Beware of geeks bearing formulas
I always feel more comforted about a situation after hearing Buffet talk about it. He has some great lines in this interview with Charlie Rose
In a bubble there are always three I’s, the innovators, the imitators and the idiots.
That’s so true not just of an economic bubble but everything in life. That’s the visitor pattern of a great nightclub, the crowd for a great band. When he was talking about how mortgage debt was packaged a resold around the world he said.
Beware of geeks bearing formulas
I have to admit that my friends down the hall on Microsoft Excel might bear some of the responsibility for our current economic state. If you include the first dot-com bust this is the second time in a decade that geeks have been to blame for fueling an economic crisis… go nerds!
Finding Music: Girl Talk
For the past few months I have been enjoying the mix tapes on Attacked By Jackets courtesy of the other Ryan. I love that I don’t have to look for new music, between Pete, Ryan, Tyler and my twitter friends I am always being introduced to great tunes. The lastest album I heard about is Feed The Animals from Girl Talk, it’s a wild ride through my entire life of music and I have not heard a record that’s made me smile so much in a long time. This is another artist that’s bypassing the labels and letting fans get music directly, awesome trend.
Desk Workouts from a reliable source: Another McMinn
My brother has a great post on getting exercise at your desk.
So why does working at a computer cause so much stress to our bodies?
Well, the answer is pretty simple. Humans were not made to sit down for long periods of time, staring at a screen, typing and mousing. We have spent much more of our 2 3/4 million year history hunting on foot and moving from place to place following food sources with the seasons
There are three more videos as well:
1-Minute Desk Exercises Video
2-Minute Desk Exercises Video
3-Minute Desk Exercises Video
My ignite talk video got posted
I had a blast doing the ignite talk and would highly recommend it to anyone else. It’s a lot of fun to get up and do 5 quick min!
Having Clear Objectives
This a topic I have been thinking a lot lately and read this which kinda sums it it much better than I could.
From Up The Organization by Robert Townsend:
Objectives
One of the important functions of a leader is to make the organization concentrate on its objectives. In the case of Avis, it took us six months to define one objective – which turned out to be: “We want to become the fastest growing company with the highest profit margin in the business of renting and leasing vehicles without drivers”
(Ryan Note: I am sure folks can come up with a simple focused objective much quicker than six months…)
That objective was simple enough so that we didn’t have to write it down. We could put it in every speech and talk about it wherever we went. And it had some social significance, because up to that time Hertz had a crushingly large share of the market and was thinking and acting like General Motors.
It also included a definition of our business: “renting and leasing vehicles without drivers”. This let us put the blinders on ourselves and stop considering the acquisition of related businesses like motels, hotels, airlines and travel agencies. It also showed that we had to get rid of some limo and sightseeing companies the we already owned.
Once those objectives have been agreed on the leader must me merciless on himself and his people. If an idea that pops into his head or out of their mouths is outside of the objective of the company, he kills it without a trial.
Peter Drucker was never more right when he wrote: “Concentration is the key to economic results…no other principle of effectiveness is violated as constantly as the principal of concentration…Our motto seems to be let’s do a little bit of everything.”
It isn’t easy to concentrate. I used to keep a sign opposite to my desk where I couldn’t miss it if I were on the phone (about to make an appointment) or in a meeting in my office: “Is what I’m doing or about to do getting us closer to our objective?” That sign saved me from a lot of useless trips, lunch dates, conferences, junkets and meetings.
Most of all, work on simplifying and distilling your statement of objectives. Cato boiled his down to three words “Delenda est Carthago”- and by saying them over and over eventually wiped out the competition
