Top 10 Believes

What are my top 10 believes now?

1. Nothing is permanent ( including this list ).
   
2. Things fail when it is not designed to evlove with changes.
   
3. One can reduces one's ignorance by learning more about oneself and the World around us.
   
4. Sharing what I discover about myself and the World around me is intellectual philanthropy.
   
5. There is power when one knows one can be wrong.
   
6. There is always more than one way of seeing and doing things.
   
7. Listen to people who have unpopular views.
   
8. Do one's own thinking.
   
9. If one does not make choices, choices make one.
   
10. Connecting the disconnects
    

What are your top 10 believes now?

Mother Teresa's definition of poverty

The hungry and the lonely, not only for food but for the Word of God; the thirsty and the ignorant, not only for water but also for knowledge, peace, truth, justice and love; the naked and the unloved, not only for clothes but also for human dignity; the unwanted, the unborn child, the racially discriminated against, the homeless and the abandoned - not only for a shelter made of bricks, but for a heart that understands, that covers, that loves; the sick, the dying destitutes and the captives - not only in body but also in mind and spirit; all those who have lost all hope and faith in life, the alcoholics and drug addicts and all those who have lost God ( for them God was but God is ) and who have lost all hope in the power of the Spirit.

Source:

A simple path

Lucinda Vardey, Mother Teresa

Page 30 - 31

Rider

ISBN: 0712674527

Generalize, don't specialize

Why should we generalize instead of specialize?

Sense from:

Operating manual for Spaceship Earth

Buckminster Fuller

Page 40 - 41

Arkana

ISBN: 0140194517

A type of bird which lived on a special variety of micro-marine life. Flying around, these birds gradually discovered that there were certain places in which that particular marine life tended to pocket-in the marshes along certain ocean shores of certain lands. So, instead of flying aimlessly for chance finding of that marine life they went to where it was concentrated in bayside marshes.

After a while, the water began to recede in the marshes, because the Earth’s polar ice cap was beginning to increase. Only the birds with very long beaks could reach deeply enough in the marsh holes to get at the marine life. The unfed, short-billed birds died off. This left only the long-beakers. When the birds’ inborn drive to reproduce occurred there were only other long-beakers surviving with whom to breed. This concentrated their long-beak genes.

So, with continually receding waters and generation to generation inbreeding, longer and longer beaked birds were produced. The waters kept receding, and the beaks of successive generations of the birds grew bigger and bigger. The long-beakers seemed to be prospering when all at once there was a great fire in the marshes. It was discovered that because their beaks had become so heavy these birds could no longer fly. They could not escape the flames by flying out of the marsh. Waddling on their legs they were too slow to escape, and so they perished.

This is typical of the way in which extinction occurs through over-specialization.

10 ways to reinvent your company

Here's a crash course from Keith Yamashita, cofounder and principal of Stone Yamashita Partners on the art and science ( mostly art ) of creating strategy and unleashing change.

1. Outlaw PowerPoint. Write down your vision as a story - with a beginning, middle and end - to clarify what must change first.
   
2. Don't rely on words alone. Bring your thinking to life: Create an exhibit, use diagrams, prototype ideas.
   
3. Make strategy an everyday act. The creation and re-creation of strategy shouldn't be a process that you undertake only when budgets are due.
   
4. Argue forcefully against your most dearly held hypotheses. Only then will you know if they stand up to scrutiny.
   
5. Make decisions, right or wrong. There's nothing worse than waffling.
   
6. Take over the TV station. Airtime is everything. Reinforce your messages in everything that you do. Use every ad, press release, store, package, and event to tell your story.
   
7. Embrace thine enemy. Make a list of the people who could legitimately stop your big idea from taking root. Befriend them. Convince them. Make it their responsibility to improve on your vision.
   
8. Don't hold meetings longer than two hours. ( Otherwise they're workshops, which require more planning. ) And don't walk out of a meeting without assigning a name to every item that needs follow-up.
   
9. Startle people. Break out of your comfort zone and do something unexpected. Run an offbeat ad. Institute casual-dress Tuesdays.
   
10. Don't throw anything out. Don't kill ideas that won't work right now. Someday soon, the world might be ready for them.
    

Source:

Keith Yamashita wants to reinvent your company

Fast Company 2002 Oct

Polly Labarre