Nagesh Belludi

The Source of All Happiness: A Spirit of Generosity

July 8, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Thinking of Others is the Source of All Happiness

'Little Book of Inner Peace' by The Dalai Lama (ISBN 1571746099) In the Little Book of Inner Peace, the Dalai Lama writes,

In this world, all qualities spring from preferring the well-being of others to our own, whereas frustrations, confusion, and pain result from selfish attitudes. By adopting an altruistic outlook and by treating others in the way they deserve, our own happiness is assured as a byproduct. We should realize that self-centeredness is the source of all suffering, and that thinking of others is the source of all happiness.

Interconnectedness

At a 2006 TED conference, Robert Thurman gave a pithy discourse called “We Can Be Buddhas” on the Buddhist concepts of interconnectedness, empathy, and compassion. Thurman is Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University, an ordained Buddhist monk, founder of the Tibet House, and father of actress Uma Thurman.

Where compassion comes is where you surprisingly discover you lose yourself in some way: through art, through meditation, through understanding, through knowledge actually, knowing that you have no such boundary, knowing your interconnectedness with other beings. You can experience yourself as the other beings when you see through the delusion of being separated from them. When you do that, you’re forced to feel what they feel.

When you’re no longer locked in yourself … you let your mind spread out, and empathize, and enhance the basic human ability of empathizing, and realizing that you are the other being, somehow by that opening, you can see the deeper nature of life.

The Dalai Lama says that when you give birth in your mind to the idea of compassion, it’s because you realize that you, yourself and your pains and pleasures are finally too small a theater for your intelligence.

Being compassionate is a selfish thing to do.

Doing something loving for a person in your life can give you an emotional high. It helps you focus outside of yourself and on the needs of others. Paradoxically enough, this outward focus and compassionate behavior benefit you. Reiterating this concept, Thurman states:

The way of helping those who are suffering badly on the physical plane or on other planes is having a good time, doing it by having a good time … the key to compassion is that it is more fun. It should be done by fun. Generosity is more fun. That’s the key.

Compassion means to feel the feelings of others, and the human being actually is compassion.

When you stop focusing on the self-centered situation … (and) you decide, “Well, I’m sick of myself. I’m going to think of how other people can be happy. I’m going to get up in the morning and think, what can I do for even one other person, even a dog, my dog, my cat, my pet, my butterfly?” And the first person who gets happy when you do that, you don’t do anything for anybody else, but you get happier, you yourself, because your whole perception broadens and you suddenly see the whole world and all of the people in it. And you realize that this—being with these people—is Nirvana.

Eight Ways to Keep Your Star Employees Around

July 5, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Every manager should make employee retention a priority and regularly inquire, “How many of my star employees would leave my organization if they could?”

Employee turnover can be expensive. Managers must find and hire replacements, invest in training the new employees, and wait for them to get to up to speed—all while suffering productivity shortfalls during the transition. The more talented an employee, the higher the cost of replacing him/her.

Here’s what you need to do to keep your star employees around.

Identify them. Find key attributes that distinguish top performers from average performers. Then rank your team against these attributes and identify those employees who are critical to your organization’s short- and long-term success.
Perform salary and compensation research within your industry and offer an attractive-enough benefits package. Beyond a particular point, compensation loses much of its motivating power. Consider flexible work arrangements.
Understand what your star employees value and help them realize their values and regard their work as meaningful, purposeful, and important. Often, the risk of losing employees because their personal values don’t correspond with the team’s values is far greater than the risk of losing them because of compensation.
Get regular feedback from your star employees. Ask, “What can I do as your manager to make our organization a great place for you to work?” Let them tell you what they need and what they like and don’t like about their jobs. Adjust their assignments and their work conditions accordingly.
Invest in training and development. Give star employees opportunities to develop their skills and increase their engagement and job security. Hold frequent and formal career discussions to determine employees’ goals and aspirations and coach them.
Give your star employees the autonomy, authority, and resources to use their skills and do their jobs in their own way.
Keep them challenged and engaged. Make work more exciting. Set aggressive, but realizable goals. Move your star employees around into positions in the company where they will face new challenges and develop critical skills. Employees would like to be challenged, appreciated, trusted, and see a path for career advancement.
Appreciate and give honest feedback regularly. Make timely and informal feedback a habit. Don’t disregard employee performance until the annual review. Help employees feel confident about your organization’s future. Earn their trust.

Inspirational Quotations by Franz Kafka (#639)

July 3, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Today marks the birthday of Franz Kafka (1883–1924,) the German-language writer from Prague who is considered a major figure of 20th-century literature.

Kafka described himself as a “peevish, miserable, silent, discontented, and sickly” man. His life was tragic. He grew up terrified of his tyrannical father. He graduated from law school; his job at an insurance company exhausted him. He suffered many mental illnesses and felt tormented by guilt and anxiety. He did not publish much of his written work during his lifetime, had a few love affairs but never got married, and died of tuberculosis at age 40.

Kafka wrote surreal, dark, pessimistic, and disturbing short stories and novels. His fictional world’s repressive nature inspired the adjective “Kafkaesque,” used to describe absurd, gloomy, bizarre, eerie, or nightmarish objects.

Kafka’s works feature strange and dreadful incidents in innocent people’s lives. In his most famous work Metamorphosis (1915, German: Die Verwandlung,) a young man dies out of guilt-ridden despair after being transformed into a monstrous and repulsive insect. The Judgment (1916, Das Urteil) is about a son who unquestioningly throws himself off a bridge after his father orders him to commit suicide. In the Penal Colony (1919, In der Strafkolonie) is about a machine that kills criminals by inscribing the nature of their offense on their skin.

Kafka was barely known during his lifetime, but attained great posthumous fame thanks to his close friend Max Brod. Just before death, Kafka asked Brod to destroy all unpublished manuscripts. Brod ignored Kafka’s wishes, made significant changes to three manuscripts, gave them better endings, and published The Trial (1925, Der Prozess) Amerika (1927,) and The Castle (1926, Das Schloss.) Only in the 1970s were the originals of these three novels published.

Inspirational Quotations by Franz Kafka

My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

Life’s splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

A belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

For words are magical formulae. They leave finger marks behind on the brain, which in the twinkling of an eye become the footprints of history. One ought to watch one’ s every word.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure, an apparent fencing-in of what is apparently at issue.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

I can prove at any time that my education tried to make another person out of me than the one I became. It is for the harm, therefore, that my educators could have done me in accordance with their intentions that I reproach them; I demand from their hands the person I now am, and since they cannot give him to me, I make of my reproach and laughter a drumbeat sounding in the world beyond.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

How to Prepare an Action Plan at a New Job [Two-Minute Mentor #6]

July 1, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Meet with all the people your new role interacts with—bosses, peers, suppliers, internal and external customers, and your employees.

Inquire what they expect to see you accomplish in five weeks, five months, and five years. Ask,

“What should we continue to do?”
“What should we change?”
“What should we do?”
“What shouldn’t we do?”
“What are the two or three levers that, if pulled correctly, can enable us to make the biggest impact?”

Synthesize their responses and prepare a one-page “plan for action.” Keep it as simple as possible for all your constituencies to understand and buy-in.

Communicate your proposals across your organization: “Here’s what I heard from you. Here’s what I think about it. Here’s our list of priorities and an action plan.”

For more guidelines on preparing an action plan, see my article on doing a job analysis; it’s part of my three-part (parts 1, 2, 3) series of articles on how to write a job description for your present position.

Five Principles of Career Success from Intel’s Andy Grove

June 28, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Andy Grove (1936–2016,) the illustrious cofounder and CEO of Intel, passed away earlier this year. Grove was arguably the most influential tech executive the Silicon Valley has ever seen. He achieved fame and success in his adopted country and provides an outstanding modern-day immigrant success story.

Modern-Day Immigrant Success Story

Born András István Gróf to a middle-class Jewish family in Hungary, he survived the Nazi occupation by taking a false name, hiding with Christian families, and escaping the heartbreaking fate of half a million Hungarian Jewish people. After the war, when the Russians occupied Hungary and installed a repressive Communist government, Grove’s father was forced to take up menial work despite having been emaciated from torture at a Nazi labor camp.

During the brutal response to the anti-Soviet 1956 Hungarian Revolution following Stalin’s death, Grove’s family hid themselves in a coal cellar whilst Soviet artillery shells destroyed their neighborhood. Grove joined a flood of people who took advantage of the pandemonium to walk across the border into Austria. He fled to the United States in 1957, arrived in New York with less than $20 in his pocket, and settled in with relatives.

As a child, Grove was afflicted with scarlet fever and an ear infection that left him nearly deaf. In spite of his hearing impairment and an inadequate knowledge of English, he studied chemical engineering at the City College of New York and graduated at the top of his class. Grove learned to lip read and then deciphered his notes after class. He recalled to The New York Times in 1960, “I had to go over each day’s work again at night with a dictionary at my side.” He then earned a Ph.D. in chemical engineering at Berkeley and joined Fairchild Semiconductor. When his managers Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce left Fairchild to start Intel, Grove went with them as director of engineering.

High Performance Management and Paranoia

Intel evolved swiftly. As President and later CEO, Grove brilliantly led Intel’s strategy and operations, established a near-monopoly on CPUs, and played a central role in the PC revolution. During this tenure as CEO from 1987–98, Intel’s stock price rose 32% a year. After relinquishing his role as Intel’s CEO in 1998 and as Chairman of the Board in 2005, he mentored prominent Silicon Valley entrepreneurs.

Grove was famous for his rigorous, no-nonsense, confrontational, non-hierarchical management style; his approach still dominates the Silicon Valley culture. He zealously demanded high performance. In 2004, the Wharton School him the most influential business leader of the past quarter-century, over Microsoft’s Bill Gates, General Electric’s Jack Welch, and Walmart’s Sam Walton.

Grove was a conspicuous voice for reason in the immigration, offshoring, and jobs-creation debates. He was also a prolific author and public speaker. His autobiography Swimming Across (2001) recounts the first 20 years of his life—from childhood in Hungary up until his move to California. His other autobiography, Only the Paranoid Survive (1996,) describes how companies should deal with emergent competitors, transform themselves, and perhaps change the nature of the industry itself. Forbes magazine calls it “probably the best book on business written by a business person since Alfred Sloan’s My Years with General Motors.” High Output Management (1995) explained how to maximize productivity and has become a cult classic in Silicon Valley. One on One with Andy Grove (1988) compiles his “Dear Abby”-style newspaper Q&A column on work- and career-advice.

Five Principles of Career Success

Wrapping up One on One, Grove summarized his advice on career, management, and leadership with five suggestions:

FIRST—and this is very important—enjoy your work. It’s impossible to like all of it. Sometimes you’ll chafe under its unrelenting nature, other times you’ll be bored, but overall you must enjoy it. I am convinced that most people will like their work if they can see that what they do makes a difference and if they approach their work with a bit of zest, maybe even playfulness. Doing so introduces a bit of levity when it’s most needed and leads to camaraderie.

SECOND, be totally dedicated to the substance of your work, to the end result, the output; not how you got to it or whose idea it was or whether you look good or not.

THIRD, respect the work of all those who respect their own work, from vice presidents to sales clerks, from maintenance technicians to security officers. Nobody is unimportant: It takes all levels and all jobs to run a functioning organization.

FOURTH, be straight with everyone. I hate it when people are not honest with me, and I would hate myself if I weren’t straight with them. This isn’t an easy principle to stick to. There are always many reasons (better to call them excuses) to compromise a little here or there. We may reason that people are not ready to hear the truth or the bad news, that the time isn’t right, or whatever. Giving in to those tempting rationalizations usually leads to conduct that can be ethically wrong and will backfire every time.

And, ALWAYS, when stumped, stop and think your way through to your own answers!

Inspirational Quotations by Pearl S. Buck (#638)

June 26, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Today marks the birthday of Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973,) American author and winner of the 1932 Pulitzer Prize and the 1938 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Buck was born Pearl Sydenstricker to Presbyterian missionary parents in West Virginia. However, she was raised in Zhenjiang, China, where her family lived in a Chinese community. Buck grew up with Chinese customs and traditions and had a Chinese governess. She wandered through the countryside, enthusiastically absorbed the Chinese culture, and learned to speak Chinese before she learned to speak English.

At age 16, she moved to the United States for college and then returned to China where she got married. Her daughter Carol suffered from a severe developmental disability. While still in China, Buck started writing her first novel before a civil war broke out in 1927. She escaped ten minutes before Communist forces destroyed her home and burned the manuscript for her first novel. When violence spread, some American gunboats rescued Buck. After a year in Japan, she returned to China.

In 1929, on a voyage to America to arrange for Carol’s specialized care, she started writing her first published novel East Wind: West Wind (1930.) It achieved little success.

The following year, she published her best-known novel The Good Earth (1931.) In it, Buck wrote of a Chinese peasant and his selfless wife who struggle to survive a drought and eventually become wealthy landowners. The book portrayed China as timeless, unromantic, earthy, and ordinary—a view that was refreshing to Americans who pictured China as an exotic land. Her description of desire and hope, good and evil, and the cyclical nature of life amidst the protagonists’ desire to thrive against great odds made The Good Earth an international bestseller.

In 1934, Pearl S. Buck bought a farmhouse in the United States and never returned to China. She wrote two sequels to The Good Earth: Sons (1933) and A House Divided (1935,) 82 other books, hundreds of short stories and nonfiction articles, and biographies of both her parents. Her writing spanned a variety of topics including women’s rights, Asian traditions, child-adoption, missionary work, war, and violence. In her later years, Buck was very active in the women’s liberation movement and founded the first international, interracial adoption agency in the United States.

Inspirational Quotations by Pearl S. Buck

It is better to be first with an ugly woman than the hundredth with a beauty.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

I don’t wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to earth.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

Self-expression must pass into communication for its fulfillment.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

If you want to understand today, you have to search yesterday.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

Be born anywhere, little embryo novelist, but do not be born under the shadow of a great creed, not under the burden of original sin, not under the doom of Salvation.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

Once the “what” is decided, the “how” always follows. We must not make the “how” an excuse for not facing and accepting the “what”.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

Like Confucius of old, I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and the angels. I have enough for this life. If there is no other life, then this one has been enough to make it worth being born, myself a human being.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

Perhaps one has to be very old before one learns how to be amused rather than shocked.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

To find joy in work is to discover the fountain of youth.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible—and achieve it, generation after generation.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

The truth is always exciting. Speak it, then. Life is dull without it.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: a human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him, a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create—so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

A good marriage is one which allows for change and growth in the individuals and in the way they express their love.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

We need to restore the full meaning of that old word, duty. It is the other side of rights.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

To serve is beautiful, but only if it is done with joy and a whole heart and a free mind.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

Growth itself contains the germ of happiness.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

To know what one can have and to do with it, being prepared for no more, is the basis of equilibrium.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

We must have hope or starve to death.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

I love people. I love my family, my children… but inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that’s where you renew your springs that never dry up.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

Praise out of season, or tactlessly bestowed, can freeze the heart as much as blame.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

There are many ways of breaking a heart. Stories were full of hearts being broken by love, but what really broke a heart was taking away its dream—whatever that dream might be.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

Finding Potential Problems & Risk Analysis: A Case Study on ‘The Three Faces of Eve’

June 24, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The Three Faces of Eve (1957)

Risk Analysis is a Forerunner to Risk Reduction

My previous article stressed the importance of problem finding as an intellectual skill and as a definitive forerunner to any creative process. In this article, I will draw attention to another facet of problem finding: thinking through potential problems.

Sometimes people are unaware of the harmful, unintended side effects of their actions. They fail to realize that a current state of affairs may lead to problems later on. Their actions and decisions could result in outcomes that are different from those planned. Risk analysis reduces the chance of non-optimal results.

The Three Contracts of Eve

A particularly instructive example of finding potential problems and mitigating risk concerns the Hollywood classic The Three Faces of Eve (1957). This psychological drama features the true story of Chris Sizemore who suffered from dissociative identity disorder (also called multiple personality disorder.) Based on The Three Faces of Eve by her psychiatrists Corbett Thigpen and Hervey Cleckley, the movie portrays Sizemore’s three personalities, which manifest in three characters: Eve White, Eve Black, and Jane.

Before filming started on The Three Faces of Eve, the legal department of the 20th Century Fox studio insisted that Sizemore sign three separate contracts—one for each of her personalities—to cover the studio from any possible legal action. For that reason, Sizemore was asked to evoke “Eve White,” “Eve Black,” and “Jane,” and then sign an agreement while manifesting each of these respective personalities. According to Aubrey Solomon’s The Films of 20th Century-Fox and her commentary on the movie’s DVD, the three signatures on the three contracts were all different because they were a product of three distinct personalities that Sizemore had invoked because of her multiple personality disorder.

Idea for Impact: Risk analysis and risk reduction should be one of the primary goals of any intellectual process.

Postscript Notes

I recommend the movie The Three Faces of Eve for its captivating glimpse into the mind of a person afflicted with dissociative identity disorder. Actress Joanne Woodward won the 1958 Academy Award (Oscar) for best actress for her portrayal of the three Eves.
The automotive, aerospace, and other engineering disciplines use a formal risk analysis procedure called “failure mode and effects analysis” (FEMA.) FEMA examines the key risk factors that may fail a project, system, design, or process, the potential effects of those failures, and the seriousness of these effects.

You Can’t Develop Solutions Unless You Realize You Got Problems: Problem Finding is an Undervalued Skill

June 21, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Problem finding plays an important role in creative thinking

Problem finding is one of the most significant parts of problem solving. However, it tends to be an underappreciated skill. Many managers naively consider it strange to encourage employees to look for problems at work: “Why look for new problems when we’ve got no resources to work on ones we’ve already identified?”

Many courses and books on problem solving and creativity overlook problem finding. Many educational resources tend to assume that problem solving really begins only after problems have been identified.

Problem-identification lead to the invention of the ballpoint pen

The story of the invention of the ballpoint pen demonstrates the importance of problem finding. Had the inventors not recognized a problem with the existing writing instruments of their day, they would not have developed their invention.

In the 1920s, Hungarian journalist Laszlo Biro spent much time proofreading and checking for errors in others’ writings. To communicate these errors to the authors, Laszlo could not use pencils because their impressions fade quickly. He tried using a fountain pen, but the ink from the fountain pen dried slowly and often left smudges on paper.

Laszlo observed that the ink used in newspaper printing dried quickly and left the paper smudge-free. When he tried using that ink in his fountain pen, however, the ink was too viscous to flow into the tip of the fountain pen.

Laszlo then collaborated with his chemist-brother Gyorgy Biro to invent a new pen tip consisting of a ball that was enclosed within a socket. As the ball rolled inside the socket, the ball could pick up ink from a reservoir or cartridge and then continue to roll to deposit the ink on the paper. The Biro brothers thus invented the ballpoint pen. The company they created is now part of the BIC Company. The ballpoint pen continues to be called a ‘Biro’ in some countries.

Often, creativity is the outcome of discovered problem solving

Greek Philosopher Plato famously wrote in The Republic, “Let us begin and create in idea a State; and yet a true creator is necessity, which is the mother of our invention.”

One reason we fail to identify problems is that we do not stop to think about improving various situations that we encounter. Very often, these problems are directly in front of us; we need to consciously identify them and convert them into opportunities for problem solving. Instead, we tend to take inconveniences and unpleasant situations for granted and assume they are merely “facts of life.”

The grain mill was not invented until somebody in antiquity identified the ineffectiveness of two hours of pounding grain to make a cup of flour.
The world’s first traffic lights were installed around the British Houses of Parliament in London only after somebody thought of the problem of traffic congestion. In other words, up until the problems from congestion were identified in the 1860s, no one attempted to systematically consider how the problem might be solved.

James Watt invented his seminal separate-condenser steam engine after discovering an interesting problem with the Newcomen steam engine. In 1763, when Watt was working as an instrument maker at the University of Glasgow, he was assigned to repair a model of a Newcomen engine for a lecture-demonstration. Watt initially had difficulty getting the Newcomen engine to work because its parts were poorly constructed. When he finally had it running, he was surprised at its efficiency. Watt observed that the engine was constantly running out of coal because the constant heating and cooling of the cylinder resulted in a large waste of energy. Watt then devised a system whereby the cylinder and the condenser were separate. This led to his invention of the “steam engine” (or, more precisely, the separate-condenser steam engine.)

As I mentioned in a previous article on the opportunities in customers’ pain points, crispy potato chips were invented only when Chef George Crum of New York’s Saratoga Springs attempted to appease a cranky customer who frequently sent Crum’s fried potatoes back to the kitchen complaining that they were mushy and not crunchy enough. Decades later, Laura Scudder invented airtight packaging for potato chips only after becoming conscious of customers’ complaints that chips packaged in metal containers quickly go stale and crumble during handling.

If problems are not identified, solutions are unlikely to be proposed

It pays to keep your eyes open and look at inconveniences, difficulties, and troubles as creative problems to be solved. Don’t ignore these merely as facts of life.

Curiosity, intrigue, and motivation influence problem finding (and problem solving.) One of the easiest ways to develop your skills in problem finding is to ponder at anything around you and wonder why those gadgets and contraptions were ever invented. Analyze carefully and you’ll learn that the first step taken by the inventors of these objects was the identification of the problems the objects were designed to solve.

When you look around various objects in your life, think about what life was before these objects were invented. What problems could these inventions have solved? Why was the zipper invented? What problems motivated Bjarne Stroustrup to create C++? What was internet search like before Google? How did commerce transpire before the advent of coins and bills and money?

Some people make a career out of problem finding. Managers who want to know if their organizations are running efficiently frequently hire consultants to look for problems that managers do not know exist in their businesses.

And finally, if you want to become an inventor or an entrepreneur, try to start with problems you already have in your work or in your life. Ideally, identify problems shared by a large number of people to increase the probability that your inventions will be put in widespread use.

Idea for Impact: A creative solution to a problem often depends on first finding and defining a creative problem. Very often, the solution to a problem becomes obvious when the problem has been properly identified, defined, and represented.

Inspirational Quotations by Elbert Hubbard (#637)

June 19, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi 1 Comment

Today marks the birthday of Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915,) a popular American salesman, author, and philosopher from the turn of the twentieth century.

This self-described “business man with a literary attachment” had an unusual career. Hubbard was a brilliant marketer and salesperson for a soap company. At age 37, he sold his shares in the company to establish an arts and crafts community called Roycroft in East Aurora, New York. Roycroft attracted publishers, bookbinders, and artisans who, although not paid well, had a great deal of freedom to experiment with and refine their trade-skills.

Hubbard wrote six novels and hundreds of inspirational biographical essays called Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great. His A Message to Garcia (1899) was a bestselling inspirational essay on sales and marketing. His satirical newspaper The Philistine: A Periodical of Protest had a monthly circulation of over 100,000.

In 1915, Hubbard died on a voyage from New York to Liverpool aboard the RMS Lusitania when a German submarine torpedoed it off the coast of Ireland. He is the author of “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” a popular proverb that urges optimism in the face of difficulty.

Inspirational Quotations by Elbert Hubbard

The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

The happiness of this life depends less on what befalls you than the way in which you take it.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

The ineffable joy of forgiving and being forgiven forms an ecstasy that might well arouse the envy of the gods.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Be pleasant until ten o’clock in the morning and the rest of the day will take care of itself.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires a great deal of strength to decide what to do.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Live truth instead of professing it.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Never explain—your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyhow.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Do not take life too seriously—you will never get out of it alive.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Folks who never do any more than they get paid for, never get paid for anymore than they do.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Where parents do too much for their children, the children will not do much for themselves.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

The path of least resistance is what makes rivers run crooked.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Simply be filled with the thought of good, and it will radiate—you do not have to bother about it, any more than you need trouble about your digestion.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

If you err it is not for me to punish you. We are punished by our sins not for them.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

The best way to prepare for life is to begin to live.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

We find what we expect to find, and we receive what we ask for.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

He picked up the lemons that Fate had sent him and started a lemonade-stand.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Money never made a fool of anybody; it only shows them up.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Habit is a form of exercise.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

The cheerful loser is the winner.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Genius is often only the power of making continuous efforts. The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it—so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it. How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience, would have achieved success. As the tide goes clear out, so it comes clear in. In business sometimes prospects may seem darkest when really they are on the turn. A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success. There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Anyone who idolizes you is going to hate you when he discovers that you are fallible. He never forgives. He has deceived himself, and he blames you for it.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

What others say of me matters little, what I myself say and do matters much.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

People who are able to do their own thinking should not allow others to do it for them.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

A retentive memory may be a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

The reason men oppose progress is not that they hate progress, but that they love inertia.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

If you want work well done, select a busy man; the other kind has no time.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Character is the result of two things: mental attitude and the way we spend our time.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

I believe in my own divinity—and yours.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can’t be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Constant effort and frequent mistakes are the stepping stones of genius.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Some men succeed by what they know; some by what they do; and a few by what they are.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Knowledge is the distilled essence of our intuitions, corroborated by experience.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Luck is tenacity of purpose.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Life is a compromise between fate and free will.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Your friend is who man who knows all about you, and still likes you.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Lessons from Amazon: ‘Mock Press Release’ Discipline to Sell an Idea

June 17, 2016 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

If you have a brilliant idea at work, the modern workplace demands that you distill your ideas into a killer PowerPoint presentation to enlighten, entertain (with animations and special effects,) and convince your audience.

As I mentioned in my previous blog article, presentations may make ineffective communication tools. They tend to promote “a seductive laziness of thought that is anti-rigor, anti-elegance, and—most damaging—anti-audience.”

Amazon’s corporate culture agrees. In Brad Stone’s The Everything Store, former Amazon executive Jeff Holden commented that “PowerPoint is a very imprecise communication mechanism. It is fantastically easy to hide between bullet points. You are never forced to express your thoughts completely.”

Instead of PowerPoint presentations, Amazon uses a narrative format called the ‘Mock Press Release.’ According to this disciplined approach, for every new feature, product, or service that employees intend to pitch within their divisions, they must produce a press release-style document wherein a hypothetical Amazon customer would first learn about the feature.

Amazon contends that if something isn’t interesting enough for a customer and can’t be eloquently expressed in a mock press release format, Amazon probably shouldn’t invest in the idea. Brad Stone’s The Everything Store mentions,

Bezos announced that employees could no longer use such corporate crutches and would have to write their presentations in prose, in what he called narratives. … He wanted people thinking deeply and taking the time to express their thoughts cogently.

Bezos refined the formula even further. Every time a new feature or product was proposed, he decreed that the narrative should take the shape of a mock press release. The goal was to get employees to distill a pitch into its purest essence, to start from something the customer might see—the public announcement—and work backward.

Amazon’s famously customer-oriented culture argues that this disciplined innovation forces all ideas to be rationalized from the customers’ perspective. Therefore, Amazon encourages it’s employees to write these mock press releases in what’s internally called “Oprah-speak” (how the idea would be explained plainly on The Oprah Winfrey Show) rather than in “geek speak.”

Rather than have employees present their ideas using PowerPoint decks, attendees receive copies of multi-page narratives (as opposed to the one-page format used at Procter & Gamble) and study the ideas before ensuing debate and decision.

On Quora, former Amazon executive Ian McAllister argued the advantages of this narrative form:

We try to work backwards from the customer, rather than starting with an idea for a product and trying to bolt customers onto it. While working backwards can be applied to any specific product decision, using this approach is especially important when developing new products or features.

McAllister also provided a sample outline for the Amazon mock press release,

Heading – Name the product in a way the reader (i.e. your target customers) will understand.

Sub-Heading – Describe who the market for the product is and what benefit they get. One sentence only underneath the title.

Summary – Give a summary of the product and the benefit. Assume the reader will not read anything else so make this paragraph good.

Problem – Describe the problem your product solves.

Solution – Describe how your product elegantly solves the problem.

Quote from You – A quote from a spokesperson in your company.

How to Get Started – Describe how easy it is to get started.

Customer Quote – Provide a quote from a hypothetical customer that describes how they experienced the benefit.

Closing and Call to Action – Wrap it up and give pointers where the reader should go next.

Also see:

Procter & Gamble’s ‘One-Page Memo’ discipline to sell an idea
STAR technique to answer interview questions. This story-telling format can help narrate direct, meaningful, personalized experiences that best demonstrate your qualifications.

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