We Don’t Know Anything About the Future
From investor Howard Marks’s interview at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania: There’s no such thing as analysis of what’s coming. We don’t know anything about the future, and you can’t prove anything about the future. But if you’ve been in business and you’ve seen some cycles, and you’ve gained some experience and you’ve gone […]
Investor Activism is Intensifying
Americans activist investors have targeted Procter & Gamble, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, eBay, Burger King, PepsiCo, Netflix, and even the once-venerable General Electric. Differing from the stereotypical scavenging hawks of the 1980s, today’s activist investors often aspire to enhance boards of many companies instead of stripping companies of assets. They work with other shareholders. From Nicholas […]
Employee Retention: Do You Know Your “Poach Rate?”
Employee poaching is hiring the finest talents of competitive firms. It can also be described as targeting the competitors’ pool of talent. Poaching is done to acquire the trained, the experienced, and the most talented employees from competitive firms. John Putzier defines “poach rate” in Get Weird! 101 Innovative Ways to Make Your Company a […]
Normative Meaning of the Word ‘Tao’
Michael Lafargue writes in The Tao of the Tao Te Ching It seems important to add to the mix here one message coming from another culture besides our own, namely the Chinese word or concept, of the “Tao” which has become part of our own Western philosophical and religious lexicon (though in a distinctive way […]
The Four Great Truths of Philosophical Map Making
Bestselling American author Stephen Covey writes about German statistician and economist E. F. Schumacher’s A Guide for the Perplexed in You’ve GOT to Read This Book!, a compilation by Gay Hendricks and Jack Canfield: I read Schumacher’s book, A Guide for the Perplexed, which took the concept of personal choice to a more applied level. […]
Margaret Thatcher (and Husband Denis Thatcher) as Parents
From The Economist (Dec 19th, 2015) discussing an auction of Margaret Thatcher’s paraphernalia: Another reminder from the sale was how bad she and her husband Denis were as parents. Having boy-and-girl twins at 27 was a typically efficient move, but her children were never much loved. Denis once said he “wished the little buggers had […]
Release from Suffering
Mark Unno writes in The Buddha of Infinite Light and Life, Most people, myself included, want to get some benefit from something. But in Buddhism, what we’re actually trying to do is to become released from the suffering that comes from wanting to get something.
Love and Commitment
Thich Nhat Hanh in Teachings on Love, True love includes the sense of responsibility, accepting the other person as he is, with all his strengths and weaknesses. If we like only the best things in the person, that is not love. We have to accept his weakness and bring our patience, understanding, and energy to […]
Neither Optimistic nor Pessimistic
Rigdzin Shikpo writes in Never Turn Away: The Buddhist Path Beyond Hope and Fear: As Buddhist practitioners, we train to see the significance of impermanence at every level: at the seemingly insignificant level of everyday things like shopping and watching television, as much as the dramatic and emotionally compelling level of old age, sickness, and […]
Most of Us Know Very Little
Economist Russ Roberts declares, Most of us know very little. The world is a complex place and it’s hard to know what is going on. So we grope around in the dark trying to make sense of what is happening and what explains what we observe. We manage to convince ourselves that we are seeking […]