Put performance reviews aside and use common sense to answer three simple questions about the individuals you put in charge of decision nodes:
Does this person have the attitude, the necessary social skills, and the right expertise?
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We go at it day after day. The routine is tiresome, at best, At worst, it is exhausting, even debilitating. In our daily haze, we become numb to life: we stop feeling the world the way we should. Our emotional intimacy with the people and experiences around us dulls down and with it, our joy. We become less aware, less conscious of our intentions, thoughts, and actions. Inevitably, it happens to us all. Frustration and impatience take the place of mindfulness, and this is the point at which we have to stop, remind ourselves of our purpose, and re-strategize.
If you’re seeking to reshape your life, reflect on the answers to these four questions to increase your awareness, expand your mindset, and change your outlook:
What thoughts do you keep thinking? Ever notice that the more you think about something, the harder it becomes to get your mind off of it? That’s because the neurons in your brain form clusters around your thoughts. You’ll continue to think the thoughts you’re used to thinking because there’s increasing traffic on those neural pathways. Like every other part of your being, your brain acts on habit and becomes programmed to operate in a certain way. And like a broken record, the thoughts usually repeat the same form and produce the same results. …...
It is the only mystery worth solving: the mystery of leadership. And here’s the question that’s wrapped around that mystery: Why is it that even leaders who have the most-beautiful intentions create projects and organizations that don’t come close to resembling their original vision?
Between the idea and the reality falls a shadow. This obscuring cast has given us a graceless DOS, crappy cell-phones, brain-dead customer service, hollow-hearted TV programming, and idiotic airlines. Worse, it robs us of pleasure in our own work and lives. Settling for “good enough” makes us all feel small and mercenary.
What if it doesn’t have to be that way?
Retailers lacking perceptual acuity might, for example, have underestimated the significance of Apple’s bringing in Angela Ahrendts as senior vice president of retail and online stores in early 2014.
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In ancient Greek mythology, Apollo, god of poetry and prophecy, falls in love with the beautiful Cassandra, daughter of the king and queen of Troy, whose tangle of red hair and alabaster skin is famed throughout the land. He woos her by giving her a rare and treasured gift—the ability to see the future—and, in response, she agrees to be his consort.
Unfortunately, just before you take your first step on the righteous journey to pursue your dreams, people around you, even the ones who deeply care for you, will give you awful advice. It’s not because they have evil intentions. It’s because they don’t understand the big picture – what your dreams, passions, and life goals mean to you. They don’t understand that, to you, the reward is worth the risk.
So they try to protect you by shielding you from the possibility of failure, which, in effect, also shields you from the possibility of making your dreams a reality.
As our friend Steve Jobs says:
“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
Here are 10 ill-advised tips (lies) people will likely tell you when you decide to pursue your dreams, and why they are dreadfully mistaken.
“I hire people brighter than me and I get out of their way.”
– Lee Iacocca
“The competition to hire the best will increase in the years ahead. Companies that give extra flexibility to their employees will have the edge in this area.”
– Bill Gates
“Some people can do one thing magnificently, like Michelangelo, and others make things like semiconductors or build 747 airplanes — that type of work requires legions of people. In order to do things well, that can’t be done by one person, you must find extraordinary people.”
– Steve Jobs
Constraints can actually speed development. For instance, we often can get a sense of just how good a new concept is if we only prototype for a single day or week. Or we’ll keep team size to three people or fewer. By limiting how long we work on something or how many people work on it, we limit our investment. In the case of the Toolbar beta, several key features (custom buttons, shared bookmarks) were tried out in under a week. In fact, during the brainstorming phase, we came up with about five times as many “key features.” Most were discarded after a week of prototyping. Since only 1 in every 5 to 10 ideas works out, the strategy of limiting the time we have to prove that an idea works allows us to try out more ideas, increasing our odds of success. Continue reading
When people wanted to kill a bear in the ancient times, they hung a heavy log over a bowl of honey. The bear would push the log away in order to eat the honey.Imagine that you met a remarkable person who could look at the sun or the stars and, amazingly, state the exact time and date. Wouldn’t it be even more amazing still if, instead of telling the time, that person built a clock that could tell the time forever, even after he or she were dead and gone?
ONE TUSK 