But here’s the catch. We can’t achieve and hold onto a masterful self on our own. Both cohorts of people that my colleagues and I studied took pride in their mastery, and took care to cultivate relationships that helped them endure and enjoy their independent and mobile working lives. They might have been nomads, but they needed a tribe.
Most of them swore by the value of networking, but they saw it as a necessary evil. They were constantly aware that they needed to keep doing it, and that every new conversation might help advance their work or set it back, turn into a source of revenues, support, or disappointment. This uncertainty kept them on edge.
In contrast to their expansive networks, the people we studied often described having a tight community, often a handful of people, who took the edge off their working lives. With those people, they were neither on show nor for sale.
Instead of demanding conformity in exchange for safety, such communities keep our working lives exciting and us stable, ultimately helping us master our working lives. Without them, those same lives might make us bored or too anxious.
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Category Archives: Management
Gems from Jack Ma.
Key takeaways.
- Technology revolution causes social problems, may be even world wars.
- Third world war should be against disease, environmental pollution etc.
- When you are 20-30 years old, find a good boss and a good company and learn all you can. 30-40 years old, if you want to do something just do it. You can afford to lose, fail. When you are 40-50 years old, my suggestion is you should do things you are good at. It could be dangerous to go after new stuff just because you find it interesting. When you are 50-60 years train and mentor young people. 60+? spend time with your grandchildren.
- When you want to win after 10 years later it is always possible.
- 49% of our employees are women. Close to 37% in senior management are women.
- If you want to be successful you should have high EQ, and if you don’t want to lose easily, high IQ. If you want to be respected, you should have high LQ (Love Quotient). Women balance these three very well.
- Women care more. On our site, women buy for their family, while men mostly buy for themselves.
- Sustainable success only happens with women in workforce.
- Order of priority for Alibaba>>1.Customer 2. Employee 3. Shareholder. Screw the wall street!
- If trade stops, war starts.
- My grandfather worked for 16 hours and said he was very busy; I worked for 8 hours a day and say I am very busy; Our children might work for 3 hours a day + 4 days a week, and say they are very busy.
- Globalization should be inclusive.
- First kings controlled globalization, later big companies, next wave will be that of 6 million small business. In the next 30 years to come>>Global buy, global sell, global pay, global delivery, global travel…all through your mobile, if mobile exists.
- When I have 1 million or two it is my money. Anything more, it is not my money it is a sense of responsibility towards society.
- Philanthropy is not about helping others, it’s helping yourselves.
- Philanthropy is not just giving money, it’s about action, it’s about involvement.
- By charity you cannot change the world, with a philanthropic heart you can.
- Philanthropy should be in the business model.
- Every problem as a kid benefited me.
- I was considered a very good teacher and I thought here I am teaching from other’s books. So let me go to real world and find new stuff to teach, and that’s how Alibaba began for me.
- If you want to be successful, learn from other people mistakes, not from success stories.
- You learn from mistakes not to avoid them, but how to face them.
- My book would be not on what we achieved, but the tough days we overcame. My 1001 mistakes at Alibaba.
- As a company I believe in making profit through our technology, not our size. Our investments are in these direction.
- AI should support human beings.
- Being Smart and Wise. Smart people know what they want, wise people know what they don’t want.
- Leaders>>Instinct. Training. Positive nature. Look things differently.
- As a CEO you have to see the happiness when everyone else is unhappy and vice versa.
- Leadership is by responsibility.
- I have 18 co founders and most of them are my students.
- Find people smarter than you are and make sure they work it together.
- The best product of the company is your employee.
- Good teacher wants their students to succeed, I brought that quality into my leadership of Alibaba.
- A teacher should learn and share all the time.
- Everything we teach should be different from machines>>values, caring for others, music, arts etc.
- Facebook, Google, Amazon. Competition?
- Single shopping day, November 11. 25BN in sales. 70-80 MN rush in the first minute. 270k transactions per day.
- Look inside. Chinese philosophy.
- Find people who are self motivators.
- Motivation is about trust, respect, and appreciation
Related links:
1) Deewar Scene 1
2) Deewar Scene 2
Embracing Agile
Spotify, the music-streaming company, exemplifies an experienced adapter. Founded in 2006, the company was agile from birth, and its entire business model, from product development to marketing and general management, is geared to deliver better customer experiences through agile innovation. But senior leaders no longer dictate specific practices; on the contrary, they encourage experimentation and flexibility as long as changes are consistent with agile principles and can be shown to improve outcomes. As a result, practices vary across the company’s 70 “squads” (Spotify’s name for agile innovation teams) and its “chapters” (the company term for functional competencies such as user interface development and quality testing). Although nearly every squad consists of a small cross-functional team and uses some form of visual progress tracking, ranked priorities, adaptive planning, and brainstorming sessions on how to improve the work process, many teams omit the “burndown” charts (which show work performed and work remaining) that are a common feature of agile teams. Nor do they always measure velocity, keep progress reports, or employ the same techniques for estimating the time required for a given task. These squads have tested their modifications and found that they improve results.
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