What is Good Design

What Is Good Design:

• Good Is Sustainable
• Good Is Accessible
• Good Is Functional
• Good Is Well Made
• Good Is Emotionally Resonant
• Good Is Enduring
• Good Is Socially Beneficial
• Good Is Beautiful
• Good Is Ergonomic
• Good Is Affordable

"Like's" & "don't like's" in a Resume

Here is a list of "likes" and don't like's" in a Resume (found it in Guy Kawasaki's blog)

Here’s What I Like:

1. A direct style: use blunt, short words. Most resumes are scanned, not read.
2. Looks: like a middle-aged man’s apartment. Nice and tidy.
3. Objective: be direct; your objective is the job you’re applying for.
4. Verbs ending in “d”: shipped, launched, built, sold.
5. Results: not responsibilities or experience — but what responsibilities and experience helped you accomplish.
6. Bullets: 3 ñ 4 results per job.
7. Numbers: increased traffic from Google 230%, decreased ad spending 40%.
8. Grades: your GPA, even if it was ten years ago, if it’s over 3.5.
9. Reviews: ratings from your last review, especially useful if you worked for a tough grader like Microsoft
10. Honors: we’ll interview an employee-of-the-quarter, every time.
11. Promotions: if your role changes, highlight that as two jobs.
12. LinkedIn endorsements: persuasive, even from your friends; excerpted & linked.
13. A link to your blog: a blog gives you online street cred. For some, it is your resume .
14. Themes: whether you care about customer service or agile software, tell a consistent story from job to job.
15. Hobbies: I always want to meet people with fun hobbies. And that’s all a resume is: a request for a meeting. At Plumtree, we received a resume from a Playboy model. A colleague forwarded it to me with a note reading, “I’ve never asked you for anything beforeÖ” I feel the same way about cyclists.
16. Two pages, max: if you’re under 30, one page.
17. Anything you did that showed initiative or passion. Eagle Scout. Math Olympics.
18. Email to the CEO: it takes chutzpah & resourcefulness to go straight to the top. The email address is easy to guess.
19. Customization: tailor your resume & especially the cover letter to the job.
20. Completed degrees: I’ve hired plenty of folks a few credits shy of a degree. Some were great; many couldn’t finish what they started. If you have time now, finish your degree.
21. Gmail address: or your own domain. Nothing says “totally out of it” like an AOL address.

Here’s What I Don’t Like:

1. Churn: stints at two or more employers of less than two years.
2. List of generic skills: just show what you actually accomplished at each job.
3. Typos or misspellings: About half the resumes I get are addressed to “RedFin.” For the other words, spell-check!
4. Photos: my favorite was of a candidate in tennis whites with a racket.
5. “Proven”: as in “proven leadership.” We all still have something to prove.
6. Printed resumes: email a Word document, web page or PDF.
7. Buzzwords: search bots love it, actual people don’t.
8. Wordiness: yes, this is the pot calling the kettle black…

But this is just one person’s (very opinionated) opinion

Read more: "How to Change the World" - http://blog.guykawasaki.com/#ixzz09eNzK1Mf

The Cretan Runner

George Psychoundakis died on the 29 January, 2006, at Canea. His obituary appeared in the Daily Telegraph on 18 February 2006. I have included the whole obituary below. A brave man. George Psychoundakis was best known for his extraordinary account of clandestine life in the Resistance after the German occupation of his island in 1941; the book was translated into English by Patrick (now Sir Patrick) Leigh Fermor, and enjoyed success in Britain as The Cretan Runner. George Psychoundakis was born on November 3 1920 at the village of Asi Gonia, perched high in a mountain pass in central Crete. He was the eldest of four children, born to a family whose only possessions were a single-room house and a few sheep and goats.

Education at the village school was basic; but unlike most of his fellows George learnt to write as well as read, and gleaned what learning he could from books lent by the schoolteacher and the village priest. When the German invasion of Crete began, he was 21, a light , wiry, elfin figure who could move among the mountains with speed and agility. While the Germans imposed their rule with the utmost brutality, Psychoundakis was among the many who guided straggling Allied soldiers over the mountains to the south coast, from where they could be evacuated.

As the Resistance grew more organised, Psychoundakis became a runner, carrying messages, wireless sets, batteries and weapons between villages and secret wireless stations, always on foot, always in danger, often exhausted and hungry, over some of the most precipitous terrain in Europe. It was gruelling work, but in an interview many years later Psychoundakis made light of the hundreds of miles he covered at a run: "I felt as if I were flying, so light and easy - just like drinking a cup of coffee."

Patrick Leigh Fermor, one of a handful of SOE officers whose job it was to co-ordinate the Cretan resistance, first met Psychoundakis at the end of July 1942 in a rocky hide-out above the village of Vaphe. The messages Psychoundakis was carrying were twisted into tiny billets and hidden away in his clothes: "They were produced," wrote Leigh Fermor, "with a comic kind of conjuror's flourish, after grotesquely furtive glances over the shoulder and fingers laid on lips in a caricature of clandestine security precautions that made us all laugh." His clothes were in rags, one of his patched boots was held together with a length of wire - but his humour and cheerfulness were infectious. Humour and danger went hand in hand. Psychoundakis told how a couple of German soldiers decided to help him with an overladen donkey, whish was carrying a heavy wireless set under bags of wheat. The Germans beat the poor creature so hard that Psychoundakis was afraid they would knock off the saddle-bags but mercifully their attention was drawn to some village girls, and the soldiers started flirting with them instead. He also describes British officers with wry amusement - one had "pyjamas, a washbasin, and a thousand and two mysterious objects. He wore a row of medals on his breast, and had a rucksack full of geological books which he studied all day long."

At the same time, the harshness of everyday life was ever-present. Near starvation at one point with another SOE officer, Jack Smith-Hughes, Psychoundakis described how they picked broken snail shells off blades of grass and ate them, pretending that each was more delicious than the last. A bed of springy branches in a dry cave was a luxury: George spent many a night freezing on a rain-soaked mountainside, listening out for German search-parties, knowing what they would do if he were caught. Tales of torture, burning villages and summary executions were all too familiar. On the one occasion he visited England, in 1955, Psychoundakis was awarded the King's Medal for Courage in the Cause of Freedom. yet at the end of the war, the Greek authorities had taken a very different view of the man who had done so much for the Cretan resistance. Psychoundakis's paperwork was not in order, so he was arrested and imprisoned as a deserter.

Months of bitterness, misery and humiliation followed in the jails of Piraeus and Macedonia. In the end he was released, though there was little comfort for him at home. His family's flock had been stolen during the Occupation, they were poorer than ever, and Psychoundakis was now the chief bread-winner. When Leigh Fermor caught up with him for a few days in Crete in 1951, he was working as a charcoal burner. He told Leigh Fermor, who recorded their meeting in the introduction to The Cretan Runner, that while in prison he had begun to write down everything he could remember about the Occupation. On his release he got a job building roads, and lived in a little cave in the hills. Here he continued his writing by the light of an oil-lamp. Leigh Fermor asked if he could see the results. "Without a word he dived into his knap-sack, fished out five thick exercise books tied in a bundle, and handed them over." As he read them, Leigh Fermor recognised Psychoundakis's manuscript as a unique document and made up his mind to translate it. At a time when dozens of books by ex-officers were filling the bookshops, this was one of the first to reveal the occupation from the point of view of the local inhabitant - and the fact that it was written with such truthfulness and honesty made it all the more impressive. The book appeared first in English, translated by Leigh Fermor, in 1955. It was published in Hungarian in 1981, and in Greek in 1986.

Psychoundakis's resilient sense of humour never failed, though bouts of bad luck continued to dog his life. With the money he earned from The Cretan Runner he bought some grazing land, and became immediately embroiled in a dispute with neighbours - "but if I'd bought land by the sea, I'd be a rich man now!" In later years he looked after the German cemetery in Canea. A German War Graves Commissioner came to see it one day, and was impressed by how well Psychoundakis looked after it- though he was surprised that he spoke no German. "Well, there's not much opportunity to learn it here," said Psychoundakis. "All the Germans I look after are dead."

He never stopped reading and writing. After The Cretan Runner he wrote a book on the island's legends and customs, Eagle's Nest in Crete, and translated Hesiod's Georgic Works and Days. His most ambitious project was the translation of The Odyssey from other prose translations into Cretan verse, based on the pattern of The Erotokritos. This celebrated 17th-century Cretan epic, composed in rhyming couplets of 15 syllables, rivals Homer in length - though Psychoundakis's father, despite being illiterate, could recite it word-perfect. When he had finished, Patrick Leigh Fermor asked what he was going to do next: "He looked surprised at the question, and answered, "Oh, The Iliad." For his translations of Homer, Psychoundakis was honoured by the Academy of Athens.

George Psychoundakis is survived by his wife Sofia, their son and two daughters.

Patrick Leigh Fermor writes:

George was a one-off, as they say. Nobody was remotely like him. Touchstone and Ariel spring to mind, and there is a dash of Kim. It was the oddity, independence, charm, curiosity and imagination that gave him the cover-name of "Changeling" in our dispatches from Crete. It seemed strange that someone so inventive could, when he took pen in hand, be so truthful, and it was puzzling that the war-like but unlettered mountain-world could give birth to anyone so gifted. His pluck, flair and defiance of fatigue and danger were of the greatest help in many contingencies, particularly in rushing signals from cave after cave arranging the departure of General Kreipe. He was happiest when writing. His last work was a poetic dialogue with Charon who, in modern Greek folklore, is not only the ferryman of the Styx, but also Death himself. We never lost touch.

Three things you need if you want more customers

From Seth's blog:

If you want to grow, you need new customers. And if you want new customers, you need three things:

1. A group of possible customers you can identify and reach.
2. A group with a problem they want to solve using your solution.
3. A group with the desire and ability to spend money to solve that problem.

You'd be amazed at how often new businesses or new ventures have none of these. The first one is critical, because if you don't have permission, or knowledge, or word of mouth, you're invisible.

The Zune didn't have #2.

A service aimed at creating videos for bestselling authors doesn't have #1.

And a counseling service helping people cut back on Big Mac consumption doesn't have #3.

Warren Buffet's Acquisition criteria

This is from the BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY INC.2008 annual report:

We are eager to hear from principals or their representatives about businesses that meet all of the following criteria:

1. Large purchases (at least $75 million of pre-tax earnings, unless the business will fit into one of our existing units),
2. Demonstrated consistent earning power (future projections are of no interest to us, nor are “turnaround” situations),
3. Businesses earning good returns on equity while employing little or no debt,
4. Management in place (we can’t supply it),
5. Simple businesses (if there’s lots of technology, we won’t understand it),
6. An offering price (we don’t want to waste by talking, even preliminarily, about a transaction when price is unknown).

The larger the company, the greater will be our interest: We would like to make an acquisition in the $5-20 billion range.
We are not interested, however, in receiving suggestions about purchases we might make in the general stock market.
We will not engage in unfriendly takeovers.
We can promise complete confidentiality and a very fast answer—customarily within five minutes as to whether we’re interested. We prefer to buy for cash, but will consider issuing stock when we receive as much in intrinsic business value as we give.
We don’t participate in auctions.

comment: a good guide if you had a lot of cash!

The 19 Es of EXCELLENCE

• Enthusiasm. (Be an irresistible force of nature!)
• Energy. (Be fire! Light fires!)
• Exuberance. (Vibrate—cause earthquakes!)
• Execution. (Do it! Now! Get it done! Barriers are baloney! Excuses are for wimps! Accountability is gospel! Adhere to the Bill Parcells doctrine: "Blame nobody! Expect nothing! Do something!")
• Empowerment. (Respect and appreciation rule! Always ask, "What do you think?" Then listen! Then let go and liberate! Then celebrate!)
• Edginess. (Perpetually dancing at the frontier, and a little or a lot beyond.)
• Enraged. (Determined to challenge & change the status quo!)
• Engaged. (Addicted to MBWA/Managing By Wandering Around. In touch. Always.)
• Electronic. (Partners with the world 60/60/24/7 via electronic community building and entanglement of every sort. Crowdsourcing rules!)
• Encompassing. (Relentlessly pursue diverse opinions—the more diversity the merrier! Diversity per se "works"!)
• Emotion. (The alpha. The omega. The essence of leadership. The essence of sales. The essence of marketing. The essence. Period. Acknowledge it.)
• Empathy. (Connect, connect, connect with others' reality and aspirations! "Walk in the other person’s shoes"—until the soles have holes!)
• Experience. (Life is theater! Make every activity-contact memorable! Standard: "Insanely Great"/Steve Jobs; "Radically Thrilling"/BMW.)
• Eliminate. (Keep it simple!)
• Errorprone. (Ready! Fire! Aim! Try a lot of stuff and make a lot of booboos and then try some more stuff and make some more booboos—all of it at the speed of light!)
• Evenhanded. (Straight as an arrow! Fair to a fault! Honest as Abe!)
• Expectations. (Michelangelo: "The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." Amen!)
• Eudaimonia. (Pursue the highest of human moral purpose—the core of Aristotle's philosophy. Be of service. Always.)
• Excellence. (The only standard! Never an exception! Start now! No excuses! If not Excellence, what? If not Excellence now, when?)

Are you a professional?

"So learn this as a first lesson about life. The only successful beings in any field, including living itself, are those who have a professional viewpoint and make themselves and ARE professionals" — L. Ron Hubbard

• A professional learns every aspect of the job. An amateur skips the learning process whenever possible.
• A professional carefully discovers what is needed and wanted. An amateur assumes what others need and want.
• A professional looks, speaks and dresses like a professional. An amateur is sloppy in appearance and speech.
• A professional keeps his or her work area clean and orderly. An amateur has a messy, confused or dirty work area.
• A professional is focused and clear-headed. An amateur is confused and distracted.
• A professional does not let mistakes slide by. An amateur ignores or hides mistakes.
• A professional jumps into difficult assignments. An amateur tries to get out of difficult work.
• A professional completes projects as soon as possible. An amateur is surrounded by unfinished work piled on top of unfinished work.
• A professional remains level-headed and optimistic. An amateur gets upset and assumes the worst.
• A professional handles money and accounts very carefully. An amateur is sloppy with money or accounts.
• A professional faces up to other people’s upsets and problems. An amateur avoids others’ problems.
• A professional uses higher emotional tones: Enthusiasm, cheerfulness, interest, contentment. An amateur uses lower emotional tones: anger, hostility, resentment, fear, victim.
• A professional persists until the objective is achieved. An amateur gives up at the first opportunity.
• A professional produces more than expected. An amateur produces just enough to get by.
• A professional produces a high-quality product or service. An amateur produces a medium-to-low quality product or service.
• A professional earns high pay. An amateur earns low pay and feels it’s unfair.
• A professional has a promising future. An amateur has an uncertain future.

The first step to making yourself a professional is to decide you ARE a professional.

Are you a professional?

Good boss - bad boss

Tool Kit

Good Boss, Bad Boss. Which Are You?

By PAUL B. BROWN

Maybe it is not them.

If employee turnover and absenteeism within the company are too high, and productivity and morale too low, the person in charge may be the one at fault.

To find out how good — or bad — a boss you are, the National Federation of Independent Business, a small business advocacy group, suggests asking yourself these questions:

1. Have you ever publicly criticized an employee?

2. Do you take credit for your employees’ work?

3. Do your employees fear you?

4. Do you expect employees to do what you tell them without question?

5. Do you believe employees should know what to do without you telling them or providing guidelines?

6. Are you a yeller?

7. Do you demean employees as a form of punishment?

8. Do you play favorites?

9. Do you hate delegating?

10. Do you check everyone’s work?

According to the answer key, the more “yes” answers, the greater the likelihood you are a bad boss.

A SHORT CHECKLIST Given that Trevor Gay wrote a book called “Simplicity Is the Key” it is not surprising that he has come up with a basic list of the differences between good and bad bosses.

¶ “Inspired confidence

¶ Were humble

¶ Had integrity

¶ Knew what they were talking about

¶ Let me get on with things

¶ Were always there when I needed help

¶ Usually said, ‘Yes, try it.’”

His worst bosses, he said, had these deficiencies:

¶ “Never seemed to be around when I needed them

¶ Always asked me to justify what I wanted to do

¶ Always wanted to know what I was doing

¶ Often said ‘no, we can’t do that’

¶ Gave the impression of being distrustful

¶ Didn’t smile much

¶ Talked about themselves a lot.”

HOW TO BE A BAD BOSS Paul Lemberg, an executive coach, has compiled a list of ways weak bosses can hinder an employee’s performance.

His advice to those bosses is to "stop immediately," if they are doing any of the following:

¶ You don't give employees a clear and compelling company direction. When people align themselves with the company’s goals, they are free to invent, to improvise, to innovate, to inspire each other.

¶ You say important things only once. If the message is important, it is worth repeating.

¶ You don’t hold employees accountable.

¶ You concentrate on trying to improve employees’ shortcomings. “Bad bosses waste too much energy on employee makeovers. Don’t worry about weaknesses — instead, figure out what employees are really good at and train them to be brilliant.”

TAKE THE QUIZ Working America, which is affiliated with the A.F.L.-C.I.O., writes on its Web site that it works “against wrong-headed priorities favoring the rich and corporate special interests over America’s well-being.”

That apparently does not keep them from having a sense of humor.

The organization has created a 10-question quiz to help employees figure how bad their boss is.

The quiz presents a situation and then asks if it sounds “like something your boss would do.”

For example, “someone in your family has died unexpectedly,” it says. “You are devastated, but feel touched when your normally cheap boss sends flowers to the funeral. The next month you find out your boss has taken the money for flowers out of your paycheck.”

The Web site says questions like this one are based on real events.

LAST CALL Writing in Inc., Leigh Buchanan offers several signs to bosses that their employees probably hate them. These are our two favorites:

“You never see people walk by. Employees would rather circumnavigate the entire office to get to the coffee machine or bathroom than take the shortcut past your door and risk being invited in.”

Employees do not volunteer for the boss’s pet projects. It could be because the idea is bad, and they are afraid to say that. Or the idea may be good, but they are petrified of what will happen if they let the boss down. Or since it is the boss’s pet project, he will probably work on it as well. “Which means more time spent ...gulp ...with you.”

Business strategy: the 48 things that matter

An excellent framework for any business

The Heart of Business Strategy:
48 Things That Matter

by Tom Peters

• "Thank you." Minimum several times a day. Measure it.
• "Thank you" to everyone even peripherally involved in some activity—especially those "deep in the hierarchy."
• Smile. Work on it.
• Apologize. Even if "they" are "mostly" to blame.
• Jump all over those who play the "blame game."
• Hire enthusiasm.
• Low enthusiasm: No hire. Any job.
• Hire optimists. Everywhere. ("Positive outlook on life," not mindless optimism.)
• Hiring: Would you like to go to lunch with him-her. 100% of jobs.
• Hire for good manners.
• Do not reject "trouble makers"—that is those who are uncomfortable with the status quo.
• Expose all would-be hires to something unexpected-weird. Observe their reaction.
• Overwhelm response to even the smallest screw-ups.
• Become a student of all you will meet with. Big time.
• Hang out with interesting new people. Measure it.
• Lunch with folks in other functions. Measure it.
• Listen. Hear. Become a serious student of listening-hearing.
• Work on everyone's listening skills. Practice.
• Become a student of information extraction-interviewing.
• Become a student of presentation giving. Formal. Short and spontaneous.
• Incredible care in 1st line supervisor selection.
• World's best training for 1st line supervisors.
• Construct small leadership opportunities for junior people within days of starting on the job.
• Insane care in all promotion decisions.
• Promote "people people" for all managerial jobs. Finance-logistics-R&D as much as, say, sales.
• Hire-promote for demonstrated curiosity. Check their past commitment to continuous learning.
• Small "d" diversity. Rich mixes for any and all teams.
• Hire women. Roughly 50% women on exec team.
• Exec team "looks like" customer population, actual and desired.
• Focus on creating products for and selling to women.
• Focus on creating products for and selling to boomers-geezers.
• Work on first and last impressions.
• Walls display tomorrow's aspirations, not yesterday's accomplishments.
• Simplify systems. Constantly.
• Insist that almost all material be covered by a 1-page summary. Absolutely no longer.
• Practice decency.
• Add "We are thoughtful in all we do" to corporate values list. Number 1 force for customer loyalty, employee satisfaction.
• Make some form of employee growth (for all) a formal part of values set. Above customer satisfaction. Steal from RE/MAX: "We are a life success company."
• Flowers.
• Celebrate "small wins." Often. Perhaps a "small win of the day."
• Manage your calendar religiously: Does it accurately reflect your espoused priorities?
• Use a "calendar friend" who's not very friendly to help you with this.
• Review your calendar: Work assiduously on your "To don'ts"—stuff that distracts.
• Bosses, especially near the top: Formally cultivate one advisor whose role is to tell you the truth. Regularly!
• Commit to Excellence.
• Talk up Excellence.
• Put "Excellence in all we do" in the values set.
• Measure everyone on demonstrated commitment to Excellence.

Leadership from TRIBES

Insights on Leadership from Seth Godin's book TRIBES:

“In other words, if everyone could do it [be a leader], they would, and it wouldn’t be worth much.

It’s uncomfortable to stand up in front of strangers.
It’s uncomfortable to propose an idea that might fail.
It’s uncomfortable to challenge the status quo.
It’s uncomfortable to resist the urge to settle.

If you’re not uncomfortable in your work as a leader, it’s almost certain you’re not reaching your potential as a leader.

Leadership is a choice. It’s the choice to not do nothing."