Parables

Change Your Perspective, Change Your Reactions

February 23, 2022 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

From the eighth-century Buddhist philosopher Śāntideva’s Bodhicaryavatara (“Entrance to the Path of Awakening,”) a translation from Stephen Batchelor’s A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life (1979:)

Where would I possibly find enough leather
With which to cover the surface of the earth?
But just leather on the soles of my shoes
Is equivalent to covering the earth with it

Likewise it is not possible for me
To restrain the external course of things
But should I restrain this mind of mine
What would be the need to restrain all else?

A powerful reminder that you can’t magically make the whole world and its people run smooth and easy, but you can reorient your heart and mind to change your perspective and endure the bumps that you’ll encounter.

Idea for Impact: If something isn’t to your liking, change your liking or find something else of your liking. The willingness to adjust is perhaps the single most critical human faculty.

Nothing Unites Like a Common Enemy

December 14, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

On a recent Airlines Confidential podcast, former CEO of Airbus-America Barry Eccleston discussed how Airbus has grown over the years to dethrone Boeing as the world’s largest commercial aircraft maker.

Airbus began in the late 1960s as a consortium of pan-European companies connected by a shared crusade to counter American industrial prowess. Once aviation’s leaders in innovation, these European underdogs had been surpassed by Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, and Lockheed in the ’50s and ’60s.

Once Airbus got started and was standing on its own feet, the concept of ‘Beat Boeing’ became the Airbus mantra. Indeed, it brought together the French, the Germans, the Brits, and the Spanish. If you think about it, Europe had been trying previously to do joint venture programs successfully for quite a while, but most of them didn’t happen. But this one did. And, I believe, it happened, not solely, but in large part, because everybody rallied around a flag, and the flag was called Beat Boeing. Do you remember, in the old days, the Avis slogan was “We are number two, and we try harder?” That kind of like, was where we were at in Airbus. We knew we were number two; we knew we could become number one, and we tried harder.

Idea for Impact: Nothing unites a team like a common enemy. The adversary doesn’t have to be a person, a team, or a competitor. It can be a being-the-underdog mindset or an against-the-the-odds challenge. It can even be a system that has resisted change.

Each Temperament Has Its Own Language

November 18, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

From Dr. Irmgard Schlögl’s The Wisdom of the Zen Masters (1976) (she was later Ven. Myokyo-ni, Rinzai Zen Buddhist nun at the Zen Centre in London):

An elder Zen monk on his pilgrimage put up in a monastery. He came across another monk who was also on the pilgrimage. The two discovered that they had much in common, and decided next morning to continue together.

They came to a river where the ferryboat had just left. The elder took a seat to wait for its return. His new friend continued however, walking over the water.

Halfway across, he turned around and beckoned the elder to follow, “You can do it, too. Just have confidence and tread on.” The elder shook his head and stayed put.

“If you are scared, I’ll help you across. You see I can do it without much trouble.” Yet again, the elder shook his head.

The other reached the other bank of the river. He waited there until the ferry had brought the elder over. “Why did you hang back like that?” he asked.

“And what have you gained by rushing like that?” replied the elder.

“Had I known what you were like, I would not have taken up company with you.”

Wishing him farewell, the elder resumed his pilgrimage on his own.

Temperament clashes exist to some extent in almost all relationships. The language of camaraderie that two people share so effortlessly at some moments can unravel at others.

Sometimes each person believes they are deliberately communicating their needs and values, when indeed little gets through because each is working from different core assumptions and expectations—conveying and interpreting language, gestures, and intent differently, or seeking a different set of signals.

Idea for Impact: Each temperament has its own language.

Each of us has our own expectations of relating in an interpersonal relationship. When there are problems, don’t always attempt to “fix” them or back off and distance yourself. Simply give the other more space to be who they are. Seek to understand.

How to Bring Your Ideas to Life

October 4, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

No matter how good an idea is, it’ll probably need some work before it can evolve into a helpful innovation. I’ve previously drawn attention to this aspect of the creative process in my 3M Post-it Note case study.

Another notable example of what transforms ideas into innovation is the “discovery” of penicillin and its curative effect on infectious diseases.

The Scottish bacteriologist Sir Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin. More specifically, Fleming found that a specific mold produced penicillin. This substance was previously known to inhibit the growth of bacteria.

In 1928, Fleming was working on cultures of Staphylococcus, a bacterium that induces blood poisoning. Upon returning from a vacation, he saw a discarded Petri dish that he had left behind without sterilizing. It had a zone around an invading fungus where his bacterium culture didn’t grow. A mold spore from another lab in Fleming’s building had unexpectedly fallen on one of his cultures. The spore had spread over the Petri dish while Fleming was away. Instead of throwing the dirty Petri dish away, he isolated the mold and identified it as Penicillium chrysogenum, which kills bacteria by inhibiting new cell walls.

Fleming suggested his discovery might be used as an antiseptic in wounds. He published an account of this work in 1929. However, he couldn’t find a way of extracting enough penicillin needed to be curative enough without it becoming ineffective.

In itself, Fleming’s discovery was thus not a substantial leap in terms of penicillin’s use as a pharmaceutical. After Fleming’s discovery, penicillin proved unstable and difficult to produce in pure form for almost a decade. It took two Oxford University scientists, Sir Howard Walter Florey and Dr. Ernst Boris Chain, to realize its full potential only in the 1940s. They showed how to prepare penicillin in usable form and demonstrated that it could be favorably applied to the treatment of disease.

From the time when its medical application was established, penicillin has saved millions of lives by stopping the growth of the bacteria responsible for poisoning the blood and causing many once-fatal diseases. Fleming, Florey, and Chain shared the 1945 Nobel Prize for Medicine to recognize their complementary achievements.

Idea for Impact: Often, there’s a divergence between an idea and its tangible application that the original creator can’t bridge by himself. The creator will have to expose the concept to others who can evaluate and trial the discovery in new contexts.

In other words, the creative process doesn’t end with an idea or a prototype. A happy accident often undergoes multiple iterations and reinterpretations that can throw light on the concept’s new applications.

How to Turn Your Fears into Fuel

May 3, 2021 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Self-doubt is an Important Motivator

It doesn’t matter how successful creative people actually achieve. Feeling inadequate is a common malady in showbiz.

Barbra Streisand avoided live performance for 27 years.

Adele has said, “I’m scared of audiences. My nerves don’t really settle until I’m off stage.” Her concerts mean so much that she fears letting her audience down.

Kate Winslet has admitted, “Sometimes I wake up in the morning before going off to a shoot, and I think, I can’t do this; I’m a fraud. They’re going to fire me—all these things. I’m fat; I’m ugly.”

Otis Skinner, one of the great 19th-century matinee idols, once told his daughter Cornelia “Any actor who claims he is immune to stage fright is either lying or else he’s no actor.”

These superstars are not alone. Michael Gambon, Meryl Streep, Kenneth Branagh, Richard Burton, Fredric March, Andrea Bocelli, Ewan McGregor, Steven Osborne, Derek Jacobi, Stephen Fry, Eileen Atkins, Maureen Stapleton, Ian Holm, Renee Fleming, Carly Simon, Marilyn Monroe, Ellen Terry, Rod Stewart, and Peter Eyre—even actor-trainers such as Lee Strasberg and Konstantin Stanislavsky—have suffered from varying degrees of stage fear.

Fear is a universal problem.

Give voice to your fear self-doubt & take action

Many icons suffer from stage fear, often from the weight of expectation that their reputations place upon them. They throw up, feel paralyzed, or break into cold sweats. Adele once got so unnerved that she escaped from the fire exit at an Amsterdam concert venue.

Consider actor Laurence Olivier, who suffered stage fright even in his sixties when he was the world’s most revered stage performer. Even at the pinnacle of his fame, the National Theatre’s stage manager had to prod Olivier onstage every night.

Laurence Olivier suffered five years of agonizing dread following a press night in 1964, when he found his voice diminishing and the audience “beginning to go giddily round.” He developed strategies. When delivering his Othello soliloquies, he asked his Iago to stay in sight, fearing, “I might not be able to stay there in front of the audience by myself.” He asked actors not to look him in the eye: “For some reason, this made me feel that there was not quite so much loaded against me.” The venerable Sybil Thorndike gave him trenchant counsel: “Take drugs, darling, we do.”

As a sidebar, when Olivier made his stage debut playing Brutus at a choir school in London, Thorndike was in the audience. After seeing Olivier on stage for just five minutes, she turned to her husband. She declared, “But this is an actor—absolutely an actor. Born to it.”

Focus on what needs to be done & break the shell of fear and self-doubt

Some of our most admired icons experienced self-doubt—even Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi. What distinguishes most successful people is that they engage their fear. They accept that diffidence and adrenalin rush are something that they must deal with.

Interestingly enough, it’s often the mature performer, not the novice, who’s most likely to succumb to a seizure of nerves. However, superstars know in their heart of hearts that fear of inadequacy isn’t shameful. It’s normal. It’s part of the profession. It’s human.

Successful people know how to turn anxiety into energy. They take steps to minimize adverse effects. Through action, they transform their fear into vitality. Fear becomes fuel. They refuse to let their fears get in the way of their goals and success. They overcome fear through the love of the work and channel the sense of the audience’s or constituency’s expectation and goodwill into their best performance.

Idea for Impact: Don’t Fear it, Embrace it.

It’s natural to feel apprehensive when embarking on any venture. Don’t drown in a sea of self-doubt.

Overconfidence can take the edge off the feeling that you need to work hard. It’s ironic that high self-confidence, so often advised as the cure for low achievement, can cause it.

Fear invites you to work harder on your methods, strategies, and skills. It’s undoubtedly more preferable than the alternative. High self-esteem and overconfidence can lead to complacency and no growth. As Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro reminds in The Remains of the Day (1989,) “If you are under the impression you have already perfected yourself, you will never rise to the heights you are no doubt capable of.”

Focus on turning your fears into positive motivators to improve your work. Action transforms anxiety into energy. The “angels” want you to succeed.

What the Duck!

December 28, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

There’s a popular technique among programmers called “rubber duck debugging:” put a rubber duck (or a cardboard cutout of a dog) next to your computer, and whenever you get stuck, you talk to the duck.

Yes, you talk your problem and walk your code with that inanimate object. And you perpetuate the stereotype that we geeks are a socially awkward bunch.

“Showing It to Someone Else” isn’t just a way of telling the other what you think; it’s a way of telling yourself what you think. Just the act of slowing down and explaining your problem and its context can bring about a moment of illumination.

Rubber duck debugging is related to what psychologists call “incubation.” The best solutions can strike suddenly and unexpectedly when you aren’t actively working on your problem. Think of Archimedes and his Eureka moment.

Idea for Impact: Talking is often a part of thought. After many failed attempts, switching your brain from problem-solving to problem-explaining—even to a cat, parent, sympathetic coworker, or somebody who may not know much about whatever it is that’s bothering you—can break you free from fixation and trigger creative breakthroughs.

Hat tip to reader Nick Ashcroft.

Constraints Inspire Creativity: How IKEA Started the “Flatpack Revolution”

November 2, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

In the mid-1950s, Gillis Lundgren (1929–2016) was a draftsman living in a remote Swedish village of Älmhult. He was the fourth employee of a fledging entrepreneur named Ingvar Kamprad.

Kamprad’s business was called IKEA, an acronym combining his initials and those of his family’s farm and a nearby village. He had founded IKEA in 1943 and got his start selling stationery and stockings at age 17. In the 1950s, Kamprad had launched a low-cost mail-order furniture retailer to cater to farmers.

Constraints have played a role in many of the most revolutionary products

In 1956, Lundgren designed a veneered, low coffee table. He built the table at home but realized that the table was too big to fit into the back of his Volvo 445 Duett station wagon. Lundgren cut off the legs, packed them in a flat box with the tabletop, and rushed to a photoshoot for the IKEA furniture catalog.

And in so doing, Lundgren unintentionally birthed the flatpack furniture industry. He modified his simple design and drew up plans for a disassembled version of the table. Lundgren’s Lövet table (now called Lövbacken) became IKEA’s first successful mass-produced product.

IKEA and Its Flatpacking Took Over the World

IKEA’s trademark, easy-to-follow assembly instructions are a central ingredient to the company’s success. Manufacturing and distributing prefabricated furniture via flatpacking has proved enormously successful. It has dramatically facilitated the shipment and storage of pieces that otherwise took up much more space.

According to Bertil Torekull’s Leading by Design—The IKEA Story (1998,) the concept of ready-to-assemble furniture is much earlier than that. But IKEA was the first to systematically develop and sell the idea commercially.

Flatpacking contributed to many of IKEA’s products’ enduring popularity—they’re affordable, sleek, functional, and brilliantly efficient. In 1978, Lundgren designed the iconic Billy bookcase, the archetypical IKEA product that currently sells one in three seconds.

IKEA’s aesthetic of simplicity and efficiency reflects in its exclusive design and marketing approach. IKEA constantly questions its design, manufacturing, and distribution to create low-cost and acceptably good products.

The method has been adopted by numerous other business enterprises, transforming how products are made and sold globally.

Out of Limitations Comes Creativity

One problem with creativity is that sometimes people face an open field of creative possibilities and become paralyzed. Constraints can be the anchors of creativity [see more examples here, here, and here.]

Constraints fuel rather than limit creativity. Use constraints to break through habitual thinking and promote spontaneity. The mere experience of playing around with different constraints can stretch your imagination and open your mind’s eye for ingenuity.

Idea for Impact: Use constraints to help stimulate creativity. As the British writer and art critic G. K. Chesterton once declared, “Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.”

Never Cast a Blind Aye

October 17, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Rep. Tom Moore Jr. (1918–2017) of the Texas House of Representatives was dismayed at how often his legislative colleagues in the Texas House of Representatives passed bills without reading and understanding them. For an April Fools’ Day prank in 1971, he sponsored this resolution honoring Albert de Salvo:

This compassionate gentleman’s dedication and devotion to his work has enabled the weak and the lonely throughout the nation to achieve and maintain a new degree of concern for their future. He has been officially recognized by the state of Massachusetts for his noted activities and unconventional techniques involving population control and applied psychology.

The resolution passed unanimously.

Albert de Salvo was actually the Massachusetts serial killer known as the “Boston Strangler.”

Having made his point, Rep. Moore withdrew the resolution.

Idea for Impact: Don’t endorse anything you haven’t read and understood thoroughly. Abstention, even denial, is much preferable to a blind aye!

How to Create Emotional Connections with Your Customers

September 21, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

Consumers are shifting towards memorable experiences over material objects that bring happiness and well-being. Experiential consumption is increasing—the global spending on travel, leisure, and food service is estimated to grow from $5.8 trillion in 2016 to $8.0 trillion by 2030.

Businesses are responding by offering indulgences (think Apple products,) enhancing shopping experience (ordering and carrying-out Domino’s Pizza,) and creating more intimate experiences (Mastercard’s Priceless campaign) for consumers.

One particularly edifying case study is Unilever’s Persil brand of laundry detergents (Unilever licenses this brand from Henkel in many countries.) As part of the “Dirt is good” campaign, Persil’s sentimental adverts that remind “learn to be a kid” (clip,) “climb a tree, break a leg … that’s part of life” (clip,) and “dirt makes us equal” (clip) have attempted to connect with consumers emotionally.

Persil bucked the longstanding ritual of creating dull adverts for its dull products (cheery moms grabbing washing baskets and fragrant flowers and butterflies rising from the clean laundry.) Persil doesn’t focus on the detergent’s stain-busting attributes. Instead, Persil’s campaign signals that children must feel free to experience the world around them regardless of the impact on their clothes. One prominent advert (clip) presented a cheerless robot who slowly transforms into a child while playing in the open air and splashing around in a muddy pool during a rainstorm: “Every child has the right to be a child. Dirt is good.”

Even the UNICEF commended Unilever for “creating awareness of children’s right to play, the right to express themselves—in short, the right to be a child! It encourages parents to see the value of exploration, play, activity and exercise as critical to children’s development and important for full and healthy lives, even if it means that children get dirty in the process.”

Idea for Impact: Enhance how your customers see and feel the benefits of your products and services. Promote an emotional connection between products and customers.

Easy Solutions

September 19, 2020 By Nagesh Belludi Leave a Comment

This Buddhist joke evokes the old saying, “If you find yourself in a hole, first, stop digging.”

Prince Gautama, who had become the Buddha, saw one of his followers meditating under a tree at the edge of the Ganges River. Upon inquiring why he was meditating, the follower stated he was attempting to become so enlightened he could cross the river unaided. Buddha gave him a few pennies and said: “Why don’t you seek passage with that boatman. It is much easier.”

The Stoic philosopher Epictetus said, “Don’t seek for everything to happen as you wish it would, but rather wish that everything happens as it actually will—then your life will be serene.”

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Parables

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Idea for Impact: Each temperament has its own language.

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Self-doubt is an Important Motivator

Give voice to your fear self-doubt & take action

Focus on what needs to be done & break the shell of fear and self-doubt

Idea for Impact: Don’t Fear it, Embrace it.

Wondering what to read next?

Wondering what to read next?

Constraints have played a role in many of the most revolutionary products

IKEA and Its Flatpacking Took Over the World

Out of Limitations Comes Creativity

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Wondering what to read next?

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