Month: April 2016
Harness the power of habits
I decided to changed slightly the format of the posts and to put more videos 😉
I was running 10 km and listening to this book: The power of Habits by Charles Duhigg and this book was so great that I decided to share what I learnt with everyone on the blog.
What did you learn?
Let me know in the comments if this video was useful for you
How do you become a trusted advisor leader?
Those years in South Korea have been the toughest of my life, but at the same time, I learnt to become a leader for my team…and this lesson is not something I couldn’t have possibly learnt from any book.
You see…you can read everything you want on paper, but as long as you don’t experience it, this knowledge doesn’t get integrated into your thinking and doesn’t get applied.
Before being a leader, I didn’t really make the difference between a leader and a manager… I didn’t know that the gap was so huge.
I used to read those “Great leaders do this, bad managers do that” kind of articles… but those article are generally just written to attract the attention with few bullet points rather than really describing what it feels to be a leader.
Here’s what I learnt about leadership, the reality behind the scene:
The best technical demo ever
Watch this video of Steve jobs introducing the Macintosh and you will understand immediately what is a great technical demo!
What makes this technical demo so good?
1- Show, don’t tell
Well, first, he is not talking endlessly about the product’s features.
He just lets the product talk by itself (literally…)
2- He is not showing the machine, he is showing what people can do with it
People never saw something like that at that time… but Steve Jobs doesn’t really show them the Macintosh…he shows them what they can do with the Macintosh: Photoshop, Word, Chess game…
Watching that, I remember that my father purchased a Macintosh II when I was a kid. I was so happy with it that I still remember ver clearly everything I was doing on it…and that made me an apple fan ever since.
3- Light effects and music
The light is focused only on the Macintosh, no other distraction is visible.
The music is motivating and reminds the incredible achievements that Apple did by creating the Macintosh.
There’s probably much more but that’s the only things I saw for the moment.
Maybe I’ll come home and find my old Macintosh II…he is still working by the way 🙂
Go over “That’s just the way I am”
The “That’s just the way I am” fallacy
Studies proved it.
Every time someone tells you to change or improve something in your life, you may think:
“This guy is right, I should do that…but that’s just the way I am”
Every time you think “That’s just the way I am”, you actually stops yourself from changing.
You are telling yourself: “I may get a tremendous benefit, but I cannot change that because I am not like that”.
To give you a simple example, a lot of people have problems with health and losing weight.
The real solution to this problem is extremely simple:
- Do more exercise
- Eat better food
But why aren’t we able to apply those simple principles?
How to become a bad leader in 7 steps*
Bad leader
Disclaimer: None of the following content is directly inspired by the reality in my office. Everything is purely fictional…This article is for engineers with a very solid sense of humour… if you don’t, please don’t read the following, that may shock you.
Becoming a bad leader is easy and natural for those gifted with superior intelligence. here are 7 steps to follow to lose the trust of your employees and become their worst nightmare at the same time.