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Monday, June 1, 2015

The Other "F" Word: How Smart Leaders, Teams, and Entrepreneurs Put Failure to Work




"Bad companies are destroyed by crisis; good companies survive them; great companies are improved by them." - Andy Grove.

In "The Other "F" Word: How Smart Leaders, Teams, and Entrepreneurs Put Failure to Work" by John Danner and Mark Coopersmith, you get to see what the crises can be and how your company size will change your reaction to it, what you can learn from it and how you can remember that to learn from failure as an individual and team.
With Edison and WD-40, we have learnt how taking more risks, we increase our chance of success. But to keep on going ahead like King Bruce, we have to know that we are not going to build that web the first time, learn and improvise from each attempt.
The Failure Value Cycle is about how to mine gold from your crash and burns. With its 7 step process, you create an environment where you accept the ubiquity of failure in a venture, prepare for it, be on the lookout for it, respond, avert and get back on track.
The authors have referred to the latest security debacles of great companies. After each chapter, there is a summary of what are the keypoints. There are questionnaires about how failure is treated in our organisation. There is an encouragement to show off not just your laurels but your albatrosses too.
The best I like are the 3 Rules of learning - from others, by play and thinking and by doing, 'What has to be true' exercise.

You are your worst competitor

Thursday, May 28, 2015

Jane Hirshfield's interview

one person's tilt of memory
like it were astronomical
and had a course

Spare poem

How would you describe a  Spare poem ?

Not spare like sparse
spare like stepney

Muddy rice and black sake

On reading following Bashos lines

I sit facing muddy sake
and black rice

I thought of the images of Muddy rice and black sake

"Avoid
Adjectives of scale,
, you will love the world more and desire it less.” - Rober Hass paraphrasing Basho.


In the sky

Birds flew together
like
grad caps

Green peach

A peach
is
green peach
at first

Does red apple start green?

Creativity

is like sugarcane
get the most out of it
by optimally recycling
it through the machine

use it like
an essential oil
a drop is enough
to get you
started

Dip in that inkwell
often but scantily

I started with thoughts become things rock inspiration with words become things in mind, but when I started writing it out, it took its own direction and became two things.

Leverage

1. employing expertsSteve jobs about hiring smart people
2. Integration instead of reinventing the wheel.

Starting with a word


solopreneur to slopreneur
entrepreneur to rentrepreneur

This is how
words can become things

By naming it
you can make it


At a Home Sales Office

A broken
message rock

"Thoug hts
  becom e
    Thin  gs"

A child had chucked it
to the ground
not sure if

with  thought
to break it
to see if it would break
to see if it would not break
to see if it will bounce like a ball

Rocks Message
I break





What happened to my morning tea?

Why does coffee heated up in the microwave foam up when sugar is added

What is an Experiment?

It makes the effect
of the invisible atoms
visible

Invisible here is
to the human eye

California two-spot octopus
sees with its skin

Whats inaudible to us
is not to dogs

Animal dictionary
does not match ours

Is life's purpose a
unified dictionary?

In the dark
does it matter
what color the octopus is?

It all depends on the prey's
eyes

Can a blind person
now see with his skin
or a deaf person
through some other
mechanism than ears?

Biomimicry
until all living things
sense in the same way.





What stone lends

Today inspiration - sculpture

Stone lets human body
defy gravity

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

Enabling Acts: The Hidden Story of How the Americans with Disabilities Act Gave the Largest US Minority Its Rights




I had read about the demonstration on the subway stairs in Newyork prior to ADA in 'Million Years with you': A Memoir of Life Observed' by elizabeth Marshall (great author), in which her daughter contributed towards ADAPT (Americans Disabled for Accessible Public Transport). At Tovrea Castle, one of the floors was closed because it couldnt be made accessible. Thats when I realised the ADA provisions. So its history hooked me right from the cover.
As a foreign national, this book is a great way to learn how things come about in law in America. For example, the relay service adding to the phone surcharge bill, number of employees of a small business being changed to 50, so really small businesses dont go out of business trying to retrofit to ADA requirements.
I have lots of notes from the reading to refer to various acts example Decoder Circuitry Act.
The book's main premise is that its not just the activists with the demonstration that got about the ADA to happen, but the politicians and the staffers too had a great role. The book goes into great detail about people, their characteristics, background, their views towards disability, change of mind of those who were not ready for ADA, organizations that melded together for the final act.

Dissent and the Supreme Court: Its Role in the Court's History and the Nation's Constitutional Dialogue


I came across 'Brandeis Briefs' in 'Enabling Acts: The Hidden Story of How the Americans with Disabilities Act Gave the Largest US Minority Its Rights' by Lennard J. Davis. Before I found the time to refer to it, I opened 'Dissent and the Supreme Court: Its Role in the Court's History and the Nation's Constitutional Dialogue' by Melvin I. Urofsky who happens to have written a book on the very Louis D Brandeis who led to 'Brandeis Briefs' with his 'compilation of scientific information and social science than on legal citations'.
If you are into legal history, you will have a ball reading how the tug of war settled in many cases. The how could involve interesting Concurrences and or Dissent. Concurrence is when the end is same but the reasoning to get to the outcome is different. Dissent is being at odds with the outcome. The expectation of the Supreme Court is to be the final word on law but for democratic purposes and future thinking, dissents are encouraged.
The book goes into detail about many cases. I enjoyed not just the specifics of the cases but also the thought processes. How prevailing legal opinions change overtime, how nature got its legal rights, what charter means for property rights.