Power Concedes Nothing Without Demand
American abolitionist and writer Frederick Douglass in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This […]
Financial Innovation
Seth Klarman’s extraordinary and mysterious book Margin of Safety, Risk Averse Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor has sold for $700 for used varieties with newer copies going for $2,500 to $4,000. His foremost investing premise is risk mitigation. He writes, Investors must recognize that the early success of an innovation is not a reliable […]
The Scarcity Principle
From Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Homeowners who are told how much money they could lose from poor insulation throughout their house are more likely to insulate their homes than those who are told how much they could save. Something will seem more valuable when its quantity is limited. People also tend to […]
Relating With Enemies
Henepola Gunaratana writes in Mindfulness in Plain English, For all practical purposes, if all of your enemies are well, happy and peaceful, they would not be your enemies. If they are free from problems, pain, suffering, affliction, neurosis, psychosis, paranoia, fear, tension, anxiety, etc., they would not be your enemies. Your practical solution towards your […]
Being Thankful for Small Blessings
Dharma teacher Pamela Gayle White writes in Skunked by Gratitude, So many factors demand our attention; isn’t it awesome that we have at least some influence over what we choose to focus on? And if there is power in acknowledging and being thankful for even small blessings, the power of finding meaning in the face […]
W. B. Yeats’s Praise of Tagore’s Gitanjali
The Irish poet W. B. Yeats wrote the introduction to the second edition of Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali (Song Offerings): Flowers and rivers, the blowing of conch-shells, the heavy rain of the Indian July, or the parching heat, are images of the moods of that heart in union or in separation; and a man sitting in […]
Quality Leadership: The Key to Quality Management
According to American-Romanian quality pioneer Joseph M. Juran, the significant factors that have aided first-rate organizations realize their top-quality positions are all leadership related: The chief executives personally led the quality initiative. They trained the entire managerial hierarchy in managing for quality. They enlarged the business plan to include strategic quality goals. The goals included […]
Don’t Follow Your Passion, Follow Your Talent
In the bestselling The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, New York University-academic and business analyst Scott Galloway offers a amendment to the cliched follow-your-passion career advice: Don’t follow your passion, follow your talent. Determine what you are good at (early), and commit to becoming great at it. You don’t have […]
Kids Who Are Different
“Kids Who Are Different”—A poem by English-born actor Digby Wolfe: Here’s to the kids who are different,The kids who don’t always get A’sThe kids who have ears twice the size of their peers,And noses that go on for days … Here’s to the kids who are different,The kids they call crazy or dumb,The kids who don’t […]
Unchangeables and Changeables of Human Nature
Few leaders have exemplified and towered over their countries as Lee Kuan Yew did in Singapore. The city-state’s founder and long-time leader stated at his 60th birthday dinner in 1983, What have I learned since 1973? Some more basic unchangeables about human beings and human societies, the ways in which they can be made to […]