Every Single Minute

"If you pick the right people and give them the opportunity to spread their wings—and put compensation as a carrier behind it—you almost don't have to manage them." — Jack Welch "Make your top managers rich and they will make you rich." — Robert H. Johnson "Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it." — Proverbs 3:27 "Catch someone doing something right." — Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson "Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig." — Paul Dickson" Surround yourself with the best people you can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere as long as the policy you've decided upon is being carried out." — Ronald Reagan "Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end." — Immanuel Kant "Management by objectives works if you first think through your objectives. Ninety pe...

What keeps Trump relevant is his passion for learning. He writes, “It’s important to remain open to new ideas and new information. Being a know-it-all is like shutting the door to great discoveries and opportunities. Keep your door open every day to something new and energizing.” It’s a theme he weaves throughout this book. Here are several lessons from Trump’s Think Like a Champion: We don’t really create, but we assemble what has been created for us. Be a great assembler—no matter what your interests may be—and you’ll be on your way to inventiveness. Considering the availability of news, blind spots can’t really be rationalized anymore, no matter where you might be living. Information is available to everyone, and if you aren’t plugging into it, it will eventually work against you—maybe on your first interview. Don’t learn this the hard way. Do not allow fear to settle into place in any part of your life. It is a defeating attitude and a negative emotion. Recognize and zap it immedia...

A manager is responsible for the application and performance of knowledge. Accept the fact that we have to treat almost anybody as a volunteer. Business, that's easily defined - it's other people's money. Checking the results of a decision against its expectations shows executives what their strengths are, where they need to improve, and where they lack knowledge or information. Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you've got. Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes. Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things. Executives owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs. Few companies that installed computers to reduce the employment of clerks have realized their expectations... They now need more, and more expensive clerks even though they...

Gandhi : The Accidental Leader Take one of the most charismatic individuals of the twentieth century: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. (Mahatma, meaning “great soul,” was an honorific title he acquired.) Gandhi led an extraordinary life, fusing the ascetic ideals of the ancient Hindu religion and culture with some revolutionary ideas for generating political change through satyagraha: “force born of truth and love or nonviolence.”His efforts were successful in mobilizing the Indian population of South Africa and then in leading the entire Indian nation to independence. His example, preaching truth and nonviolence, inspired leaders in many countries around the world to emulate his example. When he was assassinated in 1948, practically the whole world mourned him. He was compared to Socrates, to Buddha, to Jesus and St. Francis of Assisi.His life has been the subject of hundreds of biographies. Jawaharlal Nehru has written: “No man can write a real life of Gandhi, unless he is as a big as Gan...

Throughout history, wars have left an indelible mark on human psyche. Serious debates have been held on the morality of and the strategic necessity for war. And yet, like every dark cloud that has a silver lining, wars too at times leave a society wiser. India is no stranger to wars. And there are many lessons to be learnt from each of those battles -- management lessons, to be precise. Here we present the fourth in a series of articles on management lessons drawn from Indian history. This one looks at the Battle of Plassey. Read on. . . The Battle of Plassey (1757 AD) Mir Jafar, alias Sayyid Mir Muhammed Jafar Ali Khan, is to India's history what Benedict Arnold is to that of the United States. Mir Jafar came to Bengal as a traveller and took up a job in the army of Ali Vardi Khan, then Nawab of Murshidabad (near Kolkata). He fought many successful battles for the Nawab. This earned him a promotion and his career saw a meteoric rise under Khan. Apart from showering many favours on...

1. Iron rusts from disuse, stagnant water loses its purity, and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigors of the mind. 2. The color of the object illuminated partakes of the color of that which illuminates it. 3. He who possesses most must be most afraid of loss. 4. A good painter has two main objects to paint, man and the intention of his soul. The former is easy, the latter hard as he has to represent it by the attitude and movement of the limbs. 5. Where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art. 6. One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself. 7. Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master. 8. Obstacles cannot crush me. Every obstacle yields to stern resolve. He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind. 9. You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand. 10. Every now and then go away, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer sin...

Behind a three-storey white house in this village north of Paris, a rickety garden table, its top painted red, is preserved from the elements in a glass cage. Battered and scarred, it is one of the world's best known pieces of furniture, immortalised in Vincent van Gogh's portrait of Dr Paul Gachet, the most expensive painting ever sold. Now Gachet's house and gardens have been opened to the public to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Van Gogh's birth, a key event in the multi-million-pound industry surrounding the penniless Dutch painter. Gachet posed for two near-identical portraits. One now belong to Paris's Musée d'Orsay and the other to a Japanese businessman who paid $82 million (£51.5m) for the version in which yellow books obscure much of the table top. A few days after the paintings were completed, Gachet was called toVan Gogh's bedside as he lay dying at the village's Auberge Ravoux from a self-inflicted bullet wound. Yet Auvers was until rece...