Tag: Marie Curie

Unfinished business

Program lingers on linearly while project has its own bell-shaped form.

Beginning and ending.

Life is constituted of both programs and projects.

Child-rearing is not a project. Schooling them is (until they come back and take over the couch).

Warring is a project.  At least when we could get out and not sink deeper into the quagmire.

When I finished Assassin Gate, I felt a striking resemblance to what the US had encountered in Vietnam (not knowing who the enemy was – the Perfect Spy – as case in point).

People form interesting alliances in war.

For now, world attention has shifted else where e.g. Syria, Iran and Israel.

Should they be classified as programs or projects?

We would hope for the latter.

If we take a zoom-out view of  history, we will find that one man’s failure is another’s victory. Innovation came about in clusters, in Europe during the Industrial Revolution. Scientists competed to file patents and announced findings.

Medical and mechanical surprises ( Marie Curie and Marconi).

Which leads to our present dilemma: we are more aware of vaccine and virus, wireless and wire line technologies. Since those are money-making business, we  give them more street’s cred and credits over low ROI projects.

Our life style has evolved to the point where we express ourselves in terms of technology (I am low on bandwidth, I need to be reboot, I can’t copy you, I am unable to process what you have just said).

We keep tweaking and tuning. To stumble upon that optimal-efficiency point.

When we left our phone (hardware) at home, we feel “naked”.

Out of the blue, we got “Drop Box” (the equivalent of train-station locker).

So on and so forth. Keep id the problems, we got the solutions. As long as we can monetize it. If not, we drop it (Blue tooth).

It’s not too long ago that Facebook was an unknown “face”.

Then everyone knows Mark (as if he were our son-in-law). Not sure between him and Justin Bieber, who is more  popular.

I am sure of the difference: Mark , in the language of this blog, is a program, a work still in progress. Justin would be a project, whose stardom has hockey-stick beginning and definite ending. That’s how the world works. I know this. I have just finished listening to “I’ll Be There” and remember how we all loved Michael and the Jackson 5. Then I realise we all were babies in our families. What has happened? (Babies turned burden).

The flow of life floats away relationships. Then what yesterday’s program has become today’s project (papa turns patient).

First we use relationship language to address one another (uncle, brother). Then we use machine language (leaving me a message on my answering machine).

Finally, we call them “patient”, “pupil” “inmate”. Institutional language that dehumanizes people. Turning them from “program” to “project”. My friend, you will forever remain my life-long program. Unfinished business. Work in progress. Not just a Contact, or Data Point.

How do they know?

Have you ever wondered how some songs deliver just the right emotion? How do they know what’s relevant and resonating? Chicago‘s If You Leave Me Now, for instance.

On these blogs, we often mentioned the eccentric, the peculiar and oddities.

Rarely do we put much effort articulating those feelings and God forbid, meltdown or breakdown (Newtown, Conn).

This job belongs to recording artists.

In Advice to A Young Poet, Rilke was referring to being broken, being vulnerable, as prerequisites for being a poet.

Now, that’s painful.

To achieve authenticity, you to have to live through it. To pay the price (Eric Clapton‘s Tears in Heaven did not come about without his personal loss).

Who would be willing? To lose that much to gain that little? MBA candidates wouldn’t choose that route. (I was asked yesterday what’s the use of these blogs?).

Then, we touted creativity, inventiveness and “out of the box” thinking.

Serial entrepreneurs and lovers have one thing in common: they both tried and tried hard down that path (risk taking).

Without rejection, you wouldn’t get results (think of Marconi and Marie Curie).

Those in Sales know without Cold Calling, there wouldn’t be enough rejection to fill the sales funnel. Seth Godin wrote a bunch of unknown books before he got a hit (Linchpin). Colonel Sanders almost gave up as retirement was nearing.

It’s the numbers game. The Beatles logged in 10,000 hours bouncing around from Hamburg to Liverpool to become who they were.

To close : How do they know? They don’t.

They tried and failed. Then try again. Until they got it just right. It hit the spot . Think of Stephen Bishop‘s It Might Be You.

Maybe it’s you. “Wondering how they met and what makes it last”. Keep trying. Don’t give up on us, baby. It must be you. One-hit wonder is OK. As long as it’s the Whiter Shade of Pale.

Try until it’s right. How do I know? I am still trying. It’s only my 900th blog.

Load balancing

A few years back, we got headlines like “women made strides with Nobel prizes“.

And I remember hearing our shared winner of Economics said she studied ways which societies managed to share work load,

from fisheries to farming. I assumed she was trying to crack the “non-zero sum” code, or something similar to

Network Theory (how we are most affected by “weaker ties”, a few degrees of separation away from us).

The speed of microprocessors has ushered in nothing short of an information/knowledge revolution.

Essentially, each of us serves as a “node” in our social connectedness.

Back in my sales days, we treated these “nodes” as “sales leads” or “warm calls”.

Whether their influence is positive or negative, they influence nevertheless.

( I remembered for instance one real estate guy who did not like watermelon with seeds, or my former boss who enjoys yoga and sushi).

Our social memory, only to be referred to or occasionally resurfaced as our own, idiocy or idiosyncrasy, constantly gets its supply from myriads of stimuli (new book title, another  headline, latest franchise movie like Fast and Furious or Friday the 13th).

Back to our headline. When I grew up, I admired names like Marie Curie and Marilyn Monroe (I did know that one was French, and the other American, and how far apart they were, spectrum wise: science vs the arts).

Now, I remember Avon and Ebay former CEO’s  (now HP’s).

And I remember my mom, the greatest multi-tasker I have ever known: teacher, mother, wife, cook and great relative to a very large extended family. She managed it all, earning her French teaching credential during that colonial era, to eventually pass away gracefully in a West Virginian nursing home. Her secret: putting herself last. Servant leadership.

Teaching load, laundry load, and household-budget. Women are better at multi-tasking than men (Maria Shriver, one of the Kennedys, was caught on tape yapping away on a cell phone, against CA law). Microprocessing speed and fat pipe will only accelerate the process (of helping women make greater strides, in all spheres).

I would add telecommuting as a great enhancer of load balancing. And a quiet Maytag also helps.

Next studies on collaboration should incorporate machines into the mix. Imagine how fast it could have been had those first Honeywell computers (actually appliances) been sold well. It still doesn’t lessen the burden of a traveling executive, male or female. But then, that’s where out social networking comes in to complete the transformation of the Third Wave, which has swept away both Marie Curie and Marilyn Monroe, leaving only Madame Secretary in its wake (as of this edit, it’s now J. Kerry).