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Ideas for Impact

Nagesh Belludi

Inspirational Quotations #315

March 13, 2010 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.
—John Wooden (American Sportsperson)

Adversity reveals genius, prosperity conceals it.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) (Roman Poet)

Wisdom is divided into two parts: (a) having a great deal to say, and (b) not saying it.
—Anonymous

The test of a man is how much he can bear and how much he can share and how soon he confesses a mistake and makes amends for it.
—J. P. Vaswani (Indian Hindu Philosopher)

With confidence, you can reach truly amazing heights; without confidence, even the simplest accomplishments are beyond your grasp.
—Jim Loehr

Every man I meet is in some way my superior. In that I learn of him.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

A loser doesn’t know what he’ll do if he loses, but talks about what he’ll do if he wins, and a winner doesn’t talk about what he’ll do if he wins, but knows what he’ll do if he loses.
—Eric Berne

No man becomes rich unless he enriches others.
—Andrew Carnegie (Scottish-American Industrialist, Philanthropist)

An effort made for the happiness of others lifts us above ourselves.
—Lydia Maria Child (American Abolitionist)

Let us keep a firm grip upon our money, for without it the whole assembly of virtues are but as blades of grass.
—Bhartruhari

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotations

Sucking up Isn’t a Requirement for Success

March 8, 2010 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Consider the all-too-familiar boss’s pet employee at an office. He uses flattery, goes out of his way to help the boss, curries personal favors, and constantly tows the boss’s line no matter how unreasonable it is. He never corrects the boss when necessary. He either sugarcoats or withholds information that the boss would rather not hear. Over time, he has perfected the art of stroking his boss’s exaggerated sense of self-worth.

How about leaders who go overboard on their intention to exceed customer expectations and turn out to be “customer compelled?” They bend over backward to fulfill every whim and fancy of their customers to the likely peril of their own organization’s values and priorities.

Sucking up or brown-nosing is widespread approach to win a boss’s approval solely with one’s own self-interest in mind. Consider the consequences of sucking up:

  • An employee that sucks up to his boss loses the respect of his peers and employees. They assume positive discrimination and favoritism because of his ingratiatory behavior. The suck-up recursively promotes sucking up in his organization—he encourages others to establish themselves in his good graces.
  • Suck-ups quickly get into a pattern of slavishly reacting to every impulse of the boss. Without realizing, they become vulnerable to obligations to support their boss. Neither can they set limits on favors, nor do they stand up for themselves or their employees.

Be Resourceful, Don’t Suck Up

“One does not make the strengths of the boss productive by toadying to him. One does it by starting out with what is right and presenting it in a form which is accessible to the superior.”
* Peter Drucker, in The Effective Executive

Contrary to popular opinion, a vast majority of promotions are not handed out to employees who are most willing to suck up. Research and empirical evidence proves that employees who are honest, sincere, open, straightforward, and helpful earn management’s respect and attention over time. They move up fast because of their demonstrated ability to make the right choices. In addition, most people can innately distinguish the brown-nosers and differentiate genuine compliments from insincere flattery.

Do not get me wrong. There is enormous value in being helpful to the boss. After all, making yourself resourceful can go a long way in staying in the boss’s good graces. It can open professional opportunities and increase your access to new ideas, initiatives, and restricted information. However, there is an obvious boundary between doing favors and sucking up. Running an urgent errand when the boss is busy preparing for an important meeting or watching over his pet when he is travelling are well within reason. Compromising your values and priorities just to get on the boss’s side will not get you anywhere in the long term. Try these suggestions:

  • Be sincere and timely in your compliments. Refrain from making flattering remarks.
  • Use facts and logic to support or challenge the boss’s ideas. Never praise, or comment on your boss or his plans in front of others.
  • Ask your boss how you could help him achieve his goals and follow-up earnestly.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Be Proactive and Seek Feedback from Your Manager
  2. Going Over Your Boss’s Head After She Rejects Your Idea?
  3. What’s Next When You Get Snubbed for a Promotion
  4. The Good of Working for a Micromanager
  5. Five Questions to Spark Your Career Move

Filed Under: Career Development, Managing People Tagged With: Attitudes, Managing the Boss, Peter Drucker

Inspirational Quotations #314

March 6, 2010 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The soul is a fire that darts its rays through all the senses; it is in this fire that existence consists; all the observations and all the efforts of philosophers ought to turn towards this ME, the centre and moving power of our sentiments and our ideas.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
—Helen Keller (American Author)

Don’t mistake activity for achievement.
—John Wooden (American Sportsperson)

Good luck is the willing handmaid of a upright and energetic character, and conscientious observance of duty.
—James Russell Lowell (American Poet)

Unhappiness is not knowing what we want, and killing ourselves to get it.
—Don Herold (American Humorist)

When we rejoice in our fullness, then we can part without fruits with joy.
—Rabindranath Tagore (Indian Hindu Polymath)

The surest way to happiness is to lose yourself in a cause greater than yourself.
—Unknown

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. By being happy, we sow anonymous benefits upon the world, which remain unknown even to ourselves, or when they are disclosed, surprise nobody so much as the benefactor.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

It is more important to know where you are going than to get there quickly. Do not mistake activity for achievement.
—Mabel Newcomer

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotations #313

February 28, 2010 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

A knowledge of the path cannot be substituted for putting one foot in front of the other.
— M. C. Richards

So it’s probably eighty percent luck and twenty percent skill.
— Chris LeDoux

Each of us is great insofar as we perceive and act on the infinite possibilities which lie undiscovered and unrecognized about us.
— James Harvey Robinson

We are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it is possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.
— Samuel Johnson

If you can dream it, you can do it.
— Walt Disney

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.
— Rabindranath Tagore

Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.
— Benjamin Franklin

Music is the art of the prophets, the only art that can calm the agitations of the soul…
— Martin Luther

Anger is that powerful internal force that blows out the light of reason.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A helping word to one in trouble is like a switch in a railroad track… an inch between wreck and smooth, rolling prosperity.
— Henry Ward Beecher

Be true when you are tempted, be true when you don’t want to be, be true when it means standing alone from the rest of the world.
— Ruth B. Wright

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotations #312

February 21, 2010 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Beauty is truth’s smile when she beholds her own face in a perfect mirror.
—Rabindranath Tagore (Indian Hindu Polymath)

If you have nothing else to do, look at yourself and see if there isn’t something close at hand that you can improve. It may make you wealthy, although it is more likely it will make you happy.
—George Madison Adams (American Politician)

I’d rather have a lot of talent and a little experience than a lot of experience and a little talent.
—John Wooden (American Sportsperson)

Wisdom is the supreme part of happiness.
—Sophocles (Ancient Greek Dramatist)

A sense of curiosity is nature’s original school of education.
—Smiley Blanton

If you want greater prosperity in your life, start forming a vacuum to receive it.
—Catherine Ponder

No one has yet calculated how many imaginary triumphs are silently celebrated by people each year to keep up with their courage.
—Athenaeus

Every dawn signs a new contract with existence.
—Henri Frederic Amiel (Swiss Philosopher)

The company of the distinguished, fetches respect even to the unworthy. Because of its association with flowers (in a garland), the thread is also worn on head.
—Subhashita Manjari

It may be possible to forcibly snatch a jewel from the midst of powerful jaws of a crocodile. It may also be possible to cross a raging sea swimming across its high-running violent waves. One may even wear a furious snake around his head as if it is a garland of flowers. But it is impossible to win over a conceited fool.
—Subhashita Manjari

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotations

Inspirational Quotations #311

February 15, 2010 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Between Yes and No, lies mediocracy.
—Ligia Kasten

Happiness consists more in the small conveniences of pleasures that occur every day, than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom to a man in the course of his life.
—Benjamin Franklin (American Political leader)

Never do anything which you would not wish to do during the last hour of your life.
—J. P. Vaswani (Indian Hindu Philosopher)

Change always comes bearing gifts.
—Price Pritchett

Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase: if you pursue happiness you’ll never find it.
—C. P. Snow

Believe in what you can do and be not deterred by what others say.
—Jacob Gelt Dekker

We are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose.
—Charles Baudelaire (French Poet)

It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.
—Helen Keller (American Author)

We never understand a thing so well, and make it our own, as when we have discovered it for ourselves.
—Rene Descartes (French Philosopher, Mathematician)

There is this difference between happiness and wisdom, that he that thinks himself the happiest man really is so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.
—Charles Caleb Colton (English Angelic Priest)

Be of good hope in the face of death. Believe in this one truth for certain, that no evil can befall a good man either in life or death, and that his fate is not a matter of indifference to the gods.
—Socrates (Anceient Greek Philosopher)

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotations

Missing in SMART goals: the ‘Why’

February 8, 2010 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The ‘SMART’ technique (see this excellent introduction) is a popular framework for effective goal setting. Generally, the acronym SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound requisites for goals. Some people use different denotations and variations; others use the expanded ‘SMARTER’ form or focus only on the measurable and time-bound (‘MT’) characterization of goals.

Quite often, goals—even the SMART ones—fail to stimulate action beyond the initial burst of motivation. The simple reason for this slip is that goals tend to lack visibility for the “true ends.”

Make Your Goals Stick

A goal that lacks an underpinning of meaning and personal significance is likely to run out of steam. Therefore, a goal or resolution can be inspiring only when you can connect it to a larger purpose.

When you define any goal, identify its “true ends”—what benefits you expect to gain by successfully pursuing an idea or goal. For example,

  • Instead of “Join a fitness center and workout every day,” try “Lose fifteen pounds by 6-June to drop a clothes-size and look and feel better at my best friend’s wedding.”
  • Instead of “Reduce credit card debt,” try “Reduce expenses and pay off $12,000 in credit card debt in three months so that I can save $135 per month in interest fees.”
  • Instead of “Attend fewer meetings,” try “Attend fewer meetings or delegate participation to reduce time at work and enjoy more quality time with family.”

Recognizing the true ends of your goals will sustain you through internal and external resistance to pursue your goals.

Wondering what to read next?

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  2. Seek Discipline, Not Motivation: Focus on the WHY
  3. Use Friction to Make or Break Habits
  4. Goals Gone Wild: The Use and Abuse of Goals
  5. To Inspire, Translate Extrinsic Motivation to Intrinsic Motivation

Filed Under: Sharpening Your Skills Tagged With: Goals, Motivation

Inspirational Quotations #310

February 7, 2010 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The way to get things done is not to mind who gets the credit of doing them.
—Benjamin Jowett

The spirit of man communes with Heaven;|the omnipotence of Heaven resides in man.|Is the distance between Heaven and man very great?
—Hong Zicheng

There is hardly any place or any company where you may not gain knowledge, if you please; almost everybody know some one thing, and is glad to talk about that one thing.
—Earl of Chesterfield

Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. The chasm is never completely bridged. We all have the conviction, perhaps illusory, that we have much more to say than appears on the paper.
—Isaac Bashevis Singer (Polish-born American Children’s Books Writer)

Eventually, we all need to be willing to face the deepest, darkest beliefs we have about ourselves. Only in this way can we come to know that they are only beliefs, and not the truth about who we are.
—Ezra Bayda

When a man feels throbbing within him the power to do what he undertakes as well as it can possibly be done, this is happiness, this is success.
—Orison Swett Marden (American New Thought Writer)

When I work fourteen hours a day, seven days a week, I get lucky.
—Armand Hammer

To attain happiness in another world we need only to believe something, while to secure it in this world we must needs do something.
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (American Sociologist)

An avowal of poverty is no disgrace to any man; to make no effort to escape it is indeed disgraceful.
—Thucydides

A friend is there before you know it, to lend a hand before you ask it, and give you love just when you need it most.
—Unknown

Commerce is a game of skill, which every man cannot play, which few men can play well. The right merchant is one who has the just average of faculties we call commonsense; a man of strong affinity for facts, who makes up his decision on what he has seen. He is thoroughly persuaded of the truths of arithmetic. There is always a reason, in the man, for his good or bad fortune; and so, in making money. Men talk as if there were some magic about this, and believe in magic, in all parts of life. He knows that all goes on the old road, pound for pound, cent for cent-for every effect a perfect cause-and that good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.
—Helen Keller (American Author)

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotations

Origin of the Expression “You are Fired!” [Business Folklore]

February 3, 2010 By Nagesh Belludi 15 Comments

The term ‘fired’ is a colloquial expression for dismissing a person from employment. It became more popular as a result of the NBC reality show The Apprentice where the host, American businessman Donald Trump, eliminates contestants for a high-level management job by “firing” them successively. In 2004, Trump actually filed a trademark application for the catchphrase “You’re fired!”

Some sources suggest the expression may have originated from the verb “to fire,” as in “to discharge a gun.” However, legend has it that the phrase originated in the 1910s at the National Cash Register (NCR) Company.

NCR founder John Henry Patterson (1844—1922) is widely recognized as the pioneer of sales management and for developing formal methods for training and assessing salespersons. In spite of all his genius, Patterson was quirky. He sought total control of his surroundings, imposing his personal values on employees. As a food and fitness fanatic, he had employees weighed every six months. He often dismissed employees for trivial reasons just to deflate their self-confidence and, soon after, rehire them back.

Patterson’s employees and customers branded him abusive and confrontational. Patterson once dismissed an executive by asking him to visit a customer. When the executive drove back to NCR headquarters, he found his desk had been thrown out on the lawn. Right on time, his desk burst into flames. He was “fired.”

Thomas Watson Sr. was “fired” by NCR

Famously, NCR’s star sales executive Thomas Watson Sr. (1874–1956) met a similar fate. In 1914, Watson argued that NCR’s dominant product, mechanical cash registers, would soon go obsolete. He proposed that NCR develop electric cash registers. Patterson resisted the idea. He warned Watson not to overstep his boundaries and demanded that Watson focus on sales only and intrude into product innovation. Following an argument at a meeting, Patterson dismissed Watson. In a fit of rage, Patterson had workers carry Watson’s desk outside and had it lit on fire. Watson Sr. was thus “fired.”

Watson Sr. still believed in the potential for electric cash registers. He joined a smaller competitor, Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR,) which soon grew into International Business Machines (IBM.) Watson Sr. led IBM for forty years and turned it into the world’s leading technology company.

Source/Source: Keynote address by Mark Hurd, then-president and COO of Teradata at Kellogg School of Management’s Digital Frontier Conference on 17- and 18-Jan-2003. Teradata was previously a division of NCR Corporation, the company Patterson founded.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. FedEx’s ZapMail: A Bold Bet on the Future That Changed Too Fast
  2. How FedEx and Fred Smith Made Information the Package
  3. How to … Get into a Creative Mindset
  4. There’s Always Competition
  5. What Virgin’s Richard Branson Teaches: The Entrepreneur as Savior, Stuntman, Spectacle

Filed Under: Business Stories, Great Personalities Tagged With: Entrepreneurs, Hiring & Firing, Human Resources, Parables

Inspirational Quotations #309

January 31, 2010 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there.
—Robert M. Pirsig (American Writer)

Carry on, no matter what happens. Hide your sorrows under a smile and carry on.
—Anonymous

Well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech.
—Martin Farquhar Tupper (English Poet)

The more you think of yourself as shining immortal spirit, the more eager you will be to be absolutely free of matter, body, and senses. This is the intense desire to be free.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

The problem is not that there are problems. The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.
—Theodore Isaac Rubin (American Psychiatrist)

We use a lot of experience and do it [investment returns] in our heads. We don’t like complexity and we distrust other systems and think it many times leads to false confidence. The harder you work, the more confidence you get. But you may be working hard on something that is false. We’re so afraid of that process so we don’t do it.
—Charlie Munger

Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us.
—Thomas Browne (English Christian Author)

The worst bankrupt in the world is the man who has lost his enthusiasm. Let a man lose everything else in the world but his enthusiasm and he will come through again to success.
—William Howard Arnold

Leadership usually gravitates to person who can say what he thinks.
—Anonymous

The essense of a warrior is to build an indomitable spirit and an iron will; to believe you cannot fail in doing anything.
—Miyamoto Musashi (Japanese Buddhist)

Filed Under: Inspirational Quotations

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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!