The thing is, we still live in a world that’s filled with opportunity. In fact, we have more than an opportunity — we have an obligation. An obligation to spend our time doing great things. To find ideas that matter and to share them. To push ourselves and the people around us to demonstrate gratitude, insight, and inspiration. To take risks and to make the world better by being amazing.
Thought For Today
Cat Allergy Depends on When You Get the Cat
With apologies to all cat lovers out there
Acquiring a cat as an adult can lead to allergies to cat dander; the risk is lower if one had a cat as a child but higher if allergies were already present.
Bottom Line:
If you have allergies, asthma, or never had a cat as a child, don’t get a cat.
Networking for Survival – HBR
Without the network, you don’t get new ideas into your organization, you don’t see trends and issues that affect you and your customers, you don’t grow and develop your people with new challenges and opportunities, you aren’t attractive for young talent, you don’t learn about new technologies or business models, you don’t create new markets and you risk deluding yourself with your own ideas. You don’t increase your own value and advance your own career. Without the network you stagnate, you become stale. With the network you grow, provide meaningful and valuable solutions to your customers and not just survive, but thrive.
via Networking for Survival – Deborah Mills-Scofield – Harvard Business Review.
Great post and well worth reading. One comment caught my eye,
When new forms of communication emerge, don’t just look at how to improve what you’re doing already, but at new ways of doing.
I immediately thought of social media as a new way of doing. My transition from a dumb phone to a smartphone is a new way of doing (for me). One of my new projects for the New Year is to create a Google+ business page. Is this an “improvement”? Not really. It’s just a new way of doing.
Peace Be With You – Merry Xmas and Happy Holidays 2011
People are often unreasonable and self centered
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind people may accuse you of ulterior motives
Be kind anyway.
If you are honest people may cheat you
Be honest anyway.
If you find happiness people may be jealous
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough
Do your best anyway.
For you see in the end it was between you and God
It was never between you and them anyway.
Mother Theresa
How to Accomplish More by Doing Less – HBR
How to Accomplish More by Doing Less – Tony Schwartz – Harvard Business Review.
Amen brother, amen.
Change This – The Promise of Entrepreneurship
We are made to believe that when it comes to business success, bigger is always better. In our super-sized, consumption-oriented culture, not even small business is exempt from the pressure to grow for growth’s sake. We fixate on top-line revenue growth and increasing numbers of employees and locations. We pepper entrepreneurs with questions such as, ‘What are your plans for expansion? What’s next? How many cities will you go to?’ instead of asking what their goals are or why they started their business in the first place. When talk about growth we focus on speed, not sustainability. When we talk about success we focus on size, not satisfaction.
via Change This – The Promise of Entrepreneurship.
From the Change This website:
Adelaide Lancaster is the co-founder of In Good Company, a community, business learning center and coworking space for women entrepreneurs in Manhattan. She is a small business expert and has advised thousands of women entrepreneurs on how to create businesses that meet their needs and keep them satisfied over time. She earned two graduate degrees in psychology from Columbia University and her undergraduate degree from Colgate University. ingoodcompany.com
GYL here – this manifesto really hit home for me. I am 5.5 years down the Path and I would have to say the effort and sacrifice is worth it. So if you’re on your Path or if you are not and considering getting on your own Path, you ought to read this. The link takes you to the Change This website. Once there you can download a PDF of the manifesto.
Facebook Is Making Us Miserable – Harvard Business Review
Facebook is negatively affecting what psychology Professor Jeffrey Parker refers to as “the closeness properties of friendship.”
via Facebook Is Making Us Miserable – Daniel Gulati – Harvard Business Review.
Please note I am not the author of the HBR blog article so please don’t shoot the messenger. I’m neither a huge fan nor harsh critic of what the pundits term as “the dominant communication platform of the future”. I simply don’t use Facebook a lot. I don’t have a smart phone. I have a dumb phone. I don’t use an iPad. I use an old-fashioned laptop if necessary.
If anyone wishes to communicate with me, email or phone works just fine thank you.
Or we could meet in person!
I Don’t Understand What Anyone Is Saying Anymore
I Don’t Understand What Anyone Is Saying Anymore – Dan Pallotta – Harvard Business Review.
This article would be funnier if it weren’t so true.
Read this blog article. Then remember a perfectly acceptable response is “I don’t have any idea what you just said to me.”
Bob MacDonald on What’s So Hard about Doing the Right Thing?
In the abstract it is easy to say that doing the right thing is – at the very least – reporting the improper activity. But what if your report seems to be ignored? Are you off the hook and have no further responsibility? Even worse, if you do report it and your boss survives with nothing more than a reprimand, what might this do to your personal well-being and your future with the company? In theory, of course, you could quit your job and find another; but in this economy, is that possible? Is now the right time to put you and your family’s financial future at risk? You could go halfway and say nothing while you look for another job, but is that the right thing to do? This type of enigma is not an academic exercise. Anyone who has ever been in the business world, with ambitions to be successful and rise up the pyramid and support a family knows this type situation – and a wide variety of others – is more reality than theory. The real questions are: At what point are you willing to dilute or even trade in “doing the right thing,” to protect your career by “going along to get along”? At what point do you break and become willing to rationalize the elements of “doing the right thing?”
via What’s So Hard about Doing the Right Thing?.
Bob’s right. Read his entire blog post to understand why it is not easy to do the right thing. Thanks Bob and please keep writing and sharing.
Magnitude 5.6 – OKLAHOMA…(we’re OK)
It’s been a rough year weather-wise out here in OK. Not that I’m keeping count but in the past year we have experienced:
- record snowfall
- torrential flash floods
- flat wind storms
- softball size hail
- nados
- excruciating relentless heat wave
- drought
- Texas Rangers losing the World Series in 7
- 5.6 earthquake
If you’ve never experienced an earthquake your brain starts firing off like crazy trying to figure out what’s happening. The noise is one of the strangest noises I have heard in my life. Did something hit the roof? But when the house started shaking I said “Earthquake”!!!!
Then I went back to sleep.
lifeunderwriter.net 
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