Archives for September 2020

How to Minute a Meeting

September 28, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

If you’re the unlucky minute-taker tasked with recording a discussion for the benefit of posterity, remember that minutes are expected to contain essentially a reliable record of what transpired at the meeting, key decisions taken, and action items.

In principle, meetings exist for people to inform and decide, but, in reality, lots of what people say in meetings will be trivial, pointless, and unhelpful. Unless specifically required by the forum, you don’t have to scribble down each and every pearl of wisdom that ensues. Per Wikipedia, the term “minutes” derives from the Latin minuta scriptura (“small writing,”) meaning “rough notes.”

The BBC political satire Yes, Prime Minister (1986–88; prequel Yes Minister, 1980–84,) that masterly class on politics, manipulation, and being manipulated, has particularly handy advice on meeting minutes. From the ‘Man Overboard’ (clip) and ‘Official Secrets’ (clip) episodes,

A minute is a note for the records and a statement of action, if any, that was agreed upon.

It is characteristic of all discussions and decisions that every meeting member has a vivid recollection of them and that every member’s recollection of them differs violently from every other member’s recollection. Consequently, we accept the convention that the official decisions are those and only those which have officially recorded in the minutes by the officials … if a decision had been officially reached, it would have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials.

The purpose of minutes is not to record events, it is to protect people.

People frequently change their minds during a meeting. Therefore, what is said at a meeting merely constitutes the choice of ingredients for the minutes. The minute-taker’s task is to choose, from a jumble of ill-digested ideas, a version that represents the [powerful person’s] views as he would, on reflection, have liked them to emerge.

Minutes do not record everything that was said at a meeting. Minutes are constructive—they are to improve what is said, to be tactful, to put in better order.

Minutes, by virtue of the selection process, can never be a true and complete record. Minutes don’t constitute a true record.

You’ll have to maintain a Zen-like focus on why everybody disagrees with somebody and how nobody agrees to do what anybody could have done. But you don’t have to work hard to keep yourself awake either.

As soon as you’ve circulated those minutes and got them approved, you can file them away. Nobody may ever actually read them in the future.

Inspirational Quotations #860

September 27, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi

Prayer does not use up artificial energy, doesn’t burn up any fossil fuel, doesn’t pollute. Neither does song, neither does love, neither does the dance.
—Margaret Mead (American Cultural Anthropologist)

The only thing money gives you is the freedom of not worrying about money.
—Johnny Carson (American Comedian)

this is a hard world to be ludicrous in, with so many human beings so reluctant to laugh, so incapable of thought, so eager to believe and snarl and hate. So many people wanted to believe me! Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile!
—Kurt Vonnegut (American Novelist)

You have to make more noise than anybody else, you have to make yourself more obtrusive than anybody else, you have to fill all the papers more than anybody else, in fact you have to be there all the time and see that they do not snow you under, if you are really going to get your reform realized.
—Emmeline Pankhurst (British Suffragist)

Literature does not exist in a vacuum. Writers as such have a definite social function exactly proportional to their ability as writers. This is their main use.
—Ezra Pound (American Poet, Critic)

I think all women go through periods where we hate this about ourselves, we don’t like that. It’s great to get to a place where you dismiss anything you’re worried about. I find flaws attractive. I find scars attractive.
—Angelina Jolie (American Actor)

A horse that can count to 10 is a remarkable horse—not a remarkable mathematician.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

Smart is like vanilla ice cream. There are thousands of really smart people. I value eccentricity, weirdness, interestingness. Black swans.
—Ben Casnocha (American Entrepreneur, Investor)

Don’t allow your animal nature to rule your reason.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (Persian Muslim Mystic)

Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history; such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.
—Mao Zedong (Chinese Statesman)

There are people who exist in this world not like entities but like the speckles or spots on something.
—Nikolai Gogol (Russian Novelist, Dramatist)

Good birth is a fine thing, but the merit is our ancestors.
—Plutarch (Greek Biographer)

A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.
—W. H. Auden (British-born American Poet)

Treating Triumph and Disaster Just the Same // Book Summary of Pema Chödrön’s ‘The Wisdom of No Escape’

September 24, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Life often seems like a labyrinth, where you imagine that you’ll escape all its tribulations someday, and that’ll be remarkable. Envisioning that future keeps you going, but you’ll never seem to achieve it. Happiness will never come because there’s always another something that will follow the present one. The future just becomes an escape from today’s good and bad.

There’s no better antidote to this hopelessness than Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön’s bestselling first book The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving-Kindness (1991.) Chödrön’s central argument is that wherever you are and whoever you are, your exact circumstances at the moment are perfect for you—for your unfolding.

You have all that you need at this moment to awaken to your innate goodness and the goodness of the world

You can never escape the insecurities of life. Everything that you’re doing right now is your spiritual path. You don’t have to get somewhere spiritually to justify your worthiness. You’re already perfect. You’re ready enough.

Everything you’re experiencing—good or bad, joy and sorrow—is actually the perfect path for you. All the unpleasantness you are living through derives from struggling against reality.

There’s a kind of basic misunderstanding that we should try to be better than we already are, that we should try to improve ourselves, that we should try to get away from painful things, and that if we could just learn how to get away from the painful things, then we would be happy.

Use whatever is in your circumstances in your life to progress, to become awake, to become more mindful

Chödrön invites you to be accountable to who you are—and all your human frailties. Embracing all of life as it unfolds is one of the surest ways to live well. “Whatever life you’re in is a vehicle for waking up.”

We see how beautiful and wonderful and amazing things are, and we see how caught up we are. It isn’t that one is the bad part and one is the good part, but that it’s a kind of interesting, smelly, rich, fertile mess of stuff. When it’s all mixed up together, it’s us: humanness.

The Wisdom of No Escape encourages you to step out of your routine pattern of just trying to escape from life’s difficulties, and instead pursue a life of greater openness to adventure and all that life has to offer.

By stepping out of the meaningless scuffle against life’s difficulties, you can open to reality and direct your attention where it’s more likely to make a difference. Mindful awareness can motivate the full force of your presence to your relationships, vocations, and community.

Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already. … Meditation is about our emotions and thoughts just as they are right now, in this very moment, in this very room, on this very seat. It’s about not trying to make them go away, not trying to become better than we are, but just seeing clearly with precision and gentleness.

Idea for Impact: You’re all that you need to be today, but you’re not all that you’re becoming

Chödrön emphasizes that compassion cultivates with an attitude of non-aggression toward the self. “The problem is that the desire to change is fundamentally a form of aggression toward yourself.”

Prevailing over regret and taking charge of your imperfections with self-kindness is not the same as accepting blindly or making allowances for unwholesome behavior. Awakening is a matter of befriending your flaws rather than getting rid of them—letting your imperfections go than forcefully expelling them.

The key to feeling genuine compassion for others is “making friends with yourself” by developing understanding within yourself—for your own pain. Only to the extent that you can come to develop awareness for your personal problems can you be willing to “be there” for others.

Life’s work is to wake up, to let the things that enter into the circle wake you up rather than put you to sleep. The only way to do this is to open, be curious, and develop some sense of sympathy for everything that comes along, to get to know its nature and let it teach you what it will. It’s going to stick around until you learn your lesson, at any rate.

Recommendation: Read Pema Chödrön’s The Wisdom of No Escape (1991.) This short book is an unedited-for-print transcript of one of her retreats from 1989. Despite the long-winded paragraphs, there’s much wisdom about the preciousness of life and enacting your Buddha-nature. “Making friends with ourselves and with our world involves not just the parts we like, but the whole picture, because it all has a lot to teach us.”

How to Create Emotional Connections with Your Customers

September 21, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Consumers are shifting towards memorable experiences over material objects that bring happiness and well-being. Experiential consumption is increasing—the global spending on travel, leisure, and food service is estimated to grow from $5.8 trillion in 2016 to $8.0 trillion by 2030.

Businesses are responding by offering indulgences (think Apple products,) enhancing shopping experience (ordering and carrying-out Domino’s Pizza,) and creating more intimate experiences (Mastercard’s Priceless campaign) for consumers.

One particularly edifying case study is Unilever’s Persil brand of laundry detergents (Unilever licenses this brand from Henkel in many countries.) As part of the “Dirt is good” campaign, Persil’s sentimental adverts that remind “learn to be a kid” (clip,) “climb a tree, break a leg … that’s part of life” (clip,) and “dirt makes us equal” (clip) have attempted to connect with consumers emotionally.

Persil bucked the longstanding ritual of creating dull adverts for its dull products (cheery moms grabbing washing baskets and fragrant flowers and butterflies rising from the clean laundry.) Persil doesn’t focus on the detergent’s stain-busting attributes. Instead, Persil’s campaign signals that children must feel free to experience the world around them regardless of the impact on their clothes. One prominent advert (clip) presented a cheerless robot who slowly transforms into a child while playing in the open air and splashing around in a muddy pool during a rainstorm: “Every child has the right to be a child. Dirt is good.”

Even the UNICEF commended Unilever for “creating awareness of children’s right to play, the right to express themselves—in short, the right to be a child! It encourages parents to see the value of exploration, play, activity and exercise as critical to children’s development and important for full and healthy lives, even if it means that children get dirty in the process.”

Idea for Impact: Enhance how your customers see and feel the benefits of your products and services. Promote an emotional connection between products and customers.

Inspirational Quotations #859

September 20, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi

A man of sense may love like a madman, but not as a fool.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld (French Writer)

But whoever gives birth to useless children, what would you say of him except that he has bred sorrows for himself, and furnishes laughter for his enemies.
—Sophocles (Ancient Greek Dramatist)

Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity.
—John F. Kennedy (American Head of State)

The very strength that protects the heart from injury is the strength that prevents the heart from enlarging to its intended greatness within. The song of the voice is sweet, but the song of the heart is the pure voice of heaven.
—Khalil Gibran (Lebanese-born American Philosopher)

To kill a relative of whom you are tired is something. But to inherit his property afterwards, that is genuine pleasure.
—Honore de Balzac (French Novelist)

There is nothing nobler or more admirable than when two people who see eye to eye keep house as man and wife, confounding their enemies and delighting their friends.
—Homer (Ancient Greek Poet)

The really frightening thing about middle age is the knowledge that you’ll grow out of it.
—Doris Day (American Actor)

He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander.
—Aristotle (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Knowledge, like food, must be taken within limits. You must know only as much as you need, and not more.
—R. K. Narayan (Indian Novelist, Short-story Writer)

Life is obstinate and clings closest where it is most hated.
—Mary Shelley (English Novelist)

The only God resides within us: It is our wisest attitudes and actions.
—Marty Nemko (American Career Coach, Author)

A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on an installment plan.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)

Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne (American Novelist)

We are the offspring of approval-seekers. We want approval so badly that we vacillate between conforming to get it and standing out (being outstanding) to get it.
—Warren Farrell (American Educator, Activist)

I count religion but a childish toy, and hold there is no sin but innocence.
—Christopher Marlowe (English Playwright)

Easy Solutions

September 19, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

This Buddhist joke evokes the old saying, “If you find yourself in a hole, first, stop digging.”

Prince Gautama, who had become the Buddha, saw one of his followers meditating under a tree at the edge of the Ganges River. Upon inquiring why he was meditating, the follower stated he was attempting to become so enlightened he could cross the river unaided. Buddha gave him a few pennies and said: “Why don’t you seek passage with that boatman. It is much easier.”

The Stoic philosopher Epictetus said, “Don’t seek for everything to happen as you wish it would, but rather wish that everything happens as it actually will—then your life will be serene.”

Moderate Politics is the Most Sensible Way Forward

September 17, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

A sharp observation on political extremism in this 1987 TV ad by comedian John Cleese for the Social Democratic Party-Liberal Party Alliance (1981–88) in the United Kingdom:

Extremism has its advantages … the biggest advantage of extremism is that it makes you feel good because it provides you with enemies. The great thing about having enemies is that you can pretend that all the badness in the whole world is in your enemies, and all the goodness in the whole world is in you. If you have a lot of anger and resentment in you anyway, and you, therefore, enjoy abusing people, then you can pretend that you’re only doing it because these enemies of yours are such very bad persons and that if it wasn’t for them, you’d actually be good-natured and courteous and rational all the time.

I don’t belong to a political party, and I don’t think I’ll ever join one. Partisan talking points irritate me no end. I’ll watch the upcoming debates, though, because I’ll find all the onstage mudslinging and the impulsive provocations very entertaining.

In politics, everyone tries to push emotional buttons. Few seem to talk about an evidence-based attitude for making decisions and allocating society’s resources where they’ll make the most impact.

Besides, the media today have made the exchange of ideas particularly charged and increasingly polarized. The only way to be heeded to in a screaming vortex is to scream louder and resort to premeditated ad hominum.

Idea for Impact: Wisdom doesn’t reside solely on one side of the center. I am partial to those moderates whose political stance often varies with the issue. Contrary to popular perception, they aren’t tuned-out or ill-informed. Instead, they’re disposed to see both sides of the complex problems, disregard the left and the right’s excessively ideological positions, and seek the middle ground.

How to Manage Overqualified Employees

September 16, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Some employees are overeducated and overqualified—or think they are—for the jobs they are doing.

Such employees will find their roles not demanding enough to keep them occupied. They may not feel fully engaged in those tasks and responsibilities that they judge “beneath” them.

Toffee-nosed employees can create team tension. They can develop negative attitudes, such as a sense of entitlement about their skills (remember the FedEx “Even an MBA Can Do It” advert?) or resentment through boredom. That frustration and disillusion can ripple out and bring everyone else in the team down.

Here are two guidelines for managing overqualified employees:

To keep overqualified employees engaged, allow more autonomy, and assign them more creative assignments. Delegate longer-term projects or have them collaborate with other teams within the company. Though, be mindful that this may create even more resentment in the team towards the perceived overqualified employees. Discuss with the team why some people have been chosen for those special assignments.
Work together with the human resources staff and help the overqualified employees chart out individualized paths for climbing the corporate ladder and reach their potential. Find ways to help them acquire new skills and get exposure to other parts of the organization. Coach them to apply for roles that possibly do not yet warrant their experience and expertise. Expand their leadership capacity by assigning training and mentoring responsibilities.

Idea for Impact: Nurturing and keeping overqualified employees can create a strong foundation for tomorrow’s management team.

No One Has a Monopoly on Truth

September 15, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

The notion of god means different things to different people. Religions vary in identity and function. Almost all religions require their adherents to believe their specific religious doctrines with absolute certainty. These deep-seated beliefs and attitudes then become inflexible and are held with great zeal.

Closed Minds and Closed Hearts: Absolutism is Evil

The self-righteous voices of fanaticism, the cruel voices of indifference and intolerance, and the uninformed voices of hate are revolting. Religious extremists are accountable for a lot of pain and suffering in the world. Crusades, inquisitions, faith-based discrimination and persecution, religious wars, and other forms of sheer hatred of other human beings are attributable to attitudes of hate and narrow-mindedness. Nothing deceives you as much as extreme passion.

The Scottish Anglican cleric Richard Holloway reflects on these concerns in Leaving Alexandria: A Memoir of Faith and Doubt (2014,)

Religions may begin as vehicles of longing for mysteries beyond description, but they end up claiming exclusive descriptive rights to them. They segue the ardor and uncertainty of seeking to the confidence and complacence of possession. They shift from poetry to packaging. Which is what people want. They don’t want to spend years wandering in the wilderness of doubt. They want the promised land of certainty, and religious realists are quick to provide it for them. The erection of infallible systems of belief is a well-understood device to still humanity’s fear of being lost in life’s dark wood without a compass. “Supreme conviction is a self-cure for the infestation of doubts.” That is why David Hume noted that, while errors in philosophy were only ridiculous, errors in religion were dangerous. They were dangerous because when supreme conviction is threatened it turns nasty.

Idea for Impact: Beware the Danger of Religious Certainty

We, humans, tend to have a profound need for certainty. It’s easy to embrace prepackaged convictions unquestionably and deny doubt. Most people draw their faith as children from their parents and never question their beliefs for the rest of their lives.

Religious certainty can provoke limitedness in the human condition. We always have to concede that we may be mistaken and learn to tolerate others’ attitudes that may actually bother us.

Be a voice for peace. Be a voice for humanity, for open-mindedness, for wisdom, for justice.

Archives for September 2020

Wondering what to read next?

You have all that you need at this moment to awaken to your innate goodness and the goodness of the world

Use whatever is in your circumstances in your life to progress, to become awake, to become more mindful

Idea for Impact: You’re all that you need to be today, but you’re not all that you’re becoming

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Closed Minds and Closed Hearts: Absolutism is Evil

Idea for Impact: Beware the Danger of Religious Certainty

Wondering what to read next?