Right Attitudes

The #1 Cost of Overwork is Personal Relationships

February 24, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Is your career ruining your relationships?

There’s an old adage that no one ever said on his/her deathbed, “Gee, I wish I’d put more time in at the office.” Still, modern corporate life demands high-level performance for sustained periods.

Work has a tendency to capture people’s lives, leaving them out of focus and out of balance. Many people are working longer hours, often to the point of overlooking their individual needs: family, health, fitness, and home.

Personal relationships are often the first casualties of overwork. Hard workers are often in denial about the deterioration of their relationships. They unhesitatingly offer one of the many excuses that society seems to have sanctioned for overwork: “need to send the kids to private school,” “boss demands it,” “we’re experiencing quality problems and I’m making a good impression by firefighting”, “I’m keeping more patients alive,” and so forth. They are often the last to notice that their personal relationships are suffering.

As I mentioned in my article on willpower, many marriages go bad when stress at work is at its worst. This “muscle metaphor” for willpower, on a day-to-day basis, people use up all their willpower on the job; their home lives suffer because they give much to their work.

The time you do spend with your families can be more meaningful

Joe Grano, CEO of business consulting firm Centurion Holdings, used to work six days a week and almost every night. After years of slogging on Wall Street, his personal relationships worsened. Discussing how his ambition and long work hours led to his divorce (he had two daughters with his wife) in You Can’t Predict a Hero, Grano writes,

All successful, ambitious people are personally selfish to some degree. This goes beyond just the desire to pursue your self-interest in carving up the power and money in business. You can’t work the long hours that success requires and can’t set the individualistic priorities that ambition dictates without stealing somewhat from your loved ones. Some may think that a selfish perspective is rationalized with the rewards of money and prestige. Perhaps. But what if your loved ones don’t really care as much for those material rewards as you do? The truth is that successful people do what they do because they love doing it. The career is their passion, their mistress. It’s the adrenaline that drives their metabolism. The drive to spend those long hours working is as essential a part of their genetic makeup as is their DNA.

…

If you’re going to become a successful leader, you need to reconcile yourself to your own selfishness, not just the selfishness of others. Many of your peers will spend more time with their families than you do with yours. Finally, accept that the psychic rewards that come from your ambition and eventual success, while satisfying to you, may mean much less, if anything at all, to your loved ones. This is one of the prices of success. You’ll need to sacrifice on the amount of time you spend with your loved ones. Compensate by not sacrificing on the quality of that time.

Idea for Impact: Success doesn’t come without a price; neither does failure. With every choice comes consequences

What people really want and need is not work-life “balance,” but to live deeply satisfying lives both personally and professionally. The trick is a personal choice—to become more conscious of what and who matter most, and then to create the life you want.

Work-life balance isn’t so much about balance as it is about setting and living priorities. Remember, with every choice comes consequences.

Book Summary of Peter Drucker’s ‘The Practice of Management’

February 21, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi 5 Comments

Peter Drucker (1909–2005) was the 20th century’s leading thinker on business and management. He was amazingly prolific—he produced 39 volumes on management and leadership and worked right until his death a week before his 96th birthday.

Drucker’s The Practice of Management (1954) played a pivotal role in the recognition of management as a professional discipline. Even six decades after publication, The Practice of Management remains relevant for its original, profound, and timeless ideas. Drucker’s conception for the organization as an integral part of society, his elucidation of the nature of managerial tasks, his emphasis on good governance, and his prescription for effective leadership have served managers well over the decades.

Here are some prominent insights from The Practice of Management:

Drucker accentuated the need for clarity about the meaning of a business. He argued, “‘what is our business’ is the most important question successful management groups have to address.” In corporate strategy, this inquiry has become the underpinning for business analysis and the formulation of mission statements.
A business exists to “create a customer.” Therefore, managers need to query who their customers are and what the business must try to do for its customers.
The Practice of Management contributed to a rich analysis of the role of business in society. Drucker proposed that a business exists at three constructs that influence each other and thus establish the organization’s performance, mission, and business definition:
1. as an economic establishment that produces value for its stakeholders and for the society,
2. as a community that employs people, pays them, develops them, and coordinates their efforts to increase productivity,
3. as a “social institution that is deeply embedded in society and values and as such is affected by public interest discussion, debate, and values.”
“The manager is the dynamic, life-giving element in every business” who defines the organization’s mission, develops and retains productive teams, coordinates various activities, sets goals, and gets things done.
Leadership gives the organization meaning and purpose—leadership defines and nurtures the organization’s central values, creates a sense of mission, allocates resources, and builds systems and processes in pursuit of the organization’s goals.
Management entails farsighted thinking about the future state of things and taking appropriate risks to capitalize on opportunities. Additionally, “managing a business must be a creative rather than adaptive task. The more a management creates economic conditions or changes them rather than passively adapts to them, the more it manages the business.”
Managers inculcate the dominant cultural norm in the organization through their actions. These values become evident in the decisions they make concerning whom they recruit, whom they retain and promote, the goals they pursue, and the ethical parameters with which they frame their decisions.
The Practice of Management popularized the concept of management by objectives (MBO) for the successful execution of an organization’s strategic plan. The MBO process ensures delineation of key objectives, prudent allocation of resources, dedication of effort on key goals, use of real-time feedback, and effective communication. MBO helps managers organize and motivate their employees, promote effective communication, develop employees, measure performance, and increase their sense of empowerment.

The Practice of Management is one of those books that his admirers tend to appreciate more with every successive reading. Drucker’s remarkable virtues as the “father of modern management”—viz., clarity, usefulness, and common-sense pragmatism—are all on display in this book.

Recommendation: Read—it’s the best book you’ll find on the responsibilities, tasks, and challenges that managers undertake. The Practice of Management will have a profound effect on your thinking.

Inspirational Quotations #672

February 19, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

You cannot run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.
—Common Proverb

Thoughts are the shadows of our sensations—always darker, emptier, simpler than these.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (German Philosopher, Scholar)

Every failure, obstacle or hardship is an opportunity in disguise. Success in many cases is failure turned inside out. The greatest pollution problem we face today is negativity. Eliminate the negative attitude and believe you can do anything. Replace ‘if I can, I hope, maybe’ with ‘I can, I will, I must.’
—Mary Kay Ash (American Entrepreneur)

We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.
—Carl Jung (Swiss Psychologist)

It’s waiting that helps you as an investor, and a lot of people just can’t stand to wait. If you didn’t get the deferred-gratification gene, you’ve got to work very hard to overcome that.
—Charlie Munger

Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

Lend only that which you can afford to lose.
—Common Proverb

Chance usually favors the prudent man.
—Joseph Joubert (French Essayist)

History never looks like history when you are living through it.
—John W. Gardner (American Government Official)

The tragedy is that so many have ambition and so few have ability.
—William Feather (American Publisher)

The man who is prepared has his battle half fought.
—Miguel de Cervantes (Spanish Novelist)

So difficult it is to show the various meanings and imperfections of words when we have nothing else but words to do it with.
—John Locke (English Philosopher)

Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants.
—William Penn (American Entrepreneur)

The more we study the more we discover our ignorance.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (English Poet)

What Do You Want to Be Remembered for?

February 17, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

The Curious History of the Nobel Prizes: Alfred Nobel Changed His Likely Legacy from “Merchant of Death”

Alfred Nobel Changed His Only Likely Legacy from The Swedish scientist Alfred Nobel (1833–96) is most remembered in the awarding of Nobel Prizes every year. The spur for the Nobel Prizes apparently came from a remarkable incident of careless journalism.

Nobel patented the explosive dynamite in 1867. Before long, he became very wealthy as the owner of a vast international explosives empire.

In 1888, Alfred’s brother Ludvig died. A French newspaper wrongly announced Alfred’s death instead under the title “Le marchand de la mort est mort” (Eng. trans. “The merchant of death is dead.”) The article called him the “dynamite king” and reported, “Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday.”

Upon reading this obituary, Alfred Nobel was so distressed at the prospect of how the world possibly could remember him. He wanted to leave a better legacy for himself and rewrote his will. Nobel left 94 percent of his estate to institute five prizes to celebrate the greatest achievements in chemistry, physics, physiology/medicine, literature, and peace. (The “Nobel Memorial” economics prize was instituted in 1968 by the Sweden’s central bank.)

Make a Conscious Intention to Embrace the Spirit of Your Life’s Work

Peter Drucker (1909–2005,) the 20th century’s leading thinker on business and management, advocated self renewal through the probing question “What do you want to be remembered for?” in his Managing the Non-Profit Organization:

When I was thirteen I had an inspiring teacher of religion who one day went right through the class of boys asking each one, “What do you want to be remembered for?” None of us, of course, could give an answer. So, he chuckled and said, “I didn’t expect you to be able to answer it. But if you still can’t answer it by the time you’re fifty, you will have wasted your life.”

I’m always asking that question: “What do you want to be remembered for?” It is a question that induces you to renew yourself, because it pushes you to see yourself as a different person—the person you can become. If you are fortunate, someone with moral authority will ask you that question early enough in your life so that you will continue to ask it as you go through life.

Your Life’s Work Becomes the Essence of Your Legacy

Emphasizing self-renewal and its inhibitors, the American intellectual John W. Gardner wrote extensively about the need to embrace change for personal enrichment and fulfillment. In his seminal Self-Renewal: the Individual and the Innovative Society (1964,) Gardner encourages a sentient attitude toward the future to kindle self-renewal:

For self-renewing men and women the development of their own potentialities and the process of self-discovery never end. It is a sad but unarguable fact that most people go through their lives only partially aware of the full range of their abilities. … Exploration of the full range of our own potentialities is not something that we can safely leave to the chances of life. It is something to be pursued systematically, or at least avidly, to the end of our days. We should look forward to an endless and unpredictable dialogue between our potentialities and the claims of life—not only the claims we encounter but the claims we invent. And by the potentialities I mean not just skills, but the full range capacities for sensing, wondering, learning, understanding, loving, and aspiring.

Idea for Impact: Asking, “What should be your legacy?” is a Great Self-Actualizing Exercise

The English novelist Jane Austen (1775–1817) wrote in Mansfield Park (1814,) “We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.”

One single spark in your mind has the potential to alter your life forever. Inspire your personal renewal by contemplating the following questions: What do you want to be remembered for, 5-10-20 years from now? What should be your legacy?

Without doubt, you can’t tell your future—you really don’t even know what’s going to happen next. Even if you make a deliberate plan, it probably won’t succeed because reality will regulate your plan. In spite of this life’s uncertainties, reflecting on the question “What do I want to be remembered for?” can help you become more intentional in your behavior and more mindful about your life’s purpose.

If You Want to Be Loved, Love

February 14, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Love is an “Outpouring of Everything Good in You”

In 1958, when American Nobel laureate John Steinbeck’s son Thom was fourteen, he attended boarding school in Connecticut. There, “Thom” (the American novelist and screenwriter Thomas Myles Steinbeck (1944–2016)) met a young girl named Susan with whom he thought he might be in love. Soon after, Thom sent a note home and declared his love for his new school sweetheart. In response, John Steinbeck wrote the following stirring advice on how to navigate love.

Dear Thom:

We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers.

First—if you are in love—that’s a good thing—that’s about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don’t let anyone make it small or light to you.

Second—There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you—of kindness and consideration and respect—not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had.

You say this is not puppy love. If you feel so deeply—of course it isn’t puppy love.

But I don’t think you were asking me what you feel. You know better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it—and that I can tell you.

Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it.

The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.

If you love someone—there is no possible harm in saying so—only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration.

Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.

It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another—but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good.

Lastly, I know your feeling because I have it and I’m glad you have it.

We will be glad to meet Susan. She will be very welcome. But Elaine will make all such arrangements because that is her province and she will be very glad to. She knows about love too and maybe she can give you more help than I can.

And don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens—The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.

Love,
Fa

Love is Intended to be Realized in the Offering, Not in the Receiving

According to University of South Florida’s Seneca scholar Anna Lydia Motto, the great Stoic philosopher’s writings are chockfull of his profound understanding of the true significance of the many forms of love—i.e., love for one’s spouse, family, friends, fellow humans, and country.

In Moral Letters to Lucilius (Latin orig. Epistulae morales ad Lucilium), Seneca quotes his friend and fellow Stoic philosopher Hecato (or Hecaton of Rhodes):

I shall show you a love
potion without a drug, without
a herb; without the incantation
of any sorceress: if you want
to be loved, love.

The Ability to Love is a Faculty to Develop and Practice

Love is an oft-misunderstood concept. The German Philosopher Erich Fromm (1900–1980) wrote in his brilliant The Art of Loving (1956) “Most people see the problem of love primarily as that of being loved, rather than that of loving, of one’s capacity to love. Hence the problem to them is how to be loved, how to be lovable.”

Love is not something to fall into after fortuitously discovering the person (or any desirable object). Love is something we learn to “do” from years of arduous toil.

Any loving relationship demands compromise, cooperation, acceptance, forgiveness, tolerance, stability, devotion, and commitment. Genuine love, therefore, involves cultivating, nurturing, and practicing the cognitive and emotional faculty of loving.

Idea for Impact: Love, and Be Deserving of Love

To relish this complex and richest of all experiences, focus on offering love rather than on being loved.

As the Indian philosopher Nolini Kanta Gupta (1889–1983) once said, “The secret of love is the joy of self-giving. The secret of joy is self-giving. If any part in you is without joy, it means that it has not given itself, it wants to keep itself for itself.”

If you want to be loved, love.

No one unqualified to bestow love upon others is himself/herself deserving of love.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Inspirational Quotations by Abraham Lincoln (#671)

February 12, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi 2 Comments

Inspirational Quotations by Abraham Lincoln

Today marks the birthday of Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865), one of the most recognized political leaders of all time.

Not much is known about the early life of the 16th President of the United States. Lincoln was born in a log cabin to a poor family, lost his mother at nine, completed just one year of traditional schooling, spent his youth in Indiana, and did manual labor until he was 21.

Lincoln pursued self-education by reading books on grammar and rhetoric and joined a debate society. At age 27, after years of private study of law, he obtained a license to practice and eventually became one of Illinois’s ablest lawyers. Lincoln also worked his way through the Illinois State Legislature and got elected to the US House of Representatives. He gained popularity for his down-to-earth wit, integrity, and opposition to the institution of slavery.

Lincoln’s leadership during the Civil War held the country together through the worst moral, constitutional, and political crisis in its history. Amidst the War, at his second inauguration, Lincoln addressed the nation with his famous words, “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds … .” John Wilkes Booth, an actor who had heard Lincoln speak at his second inauguration, fatally shot him just six weeks later at Ford’s Theater in Washington D.C.

Lincoln is arguably the most admired President of the United States. He was famous for his compassionate nature, gentle spirit, and great oratory. His iconic 1863 Gettysburg Address is revered for its reaffirmation of a major founding principle of the United States: that all humans are born equal. To this day, this speech remains a model of ideological rhetoric and oratorical simplicity:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal … We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Inspirational Quotations by Abraham Lincoln

Perhaps a man’s character was like a tree, and his reputation like its shadow; the shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

When I get ready to talk to people, I spend two thirds of the time thinking what they want to hear and one third thinking about what I want to say.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

With the catching ends the pleasures of the chase.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

You can’t escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

I believe each individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruit of his labor, so far as it in no wise interferes with any other man’s rights.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

In times like the present men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and in eternity.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

No men living are more worthy to be trusted than those who toil up from poverty.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

He who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false, is guilty of falsehood; and the accidental truth of the assertion, does not justify or excuse him.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

Every man is proud of what he does well; and no man is proud of what he does not do well. With the former, his heart is in his work; and he will do twice as much of it with less fatigue. The latter performs a little imperfectly, looks at it in disgust, turns from it, and imagines himself exceedingly tired. The little he has done, comes to nothing, for want of finishing.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

Do not worry; eat three square meals a day; say your prayers; be courteous to your creditors; keep your digestion good; exercise; go slow and easy. Maybe there are other things your special case requires to make you happy, but my friend, these I reckon will give you a good lift.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

To believe in the things you can see and touch is no belief at all; but to believe in the unseen is a triumph and a blessing.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

Truth is generally the best vindication against slander.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

A man watches his pear tree day after day, impatient for the ripening of the fruit. Let him attempt to force the process, and he may spoil both fruit and tree. But let him patiently wait, and the ripe fruit at length falls into his lap.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

Wanting to work is so rare a merit that it should be encouraged.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

Determine that the thing can and shall be done, and then we shall find the way.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

When I do good I feel good, when I do bad I feel bad, and that’s my religion.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

There’s no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

Every blade of grass is a study; and to produce two, where there was but one, is both a profit and a pleasure.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

The better part of one’s life consists of his friendships.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

I must study the plain physical facts of the case, ascertain what is possible, and learn what appears to be wise and right.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

Everybody likes a compliment.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

I am a slow walker, but I never walk backwards.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

We hope all danger may be overcome; but to conclude that no danger may ever arise would itself be extremely dangerous.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

Seven Real Reasons Employees Disengage and Leave

February 10, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Engaged employees not only contribute more and enhance bottom-line results but also are more loyal and therefore less likely to leave their organizations voluntarily.

Here are seven widespread root causes for employees’ lack of enthusiasm and commitment to a workplace.

Employees find the job or workplace to be different from what they had expected when hired.
Employees are not well matched or challenged in the jobs to which they have been assigned or promoted.
Employees receive insufficient coaching and feedback from their boss.
Employees recognize few prospects for professional growth and advancement. Alternatively, employees are obliged to log two or three years of unexciting assignments to “pay their dues” before being considered for promotion.
Employee feel undervalued, underpaid, or under-recognized. They don’t get enough informal acknowledgement for their contributions or feel constantly “out of loop.” Their managers don’t seek opinions or supply the right tools to excel at work.
Employees feel stressed or burned-out due to overwork or work-life imbalance.
Employees have lost trust and confidence in their management and leadership.

Idea for Impact: Disengaged employees are more likely to leave their organizations.

How to Deal with Upset Customers

February 7, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

From an angry customer’s perspective, the impressions left by customer-service providers are long-lasting and can heighten the impact of a service experience, for better or worse.

A failure to recognize and quickly respond to the needs of angry customers can make them feel ignored, frustrated, and powerless. Here are nine guidelines that can result in a constructive interaction with an angry customer and restore his perception of satisfaction and loyalty.

Don’t adopt an angry tone. Stay calm and professional. When an upset customer starts shouting or being foul-mouthed, you’ll gain nothing by reacting in a like manner. Actually, responding to anger with anger can easily escalate the hostilities and thwart meaningful communication. Exercise self-control and regulate your feelings. Without remaining calm, you cannot break through emotional barricades or preempt the customer’s frustrations going from bad to worse.
If the customer is yelling, ask him to speak slower. A louder voice often goes with a faster speech. When the customer slows down his speech, the level of his voice will also drop. Repeat this request as many times as necessary to calm him down.
Declare that you intend to understand the customer’s situation and help. Say, “Could you please speak more slowly. When I understand your situation, I can help you better.”
Let your angry customer vent. When a customer is upset, what you tell him matters less than what you enable him to tell you. The first thing an upset customer wants is to vent. Commonly, just the modest act of listening patiently can defuse the customer’s anger. Only after you facilitate getting the customer’s emotions off his chest can you have a constructive discussion.
Recognize that the customer’s problem does exist. Restate the customer’s analysis of what the problem is. “If I understand you appropriately, you have a problem with X and you don’t like Y. This has caused Z.”
Demonstrate sincere empathy for the customer’s feelings. Say, “I can understand why this situation would upset you. I’m sorry you feel that way.” Your best response to the customer’s anger is empathy.
Ask what the customer would like to do to have the problem solved. Ask, “What can we do to make this right for you?” By shifting the customer’s focus from annoyance to problem solving, you can determine ways to negotiate a satisfactory solution. If the customer’s request cannot be met, provide alternative solutions that may alleviate the situation or placate the customer.
Let common sense prevail over standard operating procedure. Much of current customer service initiatives (especially with outsourced call centers) has devolved into standard operating procedures, carefully formulated decision-trees, and scripted answers that customer service agents dispense mechanically. To an upset customer, these automated responses often seem hollow and inacceptable. Deviate from the canned responses and use good judgment. Exercise the autonomy you’re granted over how you can respond to help solve customer complaints. If necessary, involve your manager.
Don’t need to give a “yes” or a “no” answer on the spot. If the customer asks for more than you’re able to accommodate, defer your answer by saying, “Give me a minute to consider all the options I have for you” or “let me talk to my boss and see how I can help you.” After weighing the pros and cons, give your answer and offer a reason if necessary. This way, even if the customer doesn’t get a “yes” from you, he will still appreciate knowing that you’ve seriously considered his appeals.

Idea for Impact: Body language, phrasing, and tone can have a big impact on angry customers who are on the lookout for evidence of compassion and want to be reassured that they have chosen a good provider for their product or service.

Inspirational Quotations by Adlai Stevenson (#670)

February 5, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Today marks the birthday of Adlai Stevenson II (1900–1965,) American politician and diplomat. Stevenson is renowned for his intellectual disposition, organizational skills, eloquent public speaking, and for advancing liberal ideologies within the Democratic Party.

Stevenson is also remembered for his significant landslide losses to popular war hero Dwight Eisenhower during both the 1952 and the 1956 presidential elections. Prior to the 1960 presidential election, Stevenson lost to Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy as the Democratic Party’s candidate. When Kennedy became President, Stevenson served as the US Ambassador to the United Nations until his death in 1965.

The 1949 “Cat Bill” in Illinois

When Stevenson was Governor of Illinois, the state legislature (supported by a committed group of bird-lovers) passed a bill protecting birds from their predators—notably cats—and declaring that cats roaming unescorted were a public nuisance. Stevenson felt the legislation was an absurd excuse to exterminate cats and have law enforcement deal with felines. He vetoed the bill with the following message:

I cannot agree that it should be the declared public policy of Illinois that a cat visiting a neighbor’s yard or crossing the highways is a public nuisance. It is in the nature of cats to do a certain amount of unescorted roaming. … Also consider the owner’s dilemma: To escort a cat abroad on a leash is against the nature of the cat, and to permit it to venture forth for exercise unattended into a night of new dangers is against the nature of the owner.

We are all interested in protecting certain varieties of birds. That cats destroy some birds, I well know, but I believe this legislation would further but little the worthy cause to which its proponents give such unselfish effort. The problem of cat versus bird is as old as time. If we attempt to resolve it by legislation who knows but what we may be called upon to take sides as well in the age old problems of dog versus cat, bird versus bird, or even bird versus worm. In my opinion, the State of Illinois and its local governing bodies already have enough to do without trying to control feline delinquency.

If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us. The free mind is not a barking dog, to be tethered on a ten-foot chain.
—Adlai Stevenson (American Diplomat)

Power corrupts, but lack of power corrupts absolutely.
—Adlai Stevenson (American Diplomat)

The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions.
—Adlai Stevenson (American Diplomat)

A free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
—Adlai Stevenson (American Diplomat)

What a man knows at fifty that he did not know at twenty is for the most part incommunicable.
—Adlai Stevenson (American Diplomat)

Our strength lies, not alone in our proving grounds and our stockpiles, but in our ideals, our goals, and their universal appeal to all men who are struggling to breathe free.
—Adlai Stevenson (American Diplomat)

Peace is the one condition of survival in this nuclear age.
—Adlai Stevenson (American Diplomat)

In youth, everything seems possible; but we reach a point in the middle years when we realize that we are never going to reach all the shining goals we had set for ourselves. And in the end, most of us reconcile ourselves, with what grace we can, to living with our ulcers and arthritis, our sense of partial failure, our less-than-ideal families—and even our politicians!
—Adlai Stevenson (American Diplomat)

We have confused the free with the free and easy.
—Adlai Stevenson (American Diplomat)

What do I believe? As an American I believe in generosity, in liberty, in the rights of man. These are social and political faiths that are part of me, as they are, I suppose, part of all of us. Such beliefs are easy to express. But part of me too is my relation to all life, my religion. And this is not so easy to talk about. Religious experience is highly intimate and, for me, ready words are not at hand.
—Adlai Stevenson (American Diplomat)

Freedom is not an ideal, it is not even a protection, if it means nothing more than freedom to stagnate, to live without dreams, to have no greater aim than a second car and another television set.
—Adlai Stevenson (American Diplomat)

For my part I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance.
—Adlai Stevenson (American Diplomat)

Laws are never as effective as habits.
—Adlai Stevenson (American Diplomat)

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A Little Known, but Powerful Technique to Fast Track Your Career: Theo Epstein’s 20 Percent Rule

February 3, 2017 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Lessons on Career Advancement from 43 Year-old Chicago Cubs President Theo Epstein

Theo Epstein (b.1973), president of baseball operations for the Chicago Cubs, has thus far had a stellar career as a sports executive.

As a freshman at Yale, Epstein was assertive enough to flaunt his role as a sports editor for the Yale student newspaper. After cold-contacting many professional sports teams to express interest in working for them, he grabbed the attention of a Yale alumnus at the Baltimore Orioles. This stroke of luck led to three consecutive summer-internships at the Orioles with increasing responsibilities.

After graduating from Yale with a degree in liberal arts, Epstein joined the Orioles full-time as a public relations assistant. His ingenuity caught the eye of Orioles President-CEO Larry Lucchino, who took Epstein under his wings. When Lucchino became team president of the San Diego Padres, he took Epstein and made him director of player development.

At Lucchino’s suggestion, Epstein also attended law school full-time whilst working 70 hour-weeks at the Padres. At that time, nobody on the small Padres’ management team had a law degree. By going to law school and getting a Juris Doctor degree, Epstein could help review players’ contracts. “Getting that seat at the table gave me the opportunity to be involved, and then my responsibilities grew from there,” he once recalled.

At age 28, Epstein moved again with Lucchino and joined the Boston Red Sox as general manager. In doing so, he became the youngest general manager in the history of Major League Baseball. Ten years later, in 2011, Epstein became president the Chicago Cubs.

At both the Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs, Epstein intelligently used complex statistical analytics to oversee the teams’ curse-breaking championships. In 2004, Epstein supervised the Red Sox’s sixth World Series Championship and ended their 86-year drought. And in 2016, when, under Epstein’s presidency, the Chicago Cubs finally won the World Series Championship 108 years after the previous time they did, their triumph ended the longest drought in professional sports.

Theo Epstein’s 20 Percent Rule: Undertake Your Boss’s Less Glamorous Responsibilities

In a recent interview (22:31-minute mark in this “The Axe Files” podcast) with the University of Chicago’s David Axelrod, Epstein revealed a career advancement technique that helped fast-track his career at the Orioles, the Padres and the Red Sox:

Whoever your boss is, or your bosses are, they have 20 percent of their job that they just don’t like … So if you can ask them or figure out what that 20 percent is, and figure out a way to do it for them, you’ll both make them really happy, and improve their quality of life and their work experience. And also gain invaluable experience for yourself. If you do a good job with it, they’ll start to give you more and more responsibility.

Idea for Impact: Those Who Raise Their Hands Climb the Ladder Faster

Human nature is such that everyone likes to do what he/she likes and not what should be done. If you can determine those aspects of your boss’ job that she hates and volunteer to help her with those responsibilities, you can expand your job’s horizons.

When you can seize such opportunities to raise your hand and sign up for tasks and responsibilities that aren’t particularly attractive, you not only learn by way of broader experiences and gain confidence, but also become more visible to management and situate yourself for a promotion. As I’ve written previously, before you can be seen as eligible for promotion, you should have demonstrated competence in doing a part of the new job you aspire to.

Seek out projects, prove that you’re eager and able to go the extra mile, and gain valuable face time with top executives.

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