Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Nagesh Belludi

Here’s a Tactic to Sell Change

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In Venice: The Hinge of Europe, 1081–1797 (1974,) the eminent University of Chicago historian William McNeill outlined how the Venetian Republic shaped European history. Describing the notion of trans-cultural diffusion, he wrote,

When a group of men encounter a commodity, technique, or idea that seems superior to what they had previously known, they will try to acquire and make their own whatever they perceive to be superior, but only as long as this does not seem to endanger other values they hold dear.

University of Washington’s Roger Soder quotes McNeill’s remarks in The Language of Leadership (2001) and supplies a case in point:

This is best illustrated by the technique of Jesuits who brought “new math” [including astronomy and mechanics] to China in the 1600s. They created the myth that the new Western mathematics had in fact evolved out of ancient Chinese ideas. The new ideas, they felt, would be accepted much more readily if they were seen as a natural progression of previously accepted methods.

That’s an important lesson on how to sell change: as a natural progression of the status quo.

Idea for Impact: People find themselves unable or unwilling to make fundamental changes in their lives. They tend to be particularly unwelcoming of ideas that they fear will alienate them from their core values. Tread delicately if you want effective change.

Wondering what to read next?

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  2. This Manager’s Change Initiatives Lacked Ethos, Pathos, Logos: Case Study on Aristotle’s Persuasion Framework
  3. Don’t Say “Yes” When You Really Want to Say “No”
  4. Facts Alone Can’t Sell: Lessons from the Intel Pentium Integer Bug Disaster
  5. Persuade Others to See Things Your Way: Use Aristotle’s Ethos, Logos, Pathos, and Timing

Yes, Money Can Buy Happiness

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Is you're overwhelmed, could money buy you some happiness

Harvard consumer psychologist Ashley Whillans’s cover article in the January 2019 issue of Harvard Business Review considers why the pursuit of money may not bring you joy.

As a society, we really have more time to spend than in previous societies (a result of convenience and mechanization.) Yet, she observes, we tend to use our free time to work yet more and expand our bank accounts, rather than invest that time in things that can provide us with more happiness—meaningful relationships, for example.

The article (and the related podcast) explains how to value your time over money, in particular by hiring help. Here is a précis:

You may not be able to change how many hours you work in a week, but you may be able to change how much of those non-work hours you’re spending on chores.

If you are having a really busy weekend and you have four or five hours of chores to do at home, that means you’re going to have four or five less hours to spend in any other ways that could promote meaning and happiness.

When considering how we can use money to increase our happiness, most of us think of investing it in positive experiences like Hawaiian vacations. But it’s also important to think about how to eliminate negative experiences from our day. Take small actions—don’t do anything too drastic, but just sit down and think about whether there’s anything you can outsource that you really don’t like, that stresses you out a lot, that you can afford.

Idea for Impact: Use your hard-earned money to buy time, reduce stress, and increase happiness

If you feel increasingly strapped for time, use the mental model of opportunity costs and consider earmarking a fraction of your discretionary income to hire a personal assistant. Buy yourself some more of that most valuable of life’s supplies, free time.

Start by asking your friends for referrals for a reliable assistant. Outsource your housework, shopping, errands, and other tasks that you dislike. Use the salvaged time to seek activities that bring you joy—recreation, relationships, spiritual and intellectual nurturance, or even productive work.

However, farm out your personal chores in moderation. According to the aforementioned article, there’s some evidence to suggest that people who outsource too much have the lowest levels of happiness, perhaps as a consequence of indolence.

Wondering what to read next?

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  2. Less, But Better
  3. Wealth and Status Are False Gods
  4. I’ll Be Happy When …
  5. Burt, Bees, and Simple Happiness / The Curious Case of Burt Shavitz

Inspirational Quotations #809

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In this world without quiet corners, there can be no easy escapes from history, from hullabaloo, from terrible, unquiet fuss.
—Salman Rushdie (Indian-born British Novelist)

Every error of the mind is the more conspicuous, and culpable, in proportion to the rank of the person who commits it.
—Juvenal (Roman Poet)

There are very honest people who do not think that they have had a bargain unless they have cheated a merchant.
—Anatole France (French Novelist)

If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it.
—Thomas Mann (German Novelist)

A wise lover values not so much the gift of the lover as the love of the giver.
—Thomas a Kempis (German Religious Writer)

A joke, even if it be a lame one, is nowhere so keenly relished or quickly applauded as in a murder trial.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

If you can’t stand the heat, you’d better get out of the kitchen.
—Harry S. Truman (American Head of State)

That’s the secret to life … replace one worry with another.
—Charles M. Schulz (American Cartoonist)

The most important thing about getting somewhere is starting right where we are.
—Bruce Fairchild Barton (American Advertising Executive)

Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Russian Novelist)

Let a man leave anger, let him forsake pride, let him overcome all bondage! No sufferings befall the man who is not attached to name and form, and who calls nothing his own.
—The Dhammapada (Buddhist Anthology of Verses)

High thoughts must have high language.
—Aristophanes (Greek Comic Playwright)

Humans should not worship other humans at all, but if they must do so it is better that the worshipped ones do not occupy any positions of political power.
—Christopher Hitchens (Anglo-American Social Critic)

Wondering what to read next?

  1. General Electric’s Jack Welch on Acting Quickly
  2. Broaden Your Thinking and Grow on Your Job
  3. General Electric’s Jack Welch Identifies Four Types of Managers
  4. The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy / Book Summary of “The Millionaire Next Door”
  5. Origin of the Expression “You are Fired!” [Business Folklore]

How Stress Impairs Your Problem-Solving Capabilities: Case Study of TransAsia Flight 235

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As I’ve examined previously, airline disasters are particularly instructive on the subjects of cognitive impairment and decision-making under stress.

Stress Can Impair Your Acuity: Case Study of TransAsia Flight 235

Consider the case of TransAsia Airways Flight 235 that crashed in 2015 soon after takeoff from an airport in Taipei, Taiwan. Accident investigations revealed that the pilots of the ATR 72-600 turboprop erroneously switched off the plane’s working engine after the other lost power. Here’s a rundown of what happened:

  1. About one minute after takeoff, at 1,300 feet, engine #2 had an uncommanded autofeather failure. This is a routine engine failure—the aircraft is designed to be able to be flown on one engine.
  2. The Pilot Flying misdiagnosed the problem, and assumed that the still-functional engine #1 had failed. He retarded power on engine #1 and it promptly shut down.
  3. With power lost on both the engines, the pilots did not react to the stall warnings in a timely and effective manner. The Pilot Flying acknowledged his error, “wow, pulled back the wrong side throttle.”
  4. The aircraft continued its descent. The pilots rushed to restart engine #1, but the remaining altitude was not adequate enough to recover the aircraft.
  5. In a state of panic, the Pilot Flying clasped the flight controls and steered (see this video) the aircraft perilously to avoid apartment blocks and commercial buildings before clipping a bridge and crashing into a river.

A High Level of Stress Can Diminish Your Problem-solving Capabilities

Thrown into disarray after a routine engine failure, the pilots of TransAsia flight 235 did not perform their airline’s abnormal and emergency procedures to identify the failure and implement the required corrective actions. Their ineffective coordination, communication, and error management compromised the safety of the flight.

The combination of sudden threat and extreme time pressure to avert a danger fosters a state of panic, in which decision-makers are inclined to commit themselves impulsively to courses of action that they will soon come to regret.

Idea for Impact: To combat cognitive impairment under stress, use checklists and standard operating procedures, as well as increased training on situational awareness, crisis communication, and emergency management.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. What Airline Disasters Teach About Cognitive Impairment and Decision-Making Under Stress
  2. Warren Buffett’s Advice on How to Focus on Priorities and Subdue Distractions
  3. How to Prevent a Communications Breakdown During Crisis
  4. Lessons from the Princeton Seminary Experiment: People in a Rush are Less Likely to Help Others (and Themselves)
  5. When Stress is Good

Inspirational Quotations #808

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Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.
—Abraham Maslow (American Psychologist)

I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.
—W. Somerset Maugham (British Novelist)

Real life is, to most men … a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher, Mathematician)

He who asks of life nothing but the improvement of his own nature is less liable than anyone else to miss and waste life.
—Henri Frederic Amiel (Swiss Philosopher, Writer)

Not what you say about yourself, but what others say.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

No matter how big a house you have or how slick a car you drive, the only thing you can take with you at the end of your life is your conscience.
—Robin Sharma (Canadian Writer, Motivational Speaker)

A man that speaks too much, and museth but little, wasteth his mind in words, and is counted a fool among men.
—Martin Farquhar Tupper (English Poet)

Let thy words be few.
—The Holy Bible (Scripture in the Christian Faith)

The first duty of a man is the seeking after and the investigation of truth.
—Cicero (Roman Philosopher)

I believe, if we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class. There seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant and warm-blooded to fall into this vice.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

There is no worse sorrow than remembering happiness in the day of sorrow.
—Alfred de Musset (French Poet, Playwright)

If you want to gather honey, don’t kick over the beehive.
—Dale Carnegie (American Self-Help Author)

Dying is the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to you, because someone’s got to take care of all your details.
—Andy Warhol (American Painter)

Rumor grows as it goes.
—Virgil (Roman Poet)

There is only one journey: going inside yourself.
—Rainer Maria Rilke (Austrian Poet)

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“The Business of Business is People” and Other Leadership Lessons from Southwest Airlines’s Herb Kelleher

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Herb Kelleher (1931–2019), the larger-than-life cofounder and long-time CEO-chairman of Southwest Airlines, passed away earlier this year. He is celebrated for establishing a people-oriented company culture that any leader would envy.

Leadership Lessons from Southwest Airlines's Herb Kelleher

What started as a doodle scratched on a cocktail napkin (this account has been disputed) changed the face of flying. Herb’s then-revolutionary vision of low-cost air travel boiled the business down to its essentials. The disciplined execution of this strategy broke the mold of the aviation industry, brought the freedom of travel to millions of people, and encouraged successful copycats the world over—from JetBlue to Ryanair, and IndiGo to Air Asia.

Here are some key lessons that Herb (he preferred to be called just that) had to teach.

Companies are built in the image of their founders. Herb was well known for his competitive chutzpah, his extroverted antics, and his knack for unforgettable publicity ploys (e.g. his paper bag commercial or the ‘Malice in Dallas’ arm wrestling contest.) To the flying public, Southwest became a brand infused with the unconventional, flamboyant, free-spirited personality of its boss. That culture will continue to reflect his vision even after he’s gone—the tone he set at Southwest is not unlike those set by Steve Jobs (foresight) at Apple, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield (social values) at Ben & Jerry’s, and Walt Disney (teamwork.)

Ego is the enemy of good leadership. Southwest stands as the paradigm of the power of a lighthearted culture. Herb’s stewardship of the well-being of employees started with the ego at the top. At a 1997 testimony before the National Civil Aviation Review Commission, Herb introduced himself saying, “My name is Herb Kelleher. I co-founded Southwest Airlines in 1967. Because I am unable to perform competently any meaningful function at Southwest, our 25,000 Employees let me be CEO. That is one among many reasons why I love the People of Southwest Airlines.” An ego-bound leader with no sense of humor can cast a shadow across everyone’s work, whereas a self-effacing leader who engages a genuine, self-deprecating humor can help create an environment in which employees take risks, work as a team, and enjoy themselves more. “Power should be reserved for weightlifting and boats, and leadership really involves responsibility.”

Focus on your people, they’ll take good care of your customers. Southwest’s successes are widely attributed to its highly committed and motivated workforce. From the very beginning, Herb fixated on looking after his employees, so they looked after each other and took care of their customers. And, the devoted customers ensured the growth of the business. He famously declared,

The business of business is people—yesterday, today and forever. And as among employees, shareholders and customers, we decided that our internal customers, our employees, came first. The synergy in our opinion is simple: Honor, respect, care for, protect and reward your employees—regardless of title or position—and in turn they will treat each other and external customers in a warm, in a caring and in a hospitable way. This causes external customers to return, thus bringing joy to shareholders.

Hire committed people who’ll fit your company’s culture. Under Herb, Southwest pursued job candidates who exemplified three characteristics: “a ‘warrior spirit’ (that is, a desire to excel, act with courage, persevere and innovate); a ‘servant’s heart’ (the ability to put others first, treat everyone with respect and proactively serve customers); and a fun-loving attitude (passion, joy and an aversion to taking oneself too seriously.)”

Herb Kelleher Evolved a Lighthearded Spirit and a Competitive Culture at Southwest Airlines

Hire for attitude, train for skill. For Herb, recruiting was not about finding people with the right experience—it was about finding people with the right mindsets. “We will hire someone with less experience, less education and less expertise, than someone who has more of those things and has a rotten attitude. Because we can train people. We can teach people how to lead. We can teach people how to provide customer service. But we can’t change their DNA.”

Get your employees committed. “We have been successful because we’ve had a simple strategy. Our people have bought into it. Our people fully understand it. We have had to have extreme discipline in not departing from the strategy.” Herb’s magic extended to making employees think like long-term business owners. He once reflected,

We don’t just give people stock options. We have an educational team that goes around and explains to them what stock options are, how they work, the fact that it’s a longer-term investment. From 1990 to 1994, the airline industry as a whole lost $13 billion. Southwest Airlines was profitable during that entire time, but our stock was battered. Eighty-four percent of our employees continued with Southwest Airlines stock during that four-year period. That’s the kind of confidence and faith that you have to engender, so people have a longer-term view, and they’re not trying to outplay the market every day.

Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines: 'The Business of Business is People' Southwest has never been in bankruptcy, nor has it had to layoff or furlong employees—an extraordinary achievement in the turbulent airline industry.

Stay focused on the core mission. During Herb’s era, Southwest never wavered from its core operating strategies. “We basically said to our people, there are three things that we’re interested in. The lowest costs in the industry, the best customer service, a spiritual infusion—because they are the hardest things for your competitors to replicate.” Herb’s low-cost recipe, however, did not expand to pinching on his employees’ earnings during tough times.

Herb’s Idea for Impact: “The business of business is not business. The business of business is people.”

'Nuts- Southwest Airlines' by Kevin and Jackie Freiberg (ISBN 0767901843) Herb left a colossal impression not only on the airline industry and on those who worked with him, but also on people-management as a practice.

Volumes have been written about Herb’s exemplar of how organizations can be responsibly people-centered. Read Kevin and Jackie Freiberg’s Nuts: Southwest Airlines’ Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success—it provides an insight into the unique culture and legacy that Herb shaped at Southwest.

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  2. Respect People for Who They Are
  3. The Power of Apology
  4. Three Leadership Lessons from Ron Johnson’s Debacle at J.C. Penney
  5. A Sense of Urgency

Inspirational Quotations #807

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Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.
—Richard Dawkins (British Ethologist, Atheist)

Some age, others mature.
—Sean Connery (Scottish Actor)

I know I’m no glamour girl, and it’s not easy for me to get up in front of a crowd of people. It used to bother me a lot, but now I’ve got it figured out that God gave me this talent to use, so I just stand there and sing.
—Ella Fitzgerald (American Singer, Composer)

There are three principles in a man’s being and life, the principle of thought, the principle of speech, and the principle of action. The origin of all conflict between me and my fellow-men is that I do not say what I mean and I don’t do what I say.
—Martin Buber (Austrian Jewish Philosopher)

What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.
—Christopher Hitchens (Anglo-American Social Critic)

He who approves evil is guilty of it.
—Indian Proverb

All philosophy lies in two words, sustain and abstain.
—Epictetus (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

We must ensure that the global market is embedded in broadly shared values and practices that reflect global social needs, and that all the world’s people share the benefits of globalization.
—Kofi Annan (Ghanaian International Diplomat)

Happy is he who can give himself up.
—Naguib Mahfouz (Egyptian Novelist)

In our time, when such threatening forces of deavage are at work, splitting peoples, individuals and atoms, it is doubly necessary that those which unite and hold together should become effective; for life is founded on the harmonious interplay of masculine and feminine forces, within the individual human being as well as without. Bringing these opposites into union is one of the most important tasks of present-day psychotherapy.
—Emma Jung (Swiss Psychoanalyst, Author)

Enthusiastic partisans of the idea of progress are in danger of failing to recognize… the immense riches accumulated by the human race. By underrating the achievements of the past, they devalue all those which still remain to be accomplished.
—Claude Levi-Strauss (French Anthropologist)

I think self-awareness is probably the most important thing towards being a champion.
—Billie Jean King (American Tennis Player)

I love art, and I love history, but it is living art and living history that I love. It is in the interest of living art and living history that I oppose so-called restoration. What history can there be in a building bedaubed with ornament, which cannot at the best be anything but a hopeless and lifeless imitation of the hope and vigor of the earlier world?
—William Morris (British Artist, Author)

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  4. Don’t Be Interesting—Be Interested!
  5. The Three Dreadful Stumbling Blocks to Time Management

The Truth About Work-Life Balance

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Bill Gates still doesn’t believe in taking breaks

This recent Bill Gates interview got a great deal of attention for what he considers his biggest regret—not working harder, and taking his eyes off the ball and allowing Google to develop Android, now the dominant phone operating system, which, according to Gates, “was a natural thing for Microsoft to win.”

Asked about work-life balance and if Gates’s opinions had changed from a past statement that he did not believe in holidays, Gates replied with a no. He reiterated that working without a vacation is one of the sacrifices a company has to make in its early years.

The vacation-free approach in Microsoft’s early years is legendary. In the memoir Idea Man (2011,) co-founder Paul Allen recalled,

Microsoft was a high-stress environment because Bill drove others as hard as he drove himself.

Bob Greenberg, a Harvard classmate of Bill’s whom we’d hired, once put in 81 hours in four days, Monday through Thursday. … When Bill touched base toward the end of Bob’s marathon, he asked him, “What are you working on tomorrow?”

Bob said, “I was planning to take the day off.”

And Bill said, “Why would you want to do that?” He genuinely couldn’t understand it; he never seemed to need to recharge.

In a 2016 interview for BBC’s The Desert Island Discs program, Gates revealed that he was so obsessed during the early years of Microsoft that he couldn’t help but keep tabs on which Microsoft troopers stayed vigilant along the frontlines and which ones had retired home for the night. “I knew everyone’s license plate so I could look out in the parking lot and see when did people come in, when were they leaving.”

For most overworked and overwhelmed people, life’s great tipping point is the moment they realize something’s got to give

The Truth About Work-Life Balance Hear any successful executive talk about work-life balance and you’ll recognize a pattern—they had an epiphany about the need for work-life balance. They were totally driven and single-minded for a long time, had difficulties in their personal life, and ultimately realized that they needed to have more balance in their life.

While this always makes for a stimulating narrative, the one aspect that is less emphasized is how much of their success was a direct outcome of single-minded focus. The truth is, most workaholics are successful.

Balance is Bunk: You can’t have everything—even if you work really, really hard

Some things are tough hard, and require an absolute commitment and high-level performance for sustained periods. Achieving distinction in any field requires extreme dedication, drive, and commitment to success—this is true of scholarship, business, art, music, sport, or parenting.

While it’s nice to extol the virtues of work-life balance, it must be acknowledged that balancing personal life with a career will inevitably lead to forgoing some advancement in the latter. Balance is sometimes about choosing between the two and setting priorities—it’s not just a matter of juggling on the way to “having it all.” This “balance” is something that each person has to decide for himself/herself.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. How to Leave Work at Work
  2. Not Everybody Wishes to Climb the Corporate Ladder [Finding Work-Life Balance]
  3. When Can Your Loved One Become an Important Client? [Work-Life Balance]
  4. Work-Life Balance: “Accomplish What You Want, Not What You Think You Have to”
  5. The #1 Cost of Overwork is Personal Relationships

Inspirational Quotations #806

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Love does not care to define and is never in a hurry to do so.
—Charles Du Bos (French Literary Critic)

When about to commit a base deed, respect thyself, though there is no witness.
—Ausonius (Latin Poet, Rhetorician)

The realization of our soul has its moral and its spiritual side. The moral side represents training of unselfishness, control of desire; the spiritual side represents sympathy and love. They should be taken together and never separated. The cultivation of the merely moral side of our nature leads us to the dark region of narrowness and hardness of heart, to the intolerant arrogance of goodness; and the cultivation of the merely spiritual side of our nature leads us to a still darker region of revelry in intemperance of imagination.
—Rabindranath Tagore (Bengali Poet, Polymath)

If the career you have chosen has some unexpected inconvenience, console yourself by reflecting that no career is without them.
—Jane Fonda (American Actress)

Be content with what thou hast received, and smooth thy frowning forehead.
—Hafez (Persian Poet)

There are some people whom you have in life who have the capacity for real, passionate commitment to something, and sometimes you may be passionately committed to the same thing.
—Warren Beatty (American Actor)

One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, compassion.
—Simone de Beauvoir (French Philosopher)

The will to act is a renewable resource.
—Al Gore (American Politician, Environmentalist )

Hope is nature’s veil for hiding truth’s nakedness.
—Alfred Nobel (Swedish Inventor, Humanitarian)

What orators lack in depth, they make up to you in length.
—Montesquieu (French Political Philosopher)

You can have a certain arrogance, and I think that’s fine, but what you should never lose is the respect for the others.
—Steffi Graf (German Tennis Player)

It’s [beauty] a kind of radiance. People who possess a true inner beauty, their eyes are a little brighter, their skin a little more dewy. They vibrate at a different frequency.
—Cameron Diaz (American Actress)

The biggest critics of my books are people who never read them.
—Jackie Collins (English Romance Novelist)

To be rich is not the end, but only a change, of worries.
—Epicurus (Greek Philosopher)

Since you alone are responsible for your thoughts, only you can change them. You will want to change them when you realize that each thought creates according to its own nature. Remember that the law works at all times and that you are always demonstrating according to the kind of thoughts you habitually entertain. Therefore, start now to think only those thoughts that will bring you health and happiness.
—Paramahansa Yogananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

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  4. Why I’m Frugal
  5. Mindfulness Meditation for Busy People: Stress-Beating Strategies

You Hear What You Listen For

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Two men were walking along a crowded sidewalk in a downtown business area. Suddenly one exclaimed: “Listen to the lovely sound of that cricket.” But the other could not hear. He asked his companion how he could detect the sound of a cricket amid the din of people and traffic. The first man, who was a zoologist, had trained himself to listen to the voices of nature. But he didn’t explain. He simply took a coin out of his pocket and dropped it to the sidewalk, whereupon a dozen people began to look around them. “We hear,” he said, “what we listen for.”

Source: American evangelist author Kermit L. Long quoted by Karen Anderson in The Busy Manager’s Guide to Successful Meetings (1993)

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Here’s a prayer to help you deal with annoying people. Learn from the Stoics!