FROM DILIP MUKERJEA

"Genius is in-born, may it never be still-born."

"Oysters, irritated by grains of sand, give birth to pearls. Brains, irritated by curiosity, give birth to ideas."

"Brainpower is the bridge to the future; it is what transports you from wishful thinking to willful doing."

"Unless you keep learning & growing, the status quo has no status."

Friday, March 28, 2014

INSPIRING QUOTE

A nice quote, which makes sense. 

"Whenever we're afraid, it's because we don't know enough.
If we understood enough, we would never be afraid."

~ Earl Nightingale, motivational speaker and author, who was often acknowledged as the "Dean of Personal Development";

As Bill Clinton says on a recent bigthink.com interview, "Never Stop Learning!"

Thursday, March 27, 2014

THE ESSENCE OF LEADERSHIP, by Mike Myatt, one of America's Top CEO Coach

Mike Myatt, reportedly one of America’s Top CEO Coach, has done a marvelous job of hacking the leadership engine by laying bare the ten challenges, which all good leaders should often deal with. 

Here's the link to his article: 

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140325184854-6114632-the-essence-of-leadership

I would have thought that Challenge #10: "Challenge Yourself" should have been placed as #1.

Nonetheless, I enjoy reading Challenge #5: "Challenge the Information"... Don't think BIG DATA, think good data; it's always worth re-imagining how one process information to yield better decisions!

Overall, it's a good roundup.


Wednesday, March 26, 2014

INTRODUCTION TO HEALTHY MIND PLATTER

Dr David Rock, Executive Director of the Neuroleadership Institute and author of 'Your Brain at Work', together with Dr Daniel Siegel, a Harvard-trained physician and codirector of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA, has jointly created  what they call the Healthy Mind Platter. 

This platter offers seven essential mental activities that are necessary for optimum mental health, and provides the full set of ‘mental nutrition’ that your brain needs to function at its best. 

Here they are:

Focus Time

When we closely focus on tasks in a goal-oriented way, taking on challenges that make deep connections in the brain.

Play Time

When we allow ourselves to be spontaneous or creative, playfully enjoying novel experiences, which helps make new connections in the brain.

Connecting Time

When we connect with other people, ideally in person, richly activating the brain’s social circuitry.

Physical Time

When we move our bodies, aerobically if possible, which strengthens the brain in many ways.

Time In

When we quietly reflect internally, focusing on sensations, images, feelings and thoughts, helping to better integrate the brain.

Down Time

When we are non-focused, without any specific goal, and let our mind wander or simply relax, which helps our brain recharge.

Sleep Time

When we give the brain the rest it needs to consolidate learning and recover from the experiences of the day.

INNOVATION DEFINED

I like what I am reading:

"Innovation is executing something real in a different way than has ever worked before. 

I emphasize execution because I believe ideas are all in the ether, and nothing under the sun is completely original. 
But how you put things together, for what purpose and how it is used, amplified and impacts the people it reaches has the potential to be completely unique. 

Real innovation has impact,... "

~ Paul Berry, Founder and CEO of RebelMouse, one of the world's Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in Advertising;

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

ØISTEIN KRISTIANSEN, OUR MUTUAL FRIEND IN NORWAY


This is Øistein Kristiansen, the bald-headed guy in the centre. 

To Dilip and I, he is fast draw artist extraordinaire, extremely comfortable with ambidexterity, especially when it comes to his artistic virtuosity.

He has been to Singapore on numerous occasions to showcase his works in real time, and now he is back in Norway.

More information about this genius can be found at this link: https://oistein.com/en

PROF. HENRY MINTZBERG: STRATEGY AS SEEING

This fine quote excerpted from the recent article, 'Every Leader Must be a Change Agent or Face Extinction', by contributor Glenn Llopis on forbes.com, reminds me of a valuable lesson I have had the wonderful opportunity to pick up from strategy guru Prof. Henry Mintzberg back in the nineties:

"... Leadership in the 21st century not only requires the ability to continuously manage crisis and change – but also the circular vision to see around, beneath and beyond the obvious in order to anticipate the unexpected before circumstances force your hand... "




Prof. Mintzberg introduced his beautiful concept of "strategy" or rather "strategic thinking" as "seeing", as illustrated below:

- Seeing ahead: planning ahead;

- Seeing behind: drawing lessons from the past;

- Seeing above: seeing the big picture;

- Seeing below: finding and understanding the root causes;

- Seeing beside: thinking laterally;

- Seeing beyond: expecting better futures with long range projections;

- Seeing through: following up and following through the vision.

However, according to him, this is not a recipe for strategic thinking but "seeing" is crucial to the formation of the strategic thinking process.

LEADERSHIP IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Here's the link to two insightful and incisive articles from Forbes.com, which read as if one is attending a crash course in "Leadership in the 21st Century'. 

Laden with great examples to illustrate strategic leadership as well as systems thinking in action in our globally interconnected business landscape, they have numerous links to more great ideas. 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/glennllopis/2014/03/24/every-leader-must-be-a-change-agent-or-face-extinction/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/marymeehan/2014/03/24/flux-the-new-rules-for-innovation-and-growth/


Monday, March 24, 2014

MCKINSEY'S 'T-SHAPED PRO' WITH HOWARD GARDNER'S 'FIVE MINDS FOR THE FUTURE'


Dilip Mukerjea and I spend an inordinate amount of time in cyberspace to brainstorm a broad array of different ideas and multiple perspectives. 

Prior to moving to Vietnam from Singapore, he often popped into my residence in Jurong West to have our  regular "pow wow", followed by chilling out with "teh c" (milked tea) in the nearby food court.  

In fact, the cafe on the ground floor of the National Library Building in Singapore had also been our regular "springboard".

We are full-time dedicated and energetic fellow explorers in the field of life-long and life-wide learning, including creative explorations

As shown above is just one of the recent productive outcomes from our cyberspace "pow wow".


What we have done is what I like to call, a "proactively combinatorial" initiative, whereby  McKinsey's original idea of a 'T-Shaped Pro' is pitched against Howard Gardner's 'Five Minds for the Future', just to make the composite idea more future savvy.

The adage, "Two Heads Are Better Than One", is very true. More importantly, "Knowledge Shared is Power Squared."

INFOGRAPHIC: HOW TO BUILD A BUSINESS PLAN


Here's a nice infographic on 'How to Build a Business Plan' from entrepreneur.com.

Sunday, March 23, 2014

COMING ATTRACTION: A BOOK ON MASTERING THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, by Dilip Mukerjea


IF YOU'RE NOT FAST, YOU'RE FOOD!

Just reminiscing a wonderful video ad on television from Timberland Stores in Singapore about four years ago. 

In addition to fancy camera work and fast action, coupled with suspense thrown in and loud energetic music, it has a catchy tagline, "IF YOU'RE NOT FAST, YOU'RE FOOD"! 

While brainstorming over Skype with my good buddy Dilip Mukerjea this morning, it suddenly comes to my mind.

Despite the transpiration of time, the larger and broader message is still very relevant today, notwithstanding the fact that its focal point was running away from animals in Timberland mountain athletic shoes.

Is your competitor out for lunch or eating your lunch? 

I will explore further on this interesting subject in a separate post, drawing upon intellectual cues from my brainstorming session with Dilip.

A SPLASH MAP FROM DILIP MUKERJEA

This is a snappy pictorial rendition of the ancient classic, 'The Richest Man in Babylon', by George Clason, done in the form of a "splashmap'' by Dilip Mukerjea.

Saturday, March 22, 2014

INSPIRING QUOTE FROM ARISTOTLE

An astute observation, but I like to amplify the quote further:

"Education is the best provision for the journey to old age."

~ Aristotle, Greek philosopher;

It should read self-education, and more precisely, self-directed life-long and life-wide learning, at least from my perspective.



Friday, March 21, 2014

INSPIRING QUOTE FROM AUTHUR C CLARKE

This fine quote has always been one of my greatest inspirations:

"The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."

~ Arthur C Clarke (1917-2008), in 'Profiles of the Future'; he was a British author, inventor and futurist, famous for his short stories and novels, among them '2001: A Space Odyssey' (1968) which was made into a classic sci-fi movie; also, a visionary who predicted artificial intelligence and communications satellites that orbit the earth in fixed positions;


WE ARE WHAT WE THINK

According to the US National Science Foundation, it's estimated that our mind produces as many as 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts in a day.

Dr Deepak Chopra, well-known holistic health guru and alternative medicine practitioner, thinks that about 95% of these thoughts are the same thoughts as yesterday's.

We should therefore, do our best, to take up a proactively combinatorial role in our lives to ensure that our daily thoughts are productive in creating positive outcomes in our lives, failing which we will only create miseries for ourselves.

As ancient sages have exhorted, we are what we think, and thoughts are the architects of our destiny.

Here are some simple and quick ideas to move forward with a positive outlook in life:

Take full responsibility for your life; Decide what you want in life and work out a strategy/plan; Be grateful for what you already have; Talk to and/or mix around with positive folk; Be happy, don't worry, and always smile; Have time-out, and do relaxation sequences; Read inspiring books or quotes; Render random kindness to others wherever possible;


INSPIRING QUOTE FROM STEPHEN HAWKING

A truly valid observation!

In fact, this is exactly what is happening in today's Google-era, especially with our younger generation with their notion that "googling" is a synonym to research!

Thursday, March 20, 2014

DATA, INFORMATION, IDEAS... WISDOM

Just taking a stand:

Information does not equal to insight, provided that we can generate useful ideas to look at more incoming information, and then explore their usefulness and usability in manifesting a productive outcome.

It's pertinent to point out that data is raw and neutral to everybody. It becomes information only when we can make sense of it [i.e. conceptually coherent and personally relevant] and eventually see a use of it.

It is through our perspective of idea generation that insight is finally drawn from the selected incoming information.

Ideas must come first.That's where our personal creativity - and creative imagination - comes to play.

So, without ideas, information is actually useless.

From the chosen workable idea(s), we can then sculpt our decision to act, and formulate a plan for action, which upon implementation and execution, in turn generates real-world experience - knowing what works; what doesn't work, and what could possibly work better the next time. 

This is what we call knowledge.

As Einstein is believed to have said, 'Knowledge is experience; everything else is just information'.

Interestingly, making a decision implies making a choice, which entails a personal accountability for consequences after the choice is taken, in either way, good or bad.

This is the harsh lesson of having gained knowledge or experience.

Nonetheless, cumulative knowledge or experience over time becomes expertise, and the discerning use of expertise is wisdom.

From data - with the crucial participating elements of information, idea, decision, choice, plan, action, consequence, experience, knowledge, and expertise - to wisdom seems like a linear progression.

In reality, it's not; it's more of an iterative and even recursive process, with feedback as well as feed-forward loops.

In a nut shell, this is how insight becomes ultimately BI (business intelligence), at least from my perspective.












DILIP MUKERJEA IN SINGAPORE







Dilip Mukerjea sharing some of his creative strategies and strategist tools, dovetailed specifically for the real estate market, during a recent return visit to Singapore from Mumbai, India.

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

A SPLASH MAP FROM DILIP MUKERJEA


A nice infographic - a work-in-progress rendition by my good buddy Dilip Mukerjea in Mumbai, India - about the power and importance of reading!