Posted in Business, Challenges, Communicating, Creativity, Life, Management, Managing, Problem Solving, leadership on August 31, 2007 | 4 Comments »
Never tell people how to do things.
Tell them what to do and
they will surprise you
with their ingenuity.
General George S. Patton, Jr.
In the physical world we use levers to multiply our physical strength. In the social world, managers fulfill the same function with respect to organizational effort. Like well placed levers, a manager can enable greater [...]
Posted in Business, Challenges, Change, Decisions, Life, Management, Managing, Self Reflection on August 30, 2007 | 2 Comments »
A perfect method for adding drama to life
is to wait until the deadline looms large.
Alyce P. Cornyn-Selby
Between the assigning and the deadline there exists a measurable, finite amount of time. From start to finish each moment is like another when measured by the tick of the clock, but worlds apart when tallied by the [...]
Posted in Challenges, Change, Life, Management, Self Reflection on August 29, 2007 | 3 Comments »
I do not pretend to know
what many ignorant men are sure of.
Clarence Darrow
We have to know a lot, to proudly state we don’t know something. There’s no paradox here. When we live in lush green valleys we can see all of our surroundings. It’s not until we painfully ascend the slopes that [...]
Posted in Business, Change, Creativity, Decisions, Life, Management, Managing, Self Reflection on August 28, 2007 | 2 Comments »
One should count each day
a separate life.
Seneca
Yesterday is but a memory, forever beyond our reach. Whatever happened, whether right or wrong, fair or foul, it is the way it is forever. Regrets and what ifs are all for naught. It is. We made it so.
Remember it? Yes! Learn from it? Of course! But it’s [...]
Posted in Challenges, Decisions, Life, Management, Managing on August 27, 2007 | 2 Comments »
If you want to build a ship,
don’t drum up the men to gather wood,
divide the work and give orders.
Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
When a child sees another on a bike and dreams of themselves there, then the falls of first attempts, fail as obstacles to progress.
Every [...]
Posted in Creativity, Decisions, Problem Solving, Puzzles, jiggler on August 26, 2007 | 3 Comments »
Good Morning!
Here’s an easier one than last week’s offering.
You’re sitting across from a friend. There are 23 peanuts between the two of you.
You go first, you’re allowed to remove (and eat if you wish) either one, two or three of the peanuts.
Then your friend can do the same thing, she can take 0ne, two or [...]
Posted in Challenges, Creativity, Management, Managing, jiggler on August 25, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Well, it’s time to provide an answer, and the reasoning behind it, for the first Jiggler.
Before we do that, some responses to the answers proposed by various readers.
Robert Rishchynski suggested that ‘He is pointing the LASER at the surface of the model.’ — well, that was a given, the question though related to what Lunar [...]
Posted in Business, Challenges, Change, Creativity, Innovation, Management, leadership on August 24, 2007 | 8 Comments »
Reward excellent failures,
Punish mediocre successes.
Phil Daniels
Somewhere between the school yard and the safety of the corporate cubicle we lose the bright badge of childhood’s courage. There was once a time – when falling out the tree was recognized as the only way to learn to climb.
Today? We shy away from anything that poses [...]
Posted in Business, Creativity, Life, Self Reflection on August 23, 2007 | 5 Comments »
It takes a lot of time to be a genius,
you have to sit around so much doing nothing,
really doing nothing.
Gertrude Stein
In our increasingly connected world, there is little time for doing nothing.
When you are disturbed by a cell phone ringing/beeping/chiming in the stall beside you, you might suspect things have gone too far.
But [...]
Posted in Challenges, Change, Creativity, Life, Management on August 22, 2007 | 1 Comment »
Little minds are interested in the extraordinary;
Great minds in the commonplace.
Elbert Hubbard
Being interested in what stands out against the pattern of our daily lives is easy, perhaps even unavoidable. The unusual has an inherent attraction, the mundane is almost invisible.
To escape notice in the wild, all animals need do – is stand still. Their [...]
