Saturday, November 19, 2011

Thank you Todd Duncan a great post about good decisions

Friday, November 12, 2010

Making Good Decisions


Too often people don’t make the time and they are not in the habit of asking powerful questions that evoke emotion to and create hope in a better way of working and living.

You cannot go through life on auto-pilot – there needs to be a high commitment to managing decisions that you make and before that can happen, you probably need to make some new decisions. Most decisions that need to be made will begin with and spring forth from an internal, intuitive perspective but without asking new questions, often this internal emotion lies dormant.

Questions that are both heart and head provoking can begin to move an individual to a position of having to make new decisions. I teach a process called Life Planning and here are some examples of questions I use each year as I review my annual Life Plan :

What if…? (I could go home on time. I could save more. I could spend more time with my family. I could get that promotion. I could become self-employeed.) Whatever are my dreams or desires and what if I could achieve these?

How would the person I see myself being in the future be handling the issues of today?

What would need to happen to take my life to a whole new level? My business?

What decision could be made in the next 5-minutes and what action could be taken in the next 60-minutes to create fulfillment and happiness in the (state area) of my life?

What am I not willing to settle for any longer in my life? My business? My finances? My health? My relationships?

Which areas of my life are most stressful for me these days? Why? What hope lies ahead in helping reduce the stress in that environment?

What could I say “no” to today?

New questions serve one key purpose – to make our intuition come alive. They also hit hard in the area of common sense. We all have a “gut” instinct to what decisions we should be making. We all know in our “heart of hearts” the key areas of our business and our life that need new or different choices.

Intuition is always first when it comes to decision-making – the reasoning always comes second. What new questions do is cause those emotions to come to the surface on the important issues that need to be dealt with. Balance is a result of acting on those emotions and reasoning is the process through which the best decision is made. All of our key decisions require facts. And if the facts were understood, we would see how many of our decisions could be altered or fixed. But it all starts with the gut! And because of this, balance is always in flux, a constant process of decision making and managing the decisions made; a process of intuition and integrity. So when we arrive a point where our gut is telling us something, we MUST move on it, balance the emotion of this with facts, the making of new decisions, and then the management those decisions consistently.

In my own personal journey of making and managing decisions, I have learned two very important truths:

1. Intuition is most effective when it is educated
2. Analysis is most effective when it is isn’t over done

Spend the rest of this year asking new questions and coming up with new solutions that will change your life forever.

Thank you Daniel Pink this is a good book tip read more oput comes the kindle

The power of an hourly beep


Peter Bregman is a strategy consultant who advises some of North America’s top CEO’s and writes widely-read blog for the Harvard Business Review.
Last month he published his second book, 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done, which is packed with smart, practical advice for boosting individual performance. (Buy it at Amazon, BN.comIndie Bound, or 8CR.)
Because I thought PinkBlog readers would dig what he had to say, I asked him to share a tip from the book — something quick and actionable that could help us on a Monday morning.

Here’s Peter:
I start every day with a plan. Each morning I look at my to do list and ask myself  ’what will make this a successful day? Then I transfer the right tasks from my list onto my calendar and get to work.
But it’s rare that I stick to every minute of my plan. Emails come in, phones ring, texts beep, and my own penchant for distraction sneaks up on me. It doesn’t take me long to wander off from my schedule. And sometimes, like in a recent angry exchange with my phone company representative, I’ll wander off from myself too.

It used to be that I’d end each day disappointed, wondering why it wasn’t the success I had envisioned.
But that changed when I started setting hourly beeps.
Each hour when my watch, computer, or phone beeps, I stop whatever I’m doing, take a deep breath, and ask myself two questions:
1. Am I doing what I most need to be doing right now?
2. Am I being who I most want to be right now?
At first it seemed counterintuitive to interrupt myself each hour. Aren’t interruptions precisely what we’re trying to avoid? But these one-minute-an-hour interruptions are productive interruptions. They bring us back to doing what, and being who, will make this a successful day.
This isn’t all about staying on plan. Sometimes the beep will ring and I’ll realize that, while I’ve strayed from my calendar, whatever it is I’m working on is what I most need to be doing. In those situations I simply shift items on my calendar so my most important priorities still get done and I make intentional choices about what I will leave undone.
For me, a once-an-hour reminder, one deep breath, and a couple of questions, has made the difference between ending my day frustrated and ending it fulfilled.
 

Coach Vicki Garcia talks about taking care of yourself so do you?

Take Care Of Yourself

by Vicki Garcia on November 18, 2011

Self care 
We can’t control every situation every day, but we can control most of how we react to unpleasant situations, and take care of our inner core. I recently heard a young lady express concern about her mother-in-law’s imminent visit. This woman apparently is über-controlling and opinionated. The young lady in question worried that she wouldn’t be able to handle the discomfort of having this woman in her home, especially during the holidays. She was concerned that her own needs and sense of self, in short, her ability to take care of herself, would be in jeopardy.

“I’ve gotten better,” she said. “I used to just kind of roll over and agree with everything, even her criticisms. Now, I’m able to stand up for myself better. But it’s still uncomfortable.”

1. Stand Up for Yourself. Sure, standing up for you isn’t always comfortable. It can be frightening to disagree. Standing up for yourself simply means that you don’t buy into stuff that helps you belittle yourself.
Simply agreeing constantly may avoid confrontation, but it does nothing for self-care. You feel resentful and prolong a vicious spiral. It doesn’t mean you are nasty to the other person, but a firm comment that bolsters your personal view or preference can go a long way to stimulate ongoing confidence and finding your voice. [click to continue

Is your college on this list? Affordable homes in college towns


Iconic college towns have affordable average prices of homes, according to the U.S. Home Listing Report released by Coldwell Banker. The report ranks the average price of homes with three bedrooms and two bathrooms across the country, and the affordability in college  towns was notable.
The top ten college towns on the Bowl Championship Series rankings released have an average listing price of $302,052, and that is including Palo Alto, CA by Stanford University, an expensive area.

The current BCS Rankings:
1.  LSU/Baton Rouge, LA ($194,518)
2.  Oklahoma State/Stillwater, OK ($141,728)
3.  Alabama/Tuscaloosa, AL (not included)
4.  Oregon/Eugene, OR ($244,964)
5.  Oklahoma/Norman, OK ($150,313)
6.  Arkansas/Fayetteville, AR ($165,643)
7.  Clemson/Clemson, SC ($164,836)
8.  Virginia Tech/Blacksburg, VA ($258,332)
9.  Stanford/Palo Alto, CA ($1,232,070)
10. Boise State, Boise, ID ($166,064)
With the exception of Palo Alto, the average listing price for a 3 BR/2 Bath home in these charming university towns are highly affordable.
Want to look up your alumni town? Click here to find out the prices in college areas.

Can good schools prevent foreclosures?


Good school scores may have other benefits than education, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article. Areas with highly ranked schools were shown to have less homes foreclosed upon, a new analysis shows.
The study, done by Location Inc., reviewed six months of 2011 sales data. Foreclosure sales decreased as the school ranking went up in five metro areas, including  Stockton, California and Seattle.

Areas with well-ranked schools also saw less price erosion.  “Higher-rated school districts also maintained higher home-sale prices, and higher home prices per square foot.”
Have you seen similar trends in your area?

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Being vulnerable as a corporation do you think it is valuable? Patrick Lencioni thinks so

Outside Shot February 11, 2010, 5:00PM EST text size: TT

The Power of Saying 'We Blew It'

New ads for Domino's Pizza display unusual corporate vulnerability—and the surprising effectiveness of talking straight

BW Magazine

This Issue

magazine cover
 
    Click here to find out more!
    I recently saw a television commercial that made quite an impression on me, and I have a hunch that it might go down as one of the most effective advertisements of all time, assuming the company behind it is sincere. I'm talking about Domino's Pizza (DPZ) and the recent ad in which the company concedes the shortcomings of its product and explains what has been done to improve it.

    The spot opens with customers describing Domino's pizza using words like ketchup and cardboard. Then, Domino's President J. Patrick Doyle matter-of-factly explains the importance of acknowledging how customers see his pizza. Finally he outlines the company's response: 40% more herbs in its sauce, better cheese, a special glaze on the crust. I have a hard time remembering the names of the U.S. Supreme Court justices and even what I had for breakfast. But I can remember all those details from the Domino's ad, and that says a lot about its impact.

    I'm willing to bet that Domino's will sell a lot more pizzas in the months ahead. And the reason I believe that has less to do with the new ingredients than with Domino's willingness to cross a line that most companies—and for that matter, most leaders—won't even approach. Domino's chose to make itself vulnerable.
    Vulnerability isn't a word that shows up on lists of ingredients for business success. Here's why it should: Without the willingness and ability to be vulnerable, we simply can't build deep and lasting relationships in business and, come to think of it, life.

    Vulnerability is often seen as a weakness; it's actually a sign of strength. People who are genuinely open and transparent prove that they have the confidence and self-esteem to allow others to see them as they really are, warts and all. There's something undeniably magnetic about people who can do that.

    When it comes to the workplace, vulnerability is critical in the building of teams. When teammates feel free to admit their mistakes, ask for help, and acknowledge their own weaknesses, they reduce divisive politics and build a bond of trust more valuable than almost any strategic advantage. Another great venue for vulnerability is the one I work in, the world of service. When consultants and advisers are willing to ask dumb questions, tell the unvarnished truth, or broach the painful, elephant-in-the-room topic, they engender loyalty and trust with clients.

    Getting back to Domino's, I think the most fascinating application of vulnerability is in marketing and advertising. It's so rare that it packs a strong punch, as long as companies mean it. Go ahead and try to think of other corporate examples of humility and naked honesty. There aren't many to choose from.
    One is General Motors (GM), which emerged from bankruptcy last summer offering this slogan: "General Motors needs to start over in order to get stronger." More recently, the Chicago Bears capped off a miserable season by buying a full-page ad admitting to a subpar attempt at professional football and thanking fans for their support in spite of the team's mediocrity.

    But the Domino's ad struck me as particularly potent, perhaps because it doesn't spring from a crisis at the company (its market share has been holding steady). You wouldn't be wrong to call it countercultural, though I hope that will change. As consumers, we are so used to companies exaggerating and embellishing that we've learned to be skeptical, even cynical.

    That's why Domino's made me do a double take. And I know there are a lot of people out there like me who will give a second chance—or even a first one—to a company that shows that kind of courage.
    Patrick Lencioni is the author of a new book, Getting Naked, and the best seller The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. He is founder and president of management consultancy The Table Group.

    Jim Collins piece I re read annually 10 best ceos of all time

    to articles

    The 10 Greatest CEOs of All Time

    Fortune
    by Jim Collins
    July 21, 2003
    It's a familiar scene. An industry under fire. A congressional committee demanding answers. A corporate CEO called to testify. Yet the familiarities, in this case, end there. When Boeing CEO Bill Allen appeared before a House subcommittee—addressing charges that military aircraft makers had improperly inflated profits at the government's expense—there was no lawyer whispering in his ear. There were no notes before him. There was no hint that he wasn't personally responsible for Boeing's actions. And when he had finished his quietly forthright explanation, there was no question that Boeing—far from gouging the government to pad executives' bonuses—had in fact been laying the foundations for future greatness, plowing profits into research and development. The committee's response now seems unimaginable: It erupted into a standing ovation.
    That image, from 1956, kept popping to mind whenever someone asked me about the business meltdowns of 2001 and 2002. What, went the questions, should be done about governance? What should Congress do? What should boards do? What, what, what?
    I usually declined to comment, feeling I had little to say that had not already been said. But as the Allen image lingered, I came to realize that I did have something to say. It's just that my answer wasn't a what answer. It was who.
    When the debates over governance mechanisms and procedural reform are all said and done, one question will still tower above all others: Who should we choose to run our corporations? In the 1990s, it's now clear, boards increasingly gave the car keys to the wrong people. Like doctors bleeding patients to death in the 1600s, the boards weren't trying to do harm. They were simply using the wrong models.
    Yet where, these days, are the right models? For good reason, we've become cynical about CEOs. There seem to be no heroes left standing, no one to emulate or believe in. There's an increasingly gloomy sense that we should simply throw up our hands and give up on corporate leadership.
    I disagree. Having spent years studying what separates great companies from mediocre ones, I can say unequivocally: There are role models to learn from—albeit not the ones you might expect. It's what inspired me to go back to my research and assemble my list of the ten greatest CEOs of all time.
    Who made the cut? Some names on the list will be familiar, while several you might expect to see—names like Gates, Grove, Welch, and Gerstner—weren't eligible for a simple reason: Great CEOs build organizations that thrive long after they're gone, making it impossible to judge their performance until they've been out of office at least ten years. That criterion—legacy—was one of four I used to winnow a universe of more than 400 CEOs. I also scored the top candidates on impact (presiding over innovations—whether technical or managerial—that changed things outside the company's walls), resilience (leading the company through a major transformation or crisis), and financial performance, measured by cumulative stock returns relative to the market (or other financial metrics in the case of pre-IPO companies) during the CEO's tenure.
    So what, exactly, made these ten so great? Strikingly, many of them never thought of themselves as CEO material. The second-greatest CEO on the list initially refused the job on the grounds that he wasn't qualified. No. 9 described herself as "scared stiff." No. 5 was once told flatly, "You will never be a leader." Striking, too, is the sheer scale of their time frames. Surrounded by pressures to manage for the quarter, they managed for the quarter-century—or even three-quarters of a century. The No. 4 CEO shaped a company that would average 15% earnings growth for an astonishing 75 years.
    Yet if one thing defines these ten giants, it was their deep sense of connectedness to the organizations they ran. Unlike CEOs who see themselves principally as members of an executive elite—an increasingly mobile club whose members measure their pay and privileges against other CEOs'—this group's ethos was a true corporate ethos, in the original, nonbusiness sense of the word corporate: "united or combined into one." They understood the central paradox of exceptional corporate leadership: On the one hand, a company depends more on the CEO than on any other individual. Only the CEO can make the really big decisions. Yet a company equally depends on the CEO's understanding that his or her role still represents less than 10% of the total puzzle. Much depended on them, but it was never about them.
    Inclusion on this list would surprise, if not horrify, more than a few of them. But if the question is how to identify more of the right leaders—and how a new generation can learn to become the right leaders—there is no better answer than these ten. In an age of diminished standards, those they set loom larger than ever.
    No. 10: David Packard
    Rejected the CEO club
    His eulogy pamphlet identified the Hewlett-Packard co-founder as 'Rancher, etc.'
    In 1949, 37-year-old David Packard attended a meeting of business leaders. Fidgeting while they discussed how to squeeze more profit from their companies, he was finally unable to contain himself. "A company has a greater responsibility than making money for its stockholders," he asserted. Eyes turned toward his six-foot-five-inch frame. "We have a responsibility to our employees to recognize their dignity as human beings," Packard said, extolling his belief that those who help create wealth have a moral right to share in that wealth.
    To his elders, Packard's ideas seemed borderline socialist if not outright dangerous. "I was surprised and shocked that not a single person at that meeting agreed with me," Packard reflected later. "It was quite evident they firmly believed I was not one of them, and obviously not qualified to run an important enterprise."
    That was just fine with David Packard. He never wanted to be part of the CEO club; he belonged to the Hewlett-Packard club. In an era when bosses dwelt in mahogany-paneled sanctums, Packard took an open-door workspace among his engineers. He practiced what would become famous as "management by walking around." Most radical of all for the time, he shared equity and profits with all employees.
    What set Packard apart, in other words, is that he wasn't a person set apart. His idea of a good time, according to a co-worker, was to get together with friends and string barbed wire. Despite being one of Silicon Valley's first self-made billionaires, he continued to live in the small, understated house he and his wife had built in 1957. And though he donated (with Hewlett) to Stanford University an amount comparable to the present value of Jane and Leland Stanford's original endowment, he never allowed his name to appear on any of its buildings while he was alive. By defining himself as an HP man first and a CEO second, Packard did more than demonstrate humility. He built a uniquely dedicated culture that became a fierce competitive weapon, delivering 40 consecutive years of profitable growth.
    While Packard's values have since waned within HP, he did more to create the DNA of Silicon Valley than perhaps any other CEO. Like the heritage left by the architects of democracy in ancient Athens, the spirit of his and Hewlett's system lives on, far beyond the walls of the institution they built.
    No. 9: Katharine Graham
    Wasn't afraid of fear
    The Nixon White House threatened her, but the chief of the Washington Post Co. didn't flinch.
    On Aug. 3, 1963, Katharine Graham heard the crack of a gunshot within her house. She ran downstairs to discover that her husband, Philip, lay dead by his own hand.
    On top of the shock and grief, Graham faced another burden. Her father had put the Washington Post Co. in her husband's hands with the idea that he'd pass it along to their children. What would become of it now? Graham laid the issue to rest immediately: The company would not be sold, she informed the board. She would assume stewardship.
    "Steward," however, would not describe Graham's approach to her new role. At the time, the Washington Post was an undistinguished regional paper; Graham aimed for people to speak of it in the same breath as the New York Times. A crucial decision point came in 1971 when she confronted what to do with the Pentagon Papers—a leaked Defense Department study that revealed government deceptions about the Vietnam war. The Times had already incurred a court injunction for publishing excerpts. If the Post published, it risked prosecution under the Espionage Act. That, in turn, could jeopardize the company's pending public stock offering and lucrative television licenses. "I would be risking the whole company on this decision," Graham wrote in her memoir, Personal History. Yet to opt for assured survival at the cost of the company's soul, she concluded, would be worse than not surviving. The Post published.
    Eventually vindicated by the Supreme Court, it was a remarkable decision for an accidental CEO who suffered from lifelong feelings of insecurity; phrases like "I was terrified" and "I was quaking in my boots" pepper her memoir. That anxiety would soon reach a crescendo as Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein doggedly investigated what became known as Watergate. Today we take that story's outcome for granted. But at the time, the Post was largely alone in pursuing it. In choosing to publish, Graham built a great paper and, in turn, a great company—one that ranks among the 50 best-performing IPOs of the past quarter-century and earned the investment of Warren Buffett. Graham never awarded herself much credit, insisting that, with Watergate, "I never felt there was much choice." But of course, she did choose. Courage, it's said, is not the absence of fear, but the ability to act in its presence. By that definition, Katharine Graham may be the most courageous CEO on this list.
    No 8: William McKnight
    Disciplined creativity
    He gave fledgling ideas freedom to grow at 3M—but insisted they learn to stand on their own.
    The early giants of industry tend to fall into one of two camps: Individual innovators (think Walt Disney) and system builders (think John D. Rockefeller). 3M's William McKnight falls into neither. Beginning in 1929, the bookish accountant fused the two models into something entirely new: a company that turned innovation into a systematic, repeatable process. While you couldn't predict exactly what McKnight's system would create, you could predict with certainty that it would create.
    Many know the story of the 3M scientist who blasted a hole in his basement to house the machine that made his little sticky tabs—a product that had failed market tests—and how, like a drug dealer, he created a base of addicted users by distributing free samples to headquarters staff. It's one of many 3M stories that celebrate the lone spirit who persists against all odds. The oft-overlooked lesson, though, is the "all odds" part. It's precisely because 3M entrepreneurs must battle attempts to kill off their ideas that a handful of winners like Post-its emerge. Without this creative tension—freedom vs. discipline, innovation vs. control—all you have is chaos, or worse. Enron was a highly innovative culture that lacked discipline, innovating itself right out of existence.
    "The test of a first-rate intelligence," wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald, "is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." By that definition, McKnight was not just a first-rate intelligence, but a genius—a genius whose company was lucky by design.
    No. 7: David Maxwell
    Turned a turnaround into art
    Fannie Mae was losing $1 million a day when he arrived—'an opportunity to make (it) into a great company.'
    In 1981, as the stock of Chrysler hit an all-time low, America was beginning its enthrallment with the man hired to save it. Lee Iacocca would soon be a national icon—bestselling author, star of more than 80 commercials, and everyone's image of a turnaround artist.
    That same year, as the stock of Fannie Mae hit an all-time low, a different executive was hired to save the deeply troubled mortgage lender. David Maxwell would not become a national icon—nor even a recognizable name. Yet by the time both men retired in the early 1990s, Maxwell's Fannie Mae had beat the stock market at a rate more than twice that attained by Chrysler under Iacocca.
    More inspired than inspiring, more diligent than dazzling, Maxwell took a burning house and not only saved it but built it into a cathedral. Some steps, such as selling off $10 billion in unprofitable mortgages, were classic fireman stuff. But his deepest genius was to frame the rebuilding around a mission: strengthening America's social fabric by democratizing home ownership. If Fannie Mae did its job well, people traditionally excluded from owning homes—minorities, immigrants, single-parent families—could more easily claim their part of the American dream. If turnaround is an art, Maxwell was its Michelangelo.
    No. 6: James Burke
    Acted before crisis hit
    The former Johnson & Johnson boss is a legend revered—for the wrong reason.
    Ask people to single out a courageous CEO action, and many will cite James Burke's decision to pull Tylenol capsules off the shelves in response to the cyanide-poisoning crisis of 1982, taking a $100 million hit to earnings along the way. It's a wonderful story. But it misses the point.
    Burke's real defining moment occurred three years before, when he pulled 20 key executives into a room and thumped his finger on a copy of the J&J credo. Penned 36 years earlier by R.W. Johnson Jr., it laid out the "We hold these truths to be self-evident" of the Johnson & Johnson Co., among them a higher duty to "mothers and all others who use our products." Burke worried that executives had come to view the credo as an artifact—interesting, but hardly relevant to the day-to-day challenges of American capitalism.
    "I said, 'Here's the credo. If we're not going to live by it, let's tear it off the wall,' " Burke later told Joseph Badaracco and Richard Ellsworth for their book Leadership and the Quest for Integrity. "We either ought to commit to it or get rid of it." The team sat there a bit stunned, wondering if Burke was serious. He was, and the room erupted into a debate that ended with a recommitment. Burke and his colleagues would conduct similar meetings around the world, restoring the credo as a living document.
    No one could have predicted the act of terrorism perpetrated on J&J customers in 1982. But J&J's response was predictable. It didn't need to debate whether customer safety outweighed short-term financial concerns, because the debating was already done. Burke makes the list not because he led J&J through crisis; he makes it because he led in the absence of it.
    No. 5: Darwin Smith
    Asked questions and moved rocks
    The Kimberly-Clark chief was told 'You'll never be a leader' by the Army's officer-training school.
    Lois Smith could tell a big decision was afoot at Kimberly-Clark whenever she heard the rumbling of a backhoe in the middle of the night. That was Darwin again, moving rocks from one pile to another. This was how her husband mulled over big decisions—and to judge by the huge piles still standing sentinel at Gotrocks Farm in Wisconsin, Smith was a champion muller.
    When he became CEO of Kimberly-Clark in 1971, Smith faced a brutal fact: The company languished in mediocrity, the bulk of its capital tied up in giant paper mills. Yet Smith offered no vision statement, no splashy acquisition, no hoopla-laden change program. Instead he posed questions. What, he pressed his colleagues, could Kimberly-Clark be passionate about? What could it be best at in the world? What could improve its economics? For months he continued to ask questions and move rocks.
    This was not Smith being indecisive. Diagnosed with nose and throat cancer shortly after becoming CEO, he told Lois what he'd learned from his illness. "If you have a cancer in your arm, you've got to have the guts to cut off your arm." He paused. "I've made a decision," he continued. "We're going to sell the mills."
    The decision had grown out of one of Smith's dialogues in which a fellow executive noted that Kleenex, a sideline product, had become a brand synonymous with its category, like Coke or Band-Aid. In what a Kimberly-Clark director called the "gutsiest decision I've ever seen a CEO make," Smith jettisoned 100 years of corporate history, right down to the original mill in Kimberly, Wis. Analysts derided the loss of revenue. The stock took a hit. Forbes predicted disaster. But Smith's ruminations had equipped him with quiet steel.
    A CEO must be willing to act boldly, yet boldness is worthless if you're wrong. It's an obvious point, but one routinely ignored by those caught up in the fanfare of big action. Smith grasped that it is better to be right than to be impressive.
    And Smith got it right. Twenty-five years after becoming CEO, Kimberly-Clark was the world's No. 1 paper-based consumer-products company—its stock outperforming the market by a factor of four over that span—and owned its main rival, Scott Paper, outright. Smith moved rocks and, in the end, moved a rock that nobody thought could be moved.
    No. 4: George Merck
    Put profit second
    The Merck & Co. boss didn't worry about Wall Street—and grew profits 50-fold.
    Late one afternoon in 1978, Dr. William Campbell did what all great researchers do: He wondered at the data. While testing a new compound to battle parasites in animals, he was struck with the idea that it might be effective against another parasite—one that causes blindness and itching in humans so horrific that some victims have committed suicide. Campbell might have simply scribbled a note in the files and gone to lunch. After all, the potential "customers"—tribal people in remote tropical locations—would have no money to buy it. Undaunted, Campbell penned a memo to his employer, Merck & Co., urging pursuit of the idea. Today 30 million people a year receive Mectizan, the drug inspired by his observation, largely free of charge.
    The most exceptional part of the story is that it wasn't an exception. "Medicine is for people, not for the profits," George Merck II declared on the cover of Time in August 1952—a rule his company observed in dispensing streptomycin to Japanese children following World War II. Yet fuzzy-headed moralistic fervor wasn't George Merck. Austere and patrician, he simply believed that the purpose of a corporation is to do something useful, and to do it very well. "And if we have remembered that, the profits have never failed to appear," he explained. "The better we remembered, the larger they have been." It's the mirror image of CEOs whose unhealthy fixations with Wall Street have served neither people nor profits: Merck served shareholders so well precisely because he served others first.
    No. 3: Sam Walton
    Overcame his charisma
    'I have the personality of a promoter,' the Wal-Mart founder wrote, but 'the soul of an operator.'
    A Brazilian businessman once told me how he'd sent letters to the heads of ten U.S. retailers in the1980s, asking to visit to see how they ran a retail operation. Most didn't bother to reply, and those who did sent a polite "No, thank you." All except Sam Walton.
    When the Brazilian and his colleagues stepped off the plane in Bentonville, Ark., a white-haired man asked if he could help. "We're looking for Sam Walton," they said, to which the man replied, "That's me." Walton led them to his truck and introduced his dog, Roy. As they rumbled around in the front cab of Walton's pickup, the Brazilian billionaires were pummeled with questions. Eventually it dawned on them: Walton had invited them to Bentonville so that he could learn about South America. Later Walton visited his friends in Sao Paulo. Late one afternoon there was a phone call from the police. Walton had been crawling around in stores on his hands and knees measuring aisle widths and had been arrested.
    The story encapsulates some of Walton's greatest strengths, notably his hunger for learning. But it also points to his biggest liability: his singularly charismatic personality. Companies built around a cult of personality seldom last. After Sam, would Wal-Mart decline like a church that loses its inspirational pastor?
    Yet Walton himself refused to let his colorful personality distract from his central message: to make better things ever more affordable to people of lesser means. And before his death in 1992, he made two brilliant moves to ensure that idea would outlast him. First, he set a goal that he knew would be unachievable in his lifetime: to grow annual sales from less than $30 billion to $125 billion by the year 2000. Second, so that no personality would become bigger than the idea, he picked a successor who had seemingly undergone a charisma bypass. Under David Glass, Wal-Mart blew right past the $125 billion goal, clocking in at $165 billion in 2000.
    Walton knew better than anyone the dangers of charismatic leadership. He proved that, like any other handicap, it can be overcome.
    No. 2: Bill Allen
    Thought bigger
    'Don't talk too much,' Boeing's new chief admonished himself. 'Let others talk.'
    Its planes helped win the war—yet victory in 1945 looked like death for Boeing. Revenues plummeted more than 90% as orders for bombers vanished overnight. And bombers, everyone knew, were what Boeing was all about.
    Everyone, that is, but its new leader. An understated lawyer who said he wasn't qualified for the job, Bill Allen never saw Boeing as the bomber company. It was the company whose engineers built amazing flying machines. In 1952 he bet heavily on a new commercial jet, the 707. At the time, Boeing had no business being in the commercial market, or at least that's what potential customers said. ("You make great bombers up there in Seattle. Why don't you stick with that?") Yet Allen's time frames were bigger too. He saw that Boeing could compete by changing the industry. Under his leadership, Boeing built the 707, 727, 737, and 747—four of the most successful bets in industrial history. At a board meeting described by Robert Serling in Legend & Legacy, a director said that if the 747 was too big for the market to swallow, Boeing could back out. "Back out?" stiffened Allen. "If the Boeing Aircraft Co. says we will build this airplane, we will build it even if it takes the resources of the entire company." Like today's CEOs, he endured the swarming gnats who think small: short time frames, pennies per share, a narrow purpose. Allen thought bigger—and left a legacy to match.
    No. 1: Charles Coffin
    Built the stage on which they all played
    General Electric's first president didn't see himself as a genius; he came from the shoe business.
    Most people have never heard of Charles Coffin—and that's the ultimate testimony to his greatness. His predecessor had something to do with this. No CEO finds it easy to take over from a founding entrepreneur; now imagine that founder holds patents on the electric light, the phonograph, the motion picture, the alkaline battery, and the dissemination of electricity. But Coffin knew his job was not to be the next Thomas Edison—though Coffin, too, would prove a master inventor. His invention was the General Electric Co.
    Coffin oversaw two social innovations of huge significance: America's first research laboratory and the idea of systematic management development. While Edison was essentially a genius with a thousand helpers, Coffin created a system of genius that did not depend on him. Like the founders of the U.S., he created the ideology and mechanisms that made his institution one of the world's most enduring and widely emulated.
    Edison's wouldn't be the only name to overshadow his. Coffin's era (1892-1912) became known as the "Steinmetz era," in homage to the brilliant GE electrical engineer Charles P. Steinmetz. What little name recognition Coffin did enjoy would then be obliterated by the likes of Swope, Cordiner, Jones, and Welch—GE CEOs who became giants in their own day.
    Jack Welch's stature, in particular, reached a point where GE was called the House That Jack Built. In fact, Welch was as much a product of GE as vice-versa. Certainly Welch vastly improved the system, and history will likely judge him a great executive. He was a master at developing general managers and steadily increasing profit per unit of executive talent. But Welch did not invent this concept; he inherited it.
    The same cannot be said of Charles Coffin. More than any other leader, Coffin made GE into a great company, creating the machine that created a succession of giants. For that reason, he stands a notch above the CEOs whose names eclipsed his. He built the stage on which they all played.

    Current blog from Daniel Pink why dont we? I liked this one read on

    Call my cell

    On Saturday night, Mrs. PinkBlog and I — along with two-thirds of our progeny — decided to go out for pizza. We chose a place about three miles from our house called Il Canale, which a friend (an Italian journalist posted in the States) had raved about.

    I wasn’t sure what to expect. But moments after walking in, I saw this sign, featuring the smiling face of owner Giuseppe Farruggio:



    As it turned out, the restaurant was outstanding and we had no need to call Signore Farruggio. But his offer left me wondering.

    Why doesn’t Jeff Smisek give out his phone number on those videos that United Airlines plays before each flight?
    Or Patrick Donahoe on a placard in every American post office?
    Or the manager of your local grocery store on its shopping carts? Or, uh, authors on their book jackets?
    It’s easy to proclaim, “I’m accountable.” It’s tougher to say, “Call my cell.”

    Current blog ask what can I do to make it easier to get my loan


    This is a list of things to steer clear of when you are seeking to obtain financing for a home. If you do any of these things, please contact your loan officer immediately.

    Even if you have been pre-qualified, we can help you re-qualify.

    1. Don’t buy or lease an auto!
    Lenders look carefully at your debt-to-income ratio. A large payment such as a car lease or purchase can greatly impact those ratios and prevent you from qualifying for a home loan.

    2. Don’t move assets from one bank account to another!
    These transfers show up as new deposits and complicate the application process, as you must then disclose and document the source of funds for each new account. The lender can verify each account as it currently exists. You can consolidate your accounts later if you need to.

    3. Don’t change jobs!
    A new job may involve a probation period, which must be satisfied before income from the new job can be considered for qualifying purposes.

    4. Don’t buy new furniture or major appliances for your “new home”!
    If the new purchases increase the amount of debt you are responsible for on a monthly basis, there is the possibility this may disqualify you from getting the loan, or cut down on the available funds you need to meet the closing costs.

    5. Don’t run a credit report on yourself!
    This will show as an inquiry on your lender’s credit report. Inquiries must be explained in writing.

    6. Don’t attempt to consolidate bills before speaking with your lender!
    The loan officer can advise you if this needs to be done.

    7. Don’t pack or ship information needed for the loan application!
    Important paperwork such as W-2 forms, divorce decrees, and tax returns should not be sent with your household goods. Duplicate copies take weeks to obtain, and could stall the closing date on your transaction.