Nov-09: Best of blog posts

This feature had stopped as Aug-Oct was pretty crazy at work. Here's an attempt to restart. Here are a few interesting blog posts I came across in the last two months:

Seth Godin talks about 3 elements of full employment - Sales, Additive Effort and Initiation, which if practiced would always guarantee a job.

Zen Habits blog has a very interesting post that give valuable tips on How to Focus on What Truly Matters. Particularly the section on how to find time is the most practical way to go about doing things that truly matter.

Guy Kawasaki interviews Po Bronson (author of the New York Times #1 best-seller, What Should I Do with My Life?)  following the publication of his new book NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children. You would love this interview if you are a parent (though Guy feels the same principles can be applied to employees too) Po Bronson warns about the extremes - over nurturing on one hand against being too strict. Here is his summary advice to parents:  

Be truthful with kids. While it isn’t necessary to be brutally honest, before I praise a kid, I ask myself if I really believe what I’m saying. If I do, then I think it’s probably right to say. It’s better for a kid to hear parents argue and resolve the quarrel, then it is to pretend the argument never occurred because the kids usually already know about the dispute. It’s the result they’re unsure of. A lot of communication by adults is intended to manipulate kids, and they’re usually on to us. And when we are constantly trying to outsmart kids, it may work in the moment, but ultimately it can hurt our credibility. Then kids don’t believe that they can turn to us when they need some honest advice. If we expect kids to be truthful with us, we should be truthful with them.

Innovation consultant Vinay Dabholkar details the methods that Edison used for his numerous innovations. After talking to Vinay on the subject several times, I've started to believe that "systematic innovation" may after all be possible.

On Tom Peters blog, Rajesh Setty has posted a set of 9 questions as a self-assessment to see whether are not you are caring enough. As is the usual case with Raj's posts this post too would make you think. For example, second question goes like this - "Do you care for them OR do you care about their opinion of you?". Equally interesting is the section on comments where Raj himself has participated in a lively debate.

BTW, Tom is launching new book The Little Big Things: 163 ways to achieve Exellence, expected to hit the market in early 2010. Follow Tom's blog for updates, previews and some videos.

Thats all I had for November. 

Thank you very much,


RamP!
ramp.ramp@gmail.com