Right Attitudes

Ideas for Impact

Inspirational Quotations #827

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Choose rather to want less, than to have more.
—Thomas a Kempis (German Religious Writer)

When you’re the victim of the behavior, it’s black and white; when you’re the perpetrator, there are a million shades of gray.
—Laura Schlessinger (American Broadcaster)

At every word a reputation dies.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

One seeks to make the loved one entirely happy, or, if that cannot be, entirely wretched.
—Jean de La Bruyere (French Author)

It is the individual’s task to differentiate himself from all the others and stand on his own feet. All collective identities… interfere with the fulfillment of this task. Such collective identities are crutches for the lame, shields for the timid, beds for the lazy, nurseries for the irresponsible….
—Carl Gustav Jung (Swiss Psychologist)

Reading is not just about the content of the text. It’s allocating quiet time / space to think and reflect on the issues raised by the text.
—Ben Casnocha (American Entrepreneur, Investor)

Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.
—Theodore Roosevelt (American Head of State)

We still have it in our power to rise above the fears, imagined and real, and to shoulder the great burdens which destiny has placed upon us, not for our country alone, but for the benefit of all the world. That is the only destiny worthy of America.
—Helen Keller (American Author)

If there is a single goal for all civilization, it does not mean that all shall speak a common tongue or profess a common creed, or that all shall live under a single government, or all shall follow an unchanging pattern in customs and manners. The unity of civilization is not to be sought in uniformity but in harmony. Every great culture is due to the blending of peoples of different ideals and temperaments. Egypt and Babylon, India and China, Greece and Rome, testify to this truth. Today the circle of those who participate in the cultural synthesis has become wider and includes practically the whole world. The faith of the future is in co-operation and not identification, in accommodation to fellowmen and not imitation of them, in toleration and not absolutism.
—Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (Indian Philosopher, Political Leader)

You can jail a Revolutionary, but you can’t jail the Revolution.
—Huey P. Newton (American Political Activist)

Better Than Brainstorming

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Most brainstorming sessions suck. Facilitators aren’t often skilled enough to direct the creative process and overcome interpersonal and intrapersonal barriers to idea-generation. Participants are not as organized as they need to be. One or two “meeting-hogs,” who lack self-awareness and self-control, dominate the conversations with their pet ideas and shut everyone else down. And then there’s groupthink and self-censorship based on responses to earlier suggestions by others. Consequently, bold ideas seldom survive a group discussion.

If you want to buck the odds, try “brainwriting” instead of brainstorming.

In its simplest form, brainwriting has the participants quietly reflect upon an open-ended prompt of appropriate scope, for example, “how could we improve our design process,” and write down their ideas. A group leader can organize the responses by combining identical ideas, grouping thematically-related ideas, and posting them on a wall for the group to appraise them further. Then, the participants vote on their favorites, and the top ‘n’ number of ideas or priorities are identified for future discussion and exploration.

Idea for Impact: Teams Don’t Think—Individuals Do

In essence, brainwriting isolates idea generation from the instantaneous discussion and evaluation that can hamper the creative process.

Brainwriting, when followed by discussion, combines the benefits of both individual and group creativity. Studies have repeatedly shown that people think of more new—and practical—ideas on their own than they do in a group.

In my experience, this creative thinking process is inclusionary, engaging, time-effective, non-judgmental, and mostly free from pressures to conform to others’ ideas. Brainwriting is particularly useful with a group of people who are reserved and would be unlikely to offer many ideas in an open group session.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Empower Your Problem-Solving with the Initial Hypothesis Method
  2. How to Stimulate Group Creativity // Book Summary of Edward de Bono’s ‘Six Thinking Hats’
  3. Why Group Brainstorming Falls Short on Creativity and How to Improve It
  4. After Action Reviews: The Heartbeat of Every Learning Organization
  5. Of Course Mask Mandates Didn’t ‘Work’—At Least Not for Definitive Proof

What You Learn from Failure

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One common theme among people who cope particularly effectively with failure is their ability to acknowledge the failure, put it in perspective, and seek causes, not blame. As the Dalai Lama XIV writes in The Dalai Lama’s Little Book of Inner Peace (2009,)

If a misfortune has already occurred, it is best not to worry about it, so we do not add fuel to the problem. Don’t ally yourself with past events by lingering on them and exaggerating them. Let the past take care of itself, and transport yourself to the present while taking whatever measures are necessary to ensure that such a misfortune never occurs again, now or in the future.

American investor and superstar hedge-fund manager Ray Dalio writes in his very instructive Principles: Life and Work (2017,)

I learned that everyone makes mistakes and has weaknesses and that one of the most important things that differentiates people is their approach to handling them. I learned that there is an incredible beauty to mistakes, because embedded in each mistake is a puzzle, and a gem that I could get if I solved it, i.e., a principle that I could use to reduce my mistakes in the future. I learned that each mistake was probably a reflection of something that I was (or others were) doing wrong, so if I could figure out what that was, I could learn how to be more effective. I learned that wrestling with my problems, mistakes, and weaknesses was the training that strengthened me. Also, I learned that it was the pain of this wrestling that made me and those around me appreciate our successes.

In short, I learned that being totally truthful, especially about mistakes and weaknesses, led to a rapid rate of improvement.

Much is written about the notion of failures as gifts, but the key to dealing with failures is to attribute those failures to weaknesses in a thought process, not to personal flaws. Failures expose a weakness in your underlying process, which you can now fix. Fine-tune your tactics until you find out what doeswork. Dalio instructs,

When a problem occurs, conduct the discussion at two levels: 1) the machine level (why that outcome was produced) and 2) the case-at-hand level (what to do about it.)

Idea for Impact: Don’t rationalize failures and magnify them in your mind. Fix them. Then, reflect on what they teach about what didn’t work. Inquire, “What was missing?” rather than “What went wrong?” The latter results in finger-pointing. The former opens up possibilities and results in personal growth.

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  5. Summary of Richard Carlson’s ‘Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff’

Inspirational Quotations #826

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Man is a marvelous curiosity … he thinks he is the Creator’s pet … he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes, and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to him and thinks He listens. Isn’t it a quaint idea?
—Robert G. Ingersoll (American Lawyer, Orator, Agnostic)

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.
—James Baldwin (American Novelist, Social Critic)

We must welcome the future, remembering that soon it will be the past; and we must respect the past, knowing that once it was all that was humanly possible.
—George Santayana (Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher)

Work spares us from three great evils: boredom, vice and need.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher, Author)

Man needs his difficulties because they are necessary to enjoy success.
—A. P. J. Abdul Kalam (Indian Head of State, Scientist)

Great political questions stir the deepest nature of one-half the nation, but they pass far above and over the heads of the other half.
—Wendell Phillips (American Abolitionist)

More than anything else, I believe it’s our decisions, not the conditions of our lives, that determine our destiny.
—Tony Robbins (American Self-Help Author)

To flatter and follow others, without being flattered and followed in turn, is but a state of half enjoyment.
—Jane Austen (English Novelist)

History cannot give us a program for the future, but it can give us a fuller understanding of ourselves, and of our common humanity, so that we can better face the future.
—Robert Penn Warren (American Novelist, Poet)

I am beginning to learn that it is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all.
—Laura Ingalls Wilder (American Author of Children’s Novels)

The painter constructs, the photographer discloses.
—Susan Sontag (American Writer, Philosopher)

The last three or four reps is what makes the muscle grow. This area of pain divides the champion from someone else who is not a champion. That’s what most people lack, having the guts to go on and just say they’ll go through the pain no matter what happens.
—Arnold Schwarzenegger (Austrian-American Actor, Politician)

The virtuous (when injured) grieve not so much for their own pain as for the loss of happiness incurred by their injurers.
—The Jataka Tales (Genre of Buddhist Literature)

Great Leaders Focus on the WHY and the WHAT—Not the How

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The most effective leaders provide their employees with a heartfelt portrayal of the WHY, a precise description of the WHAT, and freedom on the HOW.

The WHY encompasses a vision in a way that matters to people. As Howard Schultz, the Starbucks tycoon once said, “People want to be part of something larger than themselves. They want to be part of something they’re really proud of, that they’ll fight for, sacrifice for, that they trust.”

The British-American organizational consultant Simon Sinek‘s passable Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action (2009; a good summary) identifies the difference between “giving direction and giving directions.” Great leaders, he explains, motivate with the WHY, a deep-rooted purpose, before defining the WHAT, the product or service, or the HOW, the process.

The latter, the HOW, is to be deprioritized—effective leaders leave it to their employees to figure out.

In contrast, ineffective leaders provide specificity around HOW to complete a task but fail to share the big picture, the WHY.

Don’t live in the weeds. Have faith in the ingenuity of your employees. Give much latitude in how they do things.

Idea for Impact: Define the job. Explain the responsibility. Equip your people with the tools and skills they’ll need. Establish expectations. Identify the standards. That’s the essence of delegation.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. Putting the WOW in Customer Service // Book Summary of Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness
  2. Eight Ways to Keep Your Star Employees Around
  3. Our Vision of What Our Parents Achieved Influences Our Life Goals: The Psychic Contract
  4. How to Manage Smart, Powerful Leaders // Book Summary of Jeswald Salacuse’s ‘Leading Leaders’
  5. Do You Have an Unhealthy Obsession with Excellence?

Inspirational Mess, Creative Clutter

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Biographer Roland Penrose (1900–84) writes in Picasso: His Life and Work (1958,)

Disorder was to Picasso a happier breeding ground for ideas than the perfection of a tidy room in which nothing upset the equilibrium by being out of place.

Once when visiting Picasso at his flat in the rue la Boétie, I noticed that a large Renoir hanging over the fireplace was crooked. “It’s better like that,” he said. “If you want to kill a picture, all you have to do is to hang it beautifully on a nail and soon you will see nothing of it but the frame. When it’s out of place you see it better.”

Studies suggest that, for some people, messiness can boost creativity by spurring inspiration flow and helping them explore different avenues. One researcher explained, “Disorderly environments seem to inspire breaking free of tradition, which can produce fresh insights.”

But don’t use this concept as a crutch to defend your clutter.

Wondering what to read next?

  1. The Creativity of the Unfinished
  2. Why You Get Great Ideas in the Shower
  3. Question the Now, Imagine the Next
  4. You Never Know What’ll Spark Your Imagination (and When)
  5. Invention is Refined Theft

Inspirational Quotations #825

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It’s never too late—never too late to start over, never too late to be happy.
—Jane Fonda (American Actress)

An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest. Learning is to the Studious, and Riches to the Careful. If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him.
—John C. Bogle (American Mutual Fund Pioneer)

Informed decision-making comes from a long tradition of guessing and then blaming others for inadequate results.
—Scott Adams (American Cartoonist)

Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.
—George Sand (French Novelist, Dramatist)

Our notions of happiness entrap us. We forget that they are just ideas. Our idea of happiness can prevent us from actually being happy. We fail to see the opportunity for joy that is right in front of us when we are caught in a belief that happiness should take a particular form.
—Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese Buddhist Religious Leader)

I have already settled it for myself, so flattery and criticism go down the same drain and I am quite free.
—Georgia O’Keeffe (American Painter)

We forget: In life, it doesn’t matter what happens to you or where you came from. It matters what you do with what happens and what you’ve been given.
—Ryan Holiday (American Author)

The shortest route often has the steepest hills.
—Caroline Schoeder (American Aphorist)

The first time you marry for love, the second for money, and the third for companionship.
—Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (American First Lady)

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (American Novelist)

During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the Church, after doing its duty in but a lazy and indolent way for 800 years, gathered up its halters, thumbscrews, and firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured, hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed the Christian world clean with their foul blood. Then it was discovered that there as no such thing as witches, and never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

Executive Compensation: Pay Them Well, But Not Too Well

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Our executive compensation system is broken. Surveys show that the average public company CEO compensation is many hundred times that of the average employee. This gaping disparity in pay vis-à-vis the relative value they bring to their organizations is a moral embarrassment to our society, a point that wasn’t lost on the Occupy movement of yesteryear.

The debate over executive pay won’t die away anytime soon. As election year approaches, grandstanding politicians are vying to outdo each other with pledges to implement pubic policies that limit executive compensation, whereas theorists argue that, in a market economy, compensations should be set by supply and demand for executive talent.

The latter position is commonly echoed by company boards and executive compensation consultants—both of whom owe their cushy jobs to the CEOs and their top teams. They assert that leaders need to be provided with personal incentives to attract and motivate them.

Strangely enough, such incentives often demotivate the leaders’ followers. Financial incentives that are directed disproportionately to the leader in isolation often prove downright counterproductive.

Leadership is an outcome of the relationship between leader and follower, and excessively compensated leaders do not engender followership effectively.

This comports with financier J. P. Morgan‘s observations at the start of the twentieth century that the only characteristic common to his failing clients was a tendency to overpay those at the top. As Peter Drucker commented in The Frontiers of Management (1986,)

[J. P. Morgan found] eighty years ago that the only thing the businesses that were clients of J. P. Morgan & Co. and did poorly had in common was that each company’s top executive was paid more than 130 percent of the compensation of the people in the next echelon and these, in turn, more than 130 percent of the compensation of the people in the echelon just below them, and so on down the line. Very high salaries at the top, concluded Morgan—who was hardly contemptuous of big money or an “anticapitalist”—disrupt the team. They make even high-ranking people in the company see their own top management as adversaries rather than as colleagues…. And that quenches any willingness to say “we” and to exert oneself except in one’s own immediate self-interest.

Idea for Impact: Employees’ efforts are devalued markedly under conditions of gross inequality. Pay leaders well (if you pay peanuts, you’ll get monkeys,) but not too well.

Wondering what to read next?

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  3. To Inspire, Pay Attention to People: The Hawthorne Effect
  4. Seven Real Reasons Employees Disengage and Leave
  5. Don’t Push Employees to Change

Avoid Decision Fatigue: Don’t Let Small Decisions Destroy Your Productivity

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Making some decisions depletes mental resources for making more important ones

Every decision you make impacts the quality of successive decisions you’ll have to make, even in totally unrelated situations.

That’s because, according to the much-debated “muscle metaphor” of willpower, your mental stamina is limited.

'Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength' by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney (ISBN 0143122231) As Roy Baumeister and John Tierney explained in their bestselling book on Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength (2011; my summary,) you have a finite strength of will for making prudent choices. As you go about your day, your willpower is depleted and “decision fatigue” sets in. Consequently, you’re likely to employ one of two cognitive shortcuts in decision-making: you avoid the act of deciding altogether or make an less-thoughtful, sub-optimal decision.

Don’t get overloaded with so many pointless decisions that your cognitive productivity ends up falling off a cliff.

President Barack Obama claimed that he makes deliberate efforts to avoid decision fatigue so that he can devote his mental energies to things that matter. Michael Lewis quotes Obama in the October 2012 issue of Vanity Fair,

You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits … I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make. … You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia.

In the same way, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg sports a limited wardrobe. He has previously declared that doesn’t waste time and energy to pick his daily outfits: “I really want to clear my life to make it so that I have to make as few decisions as possible about anything except how to best serve the community.”

Idea for Impact: Establish healthy routines that can eliminate unnecessary deliberation

Life is the sum total of all the mundane and momentous choices you make. Being monotonous in handling the former enables you to excel in the latter. Limit decision fatigue by

  1. putting as much of your life as possible on an autopilot using routines / rituals and checklists,
  2. limiting the choices you have (read Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less,) and
  3. delegating decision-making where possible.

Good routines can provide structure to your day, protect you from your more effective negative impulses, and bring order and predictability to your life. Besides, according to renowned career coach Marty Nemko, “modern life, increasingly defined by unpredictability, can be anxiety-provoking, and routines provide an anchor of predictability.”

Wondering what to read next?

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  2. Everything in Life Has an Opportunity Cost
  3. Question the Now, Imagine the Next
  4. Make a Difficult Decision Like Benjamin Franklin
  5. Make Decisions Using Bill Hewlett’s “Hat-Wearing Process”

Inspirational Quotations #824

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What I fear is complacency. When things always become better, people tend to want more for less work.
—Lee Kuan Yew (Singaporean Statesman)

Insults should be written in the sand, and praises carved in stone.
—Arabic Proverb

Love conquers all; let us surrender to love.
—Virgil (Roman Poet)

No virtue is equal to the good of others and no vice greater than hurting others.
—Tulsidas (Indian Hindu Poet)

Nuns and married women are equally unhappy, if in different ways
—Christina, Queen of Sweden (Swedish Monarch)

People are just as wonderful as sunsets if you let them be. When I look at a sunset, I don’t find myself saying, “Soften the orange a bit on the right hand corner.” I don’t try to control a sunset, I just watch with awe as it unfolds.
—Carl Rogers (American Psychologist)

Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.
—Pablo Picasso (Spanish Painter)

It is not greed that drives the world, but envy.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

The contest, for ages, has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power.
—Daniel Webster (American Statesman, Lawyer)

A thousand fearful images and dire suggestions glance along the mind when it is moody and discontented with itself. Command them to stand and show themselves, and you presently assert the power of reason over imagination.
—Walter Scott (Scottish Novelist)

However great the work that God may achieve by an individual, he must not indulge in self-satisfaction. He ought rather to be all the more humbled, seeing himself merely as a tool which God has made use of.
—Vincent de Paul (French Catholic Saint)

Remember, happiness doesn’t depend upon who you are or what you have, it depends solely upon what you think.
—Dale Carnegie (American Self-Help Author)

In proportion as we perceive and embrace the truth do we become just, heroic, magnanimous, divine.
—William Lloyd Garrison (American Abolitionist)

Friends should be like books, easy to find when you need them, but seldom used.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Standing armies can never consist of resolute robust men; they may be well-disciplined machines, but they will seldom contain men under the influence of strong passions, or with very vigorous faculties.
—Mary Wollstonecraft (English Writer, Feminist)

A champion is afraid of losing. Everyone else is afraid of winning.
—Billie Jean King (American Tennis Player)