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Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Archives for July 2022

Inspirational Quotations #954

July 17, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi

A marriage is no amusement but a solemn act, and generally a sad one.
—Queen Victoria (British Royal)

The inability of those in power to still the voices of their own consciences is the great force leading to change.
—Kenneth Kaunda (Zambian Statesman)

Liberals feel unworthy of their possessions. Conservatives feel they deserve everything they’ve stolen.
—Mort Sahl (American Comedian)

Art is something that lies in the slender margin between the real and the unreal.
—Monzaemon Chikamatsu (Japanese Dramatist)

A leader has two important characteristics; first, he is going somewhere; second, he is able to persuade other people to go with him.
—Maximilien Robespierre (French Revolutionary)

A man big enough to be humble appears more confident than the insecure man who feels compelled to call attention to his accomplishments. A little modesty goes a long way.
—David J. Schwartz (American Self-help Author)

Never be so focused on what you’re looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.
—Ann Patchett (American Novelist)

The concentration and dedication- the intangibles are the deciding factors between who won and who lost.
—Tom Seaver (American Baseball Player)

It is faith among men that holds the moral elements of society together, as it is faith in God that binds the world to his throne.
—William M. Evarts (American Lawyer, Politician)

I look forward to being older, when what you look like becomes less and less an issue and what you are is the point.
—Susan Sarandon (American Actress)

Understanding brings control.
—Isaac Bonewits (American Neopagan)

If the existence of human beings leads to nothing, what is all this comedy about?
—Camille Flammarion (French Astronomer)

It is impossible to win the race unless you venture to run, impossible to win the victory unless you dare to battle.
—Richard DeVos (American Businessman, Philanthropist)

Individuality is only possible if it unfolds from wholeness.
—David Bohm (American Physicist)

Obstacles often are not personal attacks; they are muscle builders.
—Anne Wilson Schaef (American Clinical Psychologist)

Women love the lie that saves their pride, but never an unflattering truth.
—Gertrude Atherton (American Novelist)

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotations

Is The Customer Always Right?

July 14, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

No matter how finicky or rude a customer is, many businesses make employees treat bad customers with unquestioned respect or risk reprobation—even getting sacked.

Per the well-worn business adage, is “the customer is always right?” No, they’re not. Sometimes they’re wrong, and they need to be told so.

Your goal should be to do business with people that you enjoy doing business with. Some customers simply aren’t good customers. They don’t follow directions and complain irrationally. They have unreasonable expectations, and they treat your people rudely.

Idea for Impact: A prudent maxim is, “the customer is usually right.” Put the customer first, but don’t get mistreated by them. Putting the customer first doesn’t mean putting employees second. As a business, you must let customers be wrong with respect and dignity; but employees should be authorized to caution some customers, “After due consideration, we believe your actions are unacceptable. Persist, and we’d choose to lose your business.” Some bad customers are just bad for your business.

Almost always, though, unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning; they can especially offer an honest assessment of the expectations you’re setting. Customer satisfaction with a transaction depends on their expectations going into it.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Avoid Control Talk
  2. Beware of Narcissists’ Reality Twists and Guilt Trips
  3. Why New Expatriate Managers Struggle in Asia: Confronting the ‘Top-Down’ Work Culture
  4. Escape the People-Pleasing Trap
  5. You’re Worthy of Respect

Filed Under: Managing People, Mental Models Tagged With: Assertiveness, Attitudes, Conflict, Customer Service, Getting Along, Likeability, Persuasion, Problem Solving

The #1 Learning from Sun Tzu’s Art of War: Avoid Battle

July 11, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The #1 Learning from Sun Tzu's Art of War: Avoid Battle

The Art of War, Chinese strategist-philosopher Sun Tzu’s treatise on military strategy, is studied not so much for the advice it gives but for the state of mind it encourages. Developed in only six thousand Chinese characters and 25 pages of text, this way of thinking has held vast sway in such fields as military planning, strategic management, and negotiating. “Every battle is won or lost before it is fought.”

Something exceptional about the Art of War is the extent to which it’s devoted to methodically avoiding battle altogether. War isn’t something to be entered rashly or for petty reasons. “A sovereign should not start a war out of anger, nor should a general give battle out of rage. While anger can revert to happiness and rage to delight, a nation that has been destroyed cannot be restored, nor can the dead be brought back to life.”

'The Art of War' by Ralph D. Sawyer (ISBN 081331951X) Nor is war’s dominant purpose to cause physical destruction to an enemy. Instead, the pinnacle of military skill is to conquer one’s opponent strategically—by penetrating his alliances, rattling his plans, and coercing him diplomatically—without ever resorting to armed combat. “Why destroy,” Sun Tzu poses, “when you can win by stealth and cunning? To subdue the enemy’s forces without fighting is the summit of skill.”

Sun Tzu’s insistence that an enlightened strategist can attain victory without fighting echoes the foundational Taoist doctrine of “non-action (Wu-Wei.”) Armed conflict, therefore, is the last resort. War in itself represents a significant defeat. As a matter of course, Sun Tzu allocates a good chunk of the Art of War to the line of combat and attack. A savvy general must, however, take every accessible measure to gain victory swiftly, with minimal casualties and suffering for both sides. “The best approach is to attack the other side’s strategy; next best is to attack his alliances; next best is to attack his soldiers; the worst is to attack cities.”

Again and again, through implication, Sun-Tzu’s war document posits peace and restraint—the avoidance of battle—as the utmost victory. To fight at all, Sun-Tzu insists, is already a substantial loss, much worse than losing in war.

Idea for Impact: The Art of War is a worthy course on conflict management because avoiding confrontation requires more remarkable skill than winning on the battlefield.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Making the Nuances Count in Decisions
  2. Managerial Lessons from the Show Business: Summary of Leadership from the Director’s Chair
  3. The Sensitivity of Politics in Today’s Contentious Climate
  4. How to Mediate in a Dispute
  5. Confirm Key Decisions in Writing

Filed Under: Managing People, Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Assertiveness, Conflict, Critical Thinking, Getting Along, Negotiation, Persuasion, Social Skills

Inspirational Quotations #953

July 10, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi

I am very cautious of people who are absolutely right, especially when they are vehemently so.
—Michael Palin (English Actor, Writer, Television Traveler)

Human it is to have compassion on the unhappy.
—Giovanni Boccaccio (Italian Writer, Poet)

In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.
—John of the Cross (Spanish Roman Catholic Mystic)

Real life seems to have no plots.
—Ivy Compton-Burnett (English Novelist)

Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore; only the life I have lived. The pain now is part of the happiness then.
—Anthony Hopkins (Welsh-American Actor)

If man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted should betray his trust, and, in short, of coming eventually to hopeless misery. He would break down, at last, as every good fortune, as every dynasty, as every civilization does. In place of this we have death.
—Charles Sanders Peirce (American Philosopher)

A mind fallow becomes overgrown with the weeds of confusion and forgetfulness.
—Mick Burns (American Clergyman)

We are, to put it mildly, in a mess, and there is a strong chance that we shall have exterminated ourselves by the end of the century. Our only consolation will have to be that, as a species, we have had an exciting term of office.
—Desmond Morris (English Ethologist, Writer)

I have found no greater satisfaction than achieving success through honest dealing and strict adherence to the view that, for you to gain, those you deal with should gain as well.
—Alan Greenspan (American Economist)

If you want to know about a man you can find out an awful lot by looking at who he married.
—Kirk Douglas (American Actor)

Books – the best antidote against the marsh-gas of boredom and vacuity.
—George Steiner (American Culture Critic)

Always give in charity to people of good conduct.
—The Jataka Tales (Genre of Buddhist Literature)

He who wonders discovers that this in itself is wonder.
—M. C. Escher (Dutch Artist)

Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.
—Russell Baker (American Journalist, Humorist)

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotations

How to … Make a Dreaded Chore More Fun

July 7, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

If everyday chores feel like a drag and you don’t have the motivation to do anything but be on your phone and laze around, consider the following actions that have most benefited my clients:

  • Find a friend you can talk to long-distance while you both tackle household chores. You can keep each other accountable.
  • Challenge yourself to beat the clock. Set a time to complete the task, and see how much ahead you can get it done.
  • Do “three-minute tidy” routines throughout the day. Choose a room or clutter magnet and go at it for three minutes. Sprucing up as-you-go throughout the day is more agreeable than a long list of must-dos that must be tackled at once.
  • Begin a dreaded chore in the morning or at the earliest you can. So the rest of the day is free for having some fun. The sooner you check off your to-do list, the more motivated you tend to feel.
  • Embrace the mess. It’s okay is good enough. Tolerate some clutter from time to time and excuse yourself for not getting all the chores done or having a perfect home. Think about it as a form of prioritization.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Five Ways … You Could Prevent Clutter in the First Place
  2. Get Unstuck and Take Action Now
  3. A Guaranteed Formula for Success: Identify Your #1 Priority and Finish It First
  4. Personal Energy: How to Manage It and Get More Done // Summary of ‘The Power of Full Engagement’
  5. The Mental Junkyard Hour

Filed Under: Living the Good Life, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Clutter, Discipline, Getting Things Done, Motivation, Procrastination, Productivity, Simple Living, Time Management

What if Something Can’t Be Measured

July 4, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

During a September-2021 Airlines Confidential podcast (via Gary Leff’s View from the Wing,) former Spirit Airlines CEO Ben Baldanza told an exciting story about the airline industry’s systematic approach to reckon if potential new routes are economically feasible:

For the most part, airlines rely on data—required and reported by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics—on ticket purchases that show the number of people flying a given route and what price. For example, New Orleans, which is home to one of the largest Honduran populations in the U.S., has not had direct service to Honduras. Spirit Airlines will therefore analyze data from Sabre Market Intelligence for 2019 showing O&D (Origin and Destination) traffic between New Orleans and Honduras.

Sometimes, though, there’s no data on historical demand on a route, such as when Spirit Airlines was considering service to Armenia, Colombia. There hadn’t ever been a U.S. carrier flying into the airport, so there wasn’t available traffic data Spirit could access. Instead, Spirit looked at telephone data and migrant remittance statistics to get a sense of ties between the U.S. and the Latin American city. Spirit studied the frequency with which people were calling friends and relatives and how much money and how frequently money was being remitted as a reliable metric to determine if the new route was viable.

Spirit Airlines relies heavily on leisure bookings, especially visiting friends and relatives (VFR) traffic. In the absence of historical yield data for a route being considered, Spirit used fund transfers to Latin America as a stand-in variable.

A surrogate metric or proxy metric is exactly that—a substitute used in place of a variable of interest when that variable can’t be measured directly or is difficult to measure. For example, per-capita GDP is often a proxy for the standard of living, and the value of a house is a stand-in for the household’s wealth. Freight tonnage is often a proxy for economic activity.

Idea for Impact: Relying on intuition for sound decision-making isn’t sustainable, so folks need a systematic approach to making those decisions. Use meaningful proxy and surrogate metrics in your decisions to help overcome inherent biases with what can’t be measured.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. The Data Never “Says”
  2. Question the Now, Imagine the Next
  3. Making Tough Decisions with Scant Data
  4. Situational Blindness, Fatal Consequences: Lessons from American Airlines 5342
  5. Be Smart by Not Being Stupid

Filed Under: Mental Models, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Biases, Critical Thinking, Decision-Making, Persuasion, Problem Solving, Thinking Tools, Thought Process

Inspirational Quotations #952

July 3, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi

Integrity is so perishable in the summer months of success.
—Vanessa Redgrave (British Actress)

Most people are so busy knocking themselves out trying to do everything they think they should do, they never get around to what they want to do.
—Kathleen Winsor (American Novelist)

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.
—Frederick Douglass (American Abolitionist)

Good has but one enemy, the evil; but the evil has two enemies, the good and itself.
—Johannes von Muller (Swiss Historian)

Facts that challenge basic assumptions—and thereby threaten people’s livelihood and self-esteem—are simply not absorbed. The mind does not digest them.
—Daniel Kahneman (American-Israeli Psychologist, Economist)

When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.
—Willie Nelson (American Country Musician)

We must go beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths and intruded depths of the wilderness and travel and explore and tell the world the glories of our journey.
—John Hope Franklin (American Historian)

The meaning of life is that it is to be lived, and it is not to be traded and conceptualized and squeezed into a pattern of systems.
—Bruce Lee (American Martial Artist)

A friend is a lot of things, but a critic he isn’t.
—Bert Williams (American Entertainer)

We should not lose ourselves in vainglorious sohemes for changing human nature all over the planet. Rather, we should learn to view ourselves with a sense of proportion and Christian humility before the enormous complexity of the world in which it has been given us to live.
—George F. Kennan (American Diplomat, Historian)

Human love is often but the encounter of two weaknesses.
—Francois Mauriac (French Novelist)

Let us not take ourselves too seriously. None of us has a monopoly on wisdom.
—Queen Elizabeth II (Queen of United Kingdom)

Anyone with gumption and a sharp mind will take the measure of two things: what’s said and what’s done.
—Seamus Heaney (Irish Poet, Playwright)

The heart has eyes which the brain knows nothing of.
—Charles Henry Parkhurst (American Clergyman)

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotations

Why Groups Cheat: Complicity and Collusion

July 2, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

News broke out that Ernst & Young revealed this week that its employees cheated on ethics exams. The accounting behemoth is being fined $100 million. That’s one of the biggest fines ever levied against an audit firm.

It’s absurd that specialists responsible for keeping things straight and steering moral enterprise cheated on ethics exams! Ernst & Young’s leadership evidently disregarded the internal reports about the cheating. Perhaps because when people identify so strongly with a group, they’re much more swayed to view the group’s actions positively and accept that group’s norms.

Research by Vanderbilt University’s Jessica Kennedy and colleagues suggests that high-flying people are sometimes more inclined than low-ranking people to adopt what their group recommends, even when it represents an ethics breach. Power sometimes provokes people to so strongly want to identify with their group that they’re willing to overlook when the group’s collective actions cross an ethical line. This affinity is, therefore, urged to sustain transgression instead of stopping its spread, especially when the odds of being caught and punished are slim.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Power Corrupts, and Power Attracts the Corruptible
  2. The Poolguard Effect: A Little Power, A Big Ego!
  3. Shrewd Leaders Sometimes Take Liberties with the Truth to Reach Righteous Goals
  4. The Enron Scandal: A Lesson on Motivated Blindness
  5. Power Inspires Hypocrisy

Filed Under: Business Stories, Leadership, Managing People, Mental Models Tagged With: Discipline, Ethics, Getting Ahead, Integrity, Leadership, Motivation, Psychology, Role Models

Stop Trying to Fix Things, Just Listen!

July 1, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

In these distraction-packed times, it’s harder than ever to create the mental and physical space necessary to really listen—actively listen—to another person.

A common listening pitfall is trying to have all the answers. Instead of fully hearing out a friend, you’re scrolling through your brain, being all frustrated that this problem has an obvious solution and concocting a hasty fix.

As a listener, your most important job is to listen with curiosity and immerse yourself in the person’s message. Just try to understand the person and listen to their feelings. Validate their suffering, take their perspective, and let them know you understand. That’s often what people want most.

Idea for Impact: To be a better listener, talk with each other about the ways they’d like you to give support. People have different ways in which they prefer to seek and provide support.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Signs Your Helpful Hand Might Stray to Sass
  2. How to … Address Over-Apologizing
  3. Avoid Trigger Words: Own Your Words with Grace and Care
  4. “Are We Fixing, Whinging, or Distracting?”
  5. Silence Speaks Louder in Conversations

Filed Under: Effective Communication, Managing People, Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Conversations, Etiquette, Getting Along, Listening, Social Life, Social Skills

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About: Nagesh Belludi [hire] is a St. Petersburg, Florida-based freethinker, investor, and leadership coach. He specializes in helping executives and companies ensure that the overall quality of their decision-making benefits isn’t compromised by a lack of a big-picture understanding.

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Unless otherwise stated in the individual document, the works above are © Nagesh Belludi under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. You may quote, copy and share them freely, as long as you link back to RightAttitudes.com, don't make money with them, and don't modify the content. Enjoy!