Skill-based teams are opportunities to allow talent to really soar, but only if the vision is precise and liberating, and if the talent assembled is allowed to contribute as much as they can.
A great way to give thanks… for the privileges we’ve got is to do important work. Your job, your internet access, your education, your role in a civilized society… all of them are a platform, a chance to do art, a way for you to give back and to honor those that enabled you to get to this point. For every person reading this there are a thousand people (literally a thousand) in underprivileged nations and situations that would love to have your slot. Don’t waste it.
successful humor breaks down the power structures that tend to inhibit tighter social bonds and interactions. This is precisely the type of environment Pixar seeks to create. They have established that, at Pixar, hierarchy and positional status are of less relevance than at most companies. The dominant hierarchical work environment supports the fallacy that the most experienced or senior person in the group will have the answers.
The World Financial Center in Shanghai. August 2011
..In our time, at this moment when any moment may be the last for many of us, it’s damned galling and impossibly sad that we still have among us the small, bitter people, the witch-hunters and the declaimers against reality.
Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can’t vent any anger against them. I only feel this appalling sadness. Somewhere, in their upbringing, they were shielded against the total facts of our existence. They were only taught to look one way when many ways exist.
Food for thought
A friend just sent me this little parable. It’s not exactly new, but does invite some reflection on what makes a fulfilling life, why we do what we do. For more ideas on the same subject, one should read Umair Haque.
An American investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal Greek village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellow fin tuna.
The American complimented the Greek on the quality of his fish and asked, “How long does it take to catch them?” The Greek replied: “Only a little while.”
The American then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish? The Greek said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs. The American then asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”
The Greek fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play cards with my friends, I have a full and busy life.”
The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats.
Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution.
You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Athens, then London and eventually New York where you will run your expanding enterprise.”
The Greek fisherman asked, “But, how long will this all take?” To which the American replied, “15-25 years.”
“But what then?” The American laughed and said that’s the best part. “When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.”
“Millions … Then what?” The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play cards with your friends.”
wfp:
The refugee camp in Dadaab, Kenya has seen by the air. With kind permission from our friends at the UN Refugee Agency.
Source: wfp
For a couple of years I’ve been thinking about a kind of method to build innovative concepts into businesses more efficiently and it seems Eric Ries has found some of the answers. Look forward to his book, for now this panel is very insightful.
Large-scale education was never about teaching kids or creating scholars. It was invented to churn out adults who worked well within the system.
Danny Meyer Is on a Roll - NYTimes.com
Danny should be an inspiration to businesses of all strides. So much we can learn from his approach.
We’re either growing, or we’re getting weaker. There’s no standing still. Whether you shared his politics or not, Eldridge Cleaver was right. We’re either part of the solution, or we’re part of the problem.
But here are a few things the show won’t have: Speeches, slide shows, or tickets. Wurman’s plan is to stage a series of improvisational one-to-one conversations, held in front of a small invitation-only audience and then disseminated to the outside world via a high-quality, for-sale app that captures the event.
Seems that mr. Wurman and I agree that conferences have become stale and need some fresh air.
Our iterative process often teaches us invaluable lessons. Watching users ‘in the wild’ as they use our products is the best way to find out what works, then we can act on that feedback. It’s much better to learn these things early and be able to respond than to go too far down the wrong path.
Far from innovating our institutions in this time of historic, sweeping global economic crisis and social fracture, the very opposite seems to be happening—our institutions are diminishing, regressing, devolving, sliding back tens or hundreds of years at a time into economically prehistoric practices and beliefs.
Source: umairhaque.blogspot.com
