Quotations 2020-Jan-21

Freedom is not free - Shiv Khera
1 --- He gave his life for a stranger and that stranger is you. - Tribute to a Kargil soldier
2 --- Whenever we do something positive, we rise a little bit in our own eyes even if no one is watching. That is the magic of self esteem.
3 --- Citizens who value their PRIVILEGES over principles, end up LOSING both.
4 --- Why do we manipulate the spirit of spirituality when we don't have the basics of humanity?
5 --- Most people read history, many teach history but, very few create history.
6 --- Some people want equal opportunity, while others want equality of outcome.
7 --- Burma was separated from India in 1937.
8 --- There are limits beyond which tolerance and forbearance cease to be virtues. When evil forces unite, it is time for the good to join hands and become a force.
9 --- Those who make mistakes just because they know they will be forgiven, are crooks.
10 --- Neither appeasement, nor hatred solves problems. Solutions lie in courage and magnanimity.
11 --- I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honor, than that she should in a cowardly manner become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonor. - MK Gandhi
12 --- There are no principles on an empty stomach. - MK Gandhi
13 ... People who have fatalistic attitude think, "whatever is written in my stars and in my horoscope has to happen. I am helpless. Everything is predestined. I am only a puppet in the bigger scheme of the universe."
14 ... If a citizen does not oppose injustice or crime, then he is encouraging it. If we are not part of the solution, then "we are the problem".
15 ... Even though a good coach constantly criticizes his athlete, his attitude permanently remains caring and corrective.
16 ... Gallup calculated the percentages within the total French workforce for three categories of employees: 12 percent are 'engaged' or loyal and psychologically committed to their work; 57 percent are 'not engaged', employees who aren't psychologically committed to their roles; and 31 percent are 'actively disengaged' or disenchanted with their work places.
17 ... Responsibility means doing the right thing at the right time without having to be told to do so.
18 ... Think Indian. Stop thinking regional.
19 ... Just as horticulture cannot be reduced to the pulling out of weeds, freedom similarly means more than just an absence of oppression.
20 ... When the blind lead the blind, they both fall in the ditch.
21 ... Hands that serve humanity are a lot better than lips that just talk of divinity.
22 ... It is better to be honorable than to be honored.

'The Bill Gates Way' by Des Dearlove 
1... One former IBMer likened the culture at Big Blue during that period to the old Soviet bureaucracy, where the way to get ahead was to impress your immediate boss rather than serve the real interests of the people.
2... He who sets the standard, wins. What Gates understood that others did not was that in the computer business, market share is self-perpetuating. Once a company establishes an industry standard it becomes much harder for a newcomer to usurp their position.
3... Don't reinvent the wheel. Most people only have one brilliant idea in their entire lifetime. Although Microsoft is not a prodigious inventor, it is extremely good at taking good ideas, developing them and making them into commercially successful products. Eve DOS, the operating system that made Microsoft famous was not invented by Gates. His partner Paul Allen bought a version of the operating system called Q-DOS from another computer company, Seattle Computers, for $50,000. Microsoft developed it and supplied it to IBM for its first PC.
4... The problem, as Gates sees it, is that a mediocre employee is hard to get rid of but occupies a place in the company that could be filled by someone brilliant. To avoid this, in the early days he insisted that the company employ fewer employees than were actually required to carry out the work. His formula was n-minus-one, where n was the number of people really needed.
5... In Microsoft, Bill Gates has created a voracious learning machine. It is the sign of a "smart organisation" and the only way to avoid making the same mistakes twice. His competitors aren't so careful. By capitalising on the mistakes of others, the company has prospered.
6... Although about three million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They will get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade. (Bill Gates)
7... Buffett put his own financial success down not to his IQ but to 'rationality'. Anyone could do what he had done, he said with disarming disenguity; all they had to do was develop the right habits. That meant adopting the habits of those they admired and rejecting the habits of those they despised.
8... Gates --- The only big companies that succeed will be those that obsolete their own products before somebody else does.
9... One software designer at Microsoft, for example, filled his workspace with soft toys. Colleagues knew if they saw him clutching a teddy bear under one arm then he was having a tough day and should be approached with caution.
10... Findings from study suggest that effective leaders of creative groups do five critical things:
A. They give members of the team a great deal of freedom.
B. They encourage them to approach issues as a team to maximize the creative energy focused on any given problem.
C. They give support to individual members, particularly in the period after a failure.
D. They give extensive responsibility to individuals, allowing them to decide not just how they will do a task but the tasks they choose to do.
E. They shield the team from external pressures from other departments.

11... What Gates realised from the start was that getting to market with good or OK product first is often better than getting there second with a great product.
12... Looking in the rear view mirror is a waste of time, basically, Gates has said. The comment is reminiscent of Henry Ford, who said "History is more or less bunk".

13...
1. Be in the right place at the right time.
2. Fall in love with technology.
3. Take no prisoners.
4. Hire very smart people.
5. Learn to survive
6. Don't expect any thanks.
7. Assume the visionary position
8. Cover all the bases
9. Build a byte sized business
10. Never, ever, ever take your eye off the ball.

Getting to Yes - Roger Fisher, William Ury 
1. 
Separate the people from the problem. Unless you have good reason to trust somebody, don't. This does not mean calling him a liar; rather it means making the negotiation proceed independent of trust.

2. Lock-in tactics.  This tactic is illustrated by Thomas Schelling's well-known example of two dynamite trucks barreling toward  each other on a single-lane road. The question becomes which truck goes off the road to avoid an accident.  As the trucks near each other, one driver in full view of the other pulls off his steering wheel and throws it out the  window. Seeing this, the other driver has a choice between  an explosive crash or  driving his truck off the road into a ditch. This is an example of an extreme commitment  tactic designed to make it impossible to yield. Paradoxically, you strengthen your bargaining position by weakening your control over the situation. 

Teach yourself to think - Edward de Bono 
1. The purpose of thinking is to deliver to you the values you seek just as the purpose of a bicycle is to get you where you want to go.
2. Perception chooses whether to regard a glass as half empty or half full. Perception is a generative system which opens up to what is not there.
3. Argument is rather poor way of exploring a subject because each side soon becomes interested in winning the argument rather than in exploring the subject. At best there might be a synthesis of thesis (one side) with antithesis (the other side) to give a synthesis, but this is only one possibility amongst many which would otherwise have been designed.
4. Traditional thinking system does not adequately deal with 'perception', which is by far the most important part of thinking in everyday affairs.
5. Argument is a poor way of exploring a subject and sets up unnecessary adversarial positions.
6. Beer drinking amongst women went up when the quality of the toilets in pubs was improved. No marketing man would have suggested this as a way of getting women to drink beer.
7. "I want to stop the leak from the roof" is very different from "I want some new ideas about roofs."
8. The main point about the 'general' approach is that we state our needs in a very general way. Then we seek to get more specific. Far too many people limit their thinking because they have been taught that you need to be specific and precise at every point in your thinking. If you believe this then you can never use the power of the general approach. You can never look precisely at something if you do not know where it is. You can look in the general direction and then gradually narrow down your search.
9. Education prided itself on being concerned with numeracy and literacy. So, I invented the word 'operacy'. 'Operacy' covers the broad skills of action, of making things happen.
10. Research has shown that the best sort of incentive is not money or time, but recognition. People want to be noticed by their fellow, by management and by the organisation as a whole.
11. It is better to do something easy and to do it really well than to seek only to do difficult things and not to succeed at all.
12. I had simply sought to respond to rejection with respect, to exclusion with inclusion, or, in other words, to no with yes.
13. Topics: Six thinking hats, CoRT Thinking Program, TOLOPOSOGO


Change is a necessary condition of vitality, but it often creates winners and losers. (Negotiation, Harvard Business Essentials)

Train people well enough so they can leave. Treat them well enough so they don't want to. - Richard Branson

There is no mercy for people trying to climb up the food chain. Hunt or be hunted. (Frank Underwood - House of cards)

The gull sees farthest who flies highest. (Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Richard Bach)