Thursday, May 20, 2010

i-TFTD #281: More Deadly Sho(r)ts

i-TFTD #281: More Deadly Sho(r)ts

Many liked i-TFTD #205: Deadly Sho(r)ts so here is another set.

#281-1. Either you succeed or you learn.
-Anon

#281-2. Change yourself. Period.
-Anon (from a poster in the room of Dilip Kulkarni, a senior manager and great teacher)

#281-3. The only known cure for fear is faith.
-Lena Kellogg Sadler

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Powerful mantra for today's rapid-changing world where companies that are innovative leaders create an environment of "fail fast". Management guru Tom Peters says, "Test fast. Fail fast. Adjust fast." At the beginning of my career I was lucky to come across the concept of rapid prototyping and achieved moderate success in propagating it in the field of software. Only later I discovered its profound applicability in personal progress and organizational agility.

We can only really change ourselves. And even that is not easy. This does not mean that we do not try to influence others. Nor does it prescribe that we have to forcibly accept or tolerate anything from anybody. It just highlights that our attention should more fruitfully be focused on what we can change in our views or our actions. Paradoxically, that focus would make us better influencers of positive change in others.

Faith, by definition, means believing something without evidence for it. While usually associated negatively with things that modern science has not proved, it is a popular and useful behavior—successful people everywhere demonstrate it. A positive belief in achieving success without rational data to support such a "faith" is something worth cultivating.

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