Puppy Learning

Coelho had this to say about a child. This applies to a pup as well or even better!

A child can teach an adult three things: to be happy for no reason, to always be busy with something, and to know how to demand with all his might that which he desires.

Paulo Coelho

When you combine the last two points with the amount of energy at their disposal, you have a dynamite in your hands. That keeps going off again & again.

For someone who loves to enjoy the calm & quiet, read a book in peace, dwells on musing… this could spell anathema.

And an opportunity to understand oneself & what goes on within. And to deal with things not going your way. And to proverbially respond rather than react. And to learn to be in awe of this other being.

Lunch With TED

Lunch With TED

Every once in a while, I find myself having lunch by myself – at work or at home. In such situation, a favourite companion has been TED.

This YouTube playlist collates some of these dates with TED that you may find interesting as well:

 

 

Criticism In Corporate Culture

Today, I came across two seperate reputed opinions about corporate culture. Unfortunately, both are negative.

The first one from a Bridgewater Associates (considered the most successful hedge fund in the world) manager:

In general hierarchical structures, you don’t tell people what you actually think.

You’re always managing other people’s perceptions of you and what they think of you, and trying to butter people up above, trying to make sure they don’t think anything is going wrong, that you have all the answers.

Radical transparency is designed to solve for a deadly sin of work life: office politics. In too many places, what happens in the meeting doesn’t matter nearly as much as secret alliances and conversations after the meeting.

And the second one (paraphrased) from Malcom Gladwell:

When I think back about my time in a large organization, the thing that was most frustrating to me was the extent to which people over time in organizations, put the needs & desires of the people on the inside ahead of the needs & desires of the people they are serving.

Sometimes people get so immersed in their envronment, that the people you are supposed to be serving sort of falls away. And you just think about what would make your life better.

One way to avoid this is to keep reminding yourself & the people around you the point of your organization & who you are serving.

Principles_by_Ray_Dalio

Incidentally, both of these were heard in the TED original podcast WorkLife with Adam Grant. The episode How to Love Criticism delves into how Ray Dalio addresses these in Bridgewater Associates with a corporate culture based on radical transparency & constantly getting better (kaizen).

ABC = Fn (A, B)

(via Instagram https://ift.tt/2xnLZ99)

Your Adventure Biking Capability (ABC) is a function of your Ability (A) & the Bike (B) you ride.

ABC = Fn (A, B)

Accordingly, you can improve your ABC by either..

  1. Increasing Your Ability – picking up new skills, practicing the skills & thus building experience (muscle memory) in using the skills
  2. Using a Better Bike – a more purpose built bike, or adding any of the large number of accessories that will incrementally improve your bike – custom foot pegs, tires, etc.

The latter is the easy option – requires less effort & no practice. You just have to buy into the marketing stories of the product. I’m not saying they will not help at all. It does, incrementally.

Increasing your ability on the other hand involves learning, practicing & sweating it out building the muscle memory. But the impact this has on your ABC is multifold higher (3x – 5x). Also, ability is easily transferable to any bike you ride.

For most people, increasing our abilities should be the default strategy to improving our Adventure Riding Capability. Our investment of effort & resources will yield better overall results wrt to us becoming better riders. That’s exactly what I’m seen doing in the picture above with @bret.tkacs & @topgunindia.