“
The SEALs place a premium on brute strength, but there's an even bigger premium on speed. That's speed through the water, speed over the ground, and speed of thought. There's no prizes for gleaming a set of well-oiled muscles in Coronado. Bulk just makes you slow, especially in soft sand, and that's what we had to tackle every day of our lives, mile after mile.
”
”
Marcus Luttrell (Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10)
“
Whether you’re on a sports team, in an office or a member of a family, if you can’t trust one another there’s going to be trouble.
”
”
Stephen M.R. Covey (The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything)
“
They looked like linebackers on a prison football team, whose idea of commincation was to smash into something at full speed, preferably another person.
”
”
John Verdon (Shut Your Eyes Tight (Dave Gurney, #2))
“
Companies that are made up of clusters of leaders will actually accelerate their growth by speeding up their rate of innovation as their competition pulls back, build better teams by investing in people while their rivals shrink training budgets, and pick up top talent as their industry peers lay people off. And so fast companies get that unsettling times are actually gifts for them and periods to get so far ahead of the competition that they can never catch up.
”
”
Robin S. Sharma (The Leader Who Had No Title: A Modern Fable on Real Success in Business and in)
“
There is one thing that is common to every individual, relationship, team, family, organization, nation, economy, and civilization throughout the world—one thing which, if removed, will destroy the most powerful government, the most successful business, the most thriving economy, the most influential leadership, the greatest friendship, the strongest character, the deepest love. On the other hand, if developed and leveraged, that one thing has the potential to create unparalleled success and prosperity in every dimension of life. Yet, it is the least understood, most neglected, and most underestimated possibility of our time. That one thing is trust.
”
”
Stephen M.R. Covey (The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything)
“
Teams bring together a broader mix of skills that exceed those of any single individual. 2. Teams jointly develop and strive toward clear goals. 3. Teams can adjust with greater speed and effectiveness. 4. Trust and confidence are more easily built in teams.
”
”
Donald T. Phillips (Martin Luther King, Jr., on Leadership: Inspiration and Wisdom for Challenging Times)
“
Boyd’s Law: speed of iteration beats quality of iteration.
”
”
Yevgeniy Brikman (Hello, Startup: A Programmer's Guide to Building Products, Technologies, and Teams)
“
A humble person is more concerned about what is right than about being right, about acting on good ideas than having the ideas, about embracing new truth than defending outdated position, about building the team than exalting self, about recognizing contribution than being recognized for making it.
”
”
Stephen M.R. Covey (The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything)
“
Today’s rapidly changing world, marked by increased speed and dense interdependencies, means that organizations everywhere are now facing dizzying challenges, from global terrorism to health epidemics to supply chain disruption to game-changing technologies. These issues can be solved only by creating sustained organizational adaptability through the establishment of a team of teams.
”
”
Stanley McChrystal (Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World)
“
High Performance Teams and Execution Speed, has no value, if you are going in the wrong direction!
”
”
Tony Dovale
“
When the high-speed chases and mandatory shoot-outs become too repetitive, I head over to the revival houses and watch gentler movies, in which the couples sleep in separate beds and everyone wears a hat. As my ticket is ripped, I briefly consider all the constructive things I could be doing. I think of the parks and the restaurants, or the pleasantries I'll never use on the friends I am failing to make. I think of the great city teaming on the other side of that curtain, and then the lights go down, and I love Paris.
”
”
David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day)
“
Broadly speaking, to acheive DevOps outcomes, we need to reduce the effects of functional orientation ("optimizing for cost") and enable market orientation ("optimizing for speed") so we can have many small teams working safely and independently, quickly delivering value to the customer
”
”
Gene Kim (The DevOps Handbook: How to Create World-Class Agility, Reliability, and Security in Technology Organizations)
“
One: something can be worth doing even if you’re not around to see the end result or reap the rewards. It is a noble goal to want to do something that other people will benefit from, and it should be natural to want that for our successors. I don’t just mean after you leave this life, I mean after you leave a job, or a governing body, or a school. Act in the interests of the people who will inherit what you’ve done. Two: no man is an island. You cannot do it all. Teams, communities, friends are key to our ongoing, and hopefully everlasting, successes. And three: don’t be distracted by speed. Remember the Tortoise and the Hare fable. Not everything good can be achieved quickly and being fast doesn’t guarantee success.
”
”
Benjamin B. Ferencz (Parting Words: An extraordinary 100-year-old man’s 9 lessons for living a life to be proud of)
“
If it is humanly possible, you should plan to have one or more in-person meetings with your boss early on. It is essential to make face-to-face connections early on to begin to establish a basis of confidence and trust (the same is true if you’re leading a virtual team). So if this means you need to fight for the resources and fly halfway around the world, you should do it.
”
”
Michael D. Watkins (The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter)
“
Build your team. If you are inheriting a team, you need to evaluate, align, and mobilize its members. You likely also need to restructure it to better meet the demands of the situation. Your willingness to make tough early personnel calls and your capacity to select the right people for the right positions are among the most important drivers of success during your transition and beyond.
”
”
Michael D. Watkins (The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter)
“
Fueled by his resilience, conviction, and strength of will, Lincoln gradually recovered from his depression. He understood, he told Speed later, that in times of anxiety it is critical to “avoid being idle,” that “business and conversation of friends” were necessary to give the mind “rest from that intensity of thought, which will some times wear the sweetest idea threadbare and turn it to the bitterness of death.
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln)
“
What its withered technology lacked, the Game Boy made up in user experience. It was cheap. It could fit in a large pocket. It was all but indestructible. If a drop cracked the screen—and it had to be a horrific drop—it kept on ticking. If it were left in a backpack that went in the washing machine, once it dried out it was ready to roll a few days later. Unlike its power-guzzling color competitors, it played for days (or weeks) on AA batteries. Old hardware was extremely familiar to developers inside and outside Nintendo, and with their creativity and speed unencumbered by learning new technology, they pumped out games as if they were early ancestors of iPhone app designers—Tetris, Super Mario Land, The Final Fantasy Legend, and a slew of sports games released in the first year were all smash hits. With simple technology, Yokoi’s team sidestepped the hardware arms race and drew the game programming community onto its team.
”
”
David Epstein (Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World)
“
Hockey is a club that holds its members tightly, the bond forged by shared hardship and mutual passion, by every trip to the pond, where your feet hurt and your face is cold and you might get a stick in the ribs or a puck in the mouth, and you still can’t wait to get back out there because you are smitten with the sound of blades scraping against ice and pucks clacking off sticks, and with the game’s speed and ever-changing geometry. It has a way of becoming the center of your life even when you’re not on the ice.
”
”
Wayne Coffey (The Boys of Winter: The Untold Story of a Coach, a Dream, and the 1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team)
“
One Autumn night, in Sudbury town,
Across the meadows bare and brown,
The windows of the wayside inn
Gleamed red with fire-light through the leaves
Of woodbine, hanging from the eaves
Their crimson curtains rent and thin.”
“As ancient is this hostelry
As any in the land may be,
Built in the old Colonial day,
When men lived in a grander way,
With ampler hospitality;
A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall,
Now somewhat fallen to decay,
With weather-stains upon the wall,
And stairways worn, and crazy doors,
And creaking and uneven floors,
And chimneys huge, and tiled and tall.
A region of repose it seems,
A place of slumber and of dreams,
Remote among the wooded hills!
For there no noisy railway speeds,
Its torch-race scattering smoke and gleeds;
But noon and night, the panting teams
Stop under the great oaks, that throw
Tangles of light and shade below,
On roofs and doors and window-sills.
Across the road the barns display
Their lines of stalls, their mows of hay,
Through the wide doors the breezes blow,
The wattled cocks strut to and fro,
And, half effaced by rain and shine,
The Red Horse prances on the sign.
Round this old-fashioned, quaint abode
Deep silence reigned, save when a gust
Went rushing down the county road,
And skeletons of leaves, and dust,
A moment quickened by its breath,
Shuddered and danced their dance of death,
And through the ancient oaks o'erhead
Mysterious voices moaned and fled.
These are the tales those merry guests
Told to each other, well or ill;
Like summer birds that lift their crests
Above the borders of their nests
And twitter, and again are still.
These are the tales, or new or old,
In idle moments idly told;
Flowers of the field with petals thin,
Lilies that neither toil nor spin,
And tufts of wayside weeds and gorse
Hung in the parlor of the inn
Beneath the sign of the Red Horse.
Uprose the sun; and every guest,
Uprisen, was soon equipped and dressed
For journeying home and city-ward;
The old stage-coach was at the door,
With horses harnessed, long before
The sunshine reached the withered sward
Beneath the oaks, whose branches hoar
Murmured: "Farewell forevermore.
Where are they now? What lands and skies
Paint pictures in their friendly eyes?
What hope deludes, what promise cheers,
What pleasant voices fill their ears?
Two are beyond the salt sea waves,
And three already in their graves.
Perchance the living still may look
Into the pages of this book,
And see the days of long ago
Floating and fleeting to and fro,
As in the well-remembered brook
They saw the inverted landscape gleam,
And their own faces like a dream
Look up upon them from below.
”
”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“
As engine vibrated under him, he tried to tell himself it was all going to work out. It had to. Now that he’d found The One, there was no way in hell he was letting her get away. If that meant he had to move heaven and earth to find a good life for her and her pack mates here in the city, he’d do it. If being with Jayna meant he had to empty out his bank account and sell everything he owned, he was okay with that too.
He had friends in other places he could turn to, Family too. His parents owned a huge house and a lot of land outside of Denver. If he showed up with Jayna, her pack, and no job, his family would welcome them with open arms. Okay, maybe his mom would be a little shocked when she found out his girlfriend came with an extended family, but she’d overlook it if there was a possibility of a grandchild in the near future.
Becker was still daydreaming about kids with Jayna someday when headlights suddenly appeared in his rear- view mirror. He glanced over, swearing when he saw two vehicles speeding up behind him and closing fast.
”
”
Paige Tyler (In the Company of Wolves (SWAT: Special Wolf Alpha Team, #3))
“
Since Rose, he’d never wanted to be the right guy for anyone. He hadn’t wanted to carry that extra burden. He liked things nice and simple. But things sure as hell weren’t simple with Lena. They’d never been simple with Lena. Things with Lena had been one hundred shades of unadulterated complication from day one. That fact alone should have sent him running in the opposite direction with all the speed of an Olympic gold medalist.
But no, here he stood. Holding on to her as if his life depended on it. Heaven help him, his life probably did depend on it.
”
”
Loren Mathis (Swift Strike (SEAL Team 14 #2))
“
We were a minor league team that didn't feed into any majors, in a town that loved just about every sport but ours. We were going nowhere and we knew it, so why not have fun? In the forties, when I was playing, we were officially the most violent team in the country, and that means probably the whole world, and by the way, that's why I could skate with no toes. A figure skater, a speed skater, an NHL forward, sure, you need your toes for control, but all that finesse takes a backseat when all you're trying to do is slam somebody into a wall and break all his teeth.
”
”
Dan Wells (Partials (Partials Sequence, #1))
“
One Autumn night, in Sudbury town,
Across the meadows bare and brown,
The windows of the wayside inn
Gleamed red with fire-light through the leaves
Of woodbine, hanging from the eaves
Their crimson curtains rent and thin.
As ancient is this hostelry
As any in the land may be,
Built in the old Colonial day,
When men lived in a grander way,
With ampler hospitality;
A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall,
Now somewhat fallen to decay,
With weather-stains upon the wall,
And stairways worn, and crazy doors,
And creaking and uneven floors,
And chimneys huge, and tiled and tall.
A region of repose it seems,
A place of slumber and of dreams,
Remote among the wooded hills!
For there no noisy railway speeds,
Its torch-race scattering smoke and gleeds;
But noon and night, the panting teams
Stop under the great oaks, that throw
Tangles of light and shade below,
On roofs and doors and window-sills.
Across the road the barns display
Their lines of stalls, their mows of hay,
Through the wide doors the breezes blow,
The wattled cocks strut to and fro,
And, half effaced by rain and shine,
The Red Horse prances on the sign.
Round this old-fashioned, quaint abode
Deep silence reigned, save when a gust
Went rushing down the county road,
And skeletons of leaves, and dust,
A moment quickened by its breath,
Shuddered and danced their dance of death,
And through the ancient oaks o'erhead
Mysterious voices moaned and fled.
These are the tales those merry guests
Told to each other, well or ill;
Like summer birds that lift their crests
Above the borders of their nests
And twitter, and again are still.
These are the tales, or new or old,
In idle moments idly told;
Flowers of the field with petals thin,
Lilies that neither toil nor spin,
And tufts of wayside weeds and gorse
Hung in the parlor of the inn
Beneath the sign of the Red Horse.
Uprose the sun; and every guest,
Uprisen, was soon equipped and dressed
For journeying home and city-ward;
The old stage-coach was at the door,
With horses harnessed,long before
The sunshine reached the withered sward
Beneath the oaks, whose branches hoar
Murmured: "Farewell forevermore.
Where are they now? What lands and skies
Paint pictures in their friendly eyes?
What hope deludes, what promise cheers,
What pleasant voices fill their ears?
Two are beyond the salt sea waves,
And three already in their graves.
Perchance the living still may look
Into the pages of this book,
And see the days of long ago
Floating and fleeting to and fro,
As in the well-remembered brook
They saw the inverted landscape gleam,
And their own faces like a dream
Look up upon them from below.
”
”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“
Sean started the engine and putted through the marina waters, and Adam had the nerve to plop onto the seat across the aisle from me. Sean reached the edge of the idle zone and cranked the boat into top speed. Adam called to me so softly I could barely catch his words over the motor, “Close your legs.”
“What for? I waxed!” I looked down to make sure. This was okay now, because Sean was facing the other way and couldn’t hear me in the din. Indeed, I was clean. I spread my legs even wider, put my arms on the back of the seat, and generally took up as much room as possible, like a boy. I glanced back over at Adam. “Does it make you uncomfortable for me to sit this way?”
He watched me warily. “Yes.”
“May I suggest that this is your problem and not mine?”
He licked his lips and bent toward me. “If it keeps Sean from asking you out, it’s going to be your problem, and you’re going to make it my problem.”
“Speaking of which,” I said, crossing my legs like a girl. “Thanks for staying out of my way. How the hell am I supposed to get Sean to ask me out when he’s all pissy?”
“You wanted me to lose to him at team calisthenics? That was too sweet to miss.”
“You didn’t have to win by quite so much, Adam. You knew I needed him in a good mood. You didn’t have to rub it in.”
Adam grinned. “And you wanted me to stop growing?”
“Do not make a joke about your size. If you can’t think of anything to talk about except your large size, please say nothing at all.
”
”
Jennifer Echols (Endless Summer (The Boys Next Door, #1-2))
“
1. Question every requirement. Each should come with the name of the person who made it. You should never accept that a requirement came from a department, such as from “the legal department” or “the safety department.” You need to know the name of the real person who made that requirement. Then you should question it, no matter how smart that person is. Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous, because people are less likely to question them. Always do so, even if the requirement came from me. Then make the requirements less dumb. 2. Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn’t delete enough. 3. Simplify and optimize. This should come after step two. A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist. 4. Accelerate cycle time. Every process can be speeded up. But only do this after you have followed the first three steps. In the Tesla factory, I mistakenly spent a lot of time accelerating processes that I later realized should have been deleted. 5. Automate. That comes last. The big mistake in Nevada and at Fremont was that I began by trying to automate every step. We should have waited until all the requirements had been questioned, parts and processes deleted, and the bugs were shaken out. The algorithm was sometimes accompanied by a few corollaries, among them: All technical managers must have hands-on experience. For example, managers of software teams must spend at least 20% of their time coding. Solar roof managers must spend time on the roofs doing installations. Otherwise, they are like a cavalry leader who can’t ride a horse or a general who can’t use a sword. Comradery is dangerous. It makes it hard for people to challenge each other’s work. There is a tendency to not want to throw a colleague under the bus. That needs to be avoided. It’s OK to be wrong. Just don’t be confident and wrong. Never ask your troops to do something you’re not willing to do. Whenever there are problems to solve, don’t just meet with your managers. Do a skip level, where you meet with the level right below your managers. When hiring, look for people with the right attitude. Skills can be taught. Attitude changes require a brain transplant. A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle. The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics. Everything else is a recommendation
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Elon Musk)
“
Kya knew from reading Albert Einstein’s books that time is no more fixed than the stars. Time speeds and bends around planets and suns, is different in the mountains than in the valleys, and is part of the same fabric as space, which curves and swells as does the sea. Objects, whether planets or apples, fall or orbit, not because of a gravitational energy, but because they plummet into the silky folds of spacetime—like into the ripples on a pond—created by those of higher mass. But Kya said none of this. Unfortunately, gravity holds no sway on human thought, and the high school text still taught that apples fall to the ground because of a powerful force from the Earth. “Oh, guess what,” Chase said. “They’ve asked me to help coach the high school football team.” She smiled at him. Then thought, Like everything else in the universe, we tumble toward those of higher mass.
”
”
Delia Owens (Where the Crawdads Sing)
“
Like many in his generation, Billy had grown up playing first-person-shooter video games. He decided to take that experience a few steps further and resolved to join a SWAT team and shoot bad guys for real. He visited the local police station to find out what requirements and training were necessary to become a SWAT team member. He found out that the process was a lot more involved than he expected. He first needed to attend a police academy and become a police officer. Afterwards he would have to work his way onto a SWAT team over time. There were no guarantees. During his visit to the police station he learned that many SWAT members were former Marine Corps snipers. During that same visit the cops ran Billy’s plates through their criminal database and learned that he had outstanding warrants for speeding tickets. They unceremoniously arrested him and tossed him into jail.
”
”
William F. Sine (Guardian Angel: Life and Death Adventures with Pararescue, the World's Most Powerful Commando Rescue Force)
“
If the interest of a scientific expositor ought to be measured by the importance of the subject, I shall be applauded for my choice. In fact, there are few questions which touch more closely the very existence of man than that of animated motors—those docile helps whose power or speed he uses at his pleasure, which enjoy to some extent his intimacy, and accompany him in his labors and his pleasures. The species of animal whose coöperation we borrow are numerous, and vary according to latitude and climate. But whether we employ the horse, the ass, the camel, or the reindeer, the same problem is always presented: to get from the animal as much work as possible, sparing him, as far as we can, fatigue and suffering. This identity of standpoint will much simplify my task, as it will enable me to confine the study of animated motors to a single species: I have chosen the horse as the most interesting type. Even with this restriction the subject is still very vast, as all know who are occupied with the different questions connected therewith. In studying the force of traction of the horse, and the best methods of utilizing it, we encounter all the problems connected with teams and the construction of vehicles. But, on a subject which has engaged the attention of humanity for thousands of years, it seems difficult to find anything new to say.
If in the employment of the horse we consider its speed and the means of increasing it, the subject does not appear less exhausted. Since the chariot-races, of which Greek and Roman antiquity were passionately fond, to our modern horse-races, men have never ceased to pursue with a lively interest the problem of rapid locomotion. What tests and comparisons have not been made to discover what race has most speed, what other most bottom, what crossings, what training give reason to expect still more speed?
”
”
Etienne-Jules Marey
“
At the time the Constitution was adopted, Lincoln pointed out, “the plain unmistakable spirit of that age, towards slavery, was hostility to the principle, and toleration, only by necessity,” since slavery was already woven into the fabric of American society. Noting that neither the word “slave” nor “slavery” was ever mentioned in the Constitution, Lincoln claimed that the framers concealed it, “just as an afflicted man hides away a wen or a cancer, which he dares not cut out at once, lest he bleed to death; with the promise, nevertheless, that the cutting may begin at the end of a given time.” As additional evidence of the framers’ intent, Lincoln brought his audience even further back, to the moment when Virginia ceded its vast northwestern territory to the United States with the understanding that slavery would be forever prohibited from the new territory, thus creating a “happy home” for “teeming millions” of free people, with “no slave amongst them.” In recent years, he said, slavery had seemed to be gradually on the wane until the fateful Nebraska law transformed it into “a sacred right,” putting it “on the high road to extension and perpetuity”; giving it “a pat on its back,” saying, “ ‘Go, and God speed you.’ ” Douglas
”
”
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln)
“
Louis van Gaal is generally considered the creator of a football system or machine. It might be more accurate to describe him as the originator of a new process for playing the game. His underlying tactical principles were much as those of Michels and Cruyff: relentless attack; pressing and squeezing space to make the pitch small in order to win the ball; spreading play and expanding the field in possession. By the 1990s, though, footballers had become stronger, faster and better organised than ever before. Van Gaal saw the need for a new dimension. ‘With space so congested, the most important thing is ball circulation,’ he declared. ‘The team that plays the quickest football is the best.’ His team aimed for total control of the game, maintaining the ball ‘in construction’, as he calls it, and passing and running constantly with speed and precision. Totaalvoetbal-style position switching was out, but players still had to be flexible and adaptable. Opponents were not seen as foes to be fought and beaten in battle; rather as posing a problem that had to be solved. Ajax players were required to be flexible and smart – as they ‘circulated’ the ball, the space on the field was constantly reorganised until gaps opened in the opponents’ defence.
”
”
David Winner (Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football)
“
These include: the Bar Raiser hiring process that ensures that the company continues to acquire top talent; a bias for separable teams run by leaders with a singular focus that optimizes for speed of delivery and innovation; the use of written narratives instead of slide decks to ensure that deep understanding of complex issues drives well-informed decisions; a relentless focus on input metrics to ensure that teams work on activities that propel the business. And finally there is the product development process that gives this book its name: working backwards from the desired customer experience. Many of the business problems that Amazon faces are no different from those faced by every other company, small or large. The difference is how Amazon keeps coming up with uniquely Amazonian solutions to those problems. Taken together, these elements combine to form a way of thinking, managing, and working that we refer to as being Amazonian, a term that we coined for the purposes of this book. Both of us, Colin and Bill, were “in the room,” and—along with other senior leaders—we shaped and refined what it means to be Amazonian. We both worked extensively with Jeff and were actively involved in creating a number of Amazon’s most enduring successes (not to mention some of its notable flops) in what was the most invigorating professional experience of our lives.
”
”
Colin Bryar (Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon)
“
Another former chess player shared his own fond memory of Thiel from this era. Around the spring of 1988, the team was driving to Monterey for a tournament, with Thiel behind the wheel of the Rabbit. They took California’s Route 17, a four-lane highway that crosses the Santa Cruz Mountains and is regarded as one of the state’s most dangerous. The team was in no particular hurry, but Thiel drove as if he were a man possessed. He navigated the turns like Michael Andretti, weaving in and out of lanes, nearly rear-ending cars as he slipped past them, and seemed to be flooring the accelerator for large portions of the trip. Somewhat predictably, the lights of a California Highway Patrol cruiser eventually appeared in his rearview. Thiel was pulled over, and the trooper asked if he knew how fast he was going. The young men in the rest of the car, simultaneously relieved to have been stopped and scared of the trooper, looked at each other nervously. “Well,” Thiel responded, in his calmest, most measured baritone. “I’m not sure if the concept of a speed limit makes sense.” The officer said nothing. Thiel continued: “It may be unconstitutional. And it’s definitely an infringement on liberty.” The officer looked at Thiel and the geeks in the beater car and decided the whole thing wasn’t worth his time. He told Thiel to slow down and have a nice day. “I don’t remember any of the games we played,” said the man, now in his fifties, who’d been in the passenger seat. “But I will never forget that drive.
”
”
Max Chafkin (The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power)
“
To me, it’s not that pound dogs don’t have worth, or to be more specific, inherent worth as sled dogs. It’s just that to succeed with them you have to be open to finding their very individualized skill sets, and that’s what we did with all of our rescues.
Pong, while she can’t sustain sprint speeds for very long, can break trail at slightly slower speed for hours. Ping’s digestive processes move at a glacial pace, so much so that I think she could put on a few pounds from just a whiff of the food bucked, and this proved valuable when racing in deep-minus temperatures when dogs with higher metabolisms shiver off too much weight. Six, while small, can remember any trail after having only run it once, which I relied on whenever I grew disoriented or got lost from time to time. Rolo developed into an amazing gee-haw leader, turning left or right with precision whenever we gave the commands, which also helped the other dogs in line behind him learn the meaning of these words and the importance of listening to the musher. Ghost excelled at leading of a different sort, running at the front of a team chasing another which is also useful for not burning out gee-haw leaders. Coolwhip’s character trait of perpetually acting over-caffeinated made her invaluable as a cheerleader, where an always barking dog late in a run can, and does spread enthusiasm to the others. And Old Man, well, he was a bit too decrepit to ever contribute much to the team, but he always made me smile when I came out to feed the yard and saw him excitedly carrying around his food bowl, and that was enough for him to earn his keep.
”
”
Joseph Robertia (Life with Forty Dogs: Misadventures with Runts, Rejects, Retirees, and Rescues)
“
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)
“
five commandments: 1. Question every requirement. Each should come with the name of the person who made it. You should never accept that a requirement came from a department, such as from “the legal department” or “the safety department.” You need to know the name of the real person who made that requirement. Then you should question it, no matter how smart that person is. Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous, because people are less likely to question them. Always do so, even if the requirement came from me. Then make the requirements less dumb. 2. Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn’t delete enough. 3. Simplify and optimize. This should come after step two. A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist. 4. Accelerate cycle time. Every process can be speeded up. But only do this after you have followed the first three steps. In the Tesla factory, I mistakenly spent a lot of time accelerating processes that I later realized should have been deleted. 5. Automate. That comes last. The big mistake in Nevada and at Fremont was that I began by trying to automate every step. We should have waited until all the requirements had been questioned, parts and processes deleted, and the bugs were shaken out. The algorithm was sometimes accompanied by a few corollaries, among them: All technical managers must have hands-on experience. For example, managers of software teams must spend at least 20% of their time coding. Solar roof managers must spend time on the roofs doing installations. Otherwise, they are like a cavalry leader who can’t ride a horse or a general who can’t use a sword. Comradery is dangerous. It makes it hard for people to challenge each other’s work. There is a tendency to not want to throw a colleague under the bus. That needs to be avoided. It’s OK to be wrong. Just don’t be confident and wrong. Never ask your troops to do something you’re not willing to do. Whenever there are problems to solve, don’t just meet with your managers. Do a skip level, where you meet with the level right below your managers. When hiring, look for people with the right attitude. Skills can be taught. Attitude changes require a brain transplant. A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle.
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Elon Musk)
“
Question every requirement. Each should come with the name of the person who made it. You should never accept that a requirement came from a department, such as from “the legal department” or “the safety department.” You need to know the name of the real person who made that requirement. Then you should question it, no matter how smart that person is. Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous, because people are less likely to question them. Always do so, even if the requirement came from me. Then make the requirements less dumb. 2. Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn’t delete enough. 3. Simplify and optimize. This should come after step two. A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist. 4. Accelerate cycle time. Every process can be speeded up. But only do this after you have followed the first three steps. In the Tesla factory, I mistakenly spent a lot of time accelerating processes that I later realized should have been deleted. 5. Automate. That comes last. The big mistake in Nevada and at Fremont was that I began by trying to automate every step. We should have waited until all the requirements had been questioned, parts and processes deleted, and the bugs were shaken out. The algorithm was sometimes accompanied by a few corollaries, among them: All technical managers must have hands-on experience. For example, managers of software teams must spend at least 20% of their time coding. Solar roof managers must spend time on the roofs doing installations. Otherwise, they are like a cavalry leader who can’t ride a horse or a general who can’t use a sword. Comradery is dangerous. It makes it hard for people to challenge each other’s work. There is a tendency to not want to throw a colleague under the bus. That needs to be avoided. It’s OK to be wrong. Just don’t be confident and wrong. Never ask your troops to do something you’re not willing to do. Whenever there are problems to solve, don’t just meet with your managers. Do a skip level, where you meet with the level right below your managers. When hiring, look for people with the right attitude. Skills can be taught. Attitude changes require a brain transplant. A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle. The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics.
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Elon Musk)
“
Question every requirement. Each should come with the name of the person who made it. You should never accept that a requirement came from a department, such as from “the legal department” or “the safety department.” You need to know the name of the real person who made that requirement. Then you should question it, no matter how smart that person is. Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous, because people are less likely to question them. Always do so, even if the requirement came from me. Then make the requirements less dumb. 2. Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn’t delete enough. 3. Simplify and optimize. This should come after step two. A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist. 4. Accelerate cycle time. Every process can be speeded up. But only do this after you have followed the first three steps. In the Tesla factory, I mistakenly spent a lot of time accelerating processes that I later realized should have been deleted. 5. Automate. That comes last. The big mistake in Nevada and at Fremont was that I began by trying to automate every step. We should have waited until all the requirements had been questioned, parts and processes deleted, and the bugs were shaken out. The algorithm was sometimes accompanied by a few corollaries, among them: All technical managers must have hands-on experience. For example, managers of software teams must spend at least 20% of their time coding. Solar roof managers must spend time on the roofs doing installations. Otherwise, they are like a cavalry leader who can’t ride a horse or a general who can’t use a sword. Comradery is dangerous. It makes it hard for people to challenge each other’s work. There is a tendency to not want to throw a colleague under the bus. That needs to be avoided. It’s OK to be wrong. Just don’t be confident and wrong. Never ask your troops to do something you’re not willing to do. Whenever there are problems to solve, don’t just meet with your managers. Do a skip level, where you meet with the level right below your managers. When hiring, look for people with the right attitude. Skills can be taught. Attitude changes require a brain transplant. A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle. The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics. Everything else is a recommendation.
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Elon Musk)
“
Our team’s vision for the facility was a cross between a shooting range and a country club for special forces personnel. Clients would be able to schedule all manner of training courses in advance, and the gear and support personnel would be waiting when they arrived. There’d be seven shooting ranges with high gravel berms to cut down noise and absorb bullets, and we’d carve a grass airstrip, and have a special driving track to practice high-speed chases and real “defensive driving”—the stuff that happens when your convoy is ambushed. There would be a bunkhouse to sleep seventy. And nearby, the main headquarters would have the feel of a hunting lodge, with timber framing and high stone walls, with a large central fireplace where people could gather after a day on the ranges. This was the community I enjoyed; we never intended to send anyone oversees. This chunk of the Tar Heel State was my “Field of Dreams.” I bought thirty-one hundred acres—roughly five square miles of land, plenty of territory to catch even the most wayward bullets—for $900,000. We broke ground in June 1997, and immediately began learning about do-it-yourself entrepreneurship. That land was ugly: Logging the previous year had left a moonscape of tree stumps and tangled roots lorded over by mosquitoes and poisonous creatures. I killed a snake the first twelve times I went to the property. The heat was miserable. While a local construction company carved the shooting ranges and the lake, our small team installed the culverts and forged new roads and planted the Southern pine utility poles to support the electrical wiring. The basic site work was done in about ninety days—and then we had to figure out what to call the place. The leading contender, “Hampton Roads Tactical Shooting Center,” was professional, but pretty uptight. “Tidewater Institute for Tactical Shooting” had legs, but the acronym wouldn’t have helped us much. But then, as we slogged across the property and excavated ditches, an incessant charcoal mud covered our boots and machinery, and we watched as each new hole was swallowed by that relentless peat-stained black water. Blackwater, we agreed, was a name. Meanwhile, within days of being installed, the Southern pine poles had been slashed by massive black bears marking their territory, as the animals had done there since long before the Europeans settled the New World. We were part of this land now, and from that heritage we took our original logo: a bear paw surrounded by the stylized crosshairs of a rifle scope.
”
”
Anonymous
“
I became a broken record on the algorithm,” Musk says. “But I think it’s helpful to say it to an annoying degree.” It had five commandments: 1. Question every requirement. Each should come with the name of the person who made it. You should never accept that a requirement came from a department, such as from “the legal department” or “the safety department.” You need to know the name of the real person who made that requirement. Then you should question it, no matter how smart that person is. Requirements from smart people are the most dangerous, because people are less likely to question them. Always do so, even if the requirement came from me. Then make the requirements less dumb. 2. Delete any part or process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back at least 10% of them, then you didn’t delete enough. 3. Simplify and optimize. This should come after step two. A common mistake is to simplify and optimize a part or a process that should not exist. 4. Accelerate cycle time. Every process can be speeded up. But only do this after you have followed the first three steps. In the Tesla factory, I mistakenly spent a lot of time accelerating processes that I later realized should have been deleted. 5. Automate. That comes last. The big mistake in Nevada and at Fremont was that I began by trying to automate every step. We should have waited until all the requirements had been questioned, parts and processes deleted, and the bugs were shaken out. The algorithm was sometimes accompanied by a few corollaries, among them: All technical managers must have hands-on experience. For example, managers of software teams must spend at least 20% of their time coding. Solar roof managers must spend time on the roofs doing installations. Otherwise, they are like a cavalry leader who can’t ride a horse or a general who can’t use a sword. Comradery is dangerous. It makes it hard for people to challenge each other’s work. There is a tendency to not want to throw a colleague under the bus. That needs to be avoided. It’s OK to be wrong. Just don’t be confident and wrong. Never ask your troops to do something you’re not willing to do. Whenever there are problems to solve, don’t just meet with your managers. Do a skip level, where you meet with the level right below your managers. When hiring, look for people with the right attitude. Skills can be taught. Attitude changes require a brain transplant. A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle. The only rules are the ones dictated by the laws of physics. Everything else is a recommendation.
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Elon Musk)
“
A famous British writer is revealed to be the author of an obscure mystery novel. An immigrant is granted asylum when authorities verify he wrote anonymous articles critical of his home country. And a man is convicted of murder when he’s connected to messages painted at the crime scene. The common element in these seemingly disparate cases is “forensic linguistics”—an investigative technique that helps experts determine authorship by identifying quirks in a writer’s style. Advances in computer technology can now parse text with ever-finer accuracy. Consider the recent outing of Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling as the writer of The Cuckoo’s Calling , a crime novel she published under the pen name Robert Galbraith. England’s Sunday Times , responding to an anonymous tip that Rowling was the book’s real author, hired Duquesne University’s Patrick Juola to analyze the text of Cuckoo , using software that he had spent over a decade refining. One of Juola’s tests examined sequences of adjacent words, while another zoomed in on sequences of characters; a third test tallied the most common words, while a fourth examined the author’s preference for long or short words. Juola wound up with a linguistic fingerprint—hard data on the author’s stylistic quirks. He then ran the same tests on four other books: The Casual Vacancy , Rowling’s first post-Harry Potter novel, plus three stylistically similar crime novels by other female writers. Juola concluded that Rowling was the most likely author of The Cuckoo’s Calling , since she was the only one whose writing style showed up as the closest or second-closest match in each of the tests. After consulting an Oxford linguist and receiving a concurring opinion, the newspaper confronted Rowling, who confessed. Juola completed his analysis in about half an hour. By contrast, in the early 1960s, it had taken a team of two statisticians—using what was then a state-of-the-art, high-speed computer at MIT—three years to complete a project to reveal who wrote 12 unsigned Federalist Papers. Robert Leonard, who heads the forensic linguistics program at Hofstra University, has also made a career out of determining authorship. Certified to serve as an expert witness in 13 states, he has presented evidence in cases such as that of Christopher Coleman, who was arrested in 2009 for murdering his family in Waterloo, Illinois. Leonard testified that Coleman’s writing style matched threats spray-painted at his family’s home (photo, left). Coleman was convicted and is serving a life sentence. Since forensic linguists deal in probabilities, not certainties, it is all the more essential to further refine this field of study, experts say. “There have been cases where it was my impression that the evidence on which people were freed or convicted was iffy in one way or another,” says Edward Finegan, president of the International Association of Forensic Linguists. Vanderbilt law professor Edward Cheng, an expert on the reliability of forensic evidence, says that linguistic analysis is best used when only a handful of people could have written a given text. As forensic linguistics continues to make headlines, criminals may realize the importance of choosing their words carefully. And some worry that software also can be used to obscure distinctive written styles. “Anything that you can identify to analyze,” says Juola, “I can identify and try to hide.
”
”
Anonymous
“
14. Procrastinator’s Clock. For those who are chronically late to meetings, there’s the Procrastinator’s Clock, a downloadable program for your computer, that displays a digital clock that is guaranteed to be up to fifteen minutes fast. How fast? Well, that’s the nudge. You are never exactly sure because the clock unpredictably speeds up and slows down. That assures that users can’t game the system. We think that this device might help the lawyer of this team (who shall remain nameless) get to Noodles on time for lunch. A physical version of this clock has already been patented by a company called Emergent Technologies.
”
”
Richard H. Thaler (Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness)
“
Every Saturday, heat or cold, rain or shine, Milly would see Avery running up their road, her long blond ponytail swishing in time with her legs, just as the sun was making gemstones out of the fields and the hills and the bales of hay scattered across the landscape. Twiss would still be snoring away upstairs. Years of sleep remedies had failed to subdue her; she still slept like a wild animal and woke like one, too.
On warm mornings, Milly would take her cup of tea out to the porch to watch Avery run by. Though she'd never been a runner herself- she didn't like the sensation of breathlessness, or the hard thunk of her heart- she'd loved to watch Twiss run. And Avery was an even better runner than Twiss had been, and certainly more graceful. She'd run first on the Spring Green high school team and then on the university team and now was training to run the marathon in the Olympic trials.
In an interview, when a reporter from the 'Gazette' asked her why she ran, Avery said, "Why does anybody do anything?" which had made Milly like Avery even more.
Each Saturday morning, after she passed the driveway, Avery would pick up speed in order to crest the upcoming hills. Sometimes she ran with a yellow music player and matching headphones, but most of the time, she ran without them.
"Something comes in and something goes out," Avery had added in the interview, as if she'd been playing at being coy but couldn't really play when it came to running. "I'd keep running forever if my legs would let me."
"Tell me about the routes you run in Spring Green," the reporter had said.
"My favorite is my Saturday route," Avery said. "There's this little purple meadow I pass on my way up into the hills. When I was little, my grandpa used to say it was enchanted. He said if you walked through it, you'd never be the same person again."
"Where did he hear the story?" the reporter asked.
"I guess he used to know the people who lived in that house," Avery said.
"The bird sisters?" the reporter said.
"All I know is, when I pass that meadow, suddenly I can run faster," Avery said.
"Are you superstitious?"
"I visualize the meadow during all of my races, if that's what you mean."
"Have you ever walked through it?"
"I believe in it too much," Avery said.
"Can you be more specific?" the reporter asked.
"No," Avery said.
”
”
Rebecca Rasmussen (The Bird Sisters)
“
An open mind, a deep sense of curiosity, and constant desire to learn. You can’t be afraid of going into an area that you don’t know much about – you have to be comfortable getting up to speed quickly in new and potentially intimidating areas. You need to be a consummate and life-long learner. The key is to ask questions, be curious and learn from your team.
”
”
Gayle Laakmann McDowell (Cracking the PM Interview: How to Land a Product Manager Job in Technology (Cracking the Interview & Career))
“
The other two teams of two men were charged with sleeping. Being stress-tested special forces, they did this so much more effectively than any civilian could even have dreamt of.
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”
Mark Speed (Doctor How and the Dragons: Book 4)
“
For example, in 2015, Payal Kadakia, the founder of ClassPass (a monthly subscription service for fitness classes) decided that she needed to double the size of her staff in just three months so that ClassPass would be able expand into more cities. To achieve this kind of speed, Kadakia and her team abandoned traditional hiring processes and followed two simple rules. First, they hired people from their personal networks, with an emphasis on “branded” talent. For example, if an employee had a friend, and that friend worked for the management consulting firm Bain & Company, that friend got hired because ClassPass could assume that the person was smart and would get along with people. Second, some of the time saved by not interviewing for skills allowed the team to interview for alignment with the company’s mission. Crazy? Perhaps. But ClassPass was in a crowded, emerging market, and being able to hire faster than the competition helped it maintain and increase its leadership position. Blitzscaling also requires a strong focus on risk management. While blitzscaling requires risk taking, it doesn’t require unnecessary risk taking. Indeed, the higher level of risk associated with blitzscaling makes risk management even more valuable and important. As Yahoo! cofounder Jerry Yang told us in an interview for Reid’s Masters of Scale podcast, “All bold strategies have a risk. If you don’t see it, you’re flying risk-blind.
”
”
Reid Hoffman (Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies)
“
The relationship between cricket (that most English of sports) and spying (at which the British have always excelled) is deep rooted and unique. Something about the game attracts the sort of mind also drawn to the secret worlds of intelligence and counterintelligence—a complex test of brain and brawn, a game of honor interwoven with trickery, played with ruthless good manners and dependent on minute gradations of physics and psychology, with tea breaks. Some of the most notable British spies have been cricketers or cricket enthusiasts. Hitler played cricket, but only once. In 1930 it was claimed that, having seen British POWs playing in southern Germany during the First World War, the Nazi party leader asked to be “initiated into the mysteries of our national game.” A match was played against Hitler’s team, after which he declared that the rules should be altered by the “withdrawal of the use of pads” and using a “bigger and harder ball.” Hitler could not understand the subtlety of a game like cricket; he thought only in terms of speed, spectacle, violence. Cricket was the ideal sport on which to model an organization bent on stumping the Führer.
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Ben Macintyre (Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies)
“
Water Sports Package in Goa:
Though you can enjoy individual rides like Parasailing , jet-ski etc according to your liking it is always profitable to opt for a complete package. The Full complete watersports
package in Goa can cost effective and enjoyable. The Watersports package we provide includes – Parasailing, Jet-ski Ride, Bumper Ride,Banana Boat Ride and a Speed Boat
Prasailing
Explore Parasailing in Goa, one of the most fabulous water activities in Goa. Parasailing or para-ascending is an entertaining water sport with two significant instruments-
parachute and speedboat. The speedboats speed ahead while the parachute is tied up to the speedboat. The parasail harness is at one end while the speedboat zooms ahead.
Eventually the parachute flies high as the speedboat moves ahead. Imagine enjoying the feeling of flying in the sky with wonderful view of the sea.
Banana ride
Banana Boat Ride is one of the most fun-filled water sport activities and very popular with youngsters. If you are the sporty kinds and looking for adventure and thrill than
definitely, you should try Banana Ride in Goa. The banana boat which is a bright yellow Banana shaped swinging ship attached to another speedboat and is pulled inside the
water, lashing against waves, and the rider tries to turn it upside down. Banana Boat Ride is a great fun sport that will test your team spirit and stamina. For safety reasons
every person willing to go for banana boat ride are supposed to wear a life jacket.
Jet Ski
Jet skiing in Goa is one of the most exciting and thrilling water sports done in Goa. Jet skiing is one of the perfect vacation activity with the friends and family.
The average power of the jet skis is 100-135 hp, It is very easy to operate a jet ski, though you are usually accompanied by an instructor. Jet skiing should surely thrill you in
Goa.
Bumper Boat Ride
A Bumper Boat ride is a very popular water sport activity in Goa. Suitable for all age groups, it's an exhilarating addition to the world of water sports. We provide one round of
500 meter or 600 meter max. Bumper ride is fun and captivating ride, in which a round pipe boat is coupled with a rate boat. As the speed of the boat increases, the bumper
pipe jumps on the surface of the standard water. This is a totally amazing bumpy ride but the passengers get to almost fly on the waves. The joy filled shrieks are part and
parcel of the bumper ride fun in Goa.
Speed Boat Ride
Most popular speed boat rides in Goa. The speed and the wind blowing against one's face gives a spine chilling experience. Breaking through the waves in a speed boat and
feeling the whistling wind on your face is an exceptional experience. Cruising at more than 50 mph is like tearing the waves of the sea away, Speed Boat rides are sure to
increase your heart beat and people find this activity very exciting so most of the tourists in Goa are attracted to speed boat rides.
Location - Calangute, Baga, Candolim, Anjuna
Timing - 10am - 5 pm
Price - 1799/- Per Person
Goa Waters[prts Activities
+91 8432325222 /6222
Timming:10:00 AM-5:00PM
”
”
goa travel
“
As a team, then, the Golgis and the spindles produce a sensory impression that is very different in kind than the impressions of color, texture, odor, or sound produced by our more conscious sense. Instead of measuring any of these surface qualities, the muscle and tendon organs assess the pure mass of an object. Now mass is an invisible thing. We have only to contemplate the surprises offered by a tennis ball filled with lead, or a large “rock” made of styrofoam in a movie studio, to remind ourselves how easily deceived our other sense organs can be with regard to mass. Mass has nothing to do with surface qualities; it is the measure of an object’s resistance to movement, and I can have no idea of its value until I am actively engaged in moving the object. Nor are the sensory cues relating to mass at all constant with regard to the object. They vary continually, as a function of inertia, according to the speed with which I move the object, or the relative suddenness with which I attempt to change the direction of movement or stop the object. A five pound bucket “feels” much heavier if I swing it rapidly in a circle over my head—that is, I have to brace myself much more forcefully in order to resist its pull. It is the precise value of this resistance which is measured by the Golgi tendon organs, and when their information is correlated with the spindles’ measurement of the exact speed and distance of movement, I can arrive at an accurate estimate of mass, that invisible yet crucial property of all matter.
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Deane Juhan (Job's Body: A Handbook for Bodywork)
“
In 1967 the broom world was galvanised by the formation of the Nimbus Racing Broom Company. Nothing like the Nimbus 1000 had ever been seen before. Reaching speeds of up to a hundred miles per hour, capable of turning 360 degrees at a fixed point in mid-air, the Nimbus combined the reliability of the old Oakshaft 79 with the easy handling of the best Cleansweeps. The Nimbus immediately became the broom preferred by professional Quidditch teams across Europe, and the subsequent models (1001, 1500, and 1700) have kept the Nimbus Racing Broom Company at the top of the field.
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Hogwarts Library (Harry Potter))
“
Here’s a proven sales meeting checklist of pre-meeting, during meeting, and post-meeting best practices and tips to follow and live by every day: Have clear meeting goals and expected outcomes documented and stated in email before and after meetings. Put agendas that are agreed to by your customers in meeting calendar invites. Meeting agendas should start with introductions and customers’ priorities/challenges review. Meeting agendas should close with discussion and time for questions. Research the company and recent announcements and know how their business is doing. Understand the context of their industry, too. Research the people attending your meeting and identify shared interests and shared executive connections. Connect with meeting attendees on LinkedIn before meeting. Some people believe this should be done after a meeting. My point of view is that it’s an important touch point when a prospect accepts your request to connect. Make the connection, and use your connection’s response and speed of response as a gauge of their awareness. If they connect fast, then it may mean they are excited to meet with you. If they don’t connect quickly, it could mean it’s not top of mind. Both are important to know. Don’t forget to personalize the message. Reconfirm agenda and meeting attendee participation. It’s good to do this the day before the meeting is scheduled to happen. Prepare a list of discovery and qualification questions to ask the prospect. The questions should preferably be open ended. Share the questions with your internal team to get alignment. It’s a requirement and best practice to brief executives attending the meeting with you beforehand. Share with your executives the context, current situation, and everything you learned during company, industry, and executive research. Your executives are busy. Help them help you. Be clear on what their role in the meeting is. Introduce meeting attendees at meeting outset, and let everyone have a voice. Go around and have people share their role and what they hope to get out of the meeting. Take thorough notes, capturing your customer’s words. Listen more and talk less. Watch the clock to begin and end meetings as promised. Leave time for questions and discussion at the end. Recap meeting outcomes and next steps before ending the call. Send meeting follow-up notes with clear action items the same day of the meeting using your customer’s words.
”
”
Elay Cohen (Enablement Mastery: Grow Your Business Faster by Aligning Your People, Processes, and Priorities)
“
that Malfoy and the rest of the Slytherin team arrived for the match riding dragons. He was flying at breakneck speed, trying to avoid a spurt of flames from Malfoy’s steed’s mouth, when he realized he had forgotten his Firebolt. He fell through the air and woke with a start. It was a few seconds before Harry remembered that the match hadn’t taken place yet, that he was safe in bed, and that the Slytherin team definitely wouldn’t be allowed to play on dragons. He was feeling very thirsty. Quietly as he could, he got out of his four-poster and went to pour himself some water from the silver jug beneath the window. The grounds were still and quiet. No breath of wind disturbed the treetops in the Forbidden Forest; the Whomping Willow was motionless and innocent-looking. It looked as though the conditions for the match would be perfect. Harry set down his goblet and was about to turn back to his bed when something caught his eye. An animal of some kind was prowling across the silvery lawn. Harry dashed to his bedside table, snatched up his glasses, and put them on, then hurried back to the window. It couldn’t be the Grim — not now — not right before the match — He peered out at the grounds again and, after a minute’s frantic searching, spotted it. It was skirting the edge of the forest now. . . . It wasn’t the Grim at all . . . it was a cat. . . . Harry clutched the window ledge in relief as he recognized the bottlebrush
”
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J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Harry Potter, #3))
“
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.
”
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Jennifer Davis (Effective DevOps: Building a Culture of Collaboration, Affinity, and Tooling at Scale)
“
A few years ago, I led an expedition to return to Mount Everest, the mountain I had climbed aged 23, a mountain where I had risked everything and survived - just. I had always held a secret dream to return and attempt to fly over the mountain in a small one-man paramotor - like a paraglider, only with a backpack engine strapped to your body.
At the time, the highest altitude that one had been flown was around 17,000 feet (5,180 metres). But being an enthusiast (and an optimist!), I reckoned we shouldn’t just aim to break the record by a few feet, I thought we should go as high as it was possible to go, and in my mind that meant flying over the height of Mount Everest. This in turn meant we needed to build a machine capable of flying to over 29,000 feet (8,840 metres).
Most of the people we spoke to about this thought a) we were crazy, and b) it was technically impossible. What those naysayers hadn’t factored in was the power of yes, and specifically the ability to build a team capable of such a mission. This meant harnessing the brilliance of my good friend Gilo Cardozo, a paramotor engineer, a born enthusiast, and a man who loves to break the rules - and to say yes.
Gilo was - and is - an absolute genius aviation engineer who spends all his time in his factory, designing and testing crazy bits of machinery.
When people told us that our oxygen would freeze up in minus 70°, or that at extreme altitudes we would need such a heavy engine to power the machine that it would be impossible to take off, or that even if we managed to do it, we would break our legs landing at such speed, Gilo’s response was: ‘Oh, it’ll be great. Leave it with me.’
No matter what the obstacle, no matter what the ‘problem’, Gilo always said, ‘We can do this.’ And after months in his workshop, he did eventually build the machine that took us above the height of Everest. He beat the naysayers, he built the impossible and by the Grace of God we pulled it off - oh, and in the process we raised over $2.5 million for children’s charities around the world.
You see, dreams can come true if you stick to them and think big.
So say yes - you never know where it will lead. And there are few limits to how high you just might soar.
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Bear Grylls (A Survival Guide for Life: How to Achieve Your Goals, Thrive in Adversity, and Grow in Character)
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Atlanta Brave Chipper Jones said after Moyer threw a two-hit shutout against his team in May 2010. “The guy is eighty-seven years old and still pitching for a reason. He stays off the barrel of the bat. He changes speeds, changes the game plan, keeps you guessing.
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Jamie Moyer (Just Tell Me I Can't: How Jamie Moyer Defied the Radar Gun and Defeated Time)
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CIOs need to lead the department with the balanced mindsets, activities, and speed so that every level of the organization has great working relationships with IT teams.
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Pearl Zhu (12 CIO Personas: The Digital CIO's Situational Leadership Practices)
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Here’s something you may not know: every time you go to Facebook or ESPN.com or wherever, you’re unleashing a mad scramble of money, data, and pixels that involves undersea fiber-optic cables, the world’s best database technologies, and everything that is known about you by greedy strangers. Every. Single. Time. The magic of how this happens is called “real-time bidding” (RTB) exchanges, and we’ll get into the technical details before long. For now, imagine that every time you go to CNN.com, it’s as though a new sell order for one share in your brain is transmitted to a stock exchange. Picture it: individual quanta of human attention sold, bit by bit, like so many million shares of General Motors stock, billions of times a day. Remember Spear, Leeds & Kellogg, Goldman Sachs’s old-school brokerage acquisition, and its disappearing (or disappeared) traders? The company went from hundreds of traders and two programmers to twenty programmers and two traders in a few years. That same process was just starting in the media world circa 2009, and is right now, in 2016, kicking into high gear. As part of that shift, one of the final paroxysms of wasted effort at Adchemy was taking place precisely in the RTB space. An engineer named Matthew McEachen, one of Adchemy’s best, and I built an RTB bidding engine that talked to Google’s huge ad exchange, the figurative New York Stock Exchange of media, and submitted bids and ads at speeds of upwards of one hundred thousand requests per second. We had been ordered to do so only to feed some bullshit line Murthy was laying on potential partners that we were a real-time ads-buying company. Like so much at Adchemy, that technology would be a throwaway, but the knowledge I gained there, from poring over Google’s RTB technical documentation and passing Google’s merciless integration tests with our code, would set me light-years ahead of the clueless product team at Facebook years later.
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Antonio García Martínez (Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley)
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3 Proven Method for Rapid Weight Gain
Looking for a healthy and balanced technique of quick weight gain for the following stage of your physical fitness strategy ? Fast weight gain is feasible via just all-natural techniques. Also if you believe you are consuming sufficient to get weight, you might not also be making up for the additional calories shed by your exercise. A weight loss (or gain, in this instance) calculator will certainly take your dimensions, physical task degree, and also preferred weight to provide you a needed calorie consumption each day. Lots of individuals believe they require to exercise extra in order to attain fast weight gain. However, that breaks down the muscle mass without providing the body a possibility to restore itself.
Looking for a healthy and balanced approach to fast weight gain for the following stage of your physical fitness strategy? There are rather a couple of weight gainer tablets out there, however exactly how do you understand which ones are healthy and balanced? Fast weight gain is feasible via just all-natural techniques.
A weight loss (or gain, in this situation) calculator will certainly take your dimensions, physical task degree, as well as preferred weight to offer you a needed calorie consumption each day. Integrating this with your online tracking website allows you rapidly as well as quickly see if you are fulfilling your calorie objectives for the day.
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There are changes you could make while you are in the fitness centre to speed up your weight gain. Considerably overwhelming a details muscle mass team with enhancing quantities of weight will certainly optimize your gains in dimension from one exercise to the following. Numerous individuals believe they require to exercise extra in order to attain fast weight gain, however that just breaks down the muscular tissues without providing the body a possibility to reconstruct itself.
Usage of the internet calorie checking devices and also weight loss calculators to establish objectives as well as track your development. You had to look up every food in a calorie publication and also compose down your computations in a notepad. Currently, you could conveniently input the food you simply consumed right into an online calorie counting website as well as it will certainly look up the calories for you.
This might appear like an apparent pointer, yet problem obtaining weight typically suggests you are not consuming anywhere near sufficient food. Also if you assume you are consuming sufficient to acquire weight, you might not also be making up for the added calories shed by your exercise. Many individuals undervalue the large quantity of calories required to acquire also one extra pound.
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Roslyn
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We find in real projects that if stories are really Ready, the team will double the speed of implementation. And if the stories are really Done at the end of a Sprint, teams can double speed again.
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Jeff Sutherland (Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time)
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If the fitter climbers had been able to move at their own speed that day there would probably have been a process of natural selection. The front runners could have summited early, within an acceptable time frame and it would have become obvious that those who were at the back of the line were not going to get safely to the top and back. What, in fact, happened was that the climbers, particularly in Rob Hall's team, were forced to stay together, which held back the faster climbers. Everyone was now moving at a slow, dangerous pace. It inevitably meant there would be bunching at the choke points.
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Mike Trueman (The Storms: Adventure and tragedy on Everest)
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Some of the same forces have come to bear in the business world, where many companies in thriving talent-dependent industries embraced a new workplace ethos in which hierarchies were softened and office floor plans were reengineered to break down the walls that once kept management and talent separated. One emerging school of thought, popular among technology companies in Silicon Valley, is that organizations should adopt “flat” structures, in which management layers are thin or even nonexistent. Star employees are more productive, the theory goes, and more likely to stay, when they are given autonomy and offered a voice in decision-making. Some start-ups have done away with job titles entirely, organizing workers into leaderless “self-managing teams” that report directly to top executives. Proponents of flatness say it increases the speed of the feedback loop between the people at the top of the pyramid and the people who do the frontline work, allowing for a faster, more agile culture of continuous improvement. Whether that’s true or not, it has certainly cleared the way for top executives to communicate directly with star employees without having to muddle through an extra layer of management. As I watched all this happen, I started to wonder if I was really writing a eulogy. Just as I was building a case for the crucial value of quiet, unglamorous, team-oriented, workmanlike captains who inhabit the middle strata of a team, most of the world’s richest sports organizations, and even some of its most forward-thinking companies, seemed to be sprinting headlong in the opposite direction.
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Sam Walker (The Captain Class: A New Theory of Leadership)
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NBA 2K18 Wishlist - Good Badges To Deal Problems In 2K17
The NBA 2K18 release date has basketball fans hyped. The new game in the series will be the definitive way for fans to take control of their favorite franchises and players on the Xbox One and PS4. As of the features player wish to be added into NBA 2K18, we can compare it with NBA 2K17. Today, we'll list the best badges players would like to see in the latest NBA franchise.
Flashy Dunker
2K Sports has spent a large amount of time recording flashy dunk animations that look great when they trigger. Unfortunately players do not equip any of these because they get blocked at a higher rate than the basic one and two hand dunk packages. NBA 2K17 has posterizer to help with contact dunks but Flashy Dunker would be for non-contact animations. The badge would allow you to use these flashy dunk packages in traffic while getting blocked at a lower rate in NBA 2K18.
Bullet Passer Badge
Even with a high passer rating and Hall of Fame dimer you can still find yourself throwing slow lob passes inexplicably. These passes are easy to intercept and give the defense too much time to recover. Bullet Passer would be an increase in the speed of passes that you throw, allowing you to create open looks for teammates in 2K18 that were not possible in NBA 2K17. A strong passing game is more important than ISO ball and this badge would help with that style of play.
3 And D Badge
The 3 and D badge would be an archetype in NBA 2K18 ideally but a badge version would be an acceptable substitute. This badge would once again reward players for playing good defense. The badge would trigger after a block, steal, or good shot defense and would lead to an increase in shooting percentage on the next possession from behind the 3 point arc.
Dominant Post Presence Badge
It's a travesty that post scorer is one of the more under-utilized archetypes in NBA 2K17. Many players that have created a post scorer can immediately tell you why they do not play it as much as their other MyPlayers, it is incredibly easy to lose the ball in the post. Whether it is a double team or your matchup, getting the ball poked loose is a constant problem. Dominant Post Presence would trigger when you attempt to post up and would be an increase in your ability to maintain possession of the ball as long as NBA 2K18 add this badge. In addition the badge would be an increase in the shooting percentage of your teammate when you pass out of the post to an open man.
The Glove
NBA 2K17 has too many contested shots. The shot contest rating on most archetypes is not enough to outweigh the contested midrange or 3 point rating and consistently force misses. It's obviously that height helps you contest shots in a major way but it also slows you down. However, the Glove would solve this problem in NBA 2K18. This badge would increase your ability to contest shots effectively, forcing more misses and allowing you to play better defense.
Of course, there should be more other tips and tricks for NBA 2K18. If you have better advices, tell us on the official media. The NBA 2K18 Early Tip-Off Weekend starts September 15th. That's a total of four days for dedicated fans to get in the game and try its new features before other buyers. The game is completely unlocked for Early Tip-Off Weekend. Be sure to make enough preparation for the upcoming event.
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Bunnytheis
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Jack Dongarra, a researcher at Tennessee’s Oak Ridge National Lab and part of a team that tracks supercomputer speed, determined that Apple’s best-selling tablet, the iPad 2, is as fast as a circa 1985 Cray 2 supercomputer. In fact, running at over 1.5 gigaflops (one gigaflop equals one billion mathematical operations, or calculations per second) the iPad 2 would have made the list of the world’s five hundred fastest supercomputers as late as 1994. In
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James Barrat (Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era)
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The decision to partner the government was clearly a top-down decision taken by Suzuki himself, based on Nakanishi’s positive report. The speed of decision making was a result of the pressure from the Indian side as well as the dynamism and ability of Suzuki to take truly entrepreneurial risks. When asked as to why he took what appeared to most people, including the Japanese embassy in India, as an unwarranted risk, Suzuki explained that he always believed that it was people who determined how any project performed, and everything else was secondary. He said that at the time of the first meeting with Krishnamurthy and me, he was convinced that he could work with us and ensure success. If he did not have this feeling, he would not have asked the Maruti team to stay back till he returned from the United States. I wonder how many people in the world could take a decision to invest $25 million on this ground. Suzuki showed that his faith in the importance of people as the basis for doing business was better than the technical evaluations which companies made and which showed that India was not a good place to invest money.
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R.C. Bhargava (The Maruti Story)
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FOGLAMP project checklist FOGLAMP is an acronym for focus, oversight, goals, leadership, abilities, means, and process. This tool can help you cut through the haze and plan your critical projects. Complete the table for each early-win project you set up. Project: __________________________ Question Answer Focus: What is the focus for this project? For example, what goal or early win do you want to achieve? Oversight: How will you oversee this project? Who else should participate in oversight to help you get buy-in for implementing results? Goals: What are the goals and the intermediate milestones, and time frames for achieving them? Leadership: Who will lead the project? What training, if any, do they need in order to be successful? Abilities: What mix of skills and representation needs to be included? Who needs to be included because of their skills? Because they represent key constituencies? Means: What additional resources, such as facilitation, does the team need to be successful? Process: Are there change models or structured processes you want the team to use? If so, how will they become familiar with the approach?
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Michael D. Watkins (The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter)
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through any structure without detection by his prey. He was a flawless assassin. It was just before five local time when Steven settled into the plush leather seating of the first-class compartment. The Deutsche Bahn Intercity Express, or ICE, was a high-speed train connecting major cities across Germany with other major European destinations. The trip to Frankfurt would take about four hours, giving him time to spend some rare personal time with his team. Slash was the first to find him. The men shook hands and sat down. Typically, these two longtime friends would chest bump in a hearty bro-mance sort of way, but it would be out of place for Europe. “Hey, buddy,” said Steven. “Switzerland is our new home away from home.” “It appears so, although the terrain isn’t that different from our place in Tennessee,” said Slash. “I see lots of fishin’ and huntin’ opportunities out there.” Slash grew up on his parents’ farm atop the Cumberland Plateau of Tennessee about halfway between Nashville and Knoxville. His parents were retired and spent their days farming while raising ducks, rabbits and some livestock. While other kids spent their free time on PlayStation, Slash grew up in the woods, learning survival skills. During his time with the SEAL Teams, he earned a reputation as an expert in close-quarters combat, especially using a variety of knives—hence the nickname Slash. “Beats the heck out of the desert, doesn’t it?” asked Steven. After his service ended, Slash tried a few different security outfits like Blackwater, protecting the Saudi royal family or standing guard outside some safe house in Oman. “I’m not saying the desert won’t call us back someday, but I’ll take the Swiss cheese and German chocolate over shawarma and falafel every friggin’ day!” “Hell yeah,” said Slash. “When are you comin’ down for some ham and beans, along with some butter-soaked cornbread? My folks really wanna meet you.” “I need to, buddy,” replied Steven. “This summer will be nuts for me. Hey, when does deer hunting season open?” “Late September for crossbow and around Thanksgiving otherwise,” replied Slash. Before the guys could set a date, their partners Paul Hittle and Raymond Bower approached their seats. Hittle, code name Bugs, was a former medic with Army Special Forces who left the Green Berets for a well-paying job with DynCorp. DynCorp was a private
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Bobby Akart (Cyber Attack (The Boston Brahmin #2))
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By now, you’re familiar with Horvath’s clock, a way to determine someone’s biological age. Horvath’s team discovered that menopause speeds up cellular aging by an average of 6 percent. The research and resulting arguments “very, very strongly suggest that the loss of hormones that accompanies menopause accelerates or increases biologic age,” said Horvath to Time in 2016.
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Tony Robbins (Life Force: How New Breakthroughs in Precision Medicine Can Transform the Quality of Your Life & Those You Love)
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Identifying Cultural Norms The following domains are areas in which cultural norms may vary significantly from company to company. Transitioning leaders should use this checklist to help them figure out how things really work in the organizations they’re joining. Influence. How do people get support for critical initiatives? Is it more important to have the support of a patron within the senior team, or affirmation from your peers and direct reports that your idea is a good one? Meetings. Are meetings filled with dialogue on hard issues, or are they simply forums for publicly ratifying agreements that have been reached in private? Execution. When it comes time to get things done, which matters more—a deep understanding of processes or knowing the right people? Conflict. Can people talk openly about difficult issues without fear of retribution? Or do they avoid conflict—or, even worse, push it to lower levels, where it can wreak havoc? Recognition. Does the company promote stars, rewarding those who visibly and vocally drive business initiatives? Or does it encourage team players, rewarding those who lead authoritatively but quietly and collaboratively? Ends versus means. Are there any restrictions on how you achieve results? Does the organization have a well-defined, well-communicated set of values that is reinforced through positive and negative incentives?
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Michael D. Watkins (The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter)
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From seasonal splashes near Trewsbury
European eels migrate upstream;
Myriad carp, redfin perch, brook lamprey,
Dragonflies, mosquitoes, wee midges,
Pale cormorant, herring gulls, wagtails,
Swans glide round woodland tapestry,
Braided channel islands rest alone,
Arched medieval stone slab bridges,
Tree lines fête ash, alder, chestnut, beech.
Floodplains, tangled sedge reedbeds,
Owls speed above tree-covered islets,
Teaming alluvium water-meadows
Growing lavender, iris, marigold.
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Ruth Ann Oskolkoff (The Bones of the Poor)
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Once you have distilled these early discussions into a set of observations, questions, and insights, convene your direct reports as a group, feed them back your impressions and questions, and invite discussion. You will learn about both substance and team dynamics and will simultaneously demonstrate how quickly you have begun to identify key issues.
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Michael D. Watkins (The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter)
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Learning Plan Template Before Entry Find out whatever you can about the organization’s strategy, structure, performance, and people. Look for external assessments of the performance of the organization. You will learn how knowledgeable, fairly unbiased people view it. If you are a manager at a lower level, talk to people who deal with your new group as suppliers or customers. Find external observers who know the organization well, including former employees, recent retirees, and people who have transacted business with the organization. Ask these people open-ended questions about history, politics, and culture. Talk with your predecessor if possible. Talk to your new boss. As you begin to learn about the organization, write down your first impressions and eventually some hypotheses. Compile an initial set of questions to guide your structured inquiry after you arrive. Soon After Entry Review detailed operating plans, performance data, and personnel data. Meet one-on-one with your direct reports and ask them the questions you compiled. You will learn about convergent and divergent views and about your reports as people. Assess how things are going at key interfaces. You will hear how salespeople, purchasing agents, customer service representatives, and others perceive your organization’s dealings with external constituencies. You will also learn about problems they see that others do not. Test strategic alignment from the top down. Ask people at the top what the company’s vision and strategy are. Then see how far down into the organizational hierarchy those beliefs penetrate. You will learn how well the previous leader drove vision and strategy down through the organization. Test awareness of challenges and opportunities from the bottom up. Start by asking frontline people how they view the company’s challenges and opportunities. Then work your way up. You will learn how well the people at the top check the pulse of the organization. Update your questions and hypotheses. Meet with your boss to discuss your hypotheses and findings. By the End of the First Month Gather your team to feed back to them your preliminary findings. You will elicit confirmation and challenges of your assessments and will learn more about the group and its dynamics. Now analyze key interfaces from the outside in. You will learn how people on the outside (suppliers, customers, distributors, and others) perceive your organization and its strengths and weaknesses. Analyze a couple of key processes. Convene representatives of the responsible groups to map out and evaluate the processes you selected. You will learn about productivity, quality, and reliability. Meet with key integrators. You will learn how things work at interfaces among functional areas. What problems do they perceive that others do not? Seek out the natural historians. They can fill you in on the history, culture, and politics of the organization, and they are also potential allies and influencers. Update your questions and hypotheses. Meet with your boss again to discuss your observations.
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Michael D. Watkins (The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter)
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The goal of leadership is not to get teams together and chase after the speed of technology advancement, the speed is supersonic and the advancement is exponential. The goal of digital leadership is to draw the roadmaps to the digital future, leveraging technology, leverage its speed in pursuit to transform and improve service delivery, operational efficiency, employee engagement, customer experience and engagement among others.
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Sally Njeri
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MATCH STRATEGY TO SITUATION—CHECKLIST What portfolio of STARS situations have you inherited? Which portions of your responsibilities are in start-up, turnaround, accelerated-growth, realignment, and sustaining-success modes? What are the implications for the challenges and opportunities you are likely to confront, and for the way you should approach accelerating your transition? What are the implications for your learning agenda? Do you need to understand only the technical side of the business, or is it critical that you understand culture and politics as well? What is the prevailing climate in your organization? What psychological transformations do you need to make, and how will you bring them about? How can you best lead change given the situations you face? Which of your skills and strengths are likely to be most valuable in your new situation, and which have the potential to get you into trouble? What are the implications for the team you need to build?
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Michael D. Watkins (The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter)
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I took the opportunity to complain about our typical government approach of making the same mistakes again and again. I said, “It reminds me of the ancient tribal wisdom that goes, ‘When you’re riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.’ Well—in Washington—we sometimes do things differently.” I explained: When we find ourselves riding a dead horse, we often try strategies that are less successful, such as: buying a stronger whip, changing riders, saying things like: “This is the way we’ve always ridden this horse,” appointing a committee to study the horse, lowering the standards so that more dead horses can be included, appointing a tiger team to revive the dead horse, hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse, harnessing several dead horses together—to increase speed—attempting to mount multiple dead horses in hopes that one of them will spring to life, providing additional funding and training to increase the dead horse’s performance, declaring that, since a dead horse doesn’t have to be fed, it’s less costly, carries lower overhead, and therefore, contributes more to the mission than live horses, and my favorite—promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.
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James R. Clapper (Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence)
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William James said near the end of the nineteenth century, “No mental modification ever occurs which is not accompanied or followed by a bodily change.” A hundred years later, Norman Cousins summarized the modern view of mind-body interactions with the succinct phrase “Belief becomes biology.”6 That is, an external suggestion can become an internal expectation, and that internal expectation can manifest in the physical body. While the general idea of mind-body connections is now widely accepted, forty years ago it was considered dangerously heretical nonsense. The change in opinion came about largely because of hundreds of studies of the placebo effect, psychosomatic illness, psychoneuroimmunology, and the spontaneous remission of serious disease.7 In studies of drug tests and disease treatments, the placebo response has been estimated to account for between 20 to 40 percent of positive responses. The implication is that the body’s hard, physical reality can be significantly modified by the more evanescent reality of the mind.8 Evidence supporting this implication can be found in many domains. For example: • Hypnotherapy has been used successfully to treat intractable cases of breast cancer pain, migraine headache, arthritis, hypertension, warts, epilepsy, neurodermatitis, and many other physical conditions.9 People’s expectations about drinking can be more potent predictors of behavior than the pharmacological impact of alcohol.10 If they think they are drinking alcohol and expect to get drunk, they will in fact get drunk even if they drink a placebo. Fighter pilots are treated specially to give them the sense that they truly have the “right stuff.” They receive the best training, the best weapons systems, the best perquisites, and the best aircraft. One consequence is that, unlike other soldiers, they rarely suffer from nervous breakdowns or post-traumatic stress syndrome even after many episodes of deadly combat.11 Studies of how doctors and nurses interact with patients in hospitals indicate that health-care teams may speed death in a patient by simply diagnosing a terminal illness and then letting the patient know.12 People who believe that they are engaged in biofeedback training are more likely to report peak experiences than people who are not led to believe this.13 Different personalities within a given individual can display distinctly different physiological states, including measurable differences in autonomic-nervous-system functioning, visual acuity, spontaneous brain waves, and brainware-evoked potentials.14 While the idea that the mind can affect the physical body is becoming more acceptable, it is also true that the mechanisms underlying this link are still a complete mystery. Besides not understanding the biochemical and neural correlates of “mental intention,” we have almost no idea about the limits of mental influence. In particular, if the mind interacts not only with its own body but also with distant physical systems, as we’ve seen in the previous chapter, then there should be evidence for what we will call “distant mental interactions” with living organisms.
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Dean Radin (The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena)
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NEGOTIATE SUCCESS—CHECKLIST How effectively have you built relationships with new bosses in the past? What have you done well? Where do you need improvement? Create a plan for the situational conversation. Based on what you know now, what issues will you raise with your boss in this conversation? What do you want to say up front? In what order do you want to raise issues? Create a plan for the expectations conversation. How will you figure out what your new boss expects you to do? Create a plan for the style conversation. How will you figure out how best to work with your boss? What mode of communication does he prefer? How often should you interact? How much detail should you provide? What types of issues should you consult with him about before deciding? Create a plan for the resource conversation. Given what you need to do, what resources are absolutely needed? With fewer resources, what would you have to forgo? If you had more resources, what would the benefits be? Be sure to build the business case. Create a plan for the personal development conversation. What are your strengths, and where do you need improvement? What kinds of assignments or projects might help you develop skills you need? How might you use the five conversations framework to accelerate the development of your team? Where are you in terms of having the key conversations with each of your direct reports?
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Michael D. Watkins (The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter)
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As a team gets bigger, the number of links that need to be managed among members goes up at an accelerating, almost exponential rate.” In his handbook Leading Teams, Hackman reminds us of “Brook’s Law”: the adage that adding staff to speed up a behind-schedule project “has no better chance of working … than would a scheme to produce a baby quickly by assigning nine women to be pregnant for one month each … adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.
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Stanley McChrystal (Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World)
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Our mantra is that employees don’t need the boss’s approval to move forward (but they should let the boss know what’s going on). If Sheila comes to you with a proposal you think is going to fail, you need to remind yourself why Sheila is working for you and why you paid top of the market to get her. Ask yourself these four questions: Is Sheila a stunning employee? Do you believe she has good judgment? Do you think she has the ability to make a positive impact? Is she good enough to be on your team? If you answer NO to any of these questions, you should get rid of her (see the next chapter where we’ll learn that “adequate performance gets a generous severance”). But if your answer is yes, step aside and let her decide for herself. When the boss steps out of the role of “decision approver,” the entire business speeds up and innovation increases.
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Reed Hastings (No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention)
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Research on jaywalking pedestrians tells a similar story. Most of our decision-making is based on how far off a car is. We’re not so good at factoring in the speed. Experimental evidence suggests that full looming sensitivity doesn’t develop until adulthood. A young child on the side of the road and a car traveling faster than 20 mph combine to encourage, quoting a team of European psychologists, “injudicious road crossing.” Hence the need for injudiciously punctuated slow children signs. It’s not just that kids aren’t looking when they cross; they’re also not seeing.
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Mary Roach (Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law)
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The First Autonomous Teams Autonomous teams are built for speed. When they are aligned toward a common destination, they can go a long way in a short time. But when they are poorly aligned, the team can veer far off course just as quickly. So they need to be pointed in the right direction and have the tools to quickly course-correct when warranted. That’s why, before any proposed two-pizza team was approved, they had to meet with Jeff and their S-Team manager—often more than once—to discuss the team’s composition, charter, and fitness function. For instance, the Inventory Planning team would convene with Jeff, Jeff Wilke, and me to ensure that they were meeting the following criteria: The team had a well-defined purpose. For example, the team intends to answer the question, “How much inventory should Amazon buy of a given product and when should we buy it?” The boundaries of ownership were well understood. For example, the team asks the Forecasting team what the demand will be for a particular product at a given time, and then uses their answer as an input to make a buying decision. The metrics used to measure progress were agreed upon. For example, In-stock Product Pages Displayed divided by Total Product Pages Displayed, weighted at 60 percent; and Inventory Holding Cost, weighted at 40 percent.
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Colin Bryar (Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon)
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Managing when you are located far from your boss presents a different set of challenges. The risk is greater of falling out of step without realizing it. This puts the onus on you to exert even more discipline over communication, scheduling calls and meetings to be sure you stay aligned. It also is even more critical to establish clear and comprehensive metrics so that your boss gets a reasonable picture of what is going on and you can more effectively manage by exception. If it is humanly possible, you should plan to have one or more in-person meetings with your boss early on. It is essential to make face-to-face connections early on to begin to establish a basis of confidence and trust (the same is true if you’re leading a virtual team). So if this means you need to fight for the resources and fly halfway around the world, you should do it.
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Michael D. Watkins (The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter)
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The goal of digital leadership is not to get teams together and chase after the speed of technology advancement, the speed is supersonic and the advancement is exponential. The goal of digital leadership is to draw the roadmaps to the digital future, leveraging technology, leverage its speed in pursuit to transform and improve service delivery, operational efficiency, employee engagement, customer experience and engagement among others.
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Sally Njeri Wangari
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First, on a multicultural team, you can save time by having as few people in the group work across cultures as possible. For example, if you are building a global team that includes small groups of participants from four countries, choose one or two people from each country—the most internationally experienced of the bunch—to do most of the cross-cultural collaborating. Meanwhile, you can leave the others to work in the local way that is most natural to them. That way, you can have the innovation from the combination of cultures, while avoiding the inefficiency that comes with the clash of cultures. Second, think carefully about your larger objectives before you mix cultures up. If your goal is innovation or creativity, the more cultural diversity the better, as long as the process is managed carefully. But if your goal is simple speed and efficiency, then monocultural is probably better than multicultural. Sometimes, it is simply better to leave Rome to the Romans.
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Erin Meyer (The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business)
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You can do a lot to compensate for your vulnerabilities. Three basic tools are self-discipline, team building, and advice and counsel. You need to discipline yourself to devote time to critical activities that you do not enjoy and that may not come naturally. Beyond that, actively search out people in your organization whose skills are sharp in these areas, so that they can serve as a backstop for you and you can learn from them. A network of advisers and counselors can also help you move beyond your comfort zone.
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Michael D. Watkins (The First 90 Days: Proven Strategies for Getting Up to Speed Faster and Smarter)
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Never would have thought I’d be planning a shower for the girl who finally got the team’s resident bachelor to settle down.
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Siena Trap (Frozen Heart Face-Off (Indy Speed Hockey, #2))
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firing range. Non-Stackable Bomb Range Up Makes bombs, Point Sensors, and Disruptors travel farther when thrown. Primary Ability Boost = 15% Stackable Tenacity Fills special gauge automatically if your team has fewer active players than the enemy. Non-Stackable Run Speed Up Increases movement speed in Inkling form. Primary Ability Boost = 10% Stackable Swim Speed Up Increases movement speed while swimming in squid form. Primary Ability Boost = 10% Kraken form is 20% slower than squid form and gets 1/2 the boost in speed of this ability. Stackable
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Luke Neely (Splatoon: The Unofficial Guidebook)
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10% speed reduction in Kraken Form. Non-Stackable Recon Allows you to see the opposing team on your map while standing on your spawn point. Non-Stackable Opening Gambit Boosts your speed in both Inkling and squid form by 20% for the first 30 seconds of battle. Non-Stackable Last-Ditch Effort Boosts ink recovery rate (while submerged) 20% and weapon ink efficiency 15% for the last 30 seconds of battle. Non-Stackable Ink Resistance Up Reduces damage and movement penalties incurred
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Luke Neely (Splatoon: The Unofficial Guidebook)
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faster but the picture remained entirely static. The stillness of a deserted office descended and held steady as time rushed by. “When do the cleaners come in?” Reacher asked. “Just before midnight,” Froelich said. “That late?” “They’re night workers. This is a round-the-clock operation.” “And there’s nothing else visible before then?” “Nothing at all.” “So spool ahead. We get the picture.” Froelich operated the buttons and shuttled between fast-forward with snow on the screen and regular-speed playback with a picture to check the timecode. At eleven-fifty P.M. she let the tape run. The counter clicked ahead, a second at a time. At eleven fifty-two there was motion at the far end of the corridor. A team of three people emerged from the gloom. There were two women and a man, all of them wearing dark overalls. They looked Hispanic. They were all short and compact, dark-haired, stoic. The man was pushing a cart. It had a black garbage bag locked into a hoop at the front, and trays stacked with cloths and spray bottles on shelves at the rear. One of the women was carrying a vacuum cleaner. It rode on
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Lee Child (Without Fail (Jack Reacher, #6))
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Tech Live Connect | Software Update
Tech Live Connect to commercially operate in 2011, with its first base in Singapore. Since its inception, the company has been
providing optimum technology services to household and corporate clients. The company is being ran by a team of hardworking
professionals who have also made excellent customer service a huge part of their job. From providing simple computer set-up and
troubleshooting support to its client base, TLC has since then expanded its services to
Software Update
Network Set up
Network Security
Malware Removal
PC Speed up
System/application set up
Installation assistance
Device set up
Device sync
System tune-up
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Tech Live Connect
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How do we measure performance using the Lean speed concept? Keeping in mind that our success is determined by how well we keep our customers happy, we calculate the time that passes from when we begin working on the customer’s order to the time we actually deliver. We call that Cycle time. The shorter that period is, the more successful we deem our performance to be. If you take eternity, the customer will begin to sense danger, and the chance of not being satisfied with your work is pretty high. And that usually has good grounds. Is that it? Well, from practical experience it really is. Often when you delay delivering what the customer ordered, there is a list of things that may be wrong; and they include: Low morale on the part of your workforce The work being too complex for your firm Product defects discovered and are being corrected Team handling too many jobs at a time Lack of flexibility on the team to adjust to the demands of the customer Inefficient systems
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G. Harver (Lean Six Sigma For Beginners, A Quick-Start Beginner's Guide To Lean Six Sigma ! -)
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The heroic “hands-on” leader whose personal competence and force of will dominated battlefields and boardrooms for generations has been overwhelmed by accelerating speed, swelling complexity, and interdependence. Even the most successful of today’s heroic leaders appear uneasy in the saddle, all too aware that their ability to understand and control is a chimera.
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Stanley McChrystal (Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World)
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A long time ago inside a local ice rink, 15 year olds went to battle to win a game of hockey. They played for themselves, for their teams, for their coaches, for their towns, and for their families. It was a 0-0 tie in the 2nd period. Both goalies were outstanding. But one appeared to be somewhere else. Thinking. The shot came. The antagonist wasn’t aiming to break the scoreless tie. He was living up to his agreement with the other team’s coach. A coach who wanted his son to be the team's goalie. He didn’t want a new goalie that could take his team where they have never been. The playoffs. A goalie that could secure his team at the top. The coach watched the shot he bought. The goalie could have shifted, dodged out of the way, but he was paralyzed. He dropped to the ice when the puck struck his unprotected neck. The player skated over to examine the goalie. He had accomplished his task. And with the money he earned, he can buy the bicycle he always wanted. The goalie’s father was standing amongst the other parents. He was enraged that his son didn’t make the save. He felt the hard work he put into his boy slowly fade, and quickly die out. He knew how good his son was, and would be. He knew the puck struck because the goalie let it. He did not know why. I groaned as the puck hit me in the arm. I had pads, but pads can only soften the blow. I squeezed my arm. My father stood and watched. My friend fired another shot that whacked me in the throat, knocking me down. I felt dizzy. It was frigid on the pond in winter. This is where I learned to play hockey. This is also where I learned it was painful to be a goaltender. I got up slowly, glowering at him. My friend was perplexed at my tenacity. “This time, stay down!” And then he took the hardest slap shot I have ever encountered. The puck tore through the icy air at incredible speed right into my face. My glove rapidly came up and snatched it right before it would shatter my jaw. I took my glove off and reached for the puck inside. I swung my arm and pitched it as fiercely as I could at my friend. Next time we play, I should wear my mask and he should wear a little more cover than a hat. I turned towards my father. He was smiling. That was rare. I was relieved to know that I was getting better and he knew it. The ice cracked open and I dropped through… The goalie was alone at the hospital. He got up and opened the curtains the nurse keeps closing at night so he could see through the clear wall. He eyed out the window and there was nothing interesting except a lonely little tree. He noticed the way the moonlight shined off the grass and radiated everything else. But not the tree. The tree was as colourless as the sky. But the sky had lots of bright little glowing stars. What did the tree have? He went back to his bed and dozed off before he could answer his own question. Nobody came to visit him at the hospital but his mother. His father was at home and upset that his son is no longer on the team. The goalie spot was seized by the team’s original goalie, the coach’s son. The goalie’s entire life had been hockey. He played every day as his father observed. He really wanted a regular father, whatever that was. A father that cares about him and not about hockey. The goalie did like hockey, but it was a game. A sport just like other sports, only there’s an ice surface to play on. But he did not love hockey. It was just something he became very good at, with plenty of practice and bruises. He was silent in his new team’s locker room, so he didn’t assume anyone would come and see how he was doing.
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Manny Aujla (The Wrestler)
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The ability to solve emerging problems, both those day to day issues that we encounter in normal work, and those complex emergencies that hit us without warning, are pivotal to our personal and organizational survival in difficult economic times. Tactical Decision Games are short, pointed exercises to increase the speed and maturity of problem solving. Used regularly and thoughtfully, tactical Decision Games will train individuals and teams to shorten the time needed to recognize and successfully overcome emergent problems of any type.
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Fred Leland (Adaptive Leadership Handbook - Law Enforcement & Security)
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For many years, Darrel Royal was the football coach for the University of Texas at Austin. They always had great teams and winning records. Sometimes, however, when they won a close game, a sportswriter would suggest that while the Longhorns were skilled, they had been lucky on that day. Hearing it one time too often, Coach Royal finally said, “Luck is partly the residue of design, the simple act of being prepared for luck when it arrives.” And there is something else to luck, Royal said—luck follows speed. Move, and luck finds you. Move quickly, and it finds you more often.
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Mac Anderson (You Can't Send a Duck to Eagle School: And Other Simple Truths of Leadership)
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When trust goes down, speed goes down and costs go up. Distrust slows everything. Sales decelerate, customers grow cold, and team members get discouraged or drop out entirely. Distrust has hard costs. If you’re distrusted, people will actively refuse to do business with you, your pipeline of revenue freezes, and in extreme cases you shut down.
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Stephen R. Covey (Predictable Results in Unpredictable Times (Franklin Covey Set Book 3))
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Typical comments from younger and “top talent” employees: “I want to know immediately if I need to change what I’m doing. I prefer managers who just walk in and tell what I need to do differently.” “I can’t believe that some managers wait for performance review to let people know they aren’t good in a particular area. What’s the holdup?” “Just lay it on me. I don’t want to wait for feedback. And I want a manager who’s open to my feedback, too.” “I was hired in as a manager, a role I’d never had before. I’m lucky my boss pushes us to give more feedback to everyone—I get feedback on my feedback. My team is like a hungry beast. I feed them and they keep asking for more!
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Anna Carroll (The Feedback Imperative: How to Give Everyday Feedback to Speed Up Your Team's Success)
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[Winning in] India is essential. For GE, winning with India requires a new business model, one in which we are “local” in every sense of the word. That means migrating P&L responsibility and major business functions [like R&D, manufacturing and marketing] from a centralized headquarters to an experienced in-country team that is closest to the action and uniquely in touch with local customers and capabilities. Shifting power to where the growth is, putting more resources, more people and more products in the country, and integrating all elements of the GE product and services pipeline makes good business sense. This new One GE in India approach will speed progress. With an integrated team, we can develop products and services designed specifically to meet local needs and, potentially, for export to other markets. Since we’ve changed the model in India to align with the market more directly, there’s great excitement. It gives us entirely new opportunities to develop more products at more price points. This will help open up access to large, underserved markets in India, China, Brazil, and Africa while also fueling innovation that opens a door into new markets in the more developed regions of the world. The establishment of a new business model in India is an important step and I am eager to see it take off.
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Ravi Venkatesan (Conquering the Chaos: Win in India, Win Everywhere)
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AS IF THE abstracting qualities of numbers and scale aren’t enough to deal with when trying to run an organization, these days we have the added complication of the virtual world. The Internet is nothing short of awe inspiring. It gives the power to operate at scale or spread ideas to anyone, be it a small business or a social movement. It gives us the ability to find and connect with people more easily. And it is incredible at speeding the pace of commercial transactions. All of these things are good. But, just as money was developed to help expedite and simplify transactions by allowing payment to be rendered without barter, we often use the Internet as a means to expedite and simplify communication and the relationships we build. And just as money can’t buy love, the Internet can’t buy deep, trusting relationships. What makes a statement like that somewhat tricky or controversial is that the relationships we form online feel real. We can, indeed, get bursts of serotonin when people “like” our pictures, pages or posts or when we watch ourselves go up in a ranking (you know how much serotonin loves a ranking). The feelings of admiration we get from virtual “likes” or the number of followers we have is not like the feelings of admiration we get from our children, or that a coach gets from their players. It is simply a public display of “like” with no sacrifice required—a new kind of status symbol, if you will. Put simply, though the love may feel real, the relationship is still virtual. Relationships can certainly start online, but they only become real when we meet face-to-face.
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Simon Sinek (Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't)
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Chief Fabretti was trying to get up to speed before officially starting on Monday, Miriam explained, and was requesting a quick informal meet and greet with his transition team at his house up in the Riverdale section of the Bronx.
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James Patterson (Alert (Michael Bennett #8))
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Over the past few months, we have introduced a number of great benefits and tools to make us more productive, efficient and fun. With the introduction of initiatives like FYI, Goals and PB&J, we want everyone to participate in our culture and contribute to the positive momentum. From Sunnyvale to Santa Monica, Bangalore to Beijing—I think we can all feel the energy and buzz in our offices. To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices. Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings. Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. We need to be one Yahoo, and that starts with physically being together. Beginning in June, we’re asking all employees with work-from-home arrangements to work in Yahoo offices. If this impacts you, your management has already been in touch with next steps. And, for the rest of us who occasionally have to stay home for the cable guy, please use your best judgment in the spirit of collaboration. Being a Yahoo isn’t just about your day-to-day job, it is about the interactions and experiences that are only possible in our offices. Thanks to all of you, we’ve already made remarkable progress as a company—and the best is yet to come. Jackie
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Nicholas Carlson (Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo!)
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Recent technology might appear to have closed the gap between leaders and subordinates. Armed with unprecedented amounts of data, CEOs, politicians, and bureaucrats can peer into what is happening almost as it occurs. As we discussed, this information can seduce leaders into thinking that they understand and can predict complex situations—that they can see what will happen. But the speed and interdependence of our current environment means that what we cannot know has grown even faster than what we can.
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General S McChrystal (Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World)