When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.

Alexander Graham Bell

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.

• Albert Einstein –

Because men, when they think of women’s fashion at all, tend to see it only in terms of how it makes them feel—whether it arouses, confuses, or repels them—rather than considering what it makes a woman feel.

A man’s guide to a woman’s wardrobe

Make Mantra

Organizations need guideposts. They need an outline; employees need to know each day when they wake up why they’re going to work. This outline should be short and sweet, and all encompassing: Why do you exist? What motivates you? I call this a mantra — a three or four-word description of why you exist.

—Guy Kawasaki, author (from Make Mantra)

Whiteboard philosophy

Andy Hunt and I once wrote a debit card transaction switch. A major requirement was that the user of a debit card shouldn’t have the same transaction applied to their account twice. In other words, no matter what sort of failure mode might happen, the error should be on the side of not processing a transaction rather than processing a duplicate transaction.

So, we wrote it on our shared whiteboard in big letters: Err in favor of users.

It joined about half-a-dozen other maxims. Jointly, these guided all those tricky decisions you make while building something complex. Together, these laws gave our application strong internal coherence and great external consistency.

—Dave Thomas, The Pragmatic Programmers

“– The Board should not evaluate the CEO based on the company’s performance, but instead on the firm’s strategic risk profile — The CEO should not drive results, but manage uncertainty — Business unit leaders should not focus on execution, but on making strategic choices — Line managers should not worry about strategic risk, but devote themselves to delivering on commitments.”

-principle of Requisite Uncertainty-

The Strategy Paradox: Why committing to success leads to failure (and what to do about it)
By Michael E. Raynor

The bakery

American business at this point is really about developing an idea, making it profitable, selling it while it’s profitable and then getting out or diversifying. It’s just about sucking everything up. My idea was: Enjoy baking, sell your bread, people like it, sell more. Keep the bakery going because you’re making good food and people are happy.

—Ian MacKaye, member of Fugazi and co-owner of Dischord Records
(from Salon.com People | Ian MacKaye)