Dreams, Gifts, Talents, Bliss

This post is my signing off to the "personal effectiveness" theme. How important this last post is for YOUR personal effectiveness!

I'm referring to I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was 1994 and It's Only Too Late If You Don't Start Now 1998, both by Barbara Sher.

What Do I Do?

Follow your bliss, your heart, your happiness.
Do what you really love and enjoy.

Why Follow Bliss?

That's the only way to greatness. And in today's world, greatness is the only way to dominating a niche.

She defines greatness as what you get by dialing 10/10 on your gifts, and a byproduct of real happiness.

And "genius" as "having fun".

How Do I Find My Gifts?

1. Check out your dreams, interests, longings and wishes.[Wishes are the messages your talents keep sending you],
2. Check out your reactions to any new experiences esp. When do you feel like play or having fun? What made you look forward to going to work the next morning?
3. To discover you dreams, write down Your Life's Highlights. See what lucky break you are wishing for? 
4. To prevent holding onto a revenge dream, ask "If I were not hurt, would I still have this dream?" 
5. Do you feel fun in the fantasy/visualization?
6. What does meaningful work for you look like?Heaven-sent job? Job in Hell? The Reverse of Job in Hell job for you?
7. What does a Perfect day for you look/feel/sound like?

How Do I Pursue My Dreams?

1. Just do it ONLY because you love it.

2. Just do it with the directness and simplicity of a child or a genius.
Do it before you are ready. Action gives you self-esteem and Good Luck.
---- (2.1) Visualize a perfect day for you. Pretend this is the only option left for you.
------------ What are the first steps you need to take to get there?
------------ Do you hear any Resistance voices? Action ALWAYS smokes out the Resistance from hiding.
------------ Assume there's always a good reason for everything.
------------ How do you reassure the Resistance?

---- (2.2) How short/soon does the Resistance feel safe with?
------------ 1 day? 1 hour? Can you take those steps for 1 hour?

---- (2.3) Declare love for what you did finish in that 1 hour. Any small unit of work deserves celebration.

3. Stick to it.

on Aug 9, 2010

Jewish Ways | Open Obvious Secrets

The Jewish Phenomenon: Seven Keys to the Enduring Wealth of a People , the book that best explains why Jews are successful and how others can be successful too if they choose to.

Main Content

1. Learn constantly.


2. Set right targets: either money-making or fame.


3. Pursue your goals boldly: mitigation of the worst possible plus assertiveness.


4. Pursue your goals with sufficient mass/force.


5. Grow your tribe: with consensus, for information or knowledge.

Parenting

1. Expect high standards from your kids.
2. Nurture strong egos, high self-esteem.
----- Build close relationship with them.
----- Delay their independence.
----- Reward venturing.
----- If you have to scold/punish them, let them recover quickly. Don't let them internalize pressure.

If this is very obvious, that's the author's genius.
If it's not that obvious in the book , but obvious only in my summary, maybe that's my genius. Even when I don't add my own insight etc, I make stuffs a lot clearer, and simpler.

Do Little, Not Much

While reading Game Changer, Doing What Matters, Execution, Boards That Deliver, Business Richard Branson Way, Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? etc, I noticed certain small numbers:

1-2 critical choices,
1-2 strategic priorities,
3-4 goals, few enough to do trade-offs effectively in a decentralized decision-making environment,
3-4 skills required in a job applicant,
5-6 critical success factors for a workforce to be preoccupied with day to day,
5 priorities for the board,
5 core strengths for an enterprise, etc

With examples from P&G, IBM, Honeywell, Virgin, GE etc.

I suggest you aim to get just 3 or 4 things done every day.

TimFerriss suggests just 1 or 2 outputs everyday.

Effectiveness | Sales and Self-Belief

Effective salespeople retain their edge by firing up their self-belief. The same holds true in other areas of personal effectiveness such as persuasion, communication, presentation and negotiation. Belief in your own moral goodness is the rock upon which your effectiveness shall be built.

Are you feeling coy about your abilities, products or services? Are you harboring serious self-doubts when doing sales: Are my stuffs really good? Even if they are good, are they the right stuffs for these prospects? Am I charging more than I deserve? and so on. If you cannot convince yourself first, how can you expect to convince other people?

On a deeper level, you may even feel guilty about pushing stuffs and ideas on other people. Do you feel that sales is a self-serving activity and nothing more?

That is a dangerous situation. If you try just changing your moods or attitudes, they won't stay suppressed for long. So, I suggest changing your belief systems by changing your facts. Thus :

• What do you know, How much do you know about your products or services?
  
• What do you know, How much do you know about your customers?
  
• What can products or services like these do for people like them?
  
• What do you know about your competitors?
  What do you know about your customers' potential alternatives and substitutes to your products?
• How is your product or service superior to these alternatives and substitutes?

Once with such facts in your hand, don't do sales. Just communicate them to your customers in a friendly way.
That's Dell's definition of sales: "communicating value" to customers.

Matsushita regards it your social responsibility to advertise your products. PR, promotions and ads become a social responsibility because you are sharing something good with the fellow members of your society. I never fail to admire these noble sentiments.

You are there at their doorsteps or at a sales counter or in a store isle or at a trade show or with their board of directors -- doing sales. You are there not to dupe them, lie to them, take any advantage of them. You are there to serve them, to do something for them, to share something truly beneficial to them with them.

You are worthy of rewards in proportion to the value you add.
Yes, you are there to add value, to communicate value.

Staying in Touch with Your Own Feelings Honestly

I'm referring to I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was by Barbara Sher, 1994.

Like other psychotherapists, she advised against repressing our feelings. Like true good Buddhist meditation practictioners, she advised us to notice the dissolution of those feelings. Her secret sauce is her practical, concrete, specific and easily doable DIY exercises.

There are numerous delicious exercises throughout her books. Here I summarize only those that I find particularly useful to my clients.

(1) Regularly visit your feelings. Get in touch with them and stay in touch.
Allow them to surface.
Experience them.
Express them, release them, let them pass like a summer storm.
e.g.
------ Think about something that make you tense and anxious.
------ Pretend you are a small kid with these same feelings.
------ Let these feelings rise and roll over you like a baby.
------ Cry, groan, scream (silently!) like a baby for about 1-2 minutes.

(2) Suppose the now 'you' can visit the 'you'as a kid? What would you tell the kid?

(3) What would your day be like if you don't have to worry/fear/guard/double-check, etc?

The main idea of all such exercises is to re-surface the unhealthy emotions that originated in your childhood. Once you can re-access them, recognize them, see them in perspective, they lose their evil sway over you.

In Buddhist terms, you don't need to intensify your current/adult feelings by placing them in the context of your childhood. Just observe them as they are now, and they will dissolve as that is their true nature.

However, for those who are not familiar with the Buddhist practices, placing one's feelings in the context of one's childhood intensifies them and makes them become more prominent and observable. Thus, this mental trick is very helpful for non-Buddhists.

I recommend this feeling-release exercise to my readers.

The cost to you is just 1 or 2 minutes.

The benefits ... well, just go and see for yourself!

Switch | How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

on July 26, 2010

I'm refering to Switch by the Heath brothers, who don't need any introduction. It's a fabulous book that I heartily recommend to anyone.

The authors believe that change involves three aspects: your conscious rational mind(the rider in their terminology), your non-rational emotional makeup(the elephant in their terms), and the environment(what they call the Path). I am going to summarize only the first 2 sections below.

Direct the Rider

Reason: Without such direction, the rider will lose focus, over-analyze, spin the wheel and deplete its small reserves soon. Thus, we need to

1. Give the Rider a destination postcard.
2. Remind it of what is already working, of those signs that herald the miracle you are expecting.
3. Pre-load it with Critical Success Factors in a situation and the processess

Arouse the Elephant

Reason: Without such motivation, the elephant will remain inert and lazy or it gets spooked and demoralized soon. Thus, we need to

1.  Show the elephant a graphic stuff/scenario to incite fear (for short-term specific actoion) or joy (for longer- term not so clearly defined actions)
2. Shrink the task to reassure the elephant
3. Grow the identity of the persons involved.

What Does a CEO Do? - Part 2

An effective person is fully role-aware. She is fully conscious of the responsibilities that come with her role. As a front line manager, she had played her part. As a mid-level manager, then as a VP and so on, she had played in many roles effectively. Now she aspires to being at the helm, being a CEO. How can she retain her effectiveness despite the role change?

According to Tales from the top, a CEO should concentrate on - strategy/vision, customers, finance, and inspiration/corporate culture. CEO has four key result areas in all. To this, Konosuke Matsushita may add supplier/partner relations.

According to Parkinson Law, the No. 1 is to do whatever others cannot and will not do, including switching off lights before leaving office etc.

According to Titan, John D Rockefeller shirked everything. He also advised others to shirk and to concentrate on thinking how to make more money for his Standard Oil.

According to Andrew Carnegie, a CEO like him can run a company like US Steel with about 2 hours every morning. But then, you may later have to hear "Meet You in Hell" from your second-in-command.

Please check out What Only the CEO Can Do in HBR too.

Compiling their wisdom with what I have read from the list in one of my previous posts, I would say that a CEO should concentrate on

• Goals, Strategy, Vision


• Customers


• Finance


• Suppliers and partners


• Gurus


• Corporate Culture, Leadership, Inspiration, Inspection

Frankly, what the CEOs do is boring. We all know their KPI (key performance indicators.)

How they carry out those tasks, how they execute is the key.

What Does a CEO Do?

A truly effective person plays his part, fulfills the obligations of his role, but not oversteps it. How can a CEO be effective? How clear can he be about his role, obligations and expectations of his constituents?

An effective CEO covers these major bases: goals and strategies, capital and cash flow, values and culture, constant monitoring of the external and internal situations.

What have the legendary effective CEO's said about this?

Louis V. Gerstner.. Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?....... IBM

Jack Welch ....... Winning ............................... GE

James M. Kilts.... Doing What matters ................... Gillette

Larry Bossidy..... Execution + Confronting Reality ....... Honeywell

AG Lafley....... Game Changer ........................... P&G

Ram Charan....... What the CEO wants you to know

Konosuke Matsushita ... Matsushita Leadership ....... Panasonic

Please check out the next post too.

I have also been writing a series of posts for executive effectiveness in this blog.

Effectiveness | Dell | Obvious Open Secrets

Effectiveness is an open secret. Everyone knows what it is and how to achieve it. But the will and the courage distinguish the real deals from the posers. For instance, Michael Dell didn't even consider their formula for corporate success a secret worth keeping. He openly shared it with everyone including rivals. I hope we can learn from him how to achieve our personal or corporate effectiveness.

I'm referring to How Dell Does It

1. Play where you can win : where there is profit and growth, where your business model has an edge, where you have vendors providing standard-based components.


2. Execute.


3. Use metrics everywhere.


4. Adapt your organizational structures, your people(e.g. segment/modularize their responsibilities), the info flow in response to the markets and the technologies.

In other words,
1. play where you can win and
2. do play there.
3. monitor how you play and
4. adjust.

If this is very obvious, that's Dell's genius.
If it's not that obvious in the book , but obvious only in my summary, maybe that's my genius.

Communication | New Style

Input

1. Pre-iPad, Steve Jobs said this of Amazon's Kindle : "The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore." You may read more here .

2. On the Web, people read 25% slower. The exact number may vary but we do read slower with web pages.

3. Search Engines require your content to be 250 t0 400 words, or more than 350 words etc. I can't be bothered with them too much.

4. PowerPoint-style bullet-points constrain thoughts and discussions. You can read more about this here and here .

Customer Focus

1. I suspect the readers of this blog hate PowerPoint/bullet points too. They want depths and comprehensiveness.

2. They are too smart to be bluffed by a higher style. I can use Thesauruses to dig up arcane, esoteric, exotic vocab. Who am I fooling?

I can serve up lengthy, verbose, long-winded, rumbling sentences in misguided imitation of Joyce or Proust, whether they are suitable to the topic of discussion or not, just to make a false facade of erudition which anyone can see through at a glance, which will result in nothing but pity or ridicule and so on.

3. They value their time.

Self Care

1. I'm a bit impatient and I value my time.
2. I can't type well/efficiently.
3. It is a lot of effort for me to raise my language. And even if I managed to raise it, it adds little value.

Conclusion

I'm going to write in free-from bullet points, at the speed of thought, at the speed of note-taking in uni's.

on April 7, 2010

Competitiveness | Jose Mourinho

The two teams involved were Barcelona and Inter Milan. But the coach of Inter Milan was so famous that he overshadowed all the players and even the teams themselves. Thus, many newspapers and online commentators described the match as "Jose Mourinho vs Barcelona."

It was a battle royale between a special manager and a special team and the special manager won out 3 to 1. My curiosity was piqued to see how an individual can have that much impact on so many players. This is my analysis of what exactly happened.

Mourinho understood football/soccer as a position-and-numbers game. Barcelona and other teams take it to be a possession game. Thus, they are playing different games in fact. Most other teams want to feel like over-capitalized startups: the more money, the better. The longer you keep the ball, the better. However, the truth is borrowing more than you need does never good, and similarly, just keeping the ball for the sake of keeping it does no good. Mourinho proudly said after the match: "We gave the ball away". His players let Barcelona keep the ball as much as they like.

Threats Neutralized

1. Barcelona is feared for its passing game
------ 1. Cut off their supply line to their front men.
------ 2. Stay in your positions. Let them play their passing game in harmless areas.
---------- Software designers/architects will be reminded by Barcelona of systems where objects call each other a lot but do noting else. e.g Ken Thomson in Coders at Work
---------- Business people will be reminded by Barcelona of paper-pushing company cultures.

2. Lionel Messi
------ 1. Just hold your ground. Avoid premature commitment and tackles. Let him make his moves first.
------ 2. Don't give him any chance for free kicks.

Your Own Attacks

1. Destroy their positions by pressing high. Win back the ball, the possession at the front with the intent to attack. Not merely for possession.
2. Exploit any positional mistakes.
------ 1. Barcelona's defensive weaknesses on the flanks.
------ 2. Direct balls over Barcelona's high defensive lines, to your own fast strikers.
3. Creating numerical supremacy during your own attacks.

I do recommend All The Way Jose for a nice read. You will be inspired to see how a mere translator for coaches transformed himself into an assistant coach and eventually into a world-famous manager of the world-famous football clubs.

on May 5, 2010

How To Make Decisions Quickly - Part 2

Direct, straight into the heart of the matter!

1. By Joseph S. Nye
   "But deciding how to decide is as important as making the final decision. What should be the composition of the group the leader turns to? What is the context of the decision? How will information be communicated and how much control does the leader maintain over the decision? A leader who gets any of these factors wrong may be decisive, but also decisively wrong." 
   
   
2. It's Possible to Be Quick
   
   "It's not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are." -Roy Disney
   
   Know Your Desired Result
   
   Steve Yates said again in the Fortune Magazine interview, “Successful traders don't spend much time regretting decisions or going back over things. If a decision turned out to be wrong, so what? Move on. So when you have to make a quick decision and you know that there's a good chance it will be wrong--the worst thing you can possibly do is sit there and panic and hope. You have to be decisive--go on and do it.”
   
   Soccer/football strikers are trained that way too. 
   
   
3. Gut and Body
   
   1: Trust Your Gut
   
   2: Use Your Body’s Energy Field 
   
   
4. Traps To Avoid
   
   Analysis paralysis
   
   Getting Overwhelmed br Fear of change br Fear of commitment
   
     Fear of regret
   
   Decision-making fatigue
   
   Procrastination 
   
   
5. Colin Powell
   
   " Once the information is in the 40 to 70 range, go with your gut. Don't wait until you have enough facts to be 100% sure, because by then it is almost always too late.... " 
   
   
6. Andrew Carnegie's Master Minds?
   
   What decision would your hero make in these circumstances? Is there a consensus among your heroes on what to do? 
   
   
7. Set a Deadline
   
   An easy way to solve this problem is to put a time limit or deadline on your decisions. 
   
   
8. US Marine Corps
   
     Our leaders must be able to "feel" the battlefield tempo, discern patterns among the chaos, and make decisions in seconds ... much like a Wall Street investment trader, but with life threatening consequences.
   
   ... two primary models for human decision making -- the analytical model and the intuitive, or recognitional, model.
   
   ... While analytical decision making is based on a comparison of quantitative options, recognitional decision making depends on a qualitative assessment of the situation based on the decider’s judgement and experience. It does not look for the ideal solution; instead, it seeks the first solution that will work. Research by noted psychologist Dr. Gary Klein indicates that most people use the recognitional, or intuitive, model of decision making over 90 percent of the time...
   
   ... the longer the decision is delayed, the more opportunities are missed. Initiative can be forfeited to the enemy. ....
   
     .... Napoleon may be correct if he meant that intuition cannot be taught in the traditional sense, but both the Germans and the Japanese were successful in assuming that -- through repetition -- it could be learned. ....
   
   Advances in information technology will never clear Clausewitz’s "fog of war" to the point where the analytical model is timely enough to guarantee victory. br Foundation blocks: character, experience
   
       
   
   
   
   
9. What does US Navy Have to Say?
   
   " analytical or intuitive ... ... ... which is better depends on the nature of the situation, particularly on the time and information available.
   

Book Review "How We Decide"

The late Peter Drucker spent a large chunk of his book "Effective Executive" to discuss how to make good decisions in a corporate setting.

Behavioral economists, military historians, psychonomists, former heavy weight champions(Ali and Foreman in particular), CEO's, marketers, PR gurus, software project managers, physicians/surgeons, F15 pilots, tank commanders and so on, are also keenly interested in decision-making.

Now, let's review the book : How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer 2009.

Length : About 260 pages. Excluding content, introduction, preface, index etc.

My Summary:

1. Use Reason for Simple & New Problem ---> Then , use Intuition: take time, sleep on the problem.
2. Automate skills for individual/constituent steps ---> Then, focus on 'holistic cues' i.e. overall effect/result.
3. Encourage debate and cognitive dissonance.
4. Be mindful of what you don't know.

The smaller the content in the original, the smaller the summary. Excuse me if I am stating a very obvious fact.

People Decisions | Mao-Zedong-like Employees

Imagine Mao Zedong is applying for a job with your government or political party, or he's already got a job there. Also assume:

1. You belong to the same ideology as his.
2. He hasn't done stuffs like Cultural Revolution etc. Say, it's in early 1950s.
3. You're 100% certain that he won't overthrow you and seize power for himself. He won't undermine you in any way.

Even then, you are unlikely to use him properly.

Hard to Pigeonhole Talent

One group of experts say:

1. Mao is a bad politician.
2. He rose to power simply because he won battles and eventually wars.
3. Mao's politics is, "Power comes out of the gun barrel." etc.

So Mao can't be used in your Political Dept. You use an FDR, a Nixon, a Clinton, instead.

Another group of experts say:

1. If Japanese didn't enter China so soon, Mao had no chance against the Government army backed by German military advisers.
2. Mao's military knowledge is merely that of a bandit.
3. His generals (Chu Te, Lin Pao, etc) did all the work and he took credit.
4. Long March is a military disaster.

So Mao can't be used in your Military Dept. You use a Patton, a Mc Arthur, a Grant instead.

Mao Was Not Hired. But Those You Hired Floundered.

When Nixon made a Military-101 mistake, Patton got into trouble.
When McArthur made a Political-101 mistake, FDR got burned.

Paradoxically, sometimes, 100 plus 100 can be less than 55. Patton's 100 for his military expertise and FDR's 100 for his political expertise can combine to become 200 or 10.

And Mao will exploit that. He won't play your game, he won't let you play your own game either.

Chelsea manager said after this team's loss to Inter Milan: “I think we didn't play how we wanted to."

Perhaps Mao is one of the T people, a Jack of all trades.

Label him anyway you like. But should that prevent you from hiring him?

Effectiveness | Bluffing - Part 2

Effective people can bluff their way out of many demanding situations of life. Faced with the unknown, the unexpected, the unseen, the unheard of, they bluff. Instead of waiting for more evidence, more certainty, more security, they bluff. They try to make a good decision on insufficient data. Thus they prove effective even in murky, fluid situations.

I've talked about such honorable, honest bluffing before. I will do many more posts on bluffing since this is an essential, important skill.

Here comes an honor roll of famous bluffers.

1. Upstarts defines an entrepreneur as someone who has figured out a way to be all right in the end despite making many mistakes along the way.

2. The Humble Hound article remarks, " good leaders realize that every move is a potential partial failure to be corrected by a next move ... "

3. Deng Xiaopeng is famous for ad hoc arrangements and for "groping stones across the river."

4. Richard Branson even titles one his books "Screw It."

Welcome the Mistakes

We'll make mistakes. Even now we may be making some mistakes. That shouldn't scare us for the following reasons.

Mistakes are our old friends. Future mistakes are no different from our old ones. When we made some mistakes in the past, how did we recover? Luck, other people's mercy, God's invisible hand may have played a role.

If you recovered because of such things, then count these mistakes out. We want those mistakes from which you recovered because you had designed the mistakes in such a way that you could recover from them conveniently. It will pay high dividends to study how you designed such mistakes.

The answer is ludicrously simple. Let's listen to Sir Richard again: "Don't bet the farm." He means that if the bet equals the value of your whole firm, you should just walk away from the table. As long as you don't bet the farm, you'll be all right with whatever bluffing you want to do.

Actually you'll realize that Sir Richard has structured his business in such a way that he can bet any frim in his dukedom. I'm referring to his "atomized" corporate structure. Under one group or company, there are many companies. Let call them sub-companies. When Sir Richard wants to do deals, he can give you whatever share you want of any relevant sub-company.

The same concept goes under such terms as "portfolio," "staged bets," "phased bets," "reserves," "pots" and so on.

Therefore, the bottom line is : Bluff and keep your bets safely small.

Effectiveness | Effective Bluffing

Effective people can bluff their way out of many a tight spot. Here I don't mean, by 'bluffing', cheating, lying, or even pretending. I mean only guessing, intuition, instincts, hunches etc. Faced with the unknown, the unexpected, the unseen/unheard of, we must bluff and know that we are bluffing when we are bluffing. It takes humility, honesty and self-awareness to bluff in an honorable manner. And it's effective.

Treat an Examination as an Interview

We all have bluffed in one way or another in our school days, and we usually do so in paper-based exams, assuming "What can the examiner do if I bluffed in a dishonest way?"

It is a wrong assumption because the examiner does interact with our answer as if in a dialog. For example: The question goes: "Discuss the epistemology of Kierkegaard"
Your answer goes: "I have read a good deal about this topic. But right now, I have forgotten all about what I have read."

Then the examiner' thoughts will go like: "Lying. If you have read a lot, you should at least remember something." or "Maybe true. We all forget. But zero recall must be rewarded with zero score/grade."

We should preempt such responses by treating any examination as an interview, where we expect follow-up questions that will probe and poke through our facade of insincerity and corner us into admission of our dishonesty, cowardice and above all else being stupid enough to bluff. Does that remind you of the final scenes of the Detective Colombo episodes?

Honorable Bluffing in Interviews

Here I will give a number of possible responses to that question asked in an interview. I won't grade/order them in any way. I won't even classify them.

Question goes: "Can you talk about the epistemology of Kierkegaard"

Answers:
1. "I have read a good deal about this topic. But right now, I have forgotten all about what I have read."

2. "I know a good deal about epistemological views of Nietzsche but not Kierkegaard's."

3. "I know a good deal about epistemological views of many existentialists but not Kierkegaard's."

4. "I understand epistemology as ...
An epistemological framework needs to cover ...
Existentialists/Scandinavian/European/Western/ the 18th century philosophers usually regards epistemology as ...
Kierkegaard generally think that...
Kierkegaard remarked in one of his essays that knowing is ...
But I can't relate epistemology to Kierkegaard in particular."

5. "Kierkegaard has said very little about epistemology."

6. "Whatever Kierkegaard has said about epistemology. is flawed."

7. "Kierkegaard doesn't consider epistemology very important or relevant."

8. "Kierkegaard isn't an important philosopher for epistemology."
And so on.

Exercises

1. If you are a programmer, think how you would prevent "double submits" in Django, Turbo Gears, Pylons, CherryPy, Ruby on Rails, Merb, Struts, JSF, Webworks, Tapsetry, Spring, plain J2EE, codeigniter, PHPCake, Symfony, etc.

2. SAT: What is the average (arithmetic mean) of all the multiples of ten from 10 to 190 inclusive? or Amy has to visit towns B and C in any order. The roads connecting these towns with her home are shown on the diagram. How many different routes can she take starting from A and returning to A, going through both B and C (but not more than once through each) and not travelling any road twice on the same trip? or

3. LSAT: As any economist knows, healthy people pose less of an economic burden to society than unhealthy people. Not surprisingly, then, every dollar our state government spends on prenatal care for undocumented immigrants will save taxpayers of this state three dollars.

Which of the following, if true, would best explain why the statistics cited above are not surprising?

4. GMAT: If there are 16 ounces in 1 pound, the ratio of 6 ounces to 3¾ pounds is ....

Conclusion

Be honest at all times.
Then, bluff to your heart's content without worrying about the consequences.

1. What do you know to be true? Just trust your own experience. Don't believe even your God, Gods, or gods. Trust only what your previous tests have shown you.


2. How does that relate to this question/experiment/test? Use that, show that.

Where Are You? What Are You Doing?

I am referring to Five Problems Will Thwart Salesforce.com's Rise in On-Demand CRM by Bob Thompson, Founder, CRMGuru.com, written on November 8, 2005. I'm quoting him at length.

Problem No. 1: Confusing SFA with CRM

... Salesforce.com's heritage leads it to see CRM as primarily a sales problem.

The first time I met with Benioff, he told me he wanted to build a sales automation tool that he would like and actually use. ... he made that the guiding force for the salesforce.com solution, which does indeed do a great job automating sales processes, according to a recent CRMGuru industry study.

... But there's more to CRM technology than SFA and more to CRM than technology.

Questions Raised

1. Was he right? Did Salesforce.com get it wrong?
2. Was Salesforce.com right in concentrating all its guns on a specific function and in deciding to expand only after its initial success?
3. Is it impossibily tough to grow one's company from SFA to CRM? Organically? By acquisitions as Salesforce.com has done since then?

Even More Questions Raised

4. The first product will be SFA or CRM or ERP. Is that techno or business decision?
5. Say, you all agree it will be SFA. Will your SFA look exactly like early Salefforce.com? Again, is that techno or business decision?
6. Syatems analysis ... is that techno or business decision?

I sound dumb in asking such questions. Maybe I am.

What about those who don't even ask such dumb questions?

Effectiveness | Confidence of a Joe Girard

Joe Gerard, in his own words (from "Joe Girard Complete Audio Collection," 2006), is "No 1 new retail car salesman in the world" in Guinness Book of World Records. He is the only car salesman who sold cars by appointment. You have to make appointment in advance to buy from him.

Why do people find him irresistible? Why was he so successful? What are his secrets? As I said, I'm not going to do an overall, comprehensive summary. I'll do just an impression, just a compilation of peak passages in his books, just a number of remarkable strokes.

Foundation

He works from a solid moral, ethical foundation. He insists that there must be two winners in every sale he makes.
He believes the true mark of a successful sales is the repeat business.

An Honest Secret to Confidence

Every morning before he leaves home for work, he'd ask himself,"Will I buy from me?"
Do you radiate confidence to your buyers? Do you send out negative signals?
How do you annihilate such negative cues?
And what's his secret key to confidence? The answer is "Homework." He did a thorough preparation. I can't help admiring his disarming honesty here. He declares there are no short-cuts. Thorough preparation is the price you pay for radiant, winsome confidence.

Long Haul

How do you sustain your enthusiasm?
(1) Celebrate small successes. If you live only for monumental successes, most days in your life will be disappointing.
(2) Be grateful for everything, be grateful even for the next 24 hours you're going to live today.

There are many more pointers to learn from his tapes and books. Here I gather only what is relevant for the topic of personal effectiveness.

Effectiveness Choices | Moses says "Journey Forth!"

History and Movies are not only for inspiration but also for your mental rehearsals of success. Here I'd like to share a lesson of history from the book, Jewish Wisdom for Business Success.

Frankly, it's not a remarkable book, not worth-reading in details. But there are peaks which you should not miss. I've chosen one such peak to discuss here.

Panic Buttons

Human beings under severe pressure usually limit themselves to only the three options of fight, flee, or freeze. Animals are also known to behave in this way. How can we expand our options at such critical moments of life?

How did Moses do in Exodus?

Our book describes a scene in which the Israelis were caught between the Red Sea and the Egyptian army. The Israelis had been running away from the Pharaoh and now the king's army was coming to re-capture and enslave them again. All around there was desert and the Red Sea was blocking their escape.

The Israelis came up with four different options.
(1) Kill themselves, which the authors classify as self-destruction.
(2) Fight the pursuing army to death, which the authors say was unlikely to succeed.
(3) Surrender to the army.
(4) Pray to God, which the authors classify as "learned helplessness."

Mose's decision was "Journey Forth!"

A Ninja warrior, a Maoist guerrilla would have applauded this choice. It echoes what the Law of Attraction cult would advise "Don't solve the problem, just go after what you want."

"Remain silent," Don't pray to God now

The authors point out that it was very unusual of a prophet like Moses to ask his people not to pray. They interpret this as Mose's injunction to his followers to jerk themselves free from learned helplessness, and to take responsibility for their own destiny.

I have a different interpretation: True believers do not put their god to a test, a dilemma in this way. They take responsibility for their own actions. They don't punish themselves or choose deliberately to suffer in any way in the name of a God.

Conclusion

Don't just pray. Journey forth.

What Goals Should I Set?

How do we surface the goals from our subconscious or intuitions? How do we discover them from inside of a deluge of facts and data?

And this is not a purely rational exercise either. We all know this human tendency to see what we want to see, to hear what we want to hear, shutting out what we don't want to. A historic example is Hitler who refused to accept facts whenever they did not fit into his plans and theories.

We all are good at self-deceiving in one way or another. Then how do we outwit our own feelings? 'Emotional intelligence' doesn't become a household term without a good reason.

Here is my list of guiding questions to enable your self-discovery:

What end states do you want?

What future do you envision? Please avoid jargons and big words here. Small plain words were enough for an American president who defeated Communism and revived America. Can you recall Reagan's campaign themes? Family, Neighborhood, Work, Peace. Outspend the communists on defence and fix the American economy.

Strategy guru Liddell Hart advised that before you start a war, you must be very clear about the kind of peace you want at the end of the war. The same holds true here.

What will bring you closer to your broader goals?

Are you just spinning wheels? Just looking busy?

What goal has the higher return on your effort?

Apply the 80/20 rule, the Pareto principle.

What do you fear?

If you have a definite, concrete, specific answer, you should do that thing first. There are many terms for this concept:

1. BANJO (Bang A Nasty Job Off)
2. Handle the Killer issues first (P&G innovation guidelines as noted in Game Changer.
3. And Agile and Extreme Programming too make the similar recommendations.

If you don't have a ready answer, ask the question immediately below.

What if I don't know my fears?

What do you dread about tomorrow, or about the current project?
What miracle would you like to take place?
If you are invincible, what would you do?
Such answers point to what you secretly fear. You may invent your own question in this regard.

What do you want madly, badly?

That goal is more likely to be a red herring, a distraction than a truly beneficial goal for you.
Why are so mad, bad about this goal?
Are you taking so much risks, cutting corners?
These questions try to find out if you are being driven by lust, greed, passion, or any other wrong type of desire.

Is the goal doable?

If not, forget it for now. Keep it in a diary and revisit it when the situation has changed enough.
What is not doable is a mere pipe dream.
e.g. over-reach e.g. Napoleon in Russia, the Russians in Afghan, and the Afghans in ... ( well, I can't complete this tripartite run. ;-) )

Does the pursuit of the goal make use of your strengths?

As the late Peter Drucker remarked, strengths will give you results whereas attempts to correct your weaknesses will just give you mediocrity at best.

Does the pursuit of the goal involve something you cannot tolerate/stomach economically/morally/spiritually?

Are the goals internally consistent?

Do they defeat one another? e.g. Embrace the Internet but ban Google, Facebook, Twitter, Paypal, eBay, youtube and ... huh ...

Quite a list. Quite a list.