Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

Greatest Management Decisions that changed the world

Some of the greatest Management Decisions ...

1. Walt Disney listened to his wife (poor chap ... what else he can do :) ), Lillian, and named his cartoon mouse Mickey instead of Mortimer. Entertainment was never the same after Mickey and Minnie debuted in Steamboat Willie in 1928.
2. Around 59 B.C.,Julius Caesar kept people up-to-date with handwritten sheets that were distributed in Rome and, it is suspected, with flyers that were placed around the city. The greatness of leaders has been partly measured ever since by their ability to communicate. This might be the first government advertisement ???
3. In 1950, Frank McNamara found himself in a restaurant with no money and came up with the idea of the Diners Club Card. The first credit card changed the nature of buying and selling throughout the world. Truly, Necessity is the mother of invention. His necessity was to dine without any money :)
   
4. Ignoring market research, Ted Turner launched the Cable News Network (CNN) in 1980. No one thought a 24-hour news network would work. It did.
5. Sony chief Akio Morita noticed that young people liked listening to music wherever they went. He and the company developed what became the Walkman, first made in 1980. There was no need for market research. "The public does not know what is possible. We do," said Morita.

These are few extracts which i liked from the bigger list The 75 greatest management decisions ever made.

My Favourite poem - "IF"

[IF]

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

--Rudyard Kipling

A Leader Should Know How to Manage Failure

This video is a interview with APJ Abdul Kalam. A good one ...

My Favourite book - "To Kill a mocking bird"

When i first saw this book with a name "To Kill a mocking bird", my regular apetite for detective and suspense novel arose. So I bought the book without bothering to even give a cursory glance on the storyline. It was among bunch of Agatha christie's novels. Once i reached home i saw that this book was a pulitzer prize winner. Shocked ... According to me these kinds of books were non readable with full of bombastic words which needs dictionary for each word.

Cursing my negligence and laziness i threw it away. But the 300 bucks i paid for it made me to take it and read the first page. But i was surprised to see that it was with a very simple english.

It was a story narrated by a 10 yrs girl, who is putting forth her views on her father, her town, and its people. In her view her father is a dull lawyer who has not won any case, non athletic, not so good in checkers so and so ... She also knows that her brother also think the same way as her about her father.

An incident happens in her town, in which her father was a part. Though she is not able to understand clearly about the incident she could understand who her father is and who her father was. By the end of that incident her perspective about her father undergoes a sea of change. She could also see her brother's view also changed. It was authors very nice narration to show the change in the girl.

I felt it so well written for even guys like me. I loved this book from the beginning to end. This was my first novel of this kind that i have read and loved.