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In chapter 3 of Back To The Cottage, John Sipple lays out 7 foundational
principles of Cottage industry.
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PC World Magazine just listed Windows Vista as #1 of The 15 Biggest Tech Disappointments of 2007. I gleaned a list of how to disappoint customers from Dan Tynan's review.
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The specific work to be done — whether it is making ax handles or tacos, selling automobiles or teaching kindergarten, investment banking or political office, evangelizing or running a Christian education program, performing in the arts or teaching English as a second language — is of central interest to God. [...]
Dallas Willard
Bradley J Moore writes, "I tend to get caught up in 'What’s Next.' The next big exciting deal or promotion or position or recognition. It’s like I can’t function without having some huge ambitious goal looming on the horizon, calling out to me, luring, pulling and compelling me towards some 'better' future." Now he's wondering what's excellent about that?
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Critics sometimes suggest that competitiveness is foreign to a religion of love, meekness, and peace. They have no idea how hard it is to be meeker than one's neighbor. There are abuses of competitive spirit, of course, as there are of love, meekness, and peace. But to compete - com + petere, [...]
Michael Novak
If you are called to be a street sweeper, sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, “here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well. [...]
Martin Luther King Jr.
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The cross is the surest, truest and deepest window on the very heart and character of the living and loving God...the task of shaping our world is best understood as the redemptive task of bringing the achievement of the cross to bear on the world.
N.T. Wright
Jim Hancock thinks about mastery in the context of what may be the only sports story you'll ever hear from him.
Hugh McLeod puts his finger right on the bruise when he says "Human beings want to be part of something."
Doing 4% less does not get you 4% less.
Doing 4% less may very well get you 95% less.
That's because almost good enough gets you nowhere. No sales, no votes, no customers. The sad lie of mediocrity is the mistaken belief that partial effort yields partial results. In fact, the results are usually totally out of proportion to the incremental effort. [...]
Seth Godin
The Big Moo is a collection of essays on being remarkable by 33 remarkable business innovators.
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"For many years as a private company, Domino's really benchmarked against itself, without looking at the outside world. We were proud of the fact that for many years we had positive same-store sales, which is a big financial indicator of growth and success in the retail world. Well, that was the good news.
David Brandon, Chairman & CEO of Domino's Pizza
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As we've worked with companies over the years, the easy assumption is that becoming great also means becoming big. And so many pursue growth to their own detriment.
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"When organizations are successful, they have a tendency to stop doing the hard things, and dealing with poor performance is a really hard thing... Unfortunately, this also leads to strong players not being constantly challenged."
Robert J. Herbold
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Success, and the resulting tendency to become complacent, often leads organizations and individuals to believe that they are very talented, have figured things out, have the answers to all the questions, and no longer need to get their hands dirty in the trenches. They lose their sense of urgency - the feeling that trouble might be just around the corner [...]
Robert J. Herbold
Dan Wooldridge describes how ignoring the negative aspects of your company culture will eventually lead to the destruction of the company. He lists five common negative culture characteristics.
Dan Wooldridge reflects on the simple strategy for tough and uncertain times: do good stuff and just do good.
Al Lunsford reflects on Apple Inc.'s success as the iPad launch approaches. Al shares the three keys to Apple's success.
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Purposeful practice is about striving for what is just out of reach and not quite making it; it is about grappling with tasks beyond current limitations and falling short again and again. Excellence is about stepping outside the comfort zone, training with a spirit of endeavor, and accepting the inevitability of trials and tribulations. Progress is built, in effect, upon the foundation of necessary failure. That is the essential paradox of expert performance.Matthew Syed
Bounce - Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success , (p. 85), HarperCollins Publishers, 2010
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Geoff Colvin
Talent is Overrated - What Really Separates World-Class Performance from Everybody Else , (p. 116-117), Portfolio, 2008
Self-regulation begins with setting goals. These are not big, li [...]
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So greatness requires extraordinary hard work on a sustained basis. But some people, even those who also have high levels of natural talent, who do the hard work over a period of years, fail to break through and attain the level of greatness they hoped to achieve. What's missing?
James M. Citrin
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