Insights To Live A Better Life
Michael Bloomberg is the billionaire founder of the financial services data and media company, Bloomberg. He was also the 108th Mayor of New York. He’s confident, outspoken and has strong views on how to start and run a business. I learnt about them in his autobiography. Here are the highlights:
Continue reading “What Michael Bloomberg Taught Me About Business”“As for preserving justice, this means keeping intact with humanity and justice, and searching out what lies within hearts, in order to mesh with them.
Searching hearts means finding out what rules them, by way of external you control the internal. If matters have complicated twists and turns, you go along with them accordingly. Continue reading “Secrets On the Exercise Of Power”
No matter what we believe, we are hardwired to be affected by emotions, even at work. I learnt this at a talk given by Joan Kingsley and Sue Paterson, authors of The Fear-free Organization
The challenge for a manned mission to Mars is neither cost nor technology, but coping with solitude. Imagine being stuck with the same people for two or three years in a confined space with minimal food, entertainment, and contact with Earth. Jason Stuster, a NASA research consultant, who studied the diaries of explorers to remote regions on earth such as the Antarctic found that many would fall into depression or suffer psychoses (think Tarkovsky’s movie “Solaris”)[1]. Continue reading “Could You Fly To Mars?”
“Who has control in a conversation, the guy listening or the guy talking?
The listener, of course.
That’s because the talker is revealing information while the listener, if he’s trained well, is directing the conversation toward his own goals. He’s harnessing the talker’s energy for his own ends.”
Chris Voss
That’s what Chis Voss, formerly the FBI’s lead international hostage negotiator, writes in his excellent “Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as If Your Life Depended on It”. His insights shatter the idea that good negotiators engage in a battle of wills against their counterpart. If there is a guiding principle in the FBI’s elite negotiating team it’s that you have to remove yourself from the equation.
Continue reading “Negotiate Like A Top FBI Hostage Negotiator”
I’m in the process of re-thinking my work situation. Naturally, change, especially when the next step is not fully known, can feel a bit unsettling, but that’s the upfront emotional payment for greater future growth – no pain, no gain as they say. Importantly, the timing couldn’t be better for a big positive transformational change.
Continue reading “The Perfect Time For Transformational Change”
Helicopter parenting your kids to Harvard
Parents will know that as soon as the their child is born, they subconsciously plan their child’s path to Harvard, MIT, Oxford, Cambridge or one of the other top universities. The thinking goes that by attending a top university, a world of opportunities will open up especially in the jobs market.
Continue reading “Does Going To a Top University Make a Difference?”
How do you compare the fame of an actor today to a Greek philosopher from two thousand years ago? Well, the clever people at MIT have come up with a system called Pantheon to do just that.
It looks at the biographies of historical figures that feature in more than 25 languages in Wikipedia. This gives a sense of broad impact of the figure. Then they make adjustments for number of page views, bias towards English language bios and age of the historical character (so if a bio is still being written on someone from two thousand years ago, that means their cultural is very big).
Continue reading “Who’s the Most Famous Person Of All Time?”
How many times do you hear of a work initiative, company plan or government project that fails and you think it was obvious that was going to happen? Think government projects to upgrade IT systems or building new transport links or think company plans to go digital or break silos.
Continue reading “How To Prevent Catastrophic Decision Making (3 min read)”
Obama used his ideas on his path to the US Presidency, Hilary Clinton wrote her thesis on his work, and grass-roots movements, from both the left and now the right, treat his work as the template for action. Yet many people have never heard of the American Saul Alinsky. He is thought be the founder of modern community organising and wrote one of the most influential books on setting up grass-roots movements: the 1971 book “Rules For Radicals”. The basic philosophy was to give power to the have-nots. In his introduction he wrote:
“WHAT FOLLOWS IS for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away”
Continue reading “13 Rules For Have-Nots To Gain Power”