Rebecca's Blog
Mostly news stories or articles of interest in the future to me. I'll eventually get around to adding my own ideas and stories on a more regular basis.

 



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  Thursday, July 17, 2003


Another B&N day:

Globablly, every 60 minutes 101 new patents are applied for and over 2265 new businesses are started every day.

8 Rules for Getting it Right

  1. Check your ego at the door - Arrogance, defenisveness & desperate need for approval shut down dialogue, opportunities and decisions.
  2. Create curiousity - Your ability to enact curiosity can create a culture that encourages everyone to ask questions and discourages those that don't.
  3. Move off the solution.
  4. Give evidence - If you don't have evidence, there's no reason to do anything.
  5. Calculate the impact. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.
  6. Explore the ripple effect - Know what and who is affected.
  7. Slow down for yellow lights - What has stopped everyone from doing something about this before now?
  8. Firnd causes - Find underlying reasons the symptoms are showing up.

The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get the old ones out.

For Scott:
We are mostly likely to face resistance & counterattack when we enter a conversation afflicted with the deadly disease of certainty (of this we're damn certain) - Better than Duct Tape

Old 6 Sigma was a standard measure of goondess.  The new is an overall business improvement method.

Leadership Principle

  • Align - Link cusotmer requirements to business strategy
  • Mobilize - Empower team with clear charts, success criteria and rigerous reviews.
  • Accelerate by action learning methodology by combining structured education with real-time project work and coaching.

Look up scorecard metrics.

VOC (Voice of Customer) - Translate abstract desires from customers into concreate specifications and organiations requirements.

Customer Expectations

  • The right technology at the right time for production applications.
  • Leading, enabling technologies for research applications.
  • Reliable products.
  • All deliverables on time with no surprises.
  • Globabl, high quality customer support.
  • Industry leadership in cost of ownership.

"Business Process Improvement" - Doing a good job won't buy you customers...you must provide suprisingly good output.

"Execution: The Disciple of Getting Things Done"

  • Execution is the major job of a business leader.
  • Execution is the systematic process of rgorously discussing hows and whats, questioning teanciously, following through and ensuing accountability.
  • The heard of execution lies in 3 core processes:  The people process, the strategy process & the operations process.

How well people talk to each other absolutely determines how well the oragnization will function.

What micromanagement does: Diminishes self-confidence, Saps initiative, Stifles ability to think for themselves.
But managers should be actively involved - Constantly probe and question

Good book: "Manage by walking around" -Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan.  Maybe they have blogs.


Comments1:06:53 PM    

Note to self: Use this before you go meet with clients about those requirements management coming up.  Anthropology might be a good later-in-life degree.  People are interesting in their interactions with culture.  What do we really strip down to when we're not conformed?

News.Com: Researchers delve into the human factor. A team of computer scientists, academics and others gathered this week at IBM's Almaden Research Center to swap ideas on how to better understand the ways in which humans interact with machines. Specifically, they met to compare notes on different ways to make sense of how technology is being consumed. [Tomalak's Realm]


Comments12:25:52 PM    

One more nice quote I just read:
Vaclav Havel: "The truth is not simply what you think it is; it is also the circumstances in which it is said, and to whom, why and how it is said."
Comments12:22:55 PM    

Haha. I'm a sucker for having quotes in my office that I never use . 

Gordon R. Dickson. "Some people like my advice so much that they frame it upon the wall instead of using it."

The quotes currently in my office are:

  • If you really want to do something, you'll find a way.  If you don't, you'll find an excuse.
  • Our job is not to straighten each other out, but to help each other up. (Neva Coyle)
  • We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done (Henry Wadsworth Lonfellow)
  • Intention - Live with intention - Walk to the edge - Continue to Learn - Play with Abandon - Choose with no regret - Laugh - Appreate your friends - Practice wellness - Do what you love - live as if this is all there is. 

Comments12:22:30 PM    

I read this from Dave's weblog: http://scriptingnews.userland.com/stories/storyReader$2111

And my favorite part was this part:
 I like weblog writing, rough and rambly, even angry and reckless. See, I think people expressing themselves honestly is where beauty comes from. We all need love, to be heard, appreciated, admired, cared for, but so few of us accept that we're entitled to it. We see our imperfections and want to erase them. But when I see an imperfection, I see something real, and to me that's beautiful. I'm not just saying that, I didn't feel that way when I was 24, but now that I'm 48, that's what's inside me. I don't love women for the attributes that the inflight magazines idealize, quite the opposite. I find the airbrushed, silicon-inflated bodies to be worse than ugly, they suck life out of all they come in contact with. Beauty is in the reality, and the expression of reality.

I love, love, love people's imperfections and the things that make them unique.  I like when someone laughs so hard they snort or when you see a pretty person with their hair down and their make-up off.  Or when someone tells you what scares them.  Those things are pretty.  Pretty real.

 


Comments12:17:30 PM    


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