Notice what inspires you
Notice what interests you
Notice what you are drawn to
Notice what repeals you
Notice what turns you off
Notice what energises you
Notice what drains you
Notice the rhythms of your life
Notice who you are
Notice where you are
Notice where you are heading
Notice what is happening around you
Notice the coincidences in your life
Notice the things you stumble over
Notice the mistakes you keep making
Notice what you are feeling and why
Notice what you notice
Almost all roses have thorns. Yet we don’t tend to focus on the rose’s thorns rather we concentrate on the beauty and fragrant smell of its petals. The rose’s thorns does not diminish the flower’s perceived worth or value. Life like the rose has its petals (positive things) and thorns (negative things). You have the choice on what to pay attention to in your life. Remember that what you focus on will magnify and multiply.
I watched a BBC documentary on Amazon a few days ago and learnt about the company’s 14 leadership principles. These principles were crafted to build a strong organisational culture within Amazon. An organisation’s long term success is based on its culture. The ones with strong cultures thrive while the ones with weak ones die. Every Amazon employee is expected to adhere to these principles or find a new employer.
I believe that the sustainability of a strong organisational culture is dependent on effective organisational leadership. The documentary stated that Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s CEO, is the number one internal champion of these leadership principles. He insists that these principles influence every strategic management decision made at Amazon.
I have listed these 14 leadership principles below. All of these principles may seem commonsensical. They are principles that you would expect any ambitious organisation to hold. It is however one thing to have commonsensical leadership principles and another thing to follow them.
There are two creative acts which I try to do every day. I am not always consistent but it is a daily aspiration. I seek to write everyday and take at least one photo a day. I use two websites for this: 750words.com for writing and blipfoto.com for sharing my photos. My 750words writing is private but my photo sharing is public. Writing everyday enables me to develop my critical and creative writing abilities while daily photo taking helps me train my eye to spot interesting visual stimuli to capture and share.
Tottenham Spurs played Liverpool Football Club yesterday at Anfield stadium in Liverpool. It was a big game for both teams and the game ended 4-0 in favour of Liverpool FC. It was an entertaining one-sided game with some comical defending from Spurs gifting Liverpool at least 2 goals. “Where is our manager?” chants reverberated around the stadium as frustrated Spurs fans watched their team get humiliated on the pitch.
The Jews revere Moses as one of their greatest leaders ever. The Bible recounts how he led the Israelites out of captivity and slavery in Egypt. He was a leader who sacrificed his own interests for an ungrateful group of people. What helped Moses to last up to 40 years in the wilderness with followers who spent most of their time complaining about him, undermining him, and conspiring against him?
Regular readers of this blog know that I am a big fan of Austin Kleon. I have done several blog posts on him and his work. My last post on him was on his forthcoming book, Show your Work. This book was released last week and I would recommend that you get a copy. I purchased a Kindle version of the book which I completed earlier today. Today’s blog post is on some of the interesting ideas in the book.
Facebook turned 10 years old last month. I bet that you either have a Facebook account or know someone who does. I don’t think that Mark Zuckerburg (Facebook’s main founder) could have imagined in 2004 that Facebook would be an online social media colossus that would obliterate all other social networking sites such as Myspace, Hi5, Friendster, etc. I do believe that one of the reasons for Facebook’s success was the fact that its early growth was incremental rather than exponential.
“Break the rules, change the game” is the marketing slogan for the Mazda 3 car advert. Check out the Youtube video of the advert at the end of this blog post. This ad features Dick Fosbury, the American high jumper, who invented the back-first Fosbury Flop technique in the mid 1960’s which revolutionised the sport.
I have procrastinated doing a blog post on ‘the curse of knowledge’ for a long time. This topic was mentioned in a session I attended at the University last week and I knew it was finally time to do a post on this topic. I encountered the ‘curse of knowledge’ in a fabulous book by Chip and Dan Heath called ‘Made to Stick‘. If you are interested in how to become an effective communicator, get this book.