Category: Uncategorized

When you get great people in a beautiful functional space, magic unfolds. Creative spaces are a real passion that i have.  I was recently attending a presentation on Herman Miller concept of the Living Office, which is a human centered approach to the workplace,  part of the presentation was the chart of the engine of prosperity.  It describes elements of what makes work thrive – feeling good when you come to work and feeling pride and sense of the community is essential…

Prosperity is generated when the following elements come into a dynamic equilibrium:

= Passion of both the individual and the Organization.

= The needs of the individual, for example those laid down in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.

= The desire of the individual to generate income and an Organization to create profit.

= The needs of the workforce and the Organization.

My approach to learn a new topic besides reading can be summed up with this statement “Embed yourself in a community of practice”

If i want to learn about a topic, i just go where most of its experts hangout, even if i feel like an outsiders! I have a thick skin and not a lot of pride when trying to learn. I also embed myself in the online community of practice through Twitter and Quora. I create a twitter list of all experts or relevant people in field and  when they share an opinion or an article it will be the most relevant to the topic. It is like hiring a personal curator from the industry:)  Same for Quora, nothing compares to humans from industry giving personal answers. Both tools made a huge difference with my learning on new topics like: Angel Investments, Creative Spaces, Fintech, Audio Book Publishing, Digital Transformation…

We suffer from an overload of information and articles are mostly written for clicks….that is one of my ways of sifting through the noise.

“I like things where wandering matters, i like to wander…I make sure all my meetings do not have tight agendas. I don’t like tight agendas because they assume you know where you are going…which for certain type of meeting is right, like if you are doing a business review and you are going through the metrics, that should have a good agenda. but most meetings are not like that…wandering is super important, thinking and knowing exactly where you are going is the kind of lack of humility that does not let you invent…”  – Jeff Bezos on #min54 of the interview.

Sounds trivial but coming from Bezos these statements validates the kind of meetings that i take with headlines but no clear agendas and loose time…we finish when we finish…

This small point aside:) It is a good interview with a real great leader – no fuss but ruthless execution! #Recommended

“Cynicism is easy. Mimicry is easy. Optimistic contrarians are the rarest breed.”

– @Naval

This movie makes me feel sane.

It is the true story Michael Burry who, in 2008, realized that a number of subprime home loans are in danger of defaulting and bet against the housing market. He saw it and it was so obvious yet it is just crazy how others reacted!

I watch it over and over again. It is a TRUE Story. Some might find it boring, i find it soothing – it explains to me how obvious common sense can be uncommon! And Although the letter that Michael Burry wrote while closing Scion fund is not the real one but its essence is true. The one in the movie sums it for me!

The Make/Stay in Business at Any Cost Mentality…

“Making money is not like what I thought it would be. This business kills the part of life that is essential, the part that has nothing to do with business….”

The Compliance and Cancel your Brain Mentality

“People want an authority to tell them how to value things, but they choose this authority not based on facts or results. They choose it because it feels authoritative and familiar.”

#AMustWatch