SLIDEOLOGY:THE ART AND SCIENCE OF CREATING GREAT PRESENTATION

/0 Comments/in , , , , /by

Nancy Duarte, a presentation designer, and coach, altered the world of presentations by producing an easy-to-read masterclass on presentation — SLIDEOLOGY. Slideology talks about advanced presentation designs. It assumes that the presenter will probably utilize Microsoft powerpoint or other presentation software such as Google slips or Keynotes, an integral part of their presentation but one of the core strengths of Slideology is the fact that it explains the process of better presentation planning, design and delivery whether you utilize slideware or not. In addition, it introduces readers to 3 pillars of presentation competence which are:

1-  Create a strong story

2-  Illustrate with simple visual

3- And deliver with conviction

We, humans, are visual communicators; presentations must be delivered longer in forms of images/diagrams as visual aids. Slides should be simple and the text should be reduced, preventing bullet points. Text should be no less than 30 font.

Slides are there to improve the story and also to help the readers see what the presenter is saying  so the ideas/messages can be transmitted efficiently. Use icons instead of numbers as images tell a better story. When people relate better, it increasing the retention of data. Using various icon brings information to life.

To give a strong presentation, the presenter should know his/her audience to get ready for material and shipping. Pace info across multiple slides to increase its impact. The number of slides to present is dependent on one good rule: the 10/20/30 rule that says- 10 slides, 20 minutes and  no fonts smaller than 30.

Nancy went further to examine three things that ought to be handled creatively in a consistent way to avoid noise or confusion:

  • Deal elements: contrast (to help the audience see primary things), hierarchy, unity, space, closeness and stream.
  •  Visual elements: background, color (appropriate color palette), text and images.
  •  Movement: time, speed, distance, direction and eye flow

Duarte divides the book into five core areas:

  1. TREAT YOUR AUDIENCE AS KINGS

They didn’t even come to your presentation to see you. They came to determine what you may do for them.  Provide content that resonates and make sure it’s clear what they’re to do.

  1. SPREAD IDEAS AND MOVE PEOPLE

Communicate your ideas with strong grammar to engage all of their senses. They’ll adopt the ideas as their very own.

  1. HELP THEM SEE WHAT YOU’RE SAYING

Think like a designer and movie producer and guide your audience through each idea in a manner that can help their comprehension. Appeal not only to their verbal perceptions but to their visual impressions as well.

  1. PRACTICE DESIGN, NOT DECORATION

Don’t limit your content to pretty talking points. Instead, present information in a way that makes complex information clear.

  1. CULTIVATE HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS

Display information in the best way possible for comprehension rather than focusing on what you need as a visual crutch.

 

THE BIG THREE – KEY POINTS

Keypoint #1: Develop flow within a slide intentionally.

Keypoint #2: People’s retention of data increases when they can “see the numbers.”

Keypoint #3: Think like a designer to create effective slides.

One Last thing

“Don’t blend in; instead, clash with your environment. Stand out. Be uniquely different. That’s what will draw attention to your ideas.”

― Nancy Duarte, Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences

THE GIG ECONOMY: THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO GETTING BETTER WORK, TAKING MORE TIME OFF AND FINANCING THE LIFE YOU WANT.

/0 Comments/in , , , , , /by

The Gig Economy is a unique guide for livelihood examination professionals and anyone who’s ready to utilize their professional background and experiences to construct a brand new career path that achieves satisfaction both personally and professionally by integrating more work lifetime stability, improved suppleness, more safety, and greater potential.

From Uber into the presidential debates, the gig economics has been ruling the top billing.  Today, more than a 3rd of People in America are working at the gig economics, integrating together short term jobs, contract work, and independent assignments. For all those who have figured out the principle, life has not been better.

The Gig Economy provides suggestions about the way to earn a living beyond the corporate boundaries through contracting and freelancing to achieve personal and professional satisfaction and safety. Conventional full-time jobs are insecure, increasingly restricted, and full of workers who wish they were doing anything else with their lives. Learn how working at the Gig Economy as consultant, contractor or freelancer may offer an attractive, intriguing, flexible, and rewarding solution to the corporate community. The Gig Economy is the channel for this only you control your future world that is tentative, but rewarding. Succeeding in it begins with changing gears to realize to the larks of an employer.

Is minding your abilities, knowledge, and network to create your very own career path, the one which is resistant to the larks of an employer. According to your priorities and vision of success, Cultivate relations without networking, assist you! Construct a lifetime based on your priorities and vision of success, develop links without networking, produce your own safety, risk, prepare for your future confront your fears by lessening layoffs and outsourcing, conventional full time.

Layoffs, recession, company jobs aren’t only unstable, but they’re increasingly scarce.  In an economy marked by layoffs and outsourcing, a conventional full time much this alternative path: developing skills and attitudes to get out by themselves and tap into the many opportunities of the entertainment economy job is disappearing.

Millions of individuals are keenly picking in its own way than a traditional full-time job very producing a supply schedule and provides. Throughout action, they are in its own way, than a conventional full-time job supervisors and unforeseen fortunes of organizations, when creating a delivery program and income protection, work world and describes to you might offer. The economy gig takes you within this challenging yet reassuring fields can flourish best, yet it the way to deal with. The book highlights professionals in risks and develops a plan to shows powerful, economics work for you.

 

THE BIG THREE – KEYPOINTS

Keypoint #1: Produce your own safety by cultivating sources of earnings, new abilities, and your very own security net.

Keypoint #2: Carefully evaluate risks and develop a plan to lower your fears.

Keypoint #3:  Increase financial flexibility by reducing fixed costs and boosting income and savings.

One Last Thing

The gig economy is empowerment. This new business paradigm empowers individuals to better shape their own destiny and leverage their existing assets to their benefit. ~John McAfee

Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done

/0 Comments/in , , , , , , , , /by

Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done. It’s a breaking through book that’s so keen on harnessing better productivity is target setting, focusing on set aims, been powerful and more. Jeff said as a way to finish we need to get rid of perfection first’. This usually means the less we think about how perfect things ought to be the more productive we become. The battle is with perfection. It can occasionally be the reason why we do not start things from the first case, but as Jon describes a gorgeous beginning isn’t the most significant barrier. The start does issue.

The beginning is important. The first few steps are crucial, but they aren’t the most important. Do you know precisely what things more and makes the beginning look almost silly and simple and almost insignificant? The finish. By not targeting perfection, the result might seem to be better. You get a surprise, something you did not see coming as there’s no room for surprises with regards to perfectionism.

Then Jon Acuff informs us about the different type of motives we could be very sensitive to: self-doubt or achievement. Self-doubt is that internal voice which thinks precision is crucial.

To prevent failure, we need perfectionism. How exposed will we believe whenever we finish something, and it isn’t as perfect as we once anticipated it to be. Therefore, we get frustrated before we finish. To get the most gratifying result, add a few fun, and divide your aims into half and select the best alternative forgone. Lofty targets that make us get to the stars are fantastic, but they could have us distribute to perfectionism, and for that reason, we can never finish what we started. Nobody wishes to be known as the man that achieves only half the target that he planned.

In order words, we are not the superheroes we’d love to be. We simply cannot do whatever the world wants us to do, and the earlier we realize and learn to say no, the more likely we are to succeed in what we mean yes, to. Acuff’s solution would be to cut the target in half, down to a thing which might not look entirely as praiseworthy, but it’s manageable. After we may attain the seemingly small objectives, we are much more prone to continue going, that makes us more prone to succeed. He also points to the 2 distractions which perfectionism will bring to our manner: obstacles and hiding areas.

The book shows clearly that beginning without being dramatic doesn’t justify a successful ending of a job. Everything cannot be perfect. There’s no such thing as ideal, is there? What ideal looks like for you to be completely different from what perfect looks like to someone else. Jeff helps his reader to understand that to get it all done, you have to take it bit by bit and not focus on the ‘all.’  Doing it in bits makes us achieve more in less time because as humans, we are more efficient when we focus on one thing that different things clamoring for our attention.

THE BIG THREE – KEYPOINT

Keypoint #1: There’s joy in imperfection

Keypoint #2: Splitting goals brings about better results.

Keypoint #3: To achieve a successful goal, going to your hiding place or using a great obstacle is never an option.

One Last Thing

Progress is quiet. It whispers. Perfectionism yells hides and failure progress.

The Fifth Discipline

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

Peter Senge, an expert in leadership and sustainability, discovered that a gap existed between an organization and how it learns new things. This discovery brought about the evolution of The Fifth Discipline. The Fifth Discipline explains that the concept of a learning organization is to seek to facilitate and encourage learning at all levels. In this manner, the organization has the ability to adjust continually and transform itself in a highly dynamic and competitive world. In this summary, we will give a rundown of the five basic learning disciplines and the seven learning constraints.

THE FIVE BASIC DISCIPLINES
Peter Senge shares five basic principles that set a learning organization apart from a traditional organization; A shared Vision, Mental Models, Team Learning, Personal Mastery, and System Thinking.

A Shared Vision
All employees in a company are committed to a shared long-term inspiration. They share the same vision of where the organization needs to go. When the vision is unique and shared, staff members will automatically participate in improving processes to get the organization closer to accomplishing its vision. In Peter’s words, a vision is being shared when “people are not playing according to the rules of the game, but feel responsible for the game.”

Mental Models
Mental models are all the limiting beliefs and flaws a person has which influences their actions. The official hierarchy of an organization is the first mental model. In itself, it is the ecosystem where departmental and individuals’ Mental Models begin to bloom. When individuals begin using phrases such as “that’s not the way we do things” and reject new ideas or when leaders passively attempt to give you the history of how things came to be, these are the symptoms of resistance to growth. The first step in having people change their Mental Models is to have people reflect on their own behavior and beliefs. Personal values can overcome all the shortcomings of hierarchical power, but to do so what is needed is transparency and openness.  One part of openness is to quit playing “power games” and be open and honest about the real needs of the individual, department, and organization and then streamline them.

Personal Mastery
Shenge describes Personal Mastery as the strength of ability of people to proactively learn to achieve results continuously, achieve clarity and depth of vision, see reality objectively and close the reality-vision gap. Team influence and environment play a part in Personal Mastery. Effective teamwork leads to outcomes in which individuals could not have accomplished on their own. Members within a team learn faster and more than they would have alone. They align and develop their capacities as a team and build on individual talents and vision.

System Thinking
System thinking is described by Peter Senge and the golden discipline. This is the fifth discipline and unifies all of the five principles. It is the cornerstone of a learning organization. An organization is like a living organism that needs to be analyzed with a holistic viewpoint rather that small unrelated manageable parts.  System thinking encourages leaders to understand the impact of their department or business unit on the system. Every decision made should be based on the holistic principle of System Thinking.


THE SEVEN LEARNING CONSTRAINTS
Like any other living organism, when it’s not working according to its purpose, it will show signs and symptoms. From Senge’s point of view, there are seven disabilities that most organizations suffer from and impair them from being effective learning organizations.


1. I am my position: When a staff members define themselves as the position they fulfill within the organization. If we use our jobs as a substitute for our identity, we run the risk of failing to understand the purpose of what we are doing for the organization or we perceive ourselves as having too much or too little power. Therefore one will fail to take responsibility or fail to think that all responsibility lies with them.

2. The enemy is out there: Failing to understand that external and internal problems are part of the same overall system; there are not isolated. When we fail on the inside, the competitors see it on the outside.

3. The illusion of taking charge: Confusing response to consequences of a challenge (reactive action) with working with problems (proactive reaction) by focusing on outside threats only without first discovering how we contribute to the current problem.

4. Fixation on events: Being focused on the short term, often prevents us from foreseeing long-term patterns of change that are the cause of the immediate circumstances.

5. The delusion of learning from experience: The idea that most staff members learn from experience is an illusion. More often than not, people do not experience the consequences of their decisions in the organization directly, especially when the systems are not in place to provide honest feedback.  

6. The myth of the management team: Management and leadership are not the same. A  good manager is not automatically a good leader. Management-minded people tend to not work together but rather fight over turfs and avoid doing anything that may risk them looking bad. Real leaders cross the line, take risks and compromise as long as the vision is moving forward.

7. The parable of the boiling frog: We tend not to be conscious of or are unwilling to notice threats that arise regularly which leads to an inability to react until it’s too late. Status quo is the godfather of anti-progress and anti-innovative culture. It grows slowly, painlessly until someone in the market beat you in your own game.  

The book ends with an explanation of how to integrate and apply the five disciplines to building a learning organization. As staff members practice the discipline of personal mastery, they experience gradual progress, analyze their own mental models and become more comfortable and identify new ways of thinking. A shared vision helps people see how their actions contribute to transforming and shaping their future. All five disciplines set the foundation for team learning, which allows staff members to build the type of results they desire, at a level beyond their individual capacities. Systems thinking underlies all four other disciplines to help everyone to see the big picture, their role in it, restructure assumptions and reveal causes and ways to leverage in complex situations.


THE BIG THREE – KEY POINTS
Keypoint #1: In a learning organization, people do not want to work according to the rules of the game but rather they feel responsible for the game.
Keypoint #2: To solve problems, we need a shift of mindset from seeing small parts to a holistic view, moving away from being reactive to being proactive.
Keypoint #3: Quit playing “power games” and be open and honest about what your real needs are.

One Last Thing
“Taking in information is only distantly related to real learning. It would be nonsensical to say, “I just read a great book about bicycle riding—I’ve now learned that.”
― Peter M. Senge, The Fifth Discipline

So Good They Can’t Ignore You

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

In this book, Cal Newport contradicts a long-held mindset about following your passion. He believed there is more to loving what you do than just following your passion. To discover this and back up his point, he set out on a quest by spending time with a Venture capitalist, organic farmers, writers, freelancers and other passionate individuals that derive great satisfaction in what they do.  In this quest, Newport identified strategies used and pitfalls avoided by these individuals in developing their career. Passion comes after you have invested in becoming excellent at something valuable not before you attempt something. Aligning your career with your pre-existing passion does not matter. “So Good They Can’t Ignore You” will change your perspective about your passion, career, happiness and developing a remarkable lifestyle.”

 

Steve Mark likes to say “be so good they can’t ignore you” irrespective of your level in your career. Whether you are just starting up, or you are a professional trying to move to the next level, your target should be to master your craft to the point where people can’t help but notice you. Being passionate about what you do is a great goal but following your passion will not get you there. There are two fundamental problems attached to following your passion:

 

Firstly, it assumes that people have a pre-existing passion they can identify and use when making career decisions. However, most people end up feeling lost because they have no idea about what they want to do.

 

Secondly, there is an assumption that says if you like something you will really like doing it for a job. “We don’t have an established evidence that is true,” Newport says. People passionate about their work has little to do with whether their job matches their pre-existing passions.  The bottom line is let your passion follow you in your craft and become someone that can’t be ignored and not to follow your passion. Try something interesting to do, find a skill and career path to pursue and if you are stuck at a crossroad, flip a coin. Make your skill valuable by reaching a high level of expertise. For example, many people look down on a linguistic major for being impractical. You can be very good at a particular type of writing; it will make you stand out. People who are passionate about their work develop the passion over time after building their skill to the point that they became rear and valuable.

 

To become so good at what you do, you need to master that skill through deliberate practice. Once you have chosen a career path, the next step is to master the skills in it to become irreplaceable. “You don’t have a leverage until you become so good.” Says Newport. Look out for simple and common mistakes that show up every day when working on your skill and don’t stop getting better. Many people build their skill to a stage that they become so comfortable and they stop improving on it. It is a deadly risk. To avoid this, push yourself beyond the comfort zone and continuously practice your skills just the way athletes, musicians or artists would.

 

Finally, you have to be good at something before big things start to happen. Don’t stop building on your skills. Be so good that you can’t be ignored.

 

The Big Three – Key Points

 

Key Point #1: Do not follow your passion. Let your passion follow you and learn how you can grow your mindset around your passion.

 

Key Point #2: To become so good at what you do, you need to master that skill through deliberate practice. You don’t have a leverage until you become so good.

 

Key Point #3: Push yourself beyond your comfort zone and continuously practice your skills just the way athletes, musicians or artists do.

One Last Thing

So Good They Can’t Ignore You Quotes Showing 1-30 of 224

“Passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, not before. In other words, what you do for a living is much less important than how you do it.”

― Cal newport, So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love

The New Edge in Knowledge

/0 Comments/in , , , , /by

The New Edge of Knowledge by Carla O’dell and Cindy Hubert focuses on the best and most effective practices to ensure organizations have the knowledge needed for the future. Each chapter of the book shares ideas on new ways of working and collaboration by using knowledge management as a social network and how leading companies apply them.

Carla defines knowledge as information in action and knowledge management as a systematic effort to enable information and knowledge to grow, flow and create value. Social networking, one of today’s most popular ways of collaborating, has helped people be good at filtering, switching and organizing their memories. Social media becomes social computing when applied to a non‐commercial intent among people to share and co‐create.

Knowledge management, or KM for short, can either be done in the workflow or above workflow. KM in the workflow is when we enable staff members to collaborate, capture and share knowledge without an additional burden or interruption on their part. Knowledge management above the workflow is when we ask staff members to stop their work process to move to another mode to reflect, capture or share. One is not better than the other, it simply depends on the type of organization and the speed on which the knowledge is needed.

Furthermore, Carla describes an effective strategy in creating a call to action on identifying and prioritizing the organization’s critical knowledge. The first step in creating a call to action for knowledge management is to understand the value proposition for enhancing the essential flow of knowledge. The next, critical knowledge has to be identified. After that, the critical knowledge must be located. A key component is to develop a knowledge map that acts as a snapshot in time to help the organization understand what knowledge it has and what it lacks. The next step is to enable the knowledge flow process. A critical step to facilitate the transfer of best practices is to identify and adopt superior practices rapidly. By sharing what works best, staff members get the theory, evidence and expertise all at once.  Examination of critical success factors is usually essential. Often knowledge and best practices exist in every organization, yet employees rarely share them. And even when they do, methods are not necessarily implemented.

The author gives a special place to social networking in the way of capturing and sharing knowledge. Social networking refers to online sites where users can create a profile and designate a network of people to see their posts and following their activities. It is the pure manifestation of the user-driven philosophy. Social networks could become an essential adjunct for creating and sustaining the engine of relationships and knowledge in a Web 2.0 world. The guidelines for enterprise social networking are: ride the wave, every organization isn’t Facebook, imitate what works, observe what really happens, trust but verify, encourage extended networks and use social networking as an adjunct to expertise location.

The book also illustrates the ways to a cultivate knowledge‐sharing culture. There are three ways to directly influence the norms and behaviors of employees. First is to lead by example. Executive involvement lends credibility to KM programs and ensures the efforts will be long term. There are 10 desirable types of leaders for Knowledge Management identified as: progressive leader, investigative leader, all‐for‐one leader, trusted the leader, methodical leader, visionary leader, implementation leader, observant leader, innovative leader and follower‐centric leader. The second way is to brand aggressively. To develop a knowledge‐sharing culture, there is a need for consistent messaging- a formal and pervasive communications push and reinforcement of desired behaviors through rewards and recognition. The third and last way is to make it fun. It can be done by making Knowledge Management tools and approaches engaging, using humor, introducing friendly competition, enabling two‐way interaction and seeking inspiration elsewhere.

This book explores the knowledge management value proposition for any organization, provides proven strategies and approaches to make it work, shares how to measure knowledge management’s impact and illustrates high-level knowledge sharing with excellent case studies.

THE BIG THREE – KEY POINTS
Keypoint #1: Lead by example. Knowledge management is a cultural shift for the organization, so it’s required for the leaders to go above and beyond in their support.

Keypoint #2: Knowledge management is not a new catchy phrase, it is the edge on which organizations of all types, for-profit and non-for-profit, will be competing within the new knowledge economy.

Keypoint #3: Brand aggressively and make it fun. Besides leaders in the organization actively carrying the banner of knowledge management, there is a need to make it stick.  Influencing an established culture will require every staff member to embrace it.

One Last Thing
“Knowledge has to be improved, challenged and increased constantly, or it vanishes.” Peter Drucker

THE OUTLIERS

/0 Comments/in , , /by

The Outliers is structured around a series of case studies, cultures and time periods that are all related to same theories and thesis. According to Malcolm, success has nothing to do with high intelligence, level of genius or innate ability. Instead, success is based on prior investment of hard work, creativity, time, support and opportunity. Gladwell says it is that simple. Your culture, legacy and environment also play a part. He backed his point using various case studies of triumph and success. When an opportunity presents itself, you must be prepared and ready to maximize on it. That is not the point where you begin your preparation. Your prior preparation will determine if you will seize the opportunity or lose it. There is no shortcut to mastery. You must put in the work.

Below is a quick summary of the six key points Malcolm Gladwell takes us through:

Opportunity: Success rarely comes to those who struggle to break from the norm. There must be at least a glimmer of talent in you to achieve success. Opportunity gives you the chance to access coaches and tools that you need to build your skills. Those tools prepare you for a more robust opportunity. Gladwell considers remarkable individuals in this section such as Bill Joy, Robert Oppenheimer, Bill Gates, and an unsung intellectual Chris Langan.

Timing: Timing is crucial and critical to success and opportunity. When and where you are born can influence your opportunity. 14 of the 75 richest people in history were born between 1860’s and 1870’s when the industrial revolution was taking off. Also in 1935, there were fewer babies born, roughly 600,000, which means a smaller class size. During this period, there were greater chances of getting into college, good sports team or even getting a good job in better firms.

Upbringing: The quality of the upbringing a child receives also influences his/her success. Parents that are more involved in their kids’ lives provide them with opportunities that lead to the child’s success. This can include enrolling them in summer school, taking them to museums and assisting with their homework. Kids that do not have parental care or affection tend to lose more opportunity.

10,000 hours: It typically takes 10,000 hours to become a master of something. You must invest that amount of your time.

Meaningful Work: You must invest hard and meaningful work to get the best out of it. Meaningful work makes you want to put in more hours. For instance, immigrants value and practice hard work. Sociologist Louise Farkas confirmed this while studying the immigrants family tree. He found out that the offspring became professionals and successful. She concluded that in spite of their humble background, they have been trained to value and practice hard work.

Legacy: Value drives legacy. Our values are passed down to us from generation to generation which directly affects our current behavior. Dutch psychologist, Geer Hofstede, did an analysis on different country’s cultural tendencies. He identified different dimensions such individualism, collectivism, uncertainty, avoidance and power distance index. Gladwell believes the society of one’s ancestors has a tendency of determining one’s practice and preference, even in the present day.

The Big Three – Key Points:

Key Point #1    Success has nothing to do with level of genius or IQ. It has more to do   with hard work, culture, society, and opportunity

Key Point #2    Success comes to those who are ready to become a master in what they do.

Key Point #3    To be successful you must be ready to seize opportunities.

 

One Last Thing

“Practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good. It’s the thing you do that makes you good.”

― Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success

 

The First 20 Hours. How to Learn Anything Fast

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

The First 20 Hours was written with an intention to enlighten people on how to rapidly acquire a skill. The key to learning any skill is to have a clear definition of what you think will be “good enough” and focus on the small parts that make that “good enough” skill. The author, Josh Kaufman, tailored the three major areas of this book towards principles to learn effectively. He organizes them in three key components:

1- Rapid Skill Acquisition

2- Effective learning

3- Effectiveness of the approach

RAPID ACQUISITION SKILL

Rapid skill acquisition is a way of breaking down a particular skill into the smallest pieces possible for easier processing then identifying which of those pieces are most important and deliberately practicing those elements first.  There are four steps in RapidSkill Acquisition process.

First you need to deconstruct the skill into the smallest possible subskills; the second step is to learn enough about each subskill in order to practice intelligently and self-correct during practice; the third step is to remove any mental, emotional and physical barriers that may get in the way of practice; and lastly, practice the most important sub-skills for at least twenty hours.

EFFECTIVE LEARNING

Any time you start practicing something new, your skills will naturally improve in a very short period of time. The key is to start practicing as soon as possible. Not thinking about practicing or worrying about practicing, but actually practicing. By just simply practicing, the skill set will start escalating. To guarantee the process of practicing is effective, take into consideration the following:

1.    Identify mental models and mental hooks.

2.    Talk to practitioners to set expectations.

3.    Eliminate distractions in your environment.

4.    Use spaced repetition and reinforcement for memorization.

5.    Create scaffolds and checklists.

6.    Make and test predictions.

7.    Honor your biology.

EFFECTIVENESS OF THE APPROACH

Not only does Josh talk the talk, but he also walks the walk when it comes to the principles guiding Rapid Skill Acquisition and effective learning. To put them to the test he chose six skills he was interested in learning,

•    Yoga

•    Programming

•    Touch typing with a Colemak keyboard layout

•    Playing Go

•    Windsurfing

•    Ukulele

Josh puts 20 hours into practicing each skill and he didn’t withhold the feedback. A more significant part of the book is devoted to his experience in these skills. Briefly, programming which is one of his “wants to acquire” skills was a big hit. He wanted to create a functioning web application.  But guess what, He did not spend the precious hours stuck in textbooks, NO, he rather focused on basic elements of creating a program and then applied a “build – test – fix” approach to honing it into a working prototype. He utilized the full 20 hours, 10 of which were spent on research and the remaining 10 on the programming.  In the end, he had a couple of working software solutions. It was a breakthrough.

On a final note, the only time you can choose to practice is today. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Not next month or next year. Today. So, to all my life learners and self-taught folks… when you wake up in the morning, you have a choice and this book helps you to make the right choice. Stop procrastinating and start learning. It will take just 20 hours.

THE BIG THREE – KEY POINTS

Key point #1 – Always make the next skill you’re going to learn the one you’re most excited about.

Key point #2 – Think about emotional and real-life obstacles beforehand.

Key point #3- Initially, focus on quantity over quality.

One Last Thing

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”

― Albert Einstein

GREAT BY CHOICE: UNCERTAINTY, CHAOS, AND LUCK WHY SOME THRIVE

/0 Comments/in , , , , , /by

Great by choice is a masterpiece of Jim Collins in-depth research. It was written in collaboration with another influential management analyst, Morten. T. Hansen.  Great by Choice aims to solve the problem of “why in spite of ambiguity, chaos, uncertainty, and market volatility, a few companies thrive, and others struggle.” Collins tackles this question by comparing those who outperformed their competitors by a factor of 10 (10Xers) in given time frame and set of variables.

The authors confirm that the great companies are no luckier than good companies, average companies or bad companies. Luck does not make them succeed because even in times of chaos and uncertainty, they go on working as if nothing has happened. These companies succeed because they have acquired an antifragility trait through a process which combines discipline and preparedness. It is not something in the DNA or something you get by luck or sheer courage. It is through a process that can be learned.

The authors successfully illustrate their point with the story of conquering South Antarctica. In 1911, two explorers made dangerous trip to Antarctica in an attempt to become the first people to reach the South Pole. One was led by a Norwegian, Roald Amundsen, while the other was led by a British Navy officer, Robert Falcon Scott.  Looking at both explorers, you would expect the latter to be remembered by history. That was not the case. It was Amundsen’s expedition who won the race to immortality. Why? Simply put:

PREPARATION. Roald Amundsen didn’t know where he was going, but he had a good idea of the conditions that he may be facing and spent as much time as he could researching Eskimo habits and trying all potential food sources.  Scott, on the other hand, wanted to reach the pole faster, so he carried a lot less weight and used the “untested –for-that-terrain” motor sleds. No one remembers if Scott’s team ever made it home. Neither Amundsen nor Scott knew what they would face on Antarctica, but the former did better in preparing for it.

My favorite part of the book is how much research was included. The authors analyzed the companies which beat their industry indexes Y at least ten times in as many years (10X companies) and found out that they were able to overcome stressful situations because they were prepared.

Firstly, they were disciplined. They were not in a hurry to become better than anyone else; they choose consistency over a rapid rise. By setting targets for themselves and hitting them precisely year by year, they became immune to external influences.

Secondly, they were bold. Their leaders weren’t interested in taking unnecessary risks and as a consequence weren’t required to be anymore of visionary than those of merely good companies.

Lastly, they were productively paranoid, just like Amundsen. The polar explorer tried dolphin’s meat to prepare for the worst-case scenario. The 10x companies do this regularly. In the event that something terrible happens, they already have a good strategy.

The 10x companies are neither more innovative nor more bolder than competitive companies; they were merely more attentive. They use bullets until they are entirely sure of their target and then they fire the cannon balls.

In conclusion, be SMaC: Specific, Methodological and Consistent. That is how discipline is implemented within a company. However, it is  only one aspect of what will help you through hard times. The other is being productively paranoid. Prepare for the worst, hope for the best!

THE BIG THREE – KEYPOINTS

Key point #1: Be Attentive. Fire the bullets, then the cannonballs.

Key point #2: Be specific, methodological, consistent and productively paranoid

Key point #3: Greatness is a long-term strategy, strengthened by a consistent discipline in tactics.

One Last Thing

“The great task, rarely achieved, is to blend creative intensity with harsh discipline so as to amplify the creativity rather than destroy it. When you marry operating excellence with innovation, you multiply the value of your creativity.” Jim Collins & Morten Hanson. Great By Choice

FAILING FORWARD Turning Mistakes into Stepping Stones for Success

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

Failing forward is a strategic guide that helps people move beyond mistakes to fulfill their potential and achieve success.  In this book, John C. Maxwell took a closer look at failure and revealed that the secret of moving forward beyond failure is to use it as a lesson or stepping stone. He covers the top reason people fail and shows how to master fear instead of being mastered by it. Usually, failure is considered the opposite of success, but this is not true. Failure is not to be avoided but to be embraced.  It is a vital part of success. Learning to embrace failure, we will become stronger.  Each chapter of the book deeply explores the psychology of success and failure, using case studies of people, organizations, companies, and nations that managed to take advantage of their failure to succeed and even self-actualize.

Among my favorites stories in the book, we have the story of Mary Kay Ash, which Maxwell uses to make the point that the main difference between those who achieve and the average people is how people handle and respond to failure.

Other stories highlighted by Maxwell were, the story of the Major League Baseball player Tony Gwynn, and the founder of Chick-fil-A restaurant chain, Truett Cathy. The author leverages their stories to propose a new definition of failure. “Failure is the price a person pays for progress, as it provides growth and learning opportunities that would not be had otherwise.”

One of the most impactful chapters is Chapter Four,  the section presents many statistics of research on how fear of failure can impede success. Maxwell uses many of this statistics and studies to explained what he calls the “Fear Cycle.” The Fear of  Cycle start with  Fear, followed by Inaction and Inexperience, and close with Inability, and as inability is the main pre-angle to fear, the fear cycle begins again.  The Chapter closed with useful tips on how to break the cycle. Maxwell showed how we can cut from the past to create our own breakthroughs. And he explains the process of how we can see failure as a unique opportunity to face ourselves, and understand our own weaknesses and deal effectively with them.

The last chapter of the books explained how to grasp the positive benefits that each “negative” experience brings, and leverage from those benefits to keep taking risks because that’s the only way to succeed.

As Benjamin Franklin said “whatever hurts, instructs,” and most times people get in their own way of succeeding for one or a combination of the followings ten reasons:

1. Poor People Skills

2. A Negative Attitude

3. A Bad Fit

4. Lack of Focus

5. A Weak Commitment

6. Unwillingness to Change

7.A Short-Cut Mindset

8. Relying on Talent Alone

9. A Response to Poor Information

10. No Goals

In conclusion, Peter Drucker says, “The better a man is, the more mistakes he will make, the more new things he will try.” Mistakes really do pave the road for achievement.

THE BIG THREE – KEYPOINTS

Key Point #1: Failure creates new and a better opportunity

Key Point #2: Turn failure into knowledge and knowledge into success

Key Point #3: The only way to make failure useful is to learn from it.

One Last Thing

Achievers are given multiple reasons to believe they are failures. But in spite of that, they persevere. The average for entrepreneurs is 3.8 failures before they finally make it in business. But here is the key, fail early, fail fast, fail often, but always fail forward.

~John C. Maxwell, Falling Forward