One of the things I keep patting myself in the back was the secret realization during the school days (over 20 years ago) that if I wanted to succeed big time ( or long term) I study to learn, not study to pass the test. After all, when all is said and passed, what gives you the edge is what you ‘know’ long after you have passed the test.

So I try to understand, while many of my colleagues try to memorize.  Here is a great illustration I got from the Passionate Blog that perfectly corresponds to what I mean.

 I got this from my friend, Hans Dee, on how you can teach your child to make wise choices ….

… Tie them into some of your decisions. For example, if you are in the market for another car, ask your child to research it with you on the Internet, go with you to the car dealer, discuss with you the options…new or used, lease or purchase, low or high mileage.

Sure, you’ll ultimately decide, but bringing them into the process will teach them how to think critically and make better choices and, in the end, save you much heartache. Look for wise ties for your children in decisions you have usually been making by yourself.

Khagendra Thapa Magar is 14 years old. Teh Nepali boy is only 20 inches tall.  He raises money by going around the country and charging the people to see him.  He weighed only 600 grams during birth.

Attempts have been done to put him in the Guinness Book of World Records, but the spokesman has said that while they are impressed, the boy has to wait for 4 years and become an adult b efore his height will be officially assessed and put into the records as the world’s smallest man.

If you were the parents, would you want the boy to grow, or would you restrict his growth?

This is a new business model - instead of just posting questions on a
forum, and waiting ( sometimes for a long time) before another person
answers it for free ( if there ever is, but then there is no guarantee
he can be helpful either), this one may work - although the reputation
of the person providingthe answers, as well as thewillingness of the
person asking the question to pay for it would be the main driver.  More …

YOu will make a lousy manager.

Just as they say, a good basketball player may not always become a good coach.  The trait or talent is just so different.

This was one of the lessons I learned managing. The best sales people know how to sell, deal with people, and they spend their time knowing their products, and also their customers.  They may not want to spend time, nor are they necessarily geared or predisposed to spending time managing or mentoring other sales people.  I also had this issue

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There was a time when foreign businesses were interested in China. The sheer size of the population makes it appealing. If you have 1.3 billion people, and each will buy from you just one pair of socks…

According to Xinhua News Agency, China turned out 46 billion noodle packs last year, and industry sales totalled US 3.7 billion dollars.  The convenience of carrying around one, heating up one, plus the various flavors make it appealing.  It is said that most Chinese tourist bring some packs when they travel, and they can eat out of hotel rooms, or anywhere on it.

I attended the conference in Beijing and was flabbergasted to know that we would have to listen to one speaker ( for 2 hours in the morning), and another speaker ( for 2 hours in the afternoon).

To a chinese speaker.  Without multimedia projectors and powerpoint. Without a rostrum. Without a whiteboard or paper.  It seems here that a lot of seminars here are conducted with the speaker sitting down in a front table, and just talking, and everybody politely listening.

The setting was not the ideal setting for an entertaining presentation, nor a lively discussion. The absence of visual aids was

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The Zichuan District Court in east China’s Shandong province has installed programs on judges’ computers that provide advice on the proper verdicts in criminal cases, the state-run China Daily reported.

In the Shandong experiment, judges simply enter the relevant details of the crimes plus mitigating circumstances — and the program immediately comes up with an appropriate verdict, according to the paper.  More …

When you look at the people who succeed, you will find that there is a ‘timing’ in the business. We just overcame the dot com boom where almost every business that was in the frenzy lost money. Now we are in what many would call the web 2.0

Who are the people who are succeeding now? It is businesses like Google who was able to extend their operations while everybody was scaling down theirs. They had money during the lean months which allowed them to get the talent, and the publicity because competition was less.

As the old business principle says, “He who has money during the panic and continues to build and invest wisely is a wise person indeed!’

This is a famous anecdote about Andrew Carnegie which illustrates his understanding on motivation.

During one of his meetings with his sister Lucy, she heard her sister complained that her son was not answering her mail while he was in college. Without missing a beat, Carnegie told her sister that he could bet her $10 that he would write the young boy, and get a response.

Andrew drafted a nice letter to his nephew, and added a postcript that he was enclosing a cheque for $10 ( this was during the 1880s) as a gift. He then deliberately left the check out of the envelope.

Indeed the young boy wrote back immediately to his uncle, telling him that he is gratified by the gift but distressed that probably the cheque has been lost. Carnegie immediately presented the letter to his sister. His sister paid him $10 for losing the bet and Carnegie immediately sent off the $10 off to his nephew.