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Name of author Rick Baker, P.Eng.

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Thought Tweet #575

by Rick Baker
On Sep 28, 2012

Thought Tweet #575 If you burn the candle at both ends, don't set it down on your desk.

 

The Thinking Behind The Tweet

If you do then you will be fighting even more fires.

Tags:

Humour | I'm too busy! - I don't have time! | Thought Tweets

Thought Tweet #574

by Rick Baker
On Sep 27, 2012

Thought Tweet #574 When someone really pulls your leg it may cost you that and an arm.

 

The Thinking Behind The Tweet

Too little to explain.

Tags:

Humour | Thought Tweets

...with best Intentions...

by Rick Baker
On Sep 27, 2012

Thoughts and actions are laced with intention of two types: intention can be ego-driven, backed by desires; intention can be spirit-driven, backed by personal strengths. 

On its own, ego-driven intention is not necessarily aligned with personal strengths so it often generates more problems than solutions and causes more chaos than accomplishment. 

Spirit-driven intention builds, creates, and constructs and it naturally aligns with personal strengths.

We see evidence of spirit-driven intention in entrepreneurs. While it may lack direction, entrepreneurs have a burning desire to achieve something. While it may lack direction, entrepreneurs have a burning desire to build things of value. These are signals of spirit-driven intention. In entrepreneurs, spirit-driven intention is clear when:

  1. the entrepreneur's thoughts and actions are aligned with personal talents and personal strengths, which are developed through much effort and practice, 
  2. the entrepreneur has sufficient intelligence, and
  3. the entrepreneur's ego is managed through self-control.

At the foundation of this...

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, in his 1886 classic 'Beyond Good and Evil':

"Physiologists should think again before postulating the drive to self-preservation as the cardinal drive in an organic being. A living thing desires above all to vent its strength - life as such is will to power -: self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent consequences of it."

When entrepreneurs vent their strengths, with ego under self-control, their work is backed by spirit-driven intention. And - their spirit-driven work is creative, special, and sustainable. 


 

Tags:

Beyond Business | Entrepreneur Thinking

Thought Tweet #573

by Rick Baker
On Sep 26, 2012

Thought Tweet #573 When you put two and two together you have the answer.

 

The Thinking Behind The Tweet

That's just an idiom's logic.

Tags:

Humour | Thought Tweets

Thought Tweet #572

by Rick Baker
On Sep 25, 2012

Thought Tweet #572 If you think you are over the hill, you're on the declimb.

 

The Thinking Behind The Tweet

It's all about attitude.

Tags:

Attitude: Creating Positive Attitude | Humour | Thought Tweets

About Your Business - Strong? Smart? Both?

by Rick Baker
On Sep 25, 2012

Human beings evolved from lightly-furred prey to Earth's dominant species.

How did that happen?

Certainly, 2 things played a large role: brawn and brains. When I say 'brawn' I mean muscular strength. When I say 'brains' I mean intellectual strength, including cognitive intelligence and emotional intelligence.

Brawn and brains helped us, over time, crawl out of caves with clubs in hand and build office cubicles with smart phones in hand. Human beings had the muscular strength to survive on the available land and travel to better lands in search of safer homes and more-abundance and richer food sources. Of even more importance, human beings learned:

  • how to understand one another,
  • how to associate with one another, 
  • how to cooperate with one another,
  • how to think strategically,
  • how to work together in teams.

Which brings us to business...

Your business will be at its best when each of your people uses his or her individual business-brawn and individual business-brain.

Individual Business-Brawn

One hundred years ago, over 90% of the people in Canada earned money by exchanging physical effort for money. They used their bodies to do farm work, construction work, heavy industrial work, etc. Now, in business, muscular strength has been replaced by individual strengths where:

Individual Strength = Talent + pertinent business Knowledge + Skill, developed through repeated practice of work-thought and work-action

Each person has unique talents and some of those talents align with working in business. The key is to find those business-fitting talents and put them to use at work, gain knowledge about work and about the talents to learn how to best mesh the two, and practice, test, measure, practice...practice, practice.

Individual Business-Brain

Every person's brain is wired differently. That applies to learning, remembering, to understanding other people, to communicating with other people, and to getting along with other people... and to a whole lot more. In business, we cannot come even close to covering the enormous and unfathomable range of individual-brain nuances.

Nor do we need to.

A huge step is to believe every person's brain is unique and that uniqueness is both the source of species greatness and the source of interpersonal misunderstandings and conflict. The biggest mistakes a business person can make fall in the following areas:

  • assuming people think alike, 
  • assuming people possess similar business desires, 
  • assuming people communicate the same way,
  • assuming people remember the same facts [i.e., never facts, just perceptions],
  • etc.
If you want your business to be strong and smart you must work continuously to address and improve in these areas.

Tags:

Brain: about the Human Brain | STRENGTHS: People-Focused for Success

Copyright © 2012. W.F.C (Rick) Baker. All Rights Reserved.