Novels To Films - The GodFather - Once Upon A Screen....

My Learnings from the Book - The Godfather #Books #Reading...

Here's a look at Coppola's heavily-annotated copy of Mario Puzo's novel to give you a glimpse of the level of detail he poured into converting the Godfather book into a cinematic masterpiece: 

And since “an offer he can’t refuse” has been repeated ad nauseam in every hacky review of Coppola's otherwise entertaining stocking stuffer, we thought it’d be nice to shed some light on the lesser-known life (and business!) lessons within his three-part saga, 

(four if you count the Modern Family tribute.)

On negotiating

“Luca Brasi held a gun to his head and my father assured him that either his brains or his signature would be on the contract.” -- Michael Corleone, Book I

On health benefits

“I’d give 4 million just to be able to take a piss without it hurting.” -- Hyman Roth, Book II

On risk variables

“In Sicily, women are more dangerous than shotguns.” -- Calo, Book I

On pivoting

“I’ve lost the lust for women and now my mind is clear.” -- Don Altobello, Book III

On getting ahead in business without really dying

“If history has taught us anything, it’s that you can kill anybody.” -- Michael Corleone, Book II

On cause and effect

“You touch my sister again, I’ll kill you.” -- Sonny Corleone, Book I

On unexpected growth 

“You know Michael, now that you’re so respectable, I think you’re more dangerous than ever.” -- Kay Corleone, Book III

On healthy competition

“I don’t feel like I have to wipe everyone out, Tom. Just my enemies.” -- Michael Corleone, Book II

On strategizing

“Never hate your enemies, it affects your judgment.” -- Michael Corleone, Book III

On consulting

“Never tell anyone outside the family what you are thinking again.” -- Vito Corleone, Book I

On business planning

“I don’t want anything to happen to [my brother, Fredo,] while his mother’s alive.” -- Michael Corleone, Book II

On investment goals 

“And may your first child be a masculine child.” -- Luca Brasi, Book I

On life-work balance

“Don’t ask me about my business, Kay.” -- Michael Corleone, Book I

Tired of Wasting Time in Meetings? Try this ....

A friend of mine says people hate meetings because:

1. They don’t start on time..
2. The don’t finish on time..
3. What’s in the middle is a waste of time!

It’s true--many meetings are a waste of time! Unproductive meetings can cost your business big time. 5 people x 1 hour = 5 hours. Multiply that by everyone’s hourly value. You better be increasing production or don’t hold it.


It's not just the wasted hours, it’s the lost production time. Unnecessary meetings are a double loss, when they are not effective...


Here’s a few tips on how to have shorter and more effective meetings:

1. Define the purpose of the meeting.
2. Define the outcome of the meeting.
3. Have a timed agenda and someone in charge.
4. Facts--not opinions!
5. Keep people on-point. (Only talk about matters relating to their job)

Let’s take each point:

1. Define the purpose of the meeting.

Why are we holding this meeting? If you can’t answer that, don’t hold it.
Here are some examples but you can make it whatever you want for your business:
Weekly Sales Meeting:
-To set targets and coordinate the sales team for increased sales for the week.
-To help the salespeople with their deals so they can sell more.
Director’s Meeting:
To set an agreed list of essential targets for completion across the business for the coming month. To fix responsibility for these targets and dates for their execution.

 2. Define the outcome of the meeting.

An outcome is something of value. It is finished. It will be closely aligned to the purpose.
You should work toward the outcome as you are holding the meeting.
Example:
Business Development outcome:
An understanding of the person/business and it’s challenges.
Understanding of you and your business.
Mutually beneficial opportunities identified.
It also could be: You have identified if they are a "now" prospect, a “later" prospect, or a “never” prospect.
Of course a "profitable sale to the prospect's requirements" could also be an outcome!

3. Have a timed agenda and someone in charge.

This may apply more so to internal meetings.
Your meetings will go out of control someone doesn’t control it! Someone should be totally responsible for obtaining the outcome of the meeting.
For a management meeting it could go like this:
9am - Review last month’s sales, income and delivery.
9:20 - Recommend action items to increase sales, income and delivery.
9:40 - Review strategic plan and ensure action items align to it.
10am - End of meeting

4. Facts--not opinions!

Opinions will de-rail a meeting and waste your time more effectively than anything else, particularly if from someone who’s job it’s not! (See point 5).
Insist people come with their figures, their plans, what was done, what was not done, Their solutions to increase production etc. Challenges WITH solutions.
No one wants to listen to 10 minutes explaining why they didn’t do their job.
Someone who doesn’t mind hurrying people up and cutting people off if they are off-topic should run the meeting to the agenda.

5. Keep people on-point. (Only talk about matters relating to their job)

Simple but highly effective.
Don’t let the Sales Manager talk about how Production should be delivering.
The National Sales manager should talk about what deals they are going to get closed and what is needed to get them closed.
Production Manager should present facts relating to his area…
Coordination between different departments and roles is a vital function of meetings and you’ll get more of it if you stick to this point.

Until next time, may your meetings start on time... finish on time... and be a good use of time!


Moreover, Effective meetings contributed to these results: See case studies here.

Ethics is About Choices ...

The Dilemma of “Doing Things Right” OR “Doing the Right Thing”

7 years ago when I decided to pursue HR as a profession, I honestly had no clue about what I was getting into! Like every rookie, my cliché response for choosing HR was “I am a people’s person & I love working with people”. Today when I look back, I laugh at myself for being so naive. HR has definitely come a long way from the times when it actually originated during the Industrial Revolution. The foundation of large factories in the 18th century, increased a demand for the workforce significantly. The body of HR came into existence to take care of these people. It had the responsibility for the implementation of different social and workplace safety programs, because workers/employees were not treated well.

This is quite fascinating to me personally because no matter however we evolve in this journey & whatever new roles are created in the future; the foundation will always be the ‘well-being of employees’. I believe that we become passionate about something when it gives us a deeper meaning & when we genuinely feel happy doing it. HR for me turned into a passion from just being a profession at that very moment when I realized the possibilities of making a difference in another person’s life. There are times in everybody’s careers when you have to choose between just quietly doing your job or standing up for what is right. Being in HR I can tell you that these moments are a regular occurrence; but again it also depends from person to person based on what option they choose. However, I have always focused on doing the right thing & it has helped me grow both personally & professionally.

Some of the things which I have learnt from my experience are as follows:

• Business folks are left brain people – they understand only logic & data. HR folks are right brain people – they are intuitive & gut driven. We need to understand business language & produce proof of concepts in the language the business understands best.

• The true meaning of being STRATEGIC is “Helping business to be future ready” – Tell them now not later!

• Top down changes are easy i.e. if it flows from the leadership. Bottom up changes are tough & to convince the business, as HR we must run a pilot & show the success rates. If you believe something is right, then stick to it & don’t drop the ball. Automatically, business buys in will happen when they see positive changes on the ground.

• It’s easy to sit on the side-lines & comment on the game. But if you truly want to partner with the business – then get on the field & be a part of the game yourself. That is when you actually understand the pain of your people.

• Our true north should always be – ‘Happy People’. If your people are happy, your customers will automatically be happy. In other words, understand people experience to transform customer experience.

Anybody can just stick to doing their daily jobs but trust me ‘Doing the right thing’ is definitely a lot tougher. That path will never be easy because every human being has an opinion & Darwin’s law is all about survival of the fittest. But in the role of an HR we must ensure that everybody gets an equal shot at things & that we focus on being ‘FAIR’ rather than being NICE. True job satisfaction comes from the fact that we made an impact in another person’s life & in ensuring that we created an amazing work environment where they could reach their maximum potential. At the end of the day, we were & will always be the “Conscience Keepers" of the organization.

People size up in seconds, but what exactly are they evaluating?

People Judge you based on 2 criteria when they first meet you…

People size up in seconds, but what exactly are they evaluating?

Harvard Business School professor Amy Cuddy has been studying first impressions alongside fellow psychologists Susan Fiske and Peter Glick for more than 15 years, and has discovered patterns in these interactions.

In her new book “Presence ," Cuddy says people quickly answer two questions when they first meet you:

• Can I trust this person?
• Can I respect this person?

Psychologists refer to these dimensions as warmth and competence respectively, and ideally you want to be perceived as having both.

Interestingly, Cuddy says that most people, especially in a professional context, believe that competence is the more important factor. After all, they want to prove that they are smart and talented enough to handle your business.

But in fact warmth, or trustworthiness, is the most important factor in how people evaluate you. "From an evolutionary perspective," Cuddy says, "it is more crucial to our survival to know whether a person deserves our trust." It makes sense when you consider that in cavemen days it was more important to figure out if your fellow man was going to murder you and steal all your possessions than if he was competent enough to build a good fire.

While competence is highly valued, Cuddy says it is evaluated only after trust is established. And focusing too much on displaying your strength can backfire.

Cuddy says MBA interns are often so concerned about coming across as smart and competent that it can lead them to skip social events, not ask for help, and generally come off as unapproachable. These overachievers are in for a rude awakening when they don't get the job offer because nobody got to know and trust them as people.

"If someone you're trying to influence doesn't trust you, you're not going to get very far; in fact, you might even elicit suspicion because you come across as manipulative," Cuddy says. "A warm, trustworthy person who is also strong elicits admiration, but only after you've established trust does your strength become a gift rather than a threat."

Aristotelian Guidelines To The Best HR Practices

“In a word, acts of any kind produce habits or characters of the same kind. Hence we ought to make sure that our acts are of a certain kind; for the resulting character varies as they vary. It makes no small difference, therefore, whether a man be trained in his youth up in this way or that, but a great difference, or rather all the difference.”

—Aristotle, the Nicomachean Ethics

There’s a lot to be said for reading the works of history’s greatest thinkers

Not only do they offer timeless insights into subjects as weighty as human happiness, just law, and the meaning of life, but they offer lessons for other, more concrete pursuits.

Like human resources.

Aristotle, the famous Greek philosopher born in 384 BC, was a pupil of Plato, and a tutor to Alexander the Great.  His writings cover everything from biology and astronomy, to ethics and physics, and all are fascinating, supremely well-reasoned foundations of the Western Canon.

And HR professionals can learn a lot from them; not only in their piercing insight into human nature, but also the logical, structured thinking they represent.

Here are some big HR best practices you can glean from reading Aristotle:

1. Use technology

Aristotle was no stranger to the high technology of his day (which he termed “techne” or “craft”), including water mills, piston pumps, and astrolabes.

He viewed technology not just as a crude imitation of nature, but as humanity reaching beyond nature to accomplish much more than we otherwise could.  From his book, Physics:

Generally [technology] in some cases completes what nature cannot bring to a finish, and in others imitates nature.

He understood the force multiplier effect of technology, and why it could have such a great impact on a business.  For instance, consider his musings on automation technology, from his Politics:

For if every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others, like the statues of Daedalus, or the tripods of Hephaestus, which, says the poet, “of their own accord entered the assembly of the Gods;” if, in like manner, the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters’ slaves.

While I hope your company isn’t considering slavery as a way to cut labor costs, his point about the power of automation is striking.

And for HR professionals there are tons of technological options to help them do their jobs, even above and beyond the usual HR software suspects.

2. Invest in training

Aristotle understood the importance of continuous learning for a happy, productive, and fulfilled life.  In his seminal philosophic work, The Nicomachean Ethics, he posits:

The activity of philosophic wisdom is admittedly the pleasantest of virtuous activities; at all events the pursuit of it is thought to offer pleasures marvelous for their purity and their enduringness.

Your HR department, to be successful, needs a robust, thoughtfully planned training process.  

The things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them, e.g. men become builders by building and lyre-players by playing the lyre.

3. Use the right incentives

Aristotle was a keen observer of human nature, and built many of his most famous philosophical conclusions off what he observed to be true in the society of his time.  It’s no surprise, then, that he had a deep understanding of why people do what they do.  In The Nicomachean Ethics he noted:

The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.

Incentivizing and motivating employees is a key piece of the HR puzzle, but Aristotle was clear that money is not a great motivator.  

 Other ways to motivate employees include flexibility, recognition, and ownership.

Other ancient HR best practices?

Have you unearthed more advice from ancient sources to help HR professionals?  Are you more of a Plato-fan?  Add your thoughts in the comments!

A Good One-Page Snap-Shot on Problem Solving !!

Dear Mom I Adore You ....

I dedicate this poem to my sweet mom who has been my inspiration for almost everything I do. She tries her best to give my family and I everything and I want to be just like her :))

I want to say so many things;

I don't know how to start.

I want to capture and describe

The feelings of my heart.

But words are so inadequate

To tell you how I feel

That scarcely any thing I say

Will my True thoughts reveal.

Just let it now suffice to say

That deep inside I know

My love for you is something

That I never will outgrow.

Your many special traits will always

In my heart combine

In such a way that you alone

A perfect mom define.

Your warmth and caring are the traits

That I am proudest of.

My future's brighter through

The fine example of your love.....

5 People Who Became Gods in HR! (You’ll ❤ This!)

It's so close to the holidays! Are you excited  Yes? No? Well, it doesn't matter.

 So, this holiday season,  decided to give you all a big thank you present.

That's right as a secret Santa. And the gift? A storybook. One with five stories about what made five people special in the world of HR. Five goodies, in one tight-knit present.

Just a simple link to the read...

You can find it here.  ! :)

We're All a Little Biased, Even if We Don't Know It !!

That airline is biased in favor of pilots with many hours of experience. 

Is it possible that a newbie pilot might be safer flying this jet than someone with twenty years of daily flying? Perhaps. But it's not worth the time, the money and the risk to find out. That's why you won't see a new pilot flying the 747 you're boarding. Young pilots have to put in a ton of hours because the airlines are biased.

Everyone has a bias, because that's the only way to survive in a world where we have insufficient information.

 

Bank security guards are biased against people who walk into the bank wearing a ski mask. It might be because it's cold outside, but it helps them do their job to begin each interaction with this belief.

Engineers are biased for certain suppliers or technologies. Talent bookers are biased for certain skills and demeanors.

The problem kicks in when our bias works against our goals. When our bias keeps us from exploring options that will move us forward, it needs to be replaced. When our bias cripples a society we care about, when it gets in the way of fairness, it must be re-examined.

But it's worth understanding the nuance between the bias that enables us to be successful and the one that keeps us from that very same outcome.

The best professionals are biased. And smart enough to embrace only the biases that keep them successful.

We can often believe conclusions we reach even when we know that we arrived at them in a biased way....

What Effective Leadership Have ??

Reinvention RoadMap : Break the Rules to Get the Job You Want and Career You Deserve

The old job-search rules don't work anymore -- but that's okay! There's a better way to get a great job in 2017. Liz Ryan explains how to get the job you want and career you deserve in her new book Reinvention Roadmap, available at this link : https://lnkd.in/emazZdH

Work, Cult, Culture .....

The Work Cult that has become the integral part of Life...

Some say the work is after the certain age is important after the career you accomplish. Than what? You get into a company imposed by your family, friends, closed ones. But what if you after the certain time you try to get rid of the daily module? You think of changing Jobs and looking deliberately for the task you think that suits you.

By the way my intentions are clear, work is important as the expenses of day to day life increases. Some come from rural ares to work for with the minimum wages and some hit the shortcuts to unusual behavior so that to gain more money. Does money is everything? The respect of people comes when you are into the job working delicately.

Types of Personality You Come Across 

1. Polite: Who listen up and understand and give the reviews.

2. Impulsive: They act as an impolite way without encouraging the matter of subject.

3. Aggressive: Less time they provide to make your presentations and try to find out Luke points.

4. Fluctuation: They usually jump to multiple topics during presentations.

So the Conclusion is that how you manage by judging these personalities snd I assure if you do so , You are going to remarkable on you JOB ROLE.

Finding Time for Yourself: A Spiritual Survivor's Workbook....

Inner World of Moods

         

“Give me a place to stand on," said the Greek mathematician Archimedes, “and I can move the world.” He was talking about his invention of using pulleys and levers to raise very heavy objects. A physicist, engineer, inventor, and astronomer as well, Archimedes revolutionized geometry and anticipated Integral Calculus 2,000 years before Newton and Leibniz. But he was also a practical man who invented a wide variety of machines.

In the simplest sense, his statement is also true of our inner world of moods. When I feel anger, depression or any violent reaction coming on, I could look for a position on which I can take a stand while the storm passes through me. If I could leverage my inner world out of its momentary negative hell and back to ease and contentment, what a relief that would be!

The problem is, of course, how? Once a mood has reached its full flow of expression, it’s almost impossible to change the direction of the energy that’s pouring out of me. It has to play itself out, even if it leaves me aching, exhausted and, perhaps, apologetic. But here’s where leveraging comes in: if I can bring conscious awareness to the negative reaction early enough, before it begins to take me over, and if I care enough not to waste myself on it, there’s hope. The trick is to apply leverage before that small complaining stream becomes a raging river. That way, there’s a good chance I can escape the worst of it.

Not that it’s easy. For one thing, I have to sacrifice the positive enjoyment of being angry. Most people actually love to be angry. It gives them a sense of really being there, a kind of negative “I am.” In a perverse way they feel fired up: “Look at me now! I’m enormous when I’m in a rage!” And of course there are many other negative emotions we cling to in different ways. For example, all of us are prone to being victims of self-pity, which cuts us off from our energy as it is sucked into a black hole of despair.

If we understood better the value of the energy that’s wasted, we’d be more determined to leverage bad moods into good ones. Every morning we are given enough for the day, both the jet fuel of spirit and the ordinary psycho-physical gasoline that keeps our vehicle going. However, any violent outburst or negative feeling state I allow myself to affirm will lay waste to it. Gurdjieff said that a big burst of negativity can wipe out a whole day’s energy and, if the eruption is strong enough, one could be depleted for a week, a year or even the rest of one’s life. Ominous thought!

When you go to the gym or prepare for a serious run, you probably do a little stretching first. Your muscles need warming up and you take time out for that. How about exercising your psychic musculature to develop a subtler awareness of moods and flashpoints in order to be ready to leverage yourself out of your day’s portion of negative emotions. Bad temper, impatience, irritation, despondency are habitual negative reactions that could be replaced with more positive feelings, but it’s not easy.

 

Excerpted from Patty De Llosa's book, Finding Time for Yourself: A Spiritual Survivor's Workbook.

Seed questions for reflection: How do you relate to the notion of leveraging your inner world out of its momentary negative hell and back to ease and contentment? Can you share a personal story of a time you were able to do that? What practice helps you exercise your psychic musculature to develop a subtler awareness?

People Are An Open Book. Can You Read It?

You've heard the phrase People are An Open Book. There's no enigma, no mystery, and we are at our core either easily understood or misunderstood. All one requires is time, effort and a little bit of love. Well, maybe not the love.

We've often talked about Psychometrics and the art of deciphering the innate, the indiscernible. But what of things you can see, behavior that is influenced and experienced every minute of every day. Behavior is something that is influenced by and influences the environment.

You should know how to read it, assess it, control it. Perhaps you're merely one read away from a huge first step to making your organizational functions humanely robust.

FREE ePaper to understand how you can use Behavioral Assessments to your advantage at ...

 ( http://click.mettl.com/t/em/3784/1/6d5dcf9d-f7aa-45a8-a8d6-6f74aac94e22/1547 )

 
If you do not know the difference between personality and attitude when you see and hear it, then the idea of these powerful concepts is useless to you.

Behavioural Assessments, play an important role in providing the complete picture of an individual’s capabilities and current reactions to the environment he or she is presented with. 

Mind Programming For Success

So, How do you get your Mind on your side so that it promotes your success?

You are going to absolutely love this!

Get the Free eBook & Audio Here :

Reprogram Your Brain For Success

Sabotage Behavior That Stifle Innovation ...

Many organizations say they want to be innovative. But saying you want to be innovative and creating a leadership culture that nurtures innovation are 2 different things. Far too often, we’ve seen senior leaders behave in ways that kill new ideas. The sabotage isn’t deliberate. Many leaders don’t know how to support innovation, and they fail to recognize behavior that discourages innovation. 

 

Here are 9 of the most common innovation-destroying behaviors

A true Airtel Ambassador !

Read this awesome story of Aruna's journey to become the CTO - South & East Hub in India. She leads the Network teams across 11 Circles. Aruna is an inspiration to so many people - women, engineers, and many more professionals across the Telecom world in particular and corporate world in general ! A true Airtel ambassador !

( Source : http://www.airtel.in/powerissue/aruna-pidikiti.html )

Learning To Appreciate The Things in Life

Once upon a time, there was a man who was very helpful, kindhearted, and generous. He was a man who will help someone without asking anything to pay him back. He will help someone because he wants to and he loves to. One day while walking into a dusty road, this man saw a purse, so he picked it up and noticed that the purse was empty. Suddenly a woman with a policeman shows up and gets him arrested.

The woman kept on asking where did he hide her money but the man replied, “It was empty when I found it, Mam.” The woman yelled at him, “Please give it back, It’s for my son’s school fees.” The man noticed that the woman really felt sad, so he handed all his money. He could say that the woman was a single mother. The man said, “Take these, sorry for the inconvenience.” The woman left and policeman held he man for further questioning.

The woman was very happy but when she counted her money later on, it was doubled, she was shocked. One day while woman was going to pay her son’s school fees towards the school, she noticed that some skinny man was walking behind her. She thought that he may rob her, so she approached a policeman standing nearby. He was the same policeman, who she took along to inquire about her purse. The woman told him about the man following her, but suddenly they saw that man collapsing. They ran at him, and saw that he was the same man whom they arrested few days back for stealing a purse.

He looked very weak and woman was confused. The policeman said to the woman, “He didn’t return your money, he gave you his money that day. He wasn’t the thief but hearing about you son’s school fees, he felt sad and gave you his money.” Later, they helped man stand up, and man told the woman, “Please go ahead and pay your son’s school fees, I saw you and followed you to be sure that no one steals your son’s school fees.” The woman was speechless.

Moral: Life gives you strange experiences, sometime it shocks you and sometimes it may surprise you. We end up making wrong judgments or mistakes in our anger, desperation and frustration. However, when you get a second chance, correct your mistakes and return the favor. Be Kind and Generous. Learn to Appreciate what you are given.

( Source: Anonymous )