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Background:

This is part of the Quought for the Day - 2008 Series.

Quought = Question that provokes thought!

The question I asked thought leaders and my very smart friends is:

What is ONE question that you wish someone had asked you when you were young? And, Why?

I will be posting answers (which will be Quoughts) one by one.This one is from Mike Kanazawa

Michael Kanazawa, chief executive of Dissero Partners, serves as a business advisor to executives on the topics of corporate transformation, strategy, business execution and leadership.

He is also co-author of BIG Ideas to BIG Results (FT Press / Pearson Hall – 2008)

He has worked with organizations including Silicon Valley start-ups, private equity investors and global corporations, such as AT&T, Anadigics, Intel, PG&E, Schlumberger, Symantec, and Verizon
.

Mike’s Quought

Why wait?

Mike’s reason for choosing that Quought

We spend so much time building ourselves up with education and titles to bring our ideas into the world, when all along much of our power to influence the world was already there. This holds true at all stages of life.

More from Mike:

1. http://www.gobignetwork.com/wil/

2. http://blog.guykawasaki.com/

3. www.bigideastobigresults.com

Background:

This is part of the Quought for the Day - 2008 Series.

Quought = Question that provokes thought!

The question I asked thought leaders and my very smart friends is:

What is ONE question that you wish someone had asked you when you were young? And, Why?

I will be posting answers (which will be Quoughts) one by one.This one is from Liz Strauss

Liz Strauss has worked over 20 years in print, software, and online publishing, and strategized with publishers in Europe, Australia, the UK, and Ireland. Her blog, Liz Strauss at Successful-Blog has been called both a destination and an event. She has worked with entrepreneurs, small businesses, companies in crisis, and corporate giants to uncover the high-touch connections that make business relationships long-lasting and unforgettably positive. Liz led the vision behind last year’s SOBCon07 — THE Relationship Bloggers’ Conference that gained the attention of BusinessWeek, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Innovation Initiative of the Kellogg School of Business.

Liz’ Quought

“When you look back on your life on that very last day, what sentence do you hope people will use to describe it?”

Liz’ reason for choosing that Quought

I wish someone would have asked me that question, so that I would have learned to ask it of myself sooner. It’s a question that puts us fully in charge of our own path. In that small group of words, what my parents did, what the kids in school said, what my teachers might have written or my colleagues might have conjured about who I am or who I was falls into context. I am left with living up to my own truth, to what only I might know.

The question is filled with potential, responsibilitiy and choice. It bringsd home the fact that, though we cannot control what happens to us, we always have a choice in how we respond.

More about Liz:

1. Change the World: One World-Sized Idea

Background:

This is part of the Quought for the Day - 2008 Series.

Quought = Question that provokes thought!

The question I asked thought leaders and my very smart friends is:

What is ONE question that you wish someone had asked you when you were young? And, Why?

I will be posting answers (which will be Quoughts) one by one.This one is from Dave Taylor

Dave Taylor has been involved with the Internet since 1980, has written twenty business and technical books, launched four startups, and is widely considered a leader in the social marketing and blogging universe.

He has a Masters in Education and an MBA and current acts as a strategic marketing consultant to companies large and small.

Dave’s Quought

Are you keeping the big picture in mind?

Dave’s reason for choosing that Quought

As you travel through life, the day-to-day vicissitudes have a way of taking your attention off the long term goal, your “mission”, if you will. We all have to deal with our daily lives, but what I constantly wrestle with is the bigger picture, the ability to see beyond the trivial and mundane and understand how what I’m doing will impact myself, my family, my community and the world at large.  Being able to remain conscious of these larger issues is a wonderful way to stay aware and maximize your joy and sense of accomplishment.

More about Dave:

1. http://www.intuitive.com/blog/ <– The Business Blog @ Intuitive.com
2. http://www.askdavetaylor.com/ <– Tech Support at Ask Dave Taylor
3. http://www.APparenting.com/ <– The Attachment Parenting Blog
4. http://twitter.com/FilmBuzz <– (sneak peek) FilmBuzz: Movie News for a
Mobile World

Background:

This is part of the Quought for the Day - 2008 Series.

Quought = Question that provokes thought!

The question I asked thought leaders and my very smart friends is:

What is ONE question that you wish someone had asked you when you were young? And, Why?

I will be posting answers (which will be Quoughts) one by one.This one is from Stephen Shapiro

During his 15-year tenure with the international consulting firm Accenture, Stephen developed and delivered innovation training to over 20,000 consultants. In 2001 he left the management consulting world to write his first book, “24/7 Innovation: A Blueprint for Surviving and Thriving in an Age of Change” (McGraw-Hill). Drawing on his corporate expertise, Shapiro expanded on his innovative concepts to counsel on how individuals can realize their full potential with less effort and more personal satisfaction. Thus, his second book, “Goal Free Living: How to Have the Life You Want NOW!” (Wiley) was conceived, quickly becoming the #1 Amazon.com “Business Motivation” best seller and the subject of a cover story in “O, The Oprah Magazine.” His latest concept is the fun and educational “Innovation Personality Poker.”  He has been featured in Newsweek, Investor’s Business Daily, The New York Times, and The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch.

Steve’s Quought

What matters most?

Steve’s reason for choosing that Quought

There are two reasons for choosing this Quought:

1)    Einstein once said, “If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it.”  From my personal experience, most people (and organizations) spend 60 minutes finding solutions to problems that don’t matter.  So relevance is one aspect of “what matters most.”

2)    Recently, I have been asking myself, “Is what I do significant?”  I know my work changes organizations.  And I like to believe that it also changes lives.  But is the change significant?  Lately I have been restless. I think the reason is that I want greater significance in my life.

More about Steve:

1)    Blog/Website: www.24-7innovation.com

2)    Latest Book: The Little Book of BIG Innovation Ideas

3)    Product: Innovation Personality Poker

When you are at the beginning of your career, you really work hard and for all that effort the “real value” that you add may not be that significant.

This may not be a problem as people know that you are just “starting.”

As you learn and become better at your job, it takes less effort to “do” your job and you can start creating more value with less effort. In other words you start becoming “efficient.”

Yes, when you start getting comfortable with your job you may get bored and get another job. That’s a possibility. However, in the new job, you are “new” so again it takes a bit of effort to create value demanded by the job.

In an ideal scenario, as your career progresses, the effort required to deliver value should keep dropping or the value delivered for the same effort should keep going up.

However, there is a small catch.

With your experience, the expectation of the value that you will create is also going up. Unless you build enough “power”, you will very soon notice that you have to work “extra hard” to match the expectations of the job. Nobody will be happy if you created the value that is created by a novice when you have are a veteran. It won’t even be called an accomplishment.

The more knowledge you acquire, the more you realize that you need to acquire more knowledge. However, without leverage (higher output for lower input) there is no time for you to acquire the knowledge. So for the benefit of your organization and for your own benefit, you need to watch the effort-value curve.

So the big questions are:

1. Where are you today on this curve?

2. What can you do to move to a better place on this curve?

==========

Note 1: For links to the other 192 entries in the “Distinguish yourself” series, please visit my Squidoo lens on the same topic:
Squidoo Lens: Distinguish yourself

Note 2: The first 25 entries in the series have been packaged in a ChangeThis manifesto that was published on September 07, 2005. You can download that manifesto here:
ChangeThis Manifesto: 25 Ways to Distinguish Yourself (PDF, Free)

Note 3: My latest manifesto on ChangeThis was published on August 6, 2008. This is a photographic manifesto featuring 15 of my mini sagas (stories in exactly 50 words). Here is the link:

ChangeThis Manifesto: Mini Sagas - Bite Sized Lessons for Life and Business (PDF, Free)

Background:

This is part of the Quought for the Day - 2008 Series.

Quought = Question that provokes thought!

The question I asked thought leaders and my very smart friends is:

What is ONE question that you wish someone had asked you when you were young? And, Why?

I will be posting answers (which will be Quoughts) one by one.This one is from Jack Hayhow

Jack Hayhow is founder and “Chief Executive Servant” of Opus, a company dedicated to creating “training people like to take”. Since 1990, Opus has broken the mold of typical corporate training with productions that are as entertaining as they are effective. Today, Opus training programs are used in tens of thousands of businesses and approximately 25% of all public schools.

Jack has been described as a “chronic learner” and is compelled by his passion for helping people and companies improve performance where it matters most. He is the author of dozens of training programs including: The Foundation of Management, Reward and Recognition, Time Management for Managers, Coaching for Performance, and To Be a Leader.

Jack’s Quought

Do you know what makes you happy?

Rock’s reason for choosing that Quought

The question is a challenge to growth - it is profound and deceptively difficult.  It requires an understanding of what happiness is (in my experience a combination of contentment, fulfillment, satisfaction and pleasure) AND a self-knowledge that requires real introspection and effort.  Finally, it’s my number one question because happiness is not frivolous or self-indulgent as is often believed - it is one of the most important aspects of life.

More about Jack:

1. Jack Hayhow’s website

2. Jack’s Blog

3. Jack’s Company - Opus Training

It is interesting to note that long ago Netflix ignited the change in the way DVD rental market worked.

Netflix model was simple and the core still continues to be the same. For a flat monthly fee, you can rent as many DVDs as possible and you can keep them for as long as you want. Depending on your plan, you could have as little as 1 DVD or as much as 5 DVDs with you.

It seemed like there is no stopping for Netflix.

Today, I think the playing field is changing again. While Netflix continues to enjoy the advantage of their innovation, it is now being attacked by a number of players. Here is the list of companies that are not allies but each one of them are trying to take a piece of the market.

1. Blockbuster: Has an offline and online strategy. You can rent online and return offline. Netflix cannot do it unless it has an offline presence. Plus, Blockbuster dropped the rental fee for old movies to $1 for five days

2. RedBox: Redbox has installed kiosks in several supermarkets and MacDonalds stores. The focus of Redbox is to rent only the latest 100 movies or so for $1/day.

3. Hulu and Other Online Venues: Watch movies totally free

Add to this the Cable Networks and Digital Video Recorders (like TiVo) and there is a battle zone in the making.

I am sure there are more innovations coming up. This is a case where whoever innovates first and fast will ultimately win. Will wait and watch

I wrote earlier about the value of patience (inspired by my hero Seth Godin)

I think the winning combination is to be impatient for acquiring new knowledge but to be patient when waiting for results. Why? Learning is in your control and as much as we want it, results are typically not under your control.

I talked about the concert by Indian Ocean Group. I enjoy and appreciate music but would not have attended the concert if not for Isha Foundation. However, my view on that changed after I was mesmerized by the talent of the group.

After I was back, I was curious to find out the background of the band. As you would expect, their overnight success was in the making for the last two decades. The checkered past, the roller coaster rides of life, the trials and tribulations - you can easily make a movie out of the story of the band. You can read their story here:

Indian Ocean Music: The Story So Far…

What comes out clearly is the commitment to the group and the patience.

Hats off and wish them all the success!

A Perspective on LIfe and Death

Last night I was at a concert by Indian Ocean band at Palo Alto. I went there to support Isha Foundation but was mesmerized by the experience created by the band. Simply fascinating!

Now a perspective on Life and Death

About Life

One of the songs played by the band was from Sant Kabir. I couldn’t follow all the lyrics but I was touched by the meaning of Sant Kabir’s poem. It was about life.

Sant Kabir comes from a family of weavers. In his poem he says that this life is like a cloth by a master weaver. Although the master does not discriminate and gives the same cloth to everyone, most people don’t respect the cloth. Some people get it dirty and some people tear it and some people just mis-use it. I (Kabir) want to live in a way that I respect the gift.

About Death

A few weeks ago I attended a talk by renowned mystic Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev at the India Community Center in Milpitas. During the Q&A session, one of the participants asked Sadhguru to talk about Death.

Sadhguru used an analogy of a loan. Imagine you take a loan from someone with a promise that you will return it after a certain period. Now, if you did something meaningful with that loan or you invested the loan to make a lot more money out of that loan, when the time comes to return the original amount, you may happily do it.

However, if you mis-used that loan or lost all that money, when the time comes to return the original amount, it hurts you.

This life is like a loan and if you lived it well, you have made the most out of it. When the time comes to go (return that loan) you may take it gracefully.

Have a great week ahead!

I mean really really get in their shoes. Well, not literally!

Get In Their Shoes

At a basic level, getting into someone’s shoes is to think “how the other person may be thinking.” If you really want to get into their shoes, you need to find out the “worldview” of the person. What is their outlook and approach to life? Then we come down to the specifics of how they might be thinking about this particular topic in discussion.

I was exposed to this early in my life (sort of accidentally) although I didn’t know the terminology at that time. I was in my tenth year of school and it was a statewide exam and I was competing with 400,000 other students. It was a lot of hard work and I was happy that I was ranked 20th for the state.

While it was delightful, I always felt that there must be a better way to this. You study the whole year and you get graded based on a paper that write in less than three hours. There must be a better way and I thought I need to figure this out before the next public exam two years later.

So it started when I asked one of my teachers what was his approach when he was on of the examiners grading the papers. It was wonderful to get his perspective on “what he thought was important.” I followed up with the “why” question and also got his perspective on “why he thought something was important.”

Obviously there was a gap between “what I thought was important” and “what the examiner thought was important”. This baffled me at first and then my quest continued. I would keep asking every teacher about his or her perspective on what “really matters” when they look at a paper to grade. Remember that they have six minutes to grade a paper and usually students write about 40-50 pages in the three hours. So there is no way anyone can read everything. If “what matters” to the examiner is not there in the paper, chances that the paper gets a better grade are slim.

Now, the ultimate test is to see whether what I did worked. The results show that. I secured 2nd Rank for the state (out of 160,000 students). It was definitely not because I was smarter than 158,998 of them. I think I spent a bit more time trying to “get in the shoes” of the examiner. What really convinced me was that I didn’t work as hard as I had to for my earlier public exam.

I admit that I don’t try my best to apply this lesson in everything I do. But whenever I have put in an effort in this direction, the payback has been pretty good.

Have a wonderful weekend.

==========

Note 1: For links to the other 191 entries in the “Distinguish yourself” series, please visit my Squidoo lens on the same topic:
Squidoo Lens: Distinguish yourself

Note 2: The first 25 entries in the series have been packaged in a ChangeThis manifesto that was published on September 07, 2005. You can download that manifesto here:
ChangeThis Manifesto: 25 Ways to Distinguish Yourself (PDF, Free)

Note 3: My latest manifesto on ChangeThis was published on August 6, 2008. This is a photographic manifesto featuring 15 of my mini sagas (stories in exactly 50 words). Here is the link:

ChangeThis Manifesto: Mini Sagas - Bite Sized Lessons for Life and Business (PDF, Free)