wins,” we lose. In an unhealthy culture, each group believes that if their objectives trump the goals of the other groups, the company will be better off. In a healthy culture, all constituencies recognize the importance of balancing competing desires—they want to be heard, but they don’t have to win. Their interaction with one another—the push and pull that occurs naturally when talented people are given clear goals—yields the balance we seek. But that only happens if they understand that achieving balance is a central goal of the company.

ever. Amen. Thank God for self-help books. No wonder the business is booming. It reminds me of junior high school, where everybody was afraid of the really cool kids because they knew the latest, most potent putdowns, and were not afraid to use them. Dah! But there must be another reason that one of the best-selling books in the history of the world is Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus by John Gray. Could it be that our culture is oh so eager for a quick fix? What a relief it must be for some people to think “Oh, that’s why we fight like cats and dogs, it is because he’s from Mars and I am from Venus. I thought it was just because we’re messed up in the head.” Can you imagine Calvin Consumer’s excitement and relief to get the video on “The Secret to her Sexual Satisfaction” with Dr. GraySpot, a picture chart, a big pointer, and an X marking the spot. Could that “G” be for “giggle” rather than Dr. “Graffenberg?” Perhaps we are always looking for the secret, the gold mine, the G-spot because we are afraid of the real G-word: Growth—and the energy it requires of us. I am worried that just becoming more educated or well-read is chopping at the leaves of ignorance but is not cutting at the roots. Take my own example: I used to be a lowly busboy at 12 East Restaurant in Florida. One Christmas Eve the manager fired me for eating on the job. As I slunk away I muttered under my breath, “Scrooge!” Years later, after obtaining a Masters Degree in Psychology and getting a California license to practice psychotherapy, I was fired by the clinical director of a psychiatric institute for being unorthodox. This time I knew just what to say. This time I was much more assertive and articulate. As I left I told the director “You obviously have a narcissistic pseudo-neurotic paranoia of anything that does not fit your myopic Procrustean paradigm.” Thank God for higher education. No wonder colleges are packed. What if there was a language designed not to put down or control each other, but nurture and release each other to grow? What if you could develop a consciousness of expressing your feelings and needs fully and completely without having any intention of blaming, attacking, intimidating, begging, punishing, coercing or disrespecting the other person? What if there was a language that kept us focused in the present, and prevented us from speaking like moralistic mini-gods? There is: The name of one such language is Nonviolent Communication. Marshall Rosenberg’s Nonviolent Communication provides a wealth of simple principles and effective techniques to maintain a laser focus on the human heart and innocent child within the other person, even when they have lost contact with that part of themselves. You know how it is when you are hurt or scared: suddenly you become cold and critical, or aloof and analytical. Would it not be wonderful if someone could see through the mask, and warmly meet your need for understanding or reassurance? What I am presenting are some tools for staying locked onto the other person’s humanness, even when they have become an alien monster. Remember that episode of Star Trek where Captain Kirk was turned into a Klingon, and Bones was freaking out? (I felt sorry for Bones because I’ve had friends turn into Cling-ons too.) But then Spock, in his cool, Vulcan way, performed a mind meld to determine that James T. Kirk was trapped inside the alien form. And finally Scotty was able to put some dilithium crystals into his phaser and destroy the alien cloaking device, freeing the captain from his Klingon form. Oh, how I wish that, in my youth or childhood,