"Organizations that earn dramatic success always do it in markets where asymptotes don't exist, or where they can be shattered. If you could figure out how to bowl 320, that would be amazing. Until that happens, pick a different sport if you want to be a linchpin."
"Work is a chance to do art. Good art is useless and banal. No one crosses the street to buy good art, or becomes loyal to a good artist. If you can't be remarkable, perhaps you should consider doing nothing until you can. If your organization skipped a month's catalog because you didn't have anything great to put in it, what would happen the next month? Would the quality and user delight of your product line improve?"
Raising the bar is easier than it looks, and it pays for itself. If your boss won't raise your bar, you should."
Sunday, February 14, 2010
From Linchpin
I've been reading and facebooking from this book. Here are some of the quotes:
"Linchpins make change happen. That's the job description. Change that isn't written down, step by step, change that isn't guaranteed to work. There is a scarcity of people willing to do this, which is precisely why it's valuable."
"Of course you're a linchpin (at least occasionally). Of course you're a genius (when the time is right). You're insubordinate when you want to be and creative when you need to be. Now your job is figuring out how to do that more often."
"The New American Dream: 'Be remarkable, Be generous, Create art, Make judgment calls, Connect people and ideas ... And we have no choice but to reward you'."
"I am Good at School'. This is a fundamentally different statement from, 'I did well in school and therefore I will do a great job working for you.' The essential thing measured by school is whether or not your are good at school."
"Being good at school is a fine skill if you intend to do school forever. For the rest of us, being good at school is a little like being good at Frisbee. It's nice but it's not relevant unless your career involves homework assignments, looking through textbooks for answers known to your supervisors, complying with instructions and then, in high pressure settings, regurgitating those facts."
"We've been trained since first grade to avoid making mistakes. The goal of any test, after all, is to get 100 percent. No mistakes. Get nothing wrong and you get an A, right? Read someone's resume, and discover twenty years of extraordinary exploits and one typo."
"Which are you going to mention first? We hire for perfect, we manage for perfect, we measure for perfect, and we reward for perfect. So why are we surprised that people spend their precious minutes of self-directed, focused work time trying to achieve perfect? "
"The problem is simple: Art is never defect-free. Things that are remarkable never meet spec, because that would make them standardized, not worth talking about."
"Bob Dylan knows a little about becoming indispensable, being an artist, and living on the edge: 'Daltrey, Townshend, McCartney, the Beach Boys, Elton, Billy Joel. They made perfect records, so they have to play them perfectly... exactly the way people remember them. My records were never perfect. So there is no point in trying to duplicate them. Anyway, I'm no mainstream artist.... I guess most of my influences could be thought of as eccentric. Mass media had no overwhelming reach so I was drawn to the traveling performers passing through. The side show performers - bluegrass singers, the black cowboys with chaps and lariat doing rope tricks. Miss Europe, Qausimodo, the Bearded Lady, the half-man half-woman, the deformed and the bent, Atlas the Dwarf, the fire-eaters, the teachers and preachers, the blues singers. I remember it like it was yesterday. I got close to some of these people. I learned about dignity from them. Freedom too. Civil rights, human rights. How to stay within yourself. Most others were into the rides like the tilt-a-whirl and the roller-coaster. To me that was the nightmare. All the giddiness. The artificiality of it...
The interviewer then reminded Dylan, 'But you've sold over a hundred million records.' Dylan's answer gets to the heart of what it means to be an artist: 'Yeah I know. It's a mystery to me too.'"
"Avoiding the treadmill of defect-free is not easy to sell to someone who's been trained in the perfection worldview since first grade (which is most of us). But artists embrace the mystery of our genius instead. They understand that there is no map, no step-by-step plan, and no way to avoid blame now and then."
"If it wasn't a mystery, it would be easy. If it were easy, it wouldn't be worth much."
"Linchpins make change happen. That's the job description. Change that isn't written down, step by step, change that isn't guaranteed to work. There is a scarcity of people willing to do this, which is precisely why it's valuable."
"Of course you're a linchpin (at least occasionally). Of course you're a genius (when the time is right). You're insubordinate when you want to be and creative when you need to be. Now your job is figuring out how to do that more often."
"The New American Dream: 'Be remarkable, Be generous, Create art, Make judgment calls, Connect people and ideas ... And we have no choice but to reward you'."
"I am Good at School'. This is a fundamentally different statement from, 'I did well in school and therefore I will do a great job working for you.' The essential thing measured by school is whether or not your are good at school."
"Being good at school is a fine skill if you intend to do school forever. For the rest of us, being good at school is a little like being good at Frisbee. It's nice but it's not relevant unless your career involves homework assignments, looking through textbooks for answers known to your supervisors, complying with instructions and then, in high pressure settings, regurgitating those facts."
"We've been trained since first grade to avoid making mistakes. The goal of any test, after all, is to get 100 percent. No mistakes. Get nothing wrong and you get an A, right? Read someone's resume, and discover twenty years of extraordinary exploits and one typo."
"Which are you going to mention first? We hire for perfect, we manage for perfect, we measure for perfect, and we reward for perfect. So why are we surprised that people spend their precious minutes of self-directed, focused work time trying to achieve perfect? "
"The problem is simple: Art is never defect-free. Things that are remarkable never meet spec, because that would make them standardized, not worth talking about."
"Bob Dylan knows a little about becoming indispensable, being an artist, and living on the edge: 'Daltrey, Townshend, McCartney, the Beach Boys, Elton, Billy Joel. They made perfect records, so they have to play them perfectly... exactly the way people remember them. My records were never perfect. So there is no point in trying to duplicate them. Anyway, I'm no mainstream artist.... I guess most of my influences could be thought of as eccentric. Mass media had no overwhelming reach so I was drawn to the traveling performers passing through. The side show performers - bluegrass singers, the black cowboys with chaps and lariat doing rope tricks. Miss Europe, Qausimodo, the Bearded Lady, the half-man half-woman, the deformed and the bent, Atlas the Dwarf, the fire-eaters, the teachers and preachers, the blues singers. I remember it like it was yesterday. I got close to some of these people. I learned about dignity from them. Freedom too. Civil rights, human rights. How to stay within yourself. Most others were into the rides like the tilt-a-whirl and the roller-coaster. To me that was the nightmare. All the giddiness. The artificiality of it...
The interviewer then reminded Dylan, 'But you've sold over a hundred million records.' Dylan's answer gets to the heart of what it means to be an artist: 'Yeah I know. It's a mystery to me too.'"
"Avoiding the treadmill of defect-free is not easy to sell to someone who's been trained in the perfection worldview since first grade (which is most of us). But artists embrace the mystery of our genius instead. They understand that there is no map, no step-by-step plan, and no way to avoid blame now and then."
"If it wasn't a mystery, it would be easy. If it were easy, it wouldn't be worth much."
Friday, February 12, 2010
Why Homeschoolers Need a Well Functioning Government
I think there's a misnomer that homeschooling families refuse to accept government assistance because they feel they can do it better on their own. This is not true in our experience. Not true at all. We simply have chosen to take advantage of a different set of government funded services, without them, my wife (who is doing almost all of the work) would be much less effective. The most obvious examples:
1) The Tempe Library
My wife takes our kids to the library once every few weeks, and literally turns in about 50 pounds of books and checks out 50 pounds more. My kids don't get through all of those books, but a lot of them. We use them to supplement history lessons (our kids are studying the Vikings right now and are reading book after book about the Vikings, not to mention building Viking ships, etc.), to learn and create science experiments, and to just enjoy the act of reading. Without this valuable resource, we would be left to the books we could afford to buy or borrow from friends, or google on the internet. But the internet offers shallow knowledge. Books allow you to explore a single topic at a much, more desirable pace, allowing yourself to immerse in a new world. And the library really expands this world beyond comprehension. Our homeschooling experience would be much, much poorer without our local library.
Not to mention what else the library provides beyond just books - story time, access to knowledgeable librarians... Not to mention what library's could provide as they learn to survive and thrive in a rapidly changing world. See this inspired article by Seth Godin. Although I take issue with this quote:
"They can't survive as community-funded repositories for books that individuals don't want to own (or for reference books we can't afford to own.)",
but I love this quote:
"What we need to spend the money on are leaders, sherpas and teachers who will push everyone from kids to seniors to get very aggressive in finding and using information and in connecting with and leading others."
So, city of Tempe library, we love you. And we hope you continue to thrive, grow, and become an even better resource for us and for others in our city.
2) City Parks:
Once a week, our kids join other kids to congregate at a city park for homeschooling PE. We demand a park with plenty of open fields, green (or near green) grass, basketball courts, so our kids can grow and develop physical skills and good health.
Not to mention all of the times we enjoy Tempe Town Lake, Kiwanis Park, Daley Park, and other parks throughout and around Tempe.
Our son's birthday party will be held at a local park. Our last trip to Portland, OR to visit my sister, we spend a lot of times visiting parks.
I love city parks, I want them well maintained, and as a homeschooling family and just as a family with kids in a place with nice weather (well in February), we want to be outside as much as possible. We demand parks.
Those are the two big things, but of course I can talk about a well functioning police and fire department - we want, need and demand basic security. A well functioning and affordable health care system, well functioning sewage, access to affordable and clean water, access to affordable and clean energy.
And of course, access to a well functioning school, affordable school system. We may or may not homeschool for our kids through high school, but either way, I could see us taking advantage of our local schools. Enrolling part time in courses we can't teach ourself, taking advantage of our affordable junior college network of schools. And our lives our much better because my community is well educated. I know everyone can't home school and I demand a high quality and improving school system - public and private.
None of this is possible without a well functioning government. Lets demand our politicians to provide it and make sure they have enough resources to get these necessary jobs done with a high quality.
A well functioning government is only possible if we have a well functioning and educating and engaged electorate.
1) The Tempe Library
My wife takes our kids to the library once every few weeks, and literally turns in about 50 pounds of books and checks out 50 pounds more. My kids don't get through all of those books, but a lot of them. We use them to supplement history lessons (our kids are studying the Vikings right now and are reading book after book about the Vikings, not to mention building Viking ships, etc.), to learn and create science experiments, and to just enjoy the act of reading. Without this valuable resource, we would be left to the books we could afford to buy or borrow from friends, or google on the internet. But the internet offers shallow knowledge. Books allow you to explore a single topic at a much, more desirable pace, allowing yourself to immerse in a new world. And the library really expands this world beyond comprehension. Our homeschooling experience would be much, much poorer without our local library.
Not to mention what else the library provides beyond just books - story time, access to knowledgeable librarians... Not to mention what library's could provide as they learn to survive and thrive in a rapidly changing world. See this inspired article by Seth Godin. Although I take issue with this quote:
"They can't survive as community-funded repositories for books that individuals don't want to own (or for reference books we can't afford to own.)",
but I love this quote:
"What we need to spend the money on are leaders, sherpas and teachers who will push everyone from kids to seniors to get very aggressive in finding and using information and in connecting with and leading others."
So, city of Tempe library, we love you. And we hope you continue to thrive, grow, and become an even better resource for us and for others in our city.
2) City Parks:
Once a week, our kids join other kids to congregate at a city park for homeschooling PE. We demand a park with plenty of open fields, green (or near green) grass, basketball courts, so our kids can grow and develop physical skills and good health.
Not to mention all of the times we enjoy Tempe Town Lake, Kiwanis Park, Daley Park, and other parks throughout and around Tempe.
Our son's birthday party will be held at a local park. Our last trip to Portland, OR to visit my sister, we spend a lot of times visiting parks.
I love city parks, I want them well maintained, and as a homeschooling family and just as a family with kids in a place with nice weather (well in February), we want to be outside as much as possible. We demand parks.
Those are the two big things, but of course I can talk about a well functioning police and fire department - we want, need and demand basic security. A well functioning and affordable health care system, well functioning sewage, access to affordable and clean water, access to affordable and clean energy.
And of course, access to a well functioning school, affordable school system. We may or may not homeschool for our kids through high school, but either way, I could see us taking advantage of our local schools. Enrolling part time in courses we can't teach ourself, taking advantage of our affordable junior college network of schools. And our lives our much better because my community is well educated. I know everyone can't home school and I demand a high quality and improving school system - public and private.
None of this is possible without a well functioning government. Lets demand our politicians to provide it and make sure they have enough resources to get these necessary jobs done with a high quality.
A well functioning government is only possible if we have a well functioning and educating and engaged electorate.
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