Quote Hanger

This page is a collection of quotes, as and when I run into those:

• I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestioned ability of a man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor. -  Henry David Thoreau
• The master of the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him, he is always doing both. - Lao Tzu
  
• Change will leade to insight far more often than insight will lead to change. - Milton H Erickson
• Irrelevance comes from always doing the things you know how to do in the way you've always done them. - Tom Peters
  
• Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do - Benjamin Franklin
  
• The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure - Henry David Thoreau
• I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught - Winston Churchill
• In preparing for battles I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable - Dwight D. Eisenhover
  
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  Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people - George Bernard Shaw
  

  
  
• The difference between great and average or lousy in any job is, mostly, having the imagination and zeal to re-create yourself daily. - Tom Peters
  
• It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that. - G H Hardy
• What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Success vs Joy

I recently completed this wonderful book "Success vs Joy" by Geet Sethi, who has won Billiards World Championship, six times. I present here some of sentences that inspired, impacted and provoked me. You will possibly like some, identify with some and simply smile at some.

• Joy is internal; Success is a creation of the society
• "There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path" - (quoted from The Matrix)
• The road to excellence is paved with joy, not with targets and numerical standards.
• There is joy in any activity that leads to personal growth and excellence. The process of growth and learning is the basis of joy. Where there is joy, there is no sacrifice.
• Discipline is concentrating one's efforts in a secluded environment and training yourself to focus on what you are enthused by.
• Pure action can be described as an action that has three qualities - concentration, consistency and humility. Killer instinct is another expression for concentration. Concentration is built through lifestyle and not through any formula or mantra.
• The genuinely talented player only plays selfishly, for himself and not for audience. That is what gives him unadulterated joy and pleasure.
• Commitment to joy will create its own success. Seek joy and success will naturally follow.
• I have have learnt that when I wanted success and was willing to sacrifice joy for it, eventually got neither.
• You have to be very clear about who are you and what gives you joy. Work hard learn, grow, and stretch out to reach to this joy. Use every cell in your body and brain to hit that personal sweet spot of joy. And my experience says that success just follows.
• Success is a result. Its a job well done. Success is not about achieving fame, accumulating money or having power. Success is personal and have nothing to do with what society may think.
• My weakest moments, those situations where I lost my nerve, were at times when greed took over my entire being and I started playing for success, rewards and trophies.
• In the ultimate analysis, joy is finding your own uniqueness and being able to express this uniqueness through a perfectly executed stroke.
• Pride is not joy. Joy emanates from one's own actions, from what one feels deep down inside.
• For a performer there is no competitor. In the book of success there is, but not in the book of excellence.Excellence will come from the discovery of the self. So you have to forget the opponent and delve deep within to master your own frailties and insecurities.
• The real "I, me, mine" is independent of anybody's expectations - be they of parents, spouse, children, partners and above all your own. You just cannot live your life according to the expectations of others. Courage is in doing what you believe is right.
• Most of us would like to believe that we are intelligent and that we understand and appreciate this. Intuitively, most of us know what is good for us in the long run. But we do not listen to our inner voice because the cacophony around us drowns it.
• I have learnt to own up to my responsibilities and discard any expectations that others may have of me. I have also tried utmost to remove and eliminate any self-expectations. It is these expectations that show up as insecurities.
• I like to indulge in activities that give me joy. My joy lies in being myself, and living moment to moment. You can be alone, without being lonely.
• Those with strength of character are able to listen to their conscience, their inner voice, and then act accordingly. I define character as the courage of conviction to be your own self.
• If you want social status through a game, you will certainly be disappointed. The world does not really care whether you lose or win. You play for yourself and the joy the game gives you. Nothing else.
• Do not quit without a struggle. Do not give up unless you have stretched your potential to its limits. Only then you will experience the joy that makes life worth living. This is the joy that underscores success.

10 rules for Strategic Innovators

Started reading this book titled “10 Rules for Strategic Innovators: From Idea to Execution”, by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble of Center for Global Leadership at Darmouth Univ and is published by HBS press. Within reading few pages understood that its highly relevant to my immediate work, where we are trying to create a new BU within the established organization. The book talks about NewCo – which is a breakaway group from the parent CoreCo and is created to achieve breakthrough growth. Here are some highlights (verbatim)

1. Our research shows that strategic experiments face their stiffest resistance once they are showing signs of success, consuming more resources and clashing with CoreCo at multiple levels.
2. Research has called for appointment of a senior executive as a champion – someone who actively musters support for NewCo and breaks down barriers in CoreCo.
3. The leaders of any ground breaking new business must (apart from identifying the idea(s)):

· Attract funding

· Learn quickly from success and failure

· Rally people around a fuzzy view of the future

· Re-organize to leverage the lessons learned and

· Manage the expectations of the performance amid chaos

4. Tendencies within the established organization also present additional barriers, apart from the 5 challenges just mentioned, the leader must also:

· Protect funding of NewCo regardless of the performance of CoreCo

· Establish new organizational norms and policies that make sense for NewCo

· Overcome tensions between NewCo and CoreCo when those norms and policies conflict

· Effect changes in the existing power structure required to support NewCo

· Engage CoreCo employees in supporting NewCo and

· Recruit talented managers from CoreCo to work within NewCo

5. [Authors talk of two cultures Code A (efficiency) and Code B (creativity) and tells that CoreCo wants to embrace Code A and NewCo Code B and argues that the NewCo has to undergo transition from creativity to efficiency over time and talks of Code X, that happens in the transition phase] – my paraphrasing to avoid typing the entire book.
6. Code X must address the three unique challenges that arise from the unnatural coexistence of a new and a mature business within the same corporation:

· The Forgetting challenge (forget some of what made CoreCo successful) – a. Forget CoreCo’s business definition, b. Different business model require different competencies and c. forget Coreco’s exploitation of a proven business model and shift to exploration of new possibilities

· The Borrowing challenge (borrow CoreCo’s assets) – NewCo can complete effectively against start-ups only by borrowing CoreCo’s assets: existing customer relationships, distribution channels, brands, expertise in a variety of technologies etc.,

· The Learning challenge (the most important one being prediction of its business performance)

7. Note the important difference between forgetting and borrowing. NewCo must forget assumptions, mind-sets and biases and must borrow assets. That is, forgetting is about what goes on in your head. Borrowing is gaining access to resources with concrete value.
8. All the four elements of NewCo’s DNA must differ from CoreCo’s

· Staff - from Operational expert’s (CoreCo) to Creators, Inspireres

· Structure – from Hierarchy to Flat

· System – from focus on accountability and fixed compensation to focus on learning and variable compensation

· Culture – from risk averse to risk tolerant

The above was from the first chapter “Why strategic innovators need a different approach for execution”. The rest of the book covers in great detail each of the above points with real examples.

Buying a PC/Laptop

While buying something, it has become a habit for me to see the level of customer service, being offered by my vendors - from small grocery shops to big retail chains. Sadly, my experience has been not so great in Bangalore, barring some flashes of brilliance here and there.

From the last two weeks I've been shopping for a branded desktop PC - a commodity that might become extinct very soon. To start with only big retail chain stores in Bangalore have something on display. I visited the stores of Tata Croma, Reliance Time Out, eZone and Metro cash & carry. In almost all the places, the sales staff were not interested in answering to my numerous queries and infact most of them didn't had answers. Typical response was "I think it should work" and when I insisted that if they'd take back if it doesn't work, the person used to run away with an excuse that he/she would bring in a superior, who used to read from the box and tell what you already know. In all the four places I mentioned, no sales person bothered to have my number. Worse, when I called them back for some more clarification, I had to start all over again. The only spark of customer service, if I can call so, was from the salesman of an MNC brand, in an MNC outlet, who pulled me aside and in a hushed voice, recommended his brand without an OS and offered services of his friend who'd install XP or Vista and all the rrelated drivers for only Rs.1000. He also admitted that the brand he was selling had several missing drivers which would take enormous time for anyone to search and download from the net.

Next I thought of exploring smaller neighbourhood stores that were proudly displaying the logos of major brands on their shops. The interaction got better, but there was not a single piece of a desktop PC on display and they were only too eager to sell me an assembled one. They were good at it and 3-4 shops where I enquired came up with several confusing quotes on the assembled ones.

Tired of all these things, I thought I'll directly contact these big brands. I was put-off immediately as Dell's online "make your own PC" blew up the price by several thousands comparable ones from HP. I struggled all over the place to get the contact of local HP dealers from hp.com. Same with Acer and Lenova. I gave up and have now started looking at buying a laptop instead, as there are too many laptops on display and on the face of it, it looks lot easier to buy one.

In the process, I've got a product idea, which is reverse of standard yellow pages approach. Lets say, I want to buy a PC, I'll "broadcast" my requirements through an app installed on my mobile. This request can be caught by interested sellers who are tuned into getting such requests through the app. All such people can contact the buyer through email, SMS or a simple call. You may argue it sounds like eBay, but I feel its little different. Planning to write an Android app.