SPARKLE ZONE: April 2007

Friday, April 27, 2007

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Story Doesn't End Here (Must Read).......................

Once upon a time a tortoise and a hare had an argument

about who was faster .

They decided to settle the argument with a race.

They agreed on a route
and started off the race.
The hare shot ahead and ran briskly for some time.
Then seeing that he was far ahead of the tortoise,

he thought he'd sit under
a tree for some time and relax before continuing the race.

He sat under
the tree and soon fell asleep.

The tortoise plodding on overtook him and soon finished the race,

emerging as the undisputed champ.

The hare woke up
and realized that he'd lost the race.
The moral- "Slow and steady wins the race. This is the version of the
story that we've all grown up with."

THE STORY DOESN'T END HERE

there are few more interesting
things.....it continues as follows......

The hare was disappointed at losing the race and he did some
soul-searching.
He realized that he'd lost the race only because he had been overconfident,
careless and lax.
If he had not taken things for granted, there's no way the tortoise could have beaten him.

So he challenged the tortoise to another race.
The tortoise agreed. This time, the hare went all out and ran without
stopping from start to finish. He won by several miles.
The moral - " Fast and consistent will always beat the slow and steady.
It's good to be slow and steady; but it's better to be fast and reliable."

THE STORY DOESN'T END HERE

The tortoise did some thinking this time, and realized that there's no
way it can beat the hare in a race the way it was currently formatted.

It thought for a while, and then challenged the hare to another race, but
on a slightly different route. The hare agreed. They started off. In keeping
with his self-made commitment to be consistently fast, the hare took off and
ran at top speed until he came to a broad river. The finishing line was a
couple of kilometres on the other side of the river.

The hare sat there
wondering what to do.
In the meantime the tortoise trundled along, got into the river, swam to the opposite bank, continued walking and finished the race.

The moral - "First identify your core competency and then change the
playing field to suit your core competency."

THE STORY STILL HASN'T ENDED

The hare and the tortoise, by this time, had become pretty good friends
and they did some thinking together.

Both realized that the last race could
have been run much better So they decided to do the last race again,

but to
run as a team this time.

They started off, and this time the hare carried the tortoise till the riverbank. There, the tortoise took over and swam
across with the hare on his back. On the opposite bank, the hare again

carried the tortoise and they reached the finishing line together.

They both felt a
greater sense of satisfaction than they'd felt earlier.
The moral - "It's good to be individually brilliant and to have strong
core competencies; but unless you're able to work in a team and harness each
other's core competencies, you'll always perform below par because
there will always be situations at which you'll do poorly and someone else
does well.

Teamwork is mainly about situational leadership, letting the person
with the relevant core competency for a situation take leadership.
Note that neither the hare nor the tortoise gave up after failures. The
hare decided to work harder and put in more effort after his failure. The
tortoise changed his strategy because he was already working as hard as
he could."
In life, when faced with failure,
sometimes it is appropriate to work
harder and put in more effort.

Sometimes it is appropriate to change strategy and try something different.

And sometimes it is appropriate to do both.

The hare and the tortoise also learn t another vital lesson. When we stop competing

against a rival and instead start competing against the
situation, we perform far better.

To sum up- the story of the hare and tortoise has much to say:
Chief among them are that fast and consistent will always beat slow and
steady;work to your competencies; pooling resources and working as a team will always beat

individual performers; never give up when faced with
failure; & finally, compete against the situation - not against a rival.

Friday, April 13, 2007

Best Book for Creativity

A whack on the side of the head

In 1983 Roger von Oech wrote A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can be More Creative. In the book, revised in 1990 and reprinted every year since then, von Oech knocks down 10 myths (he calls them “mental blocks”) stopping us from being creative. Here they are:

1. The right answer. Our education system teaches us to look for the one right answer. Trouble is, in business, as in life, there are often several right answers. “Many of us,” says von Oech, “have a tendency to stop looking for alternative right answers after the first right answer has been found. This is unfortunate because often it’s the second, or third, or tenth right answer which is what we need to solve a problem in an innovative way.”
Tip: Ask questions that solicit multiple answers

2.That’s not logical. Logic is great at the implementation phase of an idea, but when you are searching and playing with ideas, excessive logic can short-circuit your creative process.
Tip: Try some “soft thinking”. Ask “what if?”, “why not?”, "what rules can we break?”, “what assumptions can we drop?”, “how about we look at this backwards?”

3. Follow the rules. Most organisations have rules that were once sensible but are now obsolete. We tend not to challenge them because “that’s how it’s always been”. Breaking the rules won’t necessarily lead to creative thinking, but it’s one avenue.
Tip: Have rule-inspecting and rule-discarding sessions within your organisation.

4. Be practical. Most people have a natural tendency to be critical of new ideas and focus on why they won’t work.
Tip: Try evaluating a new idea, not on its practical merits, but as a provocative stepping stone to come up with other ideas, some of which might eventually work.

5. Play is frivolous. Some good ideas emerge from necessity or deadline pressure. Just as many come over a boozy lunch, or when you aren’t thinking about the problem too seriously.
Tip: Introduce humour or wackiness into a meeting to stimulate the flow of ideas. Make your workplace a fun place to be.

6. That’s not my area. Many exciting ideas have come from transferring knowledge from one area into another. But most people don’t consult colleagues in other disciplines to get answers to problems. The more specialised you are, the less likely you are to explore other fields.
Tip: Develop the outlook that wherever you go and whoever you talk to, there are ideas waiting to be discovered.

7. Avoid ambiguity. Many cultures use the concept of an “oracle” to take advantage of our ability to make sense out of ambiguous situations. The oracle gives its pronouncements in an ambiguous way, and leaves its hearers to come up with a creative interpretation. Trouble is, these days we tend to avoid ambiguity, seeing it as a potential cause of communication problems and time wasting.
Tip: If you are giving someone a problem that has the potential to be solved in a creative way, try, at least initially, to pose it in an ambiguous way, so as not to restrict their imagination.

8. Don’t be foolish. The classical “fool” was an antidote to the yes-men surrounding the king. His role was to parody the common view on an issue and force the king to re-examine his assumptions and entertain alternative ideas.
Tip: If you are in a rut about a problem, try freeing up your thinking by taking the contrary position or disagreeing with the common sense view.

9. To err is wrong. From an early stage we are rewarded for the right answer and punished for the wrong one. We learn to keep mistakes to a minimum. Actually there are two benefits of failure: you learn what doesn’t work, and you get an opportunity to try a new approach.
Tip: If you aren’t making many errors, ask yourself, “How many opportunities am I missing by not being more aggressive?”

10. I’m not creative. A major oil company hired psychologists to find out why some of its engineers produced more creative product than others. The answer: the ones doing creative things thought they were creative; the others didn’t think they were.
Tip: A major factor differentiating creative people from the rest is that they believe their small ideas could lead to something bigger and build on these ideas. Do it.Von Oech's website can be found at http://www.creativethink.com

Sunday, April 08, 2007

Ebooks from esnips