The next time you feel a little bit stupid….

The next time you feel a little bit stupid, just dig this up and read it again. You’ll begin to think you’re a genius.

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(On September 17, 1994, Alabama ‘s Heather Whitestone was selected as Miss America 1995.)

Question: If you could live forever, would you and why?

Answer: “I would not live forever, because we should not live forever, because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever, but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever,” –Miss Alabama in the 1994 Miss USA contest.

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“Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world, I can’t help but cry. I mean I’d love to be skinny like that, but not with all those flies and death and stuff.” –Mariah Carey

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“Smoking kills. If you’re killed, you’ve lost a very important part of your life,” — Brooke Shields, during an interview to become spokesperson for federal anti-smoking campaign.

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“I’ve never had major knee surgery on any other part of my body,” — Winston Bennett, University of Kentucky basketball forward.

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“Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country,” –Mayor Marion Barry, Washington , DC .

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“That lowdown scoundrel deserves to be kicked to death by a jackass, and I’m just the one to do it,” –A congressional candidate in Texas.

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“Half this game is ninety percent mental.” — former Philadelphia Phillies manager, Danny Ozark

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“It isn’t pollution that’s harming the environment. It’s the impurities in our air and water that are doing it.”  –Al Gore, Vice President

*     *     *

“I love California. I practically grew up in Phoenix.” — Dan Quayle

*     *     *

“We’ve got to pause and ask ourselves: How much clean air do we really need?” –Lee Iacocca

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“The word ‘genius’ isn’t applicable in football. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein.” –Joe Theisman, NFL football quarterback & sports analyst.

*     *     *

“We don’t necessarily discriminate. We simply exclude certain types of people.” — Colonel Gerald Wellman, ROTC Instructor.

*     *     *

“Your food stamps will be stopped effective March 1992 because we received notice that you passed away. May God bless you. You may reapply if there is a change in your circumstances.” –Department of Social Services, Greenville, South Carolina

*     *     *

“Traditionally, most of Australia’s imports come from overseas.” –Keppel Enderby, a former Australian politician and retired judge

*     *     *

“If somebody has a bad heart, they can plug this jack in at night as they go to bed and it will monitor their heart throughout the night. And the next morning, when they wake up dead, there’ll be a record.”–Mark S. Fowler, FCC Chairman

Morten Hansen on “How Great Leaders Make Their Own Luck”

Morten Hansen is a professor at University of California, Berkeley, and at INSEAD, France. He was previously a professor at Harvard Business School for a number of years. Prior to joining Harvard University, Hansen obtained his Ph.D. from the business school at Stanford University. In addition to his academic career, Hansen was a management consultant with the Boston Consulting Group in the London, Stockholm and San Francisco offices. He was part of the research teams for the international best-selling books Built to Last and Good to Great. Hansen’s research on collaboration has won several prestigious awards, including the best article awards from Sloan Management Review and Administrative Science Quarterly, the leading academic journal in the field. Several of his Harvard Business Review articles have been bestsellers for a number of years. He regularly consults with companies on collaboration and gives keynotes at leadership conferences. His new management book is Collaboration: How Leaders Avoid the Traps, Create Unity, and Reap Big Results (Harvard Business School Press, 2009) and, more recently, Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck–Why Some Thrive Despite Them All, co-authored with Jim Collins (HarperBusiness, 2011). A native of Norway, Hansen holds a Master’s degree in finance from London School of Economics, and a Ph.D. in Business Administration from Stanford University where he was a Fulbright scholar.

To watch an interview of Morten during which he shares his thoughts about “How Great Leaders Make Their Own Luck” please click here.

To read my interview of Morten and Jim Collins, please click here.

 

 

 

I is an Other: A book review by Bob Morris

I is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes the Way We See the World
James Geary
Harper/An Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers (2011)

How and why the metaphor “lives a secret life all around us”

Sometimes especially helpful information about a book’s purposes and structure is provided near its conclusion and that is certainly true of this one as James Geary cites, in the final chapter, what Hart Crane characterizes as “the logic of metaphor” which Geary believes is the logic of human lives. “Metaphor impinges on everything, allowing us – poets and non-poets alike – to experience and think about the world in fluid, unusual ways. Metaphor is the bridge we fling between the utterly strange and the utterly familiar, between dice and drowned men’s bones, between I and an other.” (Page 226). The book’s title refers to Arthur Rimbaud’s summary explanation of his working method, “I is an other.” (Note: Rimbaud’s most famous poem is Le bateau ivre, The Drunken Boat). Geary views Rimbaud’s concept as “Metaphor’s defining maxim, its secret formula, and its principal equation” and wrote this book in which he explains how and why metaphors are explicit comparisons of perceived realities.

Here in Dallas, there is a Farmer’s Market near the downtown area at which several merchants offer slices of fresh fruit as sample. In that spirit, I now offer a representative selection of brief excerpts from the narrative that suggest the thrust and flavor of Geary’s thinking.

o  Metaphor “is at work in all fields of human endeavor, from economic and advertising, to politics and business, to science and psychology…Metaphorical thinking — our instinct not just for describing but for [begin italics] comprehending [end italics] one thing in terms of another, for equating I with an other — shapes our view of the world, and is essential to how we communicate, learn, discover, and invent. Metaphor is a way of thought long before it is a way with words.” (Page 3)

o  “The ability to mind-read enables us to understand that what people do is not always what they think; how people act is not always how they feel; and what people mean is nit always what they say, a process akin to pretend play; another activity in which people with ASD [Asperger’s Syndrome] have difficulty engaging.” (50)

o  “Priming experiments are case studies in the vitality of metaphorical language. A metaphor occurs when someone apprehends previously unapprehended relations between things. The metaphor perpetuates this fresh apprehension until, through time, core associations form. These associations cling fast to words themselves, eventually becoming so routine that they continue to appear long after the original relation has ceased to be consciously apprehended.” (115)

o  “Parables and proverbs feature so prominently in folk wisdom and religious scripture because there is no way to convey spiritual truths other than to set them side by side with natural truths. The numinous is the nitty gritty. I is an other.” (196)

o  “Synectics consultants use metaphor to spur business innovation; psychotherapists James Lawley and Penny Tompkins use it to inspire psychological insight. Through a process called symbolic modeling, they help clients create and explore metaphors around crucial emotions or personal dilemmas.” (208)

Until reading this book, I was unaware of the fact that, as Geary describes it, metaphor “lives a secret life all around us.” For example, we utter about one metaphor for every 10-15 words or about six metaphors a minute. I agree with Geary that gaining an understanding of the nature and extent of metaphor’s presence in our lives (invoking a simile) is “like reading a book about that process.” How important is it to gain that understanding? According to Aristotle, the mastery of metaphorical thinking is “a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars.” The reader, for example, and another reader….

Don’t Mumble – Your Communication Tip of the Day (One Reason why Todd Bradley is not the CEO of HP)

This is big.  Assuming you have something worthwhile to say when you are giving a presentation, don’t mumble!  Make sure you pronounce your words clearly.  Clearly!; fully; every syllable; especially every ending consonant.

Don’t mumble!  Not ever.

Here is a paragraph about the “who will be the next HP CEO” battles to remind you that mumbling is really not a good thing.  (from the article:  How Hewlett-Packard lost its way).  Note the phrase in bold.

Four internal aspirants stepped forward. The strongest was Todd Bradley, the head of HP’s personal computer group. His group generated $41 billion in annual revenue and had tripled its profitability during his tenure. But Bradley had shortcomings. His critics said he tended to mumble in presentations… (emphasis added) 

The article mentions other shortcomings, but being good in front or people is a big-time trait for a leader.  And being easy to understand plays an incredibly important part in this.  DON’T MUMBLE!  If you do mumble, learn to quit mumbling.  Then quit mumbling.

If you have a problem mumbling, and you don’t know it, you don’t acknowledge it, then I can’t help you.  But if you mumble, and you know it, it’s time to get to work.

This only takes a few minutes a day – if you stick to it!  Print out your favorite poem, your favorite Psalm, your favorite song lyric, mark it up with a great big slash between words, and read it aloud one-word-at-a-time.  Put your lips fully together in between each word to force yourself to practice saying each word fully, and then stopping (ask yourself – “Did I pronounce this word fully?”); then, and only then, do you read the next word.  Read at least one selection once a day, one-word-at-a-time, for a month.  At the end of the month, you have a shot at mumbling less.  At the end of many months, you will be speaking much more clearly.  If you work at it, meaning practice, every day!

Here are some exercise sheets to get you started.  Print them out, and start – today.

Click on image for full, printable view — page 1 of 3

page 2 of 3

page 3 of 3

Once you quit mumbling and you speak each word fully and completely, then you can work on other vocal traits that you need to master.  Like:  never speak in a monologue; instead speak with vocal variety and verbal punch.

But first, you’ve got to get rid of your mumbling.