Easy 6502

Easy 6502

• Assembly language is the lowest level of abstraction in computers -- the point at which the code is still readable.
• Assembly language translates directly to the bytes that are executed by your computer's processor.
• SP is the stack pointer.
• PC is the program counter--it's how the processor knows at what point in the program it currently is. Its like the current line number of an executing script.
• Instructions in assembly language are like a small set of predefined functions.
• The zero flag is set by all instructions where the result is zero.
• In assembly language, you'll usually use labels with branch instructions. When assembled though, this label is converted to a single-byte relative offset (a number of bytes to go backwards or forwards from the next instruction) so branch instructions can only go forward and back around 256 bytes.
• Remember that a byte is represented by two hex characters.
• The stack in a 6502 processor is just like any other stack--values are pushed onto it and popped of it. The current depth of the stack is measured by the stack pointer, a special register.
• JMP is an unconditional jump.
• JSR and RTS ("jump to subroutine" and "return from subroutine") are a dynamic duo that you'll usually see used together. JSR is used to jump from the current location to another part of the code. RTS returns to the previous position. This is basically like calling a function and returning.
• The processor knows where to return to because JSR pushes the address minus one of the next instruction onto the stack before jumping to the given location. RTS pops this location, adds one to it, and jumps to it.
• We can define descriptive constants (or symbols) that represent numbers. The rest of the code can then simply use the constants instead of the literal number, which immediately makes it obvious what we're dealing with.
• Nearly all games have at their heart a game loop. All game loops have the same basic form: accept user input, update the game state, and render the game state.

OPS Class Lecture Notes

ops-class.org : Learn Operating Systems Online

• An operating system is a computer program that multiplexes hardware resources and implements useful abstractions.
• As a computer scientist or engineer you should know how computers really work.
• Programming operating systems will make you a better programmer and improve all of your subsequent work.
• While many operating systems concepts are elegantly simple, implementing them is not.
• Find a way to iterate quickly and limit the number of untested lines.
• Break your code into small, easily tested functions.
• Abstractions simplify application design by hiding undesirable properties, adding new capabilities, and organizing information.
• Threads abstract the CPU.
• Address space abstract memory.
• Files abstract the disk.
• Processes are the most fundamental operating system abstraction.
• The OS is responsible for isolating processes from each other.
• Sharing data requires synchronization mechanisms to ensure consistency.
• Pipes create a producer-consumer buffer between two processes.
• Signals are a limited form of asynchronous communication between processes.
• Processes contain threads; threads belong to processes.
• Process life cycle:
• Birth: fork()
• Change: exec()
• Death: exit()
• The Afterlife: wait()
• File handles store the current file offset, or the position in the file that the next read will come from or the next write will go to.
• fork() is the Unix system call that creates a new process.
• The OS creates the illusion of concurrency by quickly switching the processor(s) between multiple threads.
• A race condition is "when the output of a process is unexpectedly dependent on timing or other events".
• Concurrency: the illusion that multiple things are happening all at once.
• Atomicity: the illusion that a set of separate actions occurred all at once.
• A critical section contains a series of instructions that only one thread can be executing at any given time.
• Busy waiting prevents the thread in the critical section from making progress.
• Locks protect access to shared resources.
• Deadlock occurs when a thread or set of threads are waiting for each other to finish and thus nobody ever does.
• Processes that have exited but not had their exit code collected are called zombies.
• When the CPU is in kernel mode there are special instructions that can be executed.
• Hardware interrupts are used to signal that a particular device needs attention.
• The instructions that the processor executes when an interrupt fires are called the interrupt service routine.
• Interrupts are voluntary. Exceptions are non-voluntary.
• Multiple cores have emerged as a solution to thermal- and energy- management issues caused by transistor density.
• Timer interrupts generated by a timer device ensure that the operating system regains control of the system at regular intervals.
• Timer interrupts are the basis of preemptive scheduling: the operating system doesn't wait for the thread to stop running, instead it preempts it.
• A transition between two threads is called a context switch.
• Nobody wants to work with a jerk--no matter how talented you are.
• Scheduling is the process of choosing the next thread to run on the CPU.
• How the CPU is scheduled impacts every other part of the system.
• Humans are sensitive to responsiveness and continuity.
• Normally we cannot predict the future. Instead, use the past to predict the future.
• Time multiplexing: sharing a resource by dividing up access to it over time.
• Space multiplexing: sharing a resource by dividing it into smaller pieces.
• Process layout is specified by the Executable and Linker Format (ELF) file.
• Address spaces are meant to provide a private view of memory to each process.
• Introducing another level of indirection is a classic systems technique.
• A physical address points to memory. A virtual address points to something that acts like memory.
• Dynamic memory allocation is performed by the sbrk() system call.
• Common systems trick: when something is too slow, throw a cache at it.
• Virtual address translation gives the kernel the ability to remove memory from a process behind its back.
• We call the process of moving data back and forth from memory to disk to improve memory usage swapping.
• Flash is the future. But HDDs are still around.
• Hierarchical file systems are dead. Long live search!
• File systems are really maintaining a large and complex data structure using disk blocks as storage.
• Most files are small, but some can be very large.
• Almost every file system operation involves modifying multiple disk blocks.
• File system operations that modify multiple blocks may leave the file system in an inconsistent state if partially completed.
• Most systems papers have one or two big ideas and a lot of implementation.
• Several cheap things can be better than one expensive thing.
• Operating systems leak a lot of information between processes through the file system and other channels.

You Can Read Anyone by David J. Lieberman

• Simply, a person wrongly accused will be more likely to go on the offensive, while the guilty party usually assumes a defensive posture.
• It is often said that a person looks at the world as a reflection of himself. If he sees the world as a corrupt place, he feels at some level--albeit probably unconsciously--that he is corrupt. If he sees honest working people, that is often how he sees himself.
• Projection is why the con artist is the first one to accuse another of cheating. If you are constantly being questioned about your motives or activities, the accusations should set off alarm bells in your mind.
• Language powerfully impacts how we perceive and, consequently, feel about what we hear.
• In a subtle way, sometimes even unconsciously, the language a person uses reveals if he is concerned you will not like, accept, or believe the news.
• Self-esteem is often confused with confidence, but the two are quite different. The distinction is very important. Confidence is how effective a person feels within a specific area or situation, while self-esteem is defined by ho much a person "likes" himself and how worthy he feels of receiving good things in life. Simply, a person can feel good about himself yet not feel positive about his chances under certain circumstances, and vice-versa.
• A person's confidence in a particular situation is based on a variety of factors: previous performance, experiences, feedback, and comparisons.
• Self-esteem and confidence are distinct psychological forces, and both impact the overall psyche differently.
• When we are anxious or stressed, our ability to focus is often diminished.
• The real secret to reading someone's confidence level lies not in observation but in filtering out the signs intended to give the impression of confidence.
• When we are nervous, we take things more literally. When we lack confidence in a situation, our mind tries to get its bearings, and we often cannot see beyond face value.
• A confident person is able to focus on the objective, and the "I" disappears. A nervous person has an ego consuming his thoughts because of fear, worry, and anxiety, and he can't help but focus on himself. He's literally self-aware of everything he says and does.
• A person engaging in perception-management generally over-compensates. If you look for it, it is glaringly obvious. Remember, the confident person is not interested in how he is coming across. He is unconcerned with his image, unlike his perception-management counterpart, who is consumed by other's impressions of him.
• Any superfluous gesture in a serious situation is a sign that someone is trying to act calm and confident.
• When caught in fear, we regress step by step to ever more infantile and animalistic drives.
• Our world, and how we interact with it, is largely determined by our own perceptions and our perceptions are anchored in our self-contempt--the way we see ourselves.
• Generally speaking, the more optimistic a person is about her future, the more forgiving she is of the past. The principle is most evident in situations when the past is directly associated with the future.
• Mood is rarely indicative of a person's present situation; it is more often a function of the future and sometimes the past.
• Our ability to gauge whether a person is interested is not difficult, if we can see clearly. The problem is, the more we want something to work out the less accurate our ability to objectively discern another person's interest.
• Remember this general rule of thumb: people act in their own best interest.
• The basic premise is this: a persons interested in something or someone wants more information than someone not so interested.
• A person's confidence is inversely proportional to his interest level.
• The more interested we are in something or someone, the more consumed and concerned we will be with our ability to obtain the object of our interests. Our perspective narrows, and we become hyper-focused. We observe interest through the lens of confidence and vice-versa.
• Remember, the greater someone's perspective, the more clearly he sees reality; the opposite is also true. By artificially narrowing someone's perspective, the less clearly he sees, forcing him to run toward what he wants.
• One important criterion defining a friend is how interested the person is in your life.
• Lots of people are willing to "cheer you up" when things aren't going well, but it's more difficult to find someone who will congratulate you when things are going well.
• A true friend tells you what you don't want to hear.
• Strong emotions cloud our perception of reality.
• A person seeking t manipulate or control others almost always presents the image of a "helpful" person.
• Emotional states are either self-induced, externally caused, or a combination of the two.
• Look and listen objectively not only to the words but also to the message.
• When emotions creep into your thinking, temporarily suspend your feelings and look in front of you, not inside yourself.
• Within human beings, three inner forces exist, often at odds with each other: the soul (our conscience), the ego, and the body. The soul seeks to do what is right; the ego (or lower soul) wants to be right; and the body just wants to escape fro all of it.
• In short, the body wants to do what feels good; the ego wants to do what looks good; and the soul wants to do what is good.
• True freedom is not about being able to do whatever we feel like doing; rather, it is about being able to do what we truly want to do, in spite of what we feel like doing at the moment.
• By definition, low self-esteem means a person does not feel in control. Remember, self-respect comes from self-control, so any circumstance robbing him of his freedom takes away his last vestige of control.
• In the person who feels disrespected or out of control, a lack of self-respect causes an out-of-proportion response to any situation.
• A person who doesn't get along well with anyone may be harmless, but he can also be dangerous. Either way, be alert, particularly if he has a penchant for violence as illuminated in the previous two sections.
• Our personality is basically an interface between the world and us, and how we relate. But, because both the person and his world are in a constant state of flux, it can be difficult to get a consistently accurate read using personality-typing.
• Human nature is the hardware running the program we call "thought"--input in, input out. It does the same thing every time, based upon the commands entered. Although rarely simple, it is an equation nonetheless, once you understand the psychology behind the commands.
• You can tell what someone is thinking because, in reality, he's not thinking. Outside of real creative though, human beings are actually forced into conclusions about how and what they see. What often passes for thought is really a response based on emotionally pre-programmed choices.
• Ninety-nine percent of human actions are irrational.
• Being right becomes more of an emotional priority than doing what is right.
• A person's instinct is to protect the psychological self, in much the same way, you protect your physical self. As you will go to great lengths to protect your body from harm, you also seek to protect your self-image.
• When your physical self is threatened, you engage in what is referred to as the "fight-or-flight" response. Similarly, when your psychological self is threatened, the mind engages in what is called the "accept-or-deflect" response.
• Everything we experience shapes us--either by adding to self-esteem or subtracting from it.
• Human beings are wired to be pleasure seekers. By the nature of reality, pleasure is attached to meaning. Therefore, when we do what is right--and seek meaning over temporary gratification--we gain pleasure; when we do not, we feel depressed, anxious and suffer from poor relationships.
• The pleasure/pain mechanism is what keeps us moving in the right direction.
• The less ego someone has the more reality he sees. Thus, he makes better choices because he can see clearly what's in his best interest and is more meaningful and pleasurable.
• The more engaged in life you are, the more meaningful and thus pleasurable your experiences will be. The more you withdraw into temporary comfort or pursue illusions driven by the ego, the less pleasurable life becomes.
• People with higher self-esteem have greater confidence in their ability to think and act effectively, particularly in new situations. They can persevere more easily when faced with difficult chances and are not consumed with the possibility of failure. Remember, the less self-esteem a person has, the greater his ego and the greater his concern with what others may think of him, as well as his own preoccupation with performance.
• A person wants to do something, but if it is not worth the effort, he will not take action--no surprise here. What is newsworthy, however, is that the effort required impacts not only our decisions to take action or not but also changes how we think and feel about the situation.
• Almost everything we do or believe is to justify our behavior ot the world and ourselves.
• To reduce guilt, we have to make sense of our previous behavior. To feel better about ourselves in general, or things done to us, we build a vision of the world and ourselves that is consistent with what we need to be true, not with what is true.
• Don't fall into the trap of believing the person who has a big ego likes himself. We must remember that the ego and self-esteem are generally inversely related. No matter how much a person appears to be happy with himself, if he has a big ego, he is not--he is miserable.
• Differentiating between self-esteem and ego can be difficult.
• Someone doing extraordinary things can feel depressed and suffer from low self-esteem if he hasn't achieved the level of success he aspires to because he's pursing his objective for ego based motivations and needs the accolades and praises of others.
• The person most dangerous to others is the one with the big ego and little or no self-esteem. The most dangerous to himself is one with a diminished ego and little self-esteem. The reason is an arrogant person is more likely to direct his anger outward.
• The more accepting we are of ourselves, the more accepting we are of others. Conversely, this person needs to "see" others as deficient or less in order to feel better about himself.
• A person with high self-esteem is gentle with his environment, while the arrogant person can often be seen hitting, banging, and forcing inanimate objects to do his will. Just as he tries to do with people, he insists on imposing his "will" onto things and demanding they take heed.
• When self-esteem skews high, then confidence equals action. Put simply, a person is driven to go after what he wants when he feels good about himself and his chances of success. But because he's acting responsibly, as confidence in his ability to be successful decreases, his desire to put in effort dwindles as well. Therefore, as effort increases, likelihood of action.

HBR Guide to Finance Basics for Managers

• Every business runs on financial data. If you don't know the tools of finance, you can't put that information to work.
• The three main financial statements: the balance sheet, the income statement, and the cash flow statement. These are the essential documents of business.
• Companies prepare balance sheets to summarize their financial position at a given point in time, usually at the end of the month, the quarter, or the fiscal year. The balance sheet shows what the company owns (its assets), what it owes (its liabilities), and its book value, or net worth (also called owners' equity, or shareholder's equity).
• Assets comprise all the physical resources a company can put to work in the service of the business.
• Liabilities are debts to suppliers and other creditors.
• Owner's equity is what's left after you subtract total liabilities from total assets.
• Fundamental accounting equation:
• assets - liabilities = owner's equity
• assets = liabilities + owner's equity
• The balance sheet shows assets on one side of the ledger, liabilities and owners' equity on the other. It's called a balance sheet because the two sides must always balance.
• Analysis of the balance sheet can give you an idea of how efficiently a company is utilizing its assets and managing its liabilities.
• Balance sheet data are most helpful when compared with the same information from one or more previous years.
• Generally, current  assets can be converted into cash within one year.
• The biggest category of fixed assets is usually property, plant, and equipment; for some companies, it's the only category.
• If one company has purchased another for a price above fair market value of its assets, the difference is know as goodwill, and it must be recorded.
• The category current liabilities represents money owed to creditors and others that typically must be paid withing a year.
• Long-term liabilities are usually bonds and mortgages--debts that the company is contractually obliged to repay over a period of time longer than a year.
• The absence of intangibles from the balance sheet is particularly significant for knowledge intensive companies, whose skills, intellectual property, brand equity, and customer relationships may be their most productive assets.
• Subtracting current liabilities from current assets gives you the company's net working capital, or the amount of money ties up in current operations.
• Shape your operations to minimize inventories.
• The use of borrowed money to acquire an asset is called financial leverage.
• Financial leverage can increase returns on an investment, but it also increases risk.
• Unlike the balance sheet, which is a snapshot of a company's position at one time, the income statement shows cumulative business results within a defined time frame, such as a quarter or a year. It tells you whether the company is making a profit or a loss--that is, whether it has positive or negative net income (net earnings)--and how much.
• The cost of goods sold, or COGS, represents the direct costs of manufacturing hat racks. This figure covers raw materials, such as lumber, and everything needed to turn those materials into finished goods, such as labor.
• The next major category of cost is operating expenses, which include the salaries of administrative employees, office rents, sales and marketing costs, and other costs not directly related to making a product or delivering a service.
• Subtracting operating expenses and depreciation from gross profit gives you ao company's operating earnings, or operating profit. This is often called earnings before interest and taxes, or EBIT.
• As with the balance sheet, comparing income statements over a period of years reveals much more than examining a single income statement. You can spot trends, turn-arounds, and recurring problems.
• Operating activities, or operations, refers to cash generated by, and used in, a company's ordinary business operations.
• Investing activities covers cash spent on capital equipment and other investments (out-going), and cash realized from the sale of such investments (incoming). Financing activities refers to cash used to reduce debt, buy back stock, or pay dividends (outgoing), and cash from loans or from stock sales (incoming).
• A sale isn't really a sale until it is paid for--so watch your receivables.
• The balance sheet shows a company's financial position at a specific point in time.
• The income statement shows the bottom line.
• The cash flow statement tells where the company;s cash came from and where it went.
• An understanding of a few financial measures coupled with an enterprise-wide perspective, Charan maintains, can help you get a grip on any company, regardless of its size or location.
• There are universal laws of business that apply whether you sell fruit from a stand or are running a Fortune 500 company.
• Problems arise when managers don't have a precise understanding of what "making money" means. Three measures can give you a good picture of whether and how a company is making money: growth, cash generation, and return on assets.
• Growth in sales is usually--but not always--a positive sign.
• Growth for its own sake doesn't do any good. Growth has to be profitable and sustainable.
• Even if your company is growing its revenues profitably and getting a respectable return on its assets, a cash shortage--or a declining cash flow--spells trouble.
• Cash from operations depends largely on two factors: accounts receivable (money owed by customers) and accounts payable (money owed to suppliers).
• A company's return on assets is its net profit divided by the average  value of its assets during a given period of time. This measure, usually expressed as a percentage, show you how well your company is using its assets--including cash, receivables, inventory, buildings, vehicles, and machinery--to make money.
• The other measure that needs to be monitored simultaneously is velocity--how hast a particular asset moves "through a business to a customer".
• By understanding growth, cash generation, and return on assets, managers can counteract the common tendency to think and act within one's "silo" (department or unit).
• A big-picture understanding of basic financial measures has very practical benefits.
• Growth, cash generation, and return on assets--these concepts, along with a focus on customers, form the nucleolus from which everything else about a business emanates.
• Part of your job as a manager is to help your company reach its financial goals--in other words, to help move the key numbers in the right direction.
• The income statement shows revenue, the various costs and expenses, subtotals such as gross profit and operating profit, and of course the bottom line--net profit. The balance sheet shows assets and liabilities, including accounts receivable and accounts payable. The cash flow statement shows how well the company is turning its profits into cash and  what it's doing with that cash.
• Ratio analysis allows you to dig into the information contained in the three financial statements.
• Return on assets (ROA). ROA indicates how well a company is using its assets to generate profit. It's a good measure for comparing companies of different sizes. To calculate it, just divide net income by total assets.
• Return on equity (ROE). ROE shows profit as a percentage of shareholder's equity. In effect, it's the owners' return on their investment--and you can bet that shareholders will compare it to what they could earn with alternative investments. To calculate ROE, divide net income by owners' equity.
• Return on sales (ROS). Also known as net profit margin, ROS measures how well a company is controlling its costs and turning revenue into bottom-line profit. To calculate ROS, divide net income by revenue.
• Gross profit margin. Gross profit margin shows how efficiently a company produces its goods or delivers its services, taking only direct costs into account. To calculate gross profit margin, divide gross profit by revenue.
• Earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) margin. Many analysts use this measure, also known as operating margin, to see how profitable a company's overall operations are, without regard to how they are financed or what taxes the company may be liable for. To calculate it, just divide EBIT by revenue.
• Operating rations help you asses a company's level of efficiency--in particular, how well it is putting its assets to work and managing its cash.
• Liquidity ratios tell you about a company's ability to meet short-term financial obligations such as debt payments, payroll, and accounts payable.
• Leverage ratios tell you to what extend a company is using debt to pay for its operations and how easily it can cover the costs of that debt.
• Comparing a company's ratios to those of competitors and to industry averages often reveals specific financial strengths and weaknesses.
• Most line managers are directly responsible for controlling costs in their areas.
• Valuation often refers to the process of determining the total value of a company for the purpose of selling it. This is an uncertain science.
• Earnings per share (EPS) equals net income divided by the number of shares outstanding. This is one of the most commonly watched financial indicators. If it fails, it will most likely take the stock's price down with it.
• Growth indicators are also important in Wall Street's valuations, because growth allows a company to provide increasing returns to its shareholders.
• As a business becomes more complex, it gets difficult to trace costs to their origins.
• Large, complex companies often lack consistent information systems across their many business and geographies.
• Most complex companies have many brands or SKUs that contribute little to the bottom line.
• If a company streamlines a sufficiently large number of accounts, it can consolidate facilities and close the highest-cost production lines or service centers.
• Supply chains can account for a staggering 80% of an organization's costs.
• A better understanding of what users want creates a better understanding of which products will satisfy them.
• Companies should assign star players--and give them the proper incentives--to tackle the supply chain challenge. They should reward these executives not just for having enough stock on hand but also for increasing asset turns, growth, and share price.
• Profit, shown on the income statement, is not the same as net cash, shown on the cash flow statement.
• A sale is recorded whenever a company delivers a product or service.
• Cash flow, by contrast, always reflects cash transactions.
• A capital expenditure doesn't appear on the income statement when it occurs; only the depreciation is charged against revenue.
• Every cash-based business, from tiny Main Street shops to giants such as Amazon.com and Dell, has the luxury of taking the customer's money before it must pay for its costs and expense. It enjoys the float--and if it is growing, that float will grow ever larger. But ultimately, the company must be profitable by the standard of the income statement; cash flow in the long run is no protection against unprofitability.
• Understanding the difference between profit and cash is the key to increasing your financial intelligence. It opens a whole new window of opportunity to make smart decisions.
• If a company is profitable but short on cash, then it needs financial expertise--someone capable of lining up additional financing. If a company has cash by is unprofitable, it needs operational expertise, someone capable of bringing down costs or generating additional revenue without adding costs. So financial statements tell you not only what is going on in the company but also what kind of expertise you need to hire.
• Informed decisions on when to take an action can increase a company's effectiveness.
• The ultimate lesson here is that profit and cash are different--and a healthy business, both in its early years and as it matures, requires both.
• You need to know not just whether the overall cash position is healthy but specifically where the cash is coming from.
• Most managers focus on profit when they should be focusing on both profit and cash.
• Disgruntled customers are not known for prompt payments--they like to wait until any dispute is resolved.
• A manger who leads a company in converting to lean thereby frees up huge quantities of cash.
• Our general point here is that cash flow is a key indicator of a company's financial health, along with profitability and shareholder's equity.
• The longer a company's DSO, the more working capital is required to run the business.
• Reducing DSO even by one day can save a large company millions of dollars per day.
• Managing inventory efficiently reduces working capital requirements by freeing up large amounts of cash.
• The challenge is to reduce inventory to a minimum level while still ensuring that every raw material and every part will be available when needed and every product will be ready for sale when a customer wants it.
• Keeping unit cost down is simply a way of managing all the costs of production in an efficient manner.
• An ROI analysis enables you to compare the financial consequences of two (or more) business alternatives.
• The ROI analysis is cash-based, whereas a P&L uses standard accounting principles to spread out costs in a reasonable fashion.
• Often an important element of building a cash flow is translating "soft" benefits into hard numbers.
• Payback period. This is the point at which all the costs expended have been recovered.
• Breakeven point. This is the moment when costs are matched by increased revenue or cost savings for that period.
• Discounted cash flow (DCF). This is a summarized cash flow that accounts for the time value of money, which is an adjustment for the fact that $100 received today is worth more than $20 a year for the next five years.
• Cost/benefit analysis involves the following steps:
• Identify the costs associate with the new business opportunity.
• Identify the benefits of additional revenues the investment will bring.
• Identify the cost savings to be gained.
• Map out the timeline for expected costs and revenues.
• Evaluate the non-quantifiable benefits and costs.
• Return on investment (ROI)--or, to use the more technical term, accounting return on investment--is not always the best measure of an investment's success.
• Any rational investor would want the money sooner rather than later. Thus, true ROI calculations must always factor in the time value of money.
• Breakeven analysts tells you how much (or how much more) you need to sell in order to pay for the fixed investment--in other words, at what point you will break even on your cash flow.
• Breakeven analysis can also help you think through the impact of changing price and volume relationships.
• Fixed costs. These are costs that stay mostly the same, no matter how many units of a product or service are sold--costs such as insurance, management salaries, and rent or lease payments.
• Variable costs. Variable costs are those that change with the number of units produced and sold.
• Contribution margin. This is the amount of money that every sold unit contributes to paying for fixed costs.
• Once you've covered all your fixed costs with the contributions of many unit sales, every subsequent sale contributes directly to profits.
• The relationship between fixed and variable costs is often described in terms of operating leverage. Companies with high fixed costs and low variable costs have high operating leverage.
• Operating leverage is a great thing once a company passes its breakeven point, but it can cause substantial losses if breakeven is never achieved.
• Once you've decided to undertake an investment opportunity, you should monitor its progress. Track your projections against actual revenues and expenses.
• The income statement and balance sheet may seem precise, but they aren't. They reflect all sorts of assumptions, estimates, and procedural decisions, such as which depreciation method to use.
• The Five Traps of Performance Measurement:
• Measuring against yourself
• Looking backward
• Putting your faith in numbers
• Gaming your metrics
• Sticking to your numbers too long
•  It's true that finance is the language of business, and unless you can grasp it, you will be at a perpetual disadvantage in any kind of business career. But make no mistake: the financials describe only a fraction of a company's reality, and sometimes a misleading fraction at that.
• Wise managers always keep one eye on the financial reports, the ultimate gauge of their performance. But they keep an equally sharp eye on all the non-financial or external factors that show up late, murkily, or not at all in the financial data.
• One limitation of financial statements is that they can be manipulated. The usual goal, of course, is to make things look better than they really are.
• The line between fraud and a reasonable change in procedures isn't always clear.
• Probably the most important financial fact the three major statements don't tell you is what a company as a whole is worth.
• For publicly traded companies, the value of the entire enterprise is known as its market capitalization, or just market cap. This is the amount, in theory, that an investor would have to pay to buy all the shares of stock. to calculate market cap, you simply multiply the stock price by the total number of shares.
• Healthy organizations are also nimble: Their people can make and execute good decisions without undue time or trouble.
• Every business is vulnerable to competitors, so the more you know about your rivals, the better off you are.
• To measure how well you're doing, you need information about the benchmarks that matter most--the ones outside the organization.
• Look for measures that lead rather than lag the profits in your business.
• The quality of managerial decision making is another leading indicator of success.
• Good management is about making choices, so a decision not to do something should be analyzed as closely as a decision to do something.
• Good or bad, the metrics in your performance assessments package all comes as numbers. The problem is that numbers-driven managers often end up producing reams of low-quality data.
• You can't prevent people from gaming numbers, no matter how outstanding your organization. The moment you choose to manage bny metric, you invite your managers to manipulate it. Metrics are only proxies for performance.
• It helps to diversify your metrics, because it's a lot harder to game several of them at once.
• Another way of providing budget flexibility is to set ranges rather than specific numbers as targets.
• As the saying goes, you manage what you measure. Unfortunately, performance assessment systems seldom evolve as fast as business do.

TAO TE CHING: A NEW TRANSLATION by Lao Tzu, Sam Hamill

• In all likelihood, Lao Tzu compiled and edited the Tao Te Ching to a far, far greater extent than actually writing it.
• Recognizing virtue recognizes evil.
• Cling to no treasures, and create no thieves.
• Self is realized through selflessness.
• One over-sharpens the well-forged blade, and it won’t last long.
• Achieve emptiness. Attain tranquility.
• Learn manifest simplicity.
• Even ordinary people can be brilliant.
• Showing off does not reveal enlightenment. Boasting won’t produce accomplishment. Self-infatuation is no way to lead.
• Skillful travelers leave no tracks. Skillful speech leaves no doubt. Good accounting needs no abacus.
• Understand others and grow wise. Understand yourself and become enlightened.
• Conquering others requires force. Conquering yourself takes power.
• The greatest calamity is not knowing sufficiency, no greater calamity than desire for gain.
• The further one ventures forth, the less one knows.
• One who meddles and possesses isn’t fit to govern the world.
• Those who know don’t speak. Those who speak don’t know.
• Employ routine to govern a state. Use surprise to direct a war. With not-striving, master the world.
• The more laws are posted, the more thieves appear.
• There is nothing great virtue cannot overcome.
• Plan for difficulty while it’s easy. Manage the great while it’s small.
• Act before things exist, manage them before there’s disorder.
• When people don’t feel threatened by power, a greater power follows.
• If people don’t fear death, why threaten them with death?

MEDITATIONS: A NEW TRANSLATION by Marcus Aurelius, Gregory Hays

• Philosophy in the modern sense is largely the creation of one man, the fifth-century B.C. Athenian thinker Socrates.
• The discipline of perception requires that we maintain absolute objectivity of thought: that we see things dispassionately for what they are.
• Everywhere, at each moment, you have the option: to accept this event with humility [will]; to treat this person as he should be treated [action]; to approach this thought with care, so that nothing irrational creeps in [perception].
• When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own—not of the same blood or birth, but the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me.
• Throw away your books; stop letting yourself be distracted.
• The angry man is more like a victim of wrongdoing, provoked by pain to anger.
• Remember two things:
• i. that everything has always been the same, and keeps recurring, and it makes no difference whether you see the same things recur in a hundred years or two hundred, or in an infinite period;
• ii. that the longest-lived and those who will die soonest lose the same thing. The present is all that they can give up, since that is all you have, and what you do not have, you cannot lose.
• Don’t waste the rest of your time here worrying about other people—unless it affects the common good.
• You need to avoid certain things in your train of thought: everything random, everything irrelevant. And certainly everything self-important or malicious. You need to get used to winnowing your thoughts, so that if someone says, “What are you thinking about?” you can respond at once (and truthfully) that you are thinking this or thinking that.
• No surplus words or unnecessary actions.
• In everything you do, even the smallest thing, remember the chain that links them.
• Stop drifting.
• Sprint for the finish.
• No random actions, none not based on underlying principles.
• Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.
• It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character. Otherwise it cannot harm you—inside or out.
• Uncomplicate yourself.
• Life is short. That’s all there is to say. Get what you can from the present—thoughtfully, justly.
• Love the discipline you know, and let it support you. Entrust everything willingly to the gods, and then make your way through life—no one’s master and no one’s slave.
• A key point to bear in mind: The value of attentiveness varies in proportion to its object. You’re better off not giving the small things more time than they deserve.
• In short, know this: Human lives are brief and trivial. Yesterday a blob of semen; tomorrow embalming fluid, ash.
• People who love what they do wear themselves down doing it, they even forget to wash or eat. Do you have less respect for your own nature
• It is crazy to want what is impossible. And impossible for the wicked not to do so.
• Nothing is stable, not even what’s right here. The infinity of past and future gapes before us—a chasm whose depths we cannot see.
• You can lead an untroubled life provided you can grow, can think and act systematically.
• Two characteristics shared by gods and men (and every rational creature):
• i. Not to let others hold you back.
• ii. To locate goodness in thinking and doing the right thing, and to limit your desires to that.
• I was once a fortunate man but at some point fortune abandoned me. But true good fortune is what you make for yourself. Good fortune: good character, good intentions, and good actions.
• Pride is a master of deception: when you think you’re occupied in the weightiest business, that’s when he has you in his spell.
• What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance.
• Our lives are short. The only rewards of our existence here are an unstained character and unselfish acts.
• Nothing has meaning to my mind except its own actions. Which are within its own control. And it’s only the immediate ones that matter. Its past and future actions too are meaningless.
• It’s normal to feel pain in your hands and feet, if you’re using your feet as feet and your hands as hands. And for a human being to feel stress is normal—if he’s living a normal human life.
• The only thing that isn’t worthless: to live this life out truthfully and rightly. And be patient with those who don’t.
• Nothing is as encouraging as when virtues are visibly embodied in the people around us, when we’re practically showered with them.
• Things can’t shape our decisions by themselves.
• Practice really hearing what people say. Do your best to get inside their minds.
• our own worth is measured by what we devote our energy to.
• Focus on what is said when you speak and on what results from each action. Know what the one aims at, and what the other means.
• Don’t be ashamed to need help. Like a soldier storming a wall, you have a mission to accomplish. And if you’ve been wounded and you need a comrade to pull you up? So what?
• Forget the future. When and if it comes, you’ll have the same resources to draw on—the same logos.
• The mind in itself has no needs, except for those it creates itself. Is undisturbed, except for its own disturbances. Knows no obstructions, except those from within.
• Treat what you don’t have as nonexistent. Look at what you have, the things you value most, and think of how much you’d crave them if you didn’t have them. But be careful. Don’t feel such satisfaction that you start to overvalue them—that it would upset you to lose them.
• Everywhere, at each moment, you have the option: to accept this event with humility to treat this person as he should be treated to approach this thought with care, so that nothing irrational creeps in.
• It’s silly to try to escape other people’s faults. They are inescapable. Just try to escape your own.
• Remember that to change your mind and to accept correction are free acts too. The action is yours, based on your own will, your own decision—and your own mind.
• Nothing that can happen is unusual or unnatural, and there’s no sense in complaining. Nature does not make us endure the unendurable.
• External things are not the problem. It’s your assessment of them. Which you can erase right now.
• If the problem is something in your own character, who’s stopping you from setting your mind straight?
• Don’t look down on death, but welcome it. It too is one of the things required by nature.
• So this is how a thoughtful person should await death: not with indifference, not with impatience, not with disdain, but simply viewing it as one of the things that happen to us. Now you anticipate the child’s emergence from its mother’s womb; that’s how you should await the hour when your soul will emerge from its compartment.
• Leave other people’s mistakes where they lie.
• The world’s cycles never change—up and down, from age to age.
• Everything that happens is either endurable or not. If it’s endurable, then endure it. Stop complaining. If it’s unendurable … then stop complaining. Your destruction will mean its end as well.
• Just remember: you can endure anything your mind can make endurable, by treating it as in your interest to do so.
• To stop talking about what the good man is like, and just be one.
• Stop whatever you’re doing for a moment and ask yourself: Am I afraid of death because I won’t be able to do this anymore?
• When faced with people’s bad behavior, turn around and ask when you have acted like that.
• Learn to ask of all actions, “Why are they doing that?” Starting with your own.
• As long as you do what’s proper to your nature, and accept what the world’s nature has in store—as long as you work for others’ good, by any and all means—what is there that can harm you?
• A straightforward, honest person should be like someone who stinks: when you’re in the same room with him, you know it. But false straightforwardness is like a knife in the back.
• False friendship is the worst. Avoid it at all costs. If you’re honest and straightforward and mean well, it should show in your eyes. It should be unmistakable.
• As you kiss your son good night, says Epictetus, whisper to yourself, “He may be dead in the morning.”
• Practice even what seems impossible.

Principle-Centered Leadership by Stephen R. Covey

• Natural laws, based upon principles, operate regardless of our awareness of them or our obedience to them.
• It’s relatively easy to work on personalities: all we have to do is learn some new skill, rearrange language patterns, adopt human relations technologies, employ visualization affirmations, or strengthen our self-esteem. But it’s comparatively hard to change habits, develop virtues, learn basic disciplines, keep promises, be faithful to vows, exercise courage, or be genuinely considerate of the feelings and convictions of others. Nonetheless, it’s the true test and manifestation of our maturity.
• Correct principles are like compasses: they are always pointing the way. And if we know how to read them, we won’t get lost, confused, or fooled by conflicting voices and values.
• One of the characteristics of authentic leaders is there humility.
• Real empowerment comes from having both the principles and the practices understood and applied at all levels of the organization.
• Practices are the what to do’s, specific applications that fit specific circumstances. Principles are the why to do’s, the elements upon which applications or practices are built.
• Throughout history, the most significant breakthroughs have been breaks with the old ways of thinking, the old models and paradigms.
• Principle-centered leadership is practiced from the inside out on four levels:
• 1) personal (my relationship with myself);
• 2) interpersonal (my relationships and interactions with others);
• 3) managerial (my responsibility to get a job done with others); and
• 4) organizational (my need to organize people--to recruit them, train them, compensate them, build teams, solve problems, and crate aligned structure, strategy, and systems).
• Trustworthiness is based on character, what you are as a person, and competence, what you can do.
• Trust--or the lack of it--is at the root of success or failure in relationships and in the bottom-line results of business, industry, education, and government.
• Principle-centered people are constantly educated by their experiences.
• The primary human endowments are 1) self-awareness or self knowledge; 2) imagination and conscience; and 3) volition or will-power. The secondary endowments are 4) an abundance mentality; 5) courage and consideration; and 6) creativity. The seventh endowment is self-renewal. All are unique human endowments; animals don’t possess any of them. But they are all on a continuum of low to high levels.
• The root cause of almost all people problems is the basic communication problem--people do not listen with empathy.
• Success begets success. Starting a day with an early victory over self leads to more victories.
• Effective people lead their lives and manage their relationships around principles; ineffective people attempt to manage their time around priorities and their tasks around goals. Think effectiveness with people; efficiency with things.
• The ethical person looks at every economic transaction as a test of his or her moral stewardship. That’s why humility is the mother of all other virtues--because it promotes stewardship.
• Unless we control our appetites, we will not be in control of our passions and emotions. We will instead become victims of our passions, seeking or aspiring our own wealth, dominion, prestige, and power.
• The key to growth is to learn to make promises and to keep them.
• Self-mastery and self-discipline are the roots of good relationships with others.
• The place to begin building any relationship is inside ourselves inside our circle of influence, our own character. As we become independent--proactive, centered in correct principles, value driven, and able to organize and execute around the priorities in our life with integrity--we can choose to become interdependent: capable of building rich, enduring, productive relationships with other people.
• Personal effectiveness is the foundation of interpersonal effectiveness. Private victory precedes public victory. Strength of character and independence from the foundation for authentic, effective interaction with others.
• The following three character traits are essential to primary greatness:
• Integrity
• Maturity
• Abundance Mentality
• I define integrity as the value we place on ourselves.
• I define maturity as the balance between courage and consideration.
• Our thinking is that there is plenty out there for everybody.
• Most people are deeply scripted in the scarcity mentality. The see life as a finite pie: if someone gets a big piece of the pie, it means less for everybody else. It’s the zero-sum paradigm of life.
• Lasting solutions to problems, lasting happiness and success, come from the inside out. What results from the outside in is unhappy people who feel victimized and immobilized, focus on all the weakness of other people and the circumstances they feel are responsible for their own stagnant condition.
• The deep, fundamental problems we face cannot be solved on the superficial level on which they were created. We need a new level of thinking--based on principles of effective management--to solve these deep concerns. We need a principle-centered, character-based, “inside-out” approach.
• Almost every significant breakthrough is the result of a courageous break with traditional ways of thinking.
• The word paradigm is from the Greek word paradigma: a pattern or map for understanding and explaining certain aspects of reality. While a person may make small improvements by developing new skills, quantum leaps in performance and revolutionary advances in technology require new maps, new paradigms, new ways of thinking about and seeing the world.
• Ultimately the leadership style one adopts springs from one’s core ideas and feelings about the nature of man. Whatever a person has at the center of his life--work or pleasure, friend or enemy, family or possessions, spouse or self, principles or passions--will affect his perception. And it is perception that governs beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors.
• People are often seen as limitations, if not liabilities, rather than advantages and assets. Thus low performance is often institutionalized in the structure and systems, procedures and processes, of the organization.
• Programs should attempt to empower people to soard, to sail, to step forward bravely into the unknown, being guided more by imagination than memory, and ultimately to reach beyond their fears and past failures.
• Overcoming the pull of the past is in large part a matter of having clear identify and strong purpose--of knowing who you are and what you want to accomplish. Poor performance can often be attributed to poor prioritization and organization. Weak resolve si easily uprooted by emotion, mood, and circumstance.
• Highly effective people carry their agenda with them. Their schedule is their servant, not their master.
• For by small means are great things accomplished.
• Starting the day with a private victory over self is one good way to break old habits and make new ones.
• Our ability to do more and perform better will increase as we exercise the discipline of doing important and difficult work first, when we are fresh, and deferring routine jobs to other times. In this way we are products of our decisions, goals, and plans, not of our moods and circumstances.
• We increase our capacity to make and break habits much as we increase our lung capacity--we begin with a program of aerobics.
• If we will do the following five things, we will have the strength to be strong in hard moments, in testing times.
• Never make a promise we will not keep.
• Make meaningful promises, resolutions, and commitments to do better and to be better-and share these with a loved one.
• Use self-knowledge and be very selective about the promises we make.
• Consider promises as a measure of our integrity and faith in ourselves.
• Remember that our personal integrity or self-mastery is the basis for our success with others.
• Actions--actual doing--can change the very fiber of our nature. Dong changes our view of ourselves. Our personal behavior is largely a product of such self-made fuel.
• All real growth and progress is made step by step, following a natural sequence of development.
• There are no shortcuts in the development of professional skills, of talents such as piano playing and public speaking, or of our minds and characters. In all of life there are stages of processes of growth and development, and at every step the concept of the sex days of creation applies.
• Progress involves accepting the fact that I am currently at day two and refusing to pretend to be anywhere else.
• People cannot pretend for long; eventually they will be found out. Often an admission of ignorance is the first step in our education.
• There are times to teach and train and times not to teach. When relationships are strained and charged with emotion, attempts to teach or train are often perceived as a form of judgement and rejection. A better approach is to be alone with the person and to discuss the principle privately. But again, this requires patience and internal control--in short, emotional maturity.
• Comparisons breed insecurity, yet we commonly make them among our children, coworkers, and other acquaintances. If our sense of worth and personal security comes from such comparisons, how insecure and anxious we will be, feeling superior one minute and inferior the next.
• There is no security in changing things. Internal security simply does not come externally.
• To improve, we must start from where we are, not from where we should be, or where someone else is, or even from where others may think we are.
• I believe that day one and day two for most of us involve getting more control over the body--getting to bed early, arising early, exercising regularly, eating in moderation, staying at our work when necessary even though tired, and so many.
• But they key to our growth and development is always to begin where we are, at our day one.
• As dangerous as a little knowledge is, even more dangerous is much knowledge without a strong, principles character. Purely intellectual development without commensurate internal character development makes as much sense as putting a high-powered sports car in the hands of a teenager who is high on drugs.
• If there is no principle, there is no true north, nothing you can depend upon. Principles are proven, enduring guidelines for human conduct. Certain principles govern human effectiveness. The six major world religions all teach the same basic core beliefs--such principles as “You reap what you sow” and “Actions are more important than words.”
• The more closely our maps are aligned with correct principles--with the realities of the territory, with things as they are--the more accurate and useful they will be. Correct maps will impact our effectiveness far more than our efforts to change attitudes and behaviors. However, when the territory is constantly changing, any map is soon obsolete.
• Peter Drucker has said: “Plans are worthless, but planning is invaluable.” And if our planning is centered on an overall purpose or visions and on a commitment to set of principles, then the people who are closest to the action in the wilderness can use that compass and their own expertise and judgment to make decisions and take actions.
• Principles are not practices. Practices are specific activities or actions that work in one circumstance but not necessarily in another.
• Real leadership power comes from an honorable character and from the exercise of certain power tools and principles. Yet most discussion of leadership focus on genetic “great man” theories, personality “trait” theories, or behavioral “style” theories.
• Coercive power is based on fear in both the leaders and the follower. Leaders tend to lean on coercive power when they are afraid they won’t get compliance.
• The leaders who controls others through fear will find that the control is reactive and temporary. It is gone when the leaders or leader’s representatives or controlling system is gone.
• Coercive power imposes a psychological and emotional burden on both leaders and followers. It encourages suspicion, deceit, dishonesty, and, in the long run, dissolution.
• Most organizations are held together by utility power. Utility power is based on a sense of equity and fairness. As long as followers feel they are receiving fairly for what they are giving, the relationship will be sustained. The compliance that is based on utility power tends to look more like influence than control.
• Legitimate power is rare. It is the mark of quality, distinction, and excellence in all relationships. It is based on honor, with the leader honoring the follower and the follower choosing to contribute because the leader is also honored. The hallmark of legitimate power is sustained, proactive influence. Power is sustained because it is not dependent on whether or not something desirable or undesirable happens to the follower.
• Legitimate power occurs when the cause or purpose or goal is believed in as deeply by the followers as by the leaders.
• The more a leader is honored, respected, and genuinely regarded by others, the more legitimate power he will have with others.
• Here are ten suggestions for processors and principles that will increase a leader’s honor and power with others: persuasions, patience, gentleness, teachableness, acceptance, kindness, openness, compassionate confrontation, consistency, integrity.
• At the root of most communication problems are perception of credibility problems. None of us see the world as it is but as we are, as our frames of reference, or “maps”, define the terrority. And our experience-induced perceptions greatly influence our feelings, beliefs, and behavior.
• Listen to understand. Speak to be understood. Start dialogue from a common point of reference or point of agreement, and move slowly into areas of disagreement.
• The key to effective communication is the one-on-one relationship. The moment we enter into this special relationship with another person, we begin to change the very nature of our communication with them. We begin to build trust and confidence in each other.
• Effective communication requires skills, and skill development takes practice.
• Effective, two-way communication demands that we capture both content and intent and learn to speak the languages of logic and emotion.
• To be effective in presenting your point of view, start by demonstrating a clear understanding of the alternative points of view. Articulate them better than their advocates can. Effective presentations begin with pre assessment.
• Effective communication is built on the cement of trust. And trust is based on trustworthiness, not politics.
• Seek first to understand, then to be understood. When we’re communicating with another, we need to give full attention, to be completely present. Then we need to empathize--to see from the other’s point of view, to “walk in his moccasins” for awhile. This takes courage, and patience, and inner sources of security. But until people feel that you understand them, they will not be open to your influence.
• Remember: We are teaching one thing or another all of the time, because we are constantly radiating what we are.
• Effective delegation takes emotional courage as we allow, to one degree or another, others to make mistakes on our time, money, and good name. This courage consists of patience, self-control, faith in the potential of others, and respect for individual differences.
• Effective delegation must be two-way: responsibility given, responsibility received.
• Professional successes can’t compensate for failure in marriage and family relationships; life’s ledger will reflect the imbalance, if not the debt.
• Relationships with spouses and with children, as with other relationships, tend toward entropy--toward disorder and dissolution.
• People identify with what they see and what they feel far more than with what they hear.
• We are powerfully influenced by our scripts, but we can learn to rewrite our scripts. We can identify with new models and have new relationships. Better scripts won’t come merely from reading correct principles in good books, but from identifying with and relating to the persons who live them.
• Correct principles cannot compensate for incorrect modeling, for bad examples.
• Refine three vital skills. Time management, communication, and problem-solving are skills needed in every phase of marriage and family life.
• The essence of time management is to set priorities and then to organize and execute around them. Setting priorities requires us to think carefully and clearly about values, about ultimate concerns.
• Communication is a prerequisite to problem-solving and one of the most fundamental skills in life.
• The main problem in communication is the “translation” problem: translating what we mean into what we say and translating what we say into what we mean.
• When trust is low, communication is extremely difficult, exhausting, and ineffective. The key to communication is trust, and the key to trust is trustworthiness. Living a life of integrity is the beast guarantee of maintaining the climate of effective communication. As with all natural processes, there are no shortcuts, no quick fixes.
• Cultivate the ability to be alone and to think deeply, to “do nothing”, to enjoy silence and solitude. Reflect, write, listen, plan, visualize, ponder, relax. A rich private life nourishes our sense of personal worth and security.
• Cultivate the habit of sharpening the saw physically, mentally, and spiritually every day.
• Regular, vigorous exercise is vital to radiant health and unquestionably influences not just the quantity of our years but the quality of life in those years.
• We must never get so busy sawing that we don’t take time to sharpen the saw.
• If you want to get anywhere long-term, identify core values and goals and get the systems aligned with these values and goals.
• I have always believed that how people feel about themselves inside is the real key to using their talent and releasing their potential. And how they feel about themselves is largely a function of how they are seen and treated by others, particularly their parents.
• Visualization is based on the principle that all things are created twice: first mentally and then physically.
• World-class athletes are almost all visualizers; they literally experience their victories in their minds long before they experience them in fact.
• Principle-centered leadership is practiced from the inside out on personal, interpersonal, managerial, and organizational levels. Each level is “necessary but insufficient.” We have to work at all four levels on the basis of certain principles.
• The one thing people don’t want to change is their lifestyle, but they generally must change if they want to deal with the chronic nature of their most serious problems.
• Trust determines the quality of the relationship between people. And in a sense, trust is a chicken-and-egg problem. If you attempt to work on building trust at the exclusion of other chronic and acute problems, you will only exacerbate your situation.
• If you want to improve in major ways--I mean dramatic, revolutionary, transformation ways--if you want to make quantum improvements, either as an individual or as an organization, change your frame of reference.
• The great breakthroughs are breaks with old ways of thinking. As the paradigm shifts, it opens up a whole new area of insight, knowledge, and understanding, resulting in a quantum difference in performance.
• People spend their creativity on their own goals and dreams--and much of that energy is lost to the organization. Negative synergy is an enormous waste of human talent.
• The formula for positive synergy is involvement + patience = commitment.
• People want to contribute to the accomplishment of worthwhile objectives. They want to be part of a mission and enterprise that transcends their individual tasks. They don’t want to work in a job that has little meaning, even though it may tap their mental capacities. They want purposes and principles that life them, ennoble them, inspire them, empower them, and encourage them to their best selves.
• The scientific management paradigm says, “Pay me well.” The human relations paradigm says, “Treat me well.” The human resources paradigm suggests, “Use me well.” The principle-centered leadership paradigm says: “Let’s talk about vision and mission, roles, and goals. I want to make a meaningful contribution.”
• Culture is only a manifestation of how people see themselves, their co-workers, and their organizations.
• The key to quality products and services is a quality person. And the key to our personal quality is character and competence and the emotional bank account we have with other people. Principle-centered people get quantity through quality, results through relationships.
• A paradigm is a model of nature. To improve a paradigm is to make an effort to get a clearer understanding of what nature is, and in every field of endeavor these are called theories or explanations or models. It doesn’t matter how good your attitude is if your paradigm is flawed.
• Real progress starts with self and works from the inside out.
• In every field of endeavour we make assumptions regarding the ultimate nature of reality. If the fundamental assumptions or premises are wrong, the conclusions will also be wrong, even when the reasoning process from those premises are right.
• Sound conclusions can come only from consistent reasoning based on a correct premise or assumption.
• These are the first four conditions of empowerment: 1) win-win agreement; 2) self-supervision; 3) helpful structure and systems; and 4) accountability.
• First, specify desired results. Discuss what results you expect. Be specific about the quantity and quality.
• The concept of win-win suggests that managers and employees clarify expectations and mutually commit themselves to getting desired results.
• Second, set some guidelines. Communicate whatever principles, policies, and procedures are considered essential to getting desired results. Mention as few procedures as possible to allow as much freedom and flexibility as possible.
• Guidelines should also identify no-no’s or failure paths that experience has identified as inimical to accomplishing organizational goals or maintaining organizational values.
• Third, identify available resources. Identify the various financial, human, technical, and organizational resources available to employees to assist them in getting desired results.
• Fourth, define accountability. Holding people accountable for results puts teeth into the win-win agreement. If there is no accountability, people gradually lose their sense of responsibility and start blaming circumstances or other people for poor performance. But when people participate in setting the exact standard of acceptable performance, they feel a deep sense of responsibility to get desired results.
• Results can be evaluated in three ways: measurement, observation, and discernment. Specify how you will evaluate performance.
• Character is what a person is; skills are what a person can do. These are the human competences required to establish and maintain the other four [conditions].
• Clarifying expectations about roles and goals is the essence of team building. The idea is to get different groups together and sharing expectations regarding roles and goals in an atmosphere that isn’t emotionally charged.
• An “empowered” organization is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organizational success.
• Involvement is the key to implementing change and increasing commitment. We tend to be more interested in our own ideas than in those of others. If we are not involved, we will likely resist change.
• An effective decision has two dimensions: quality and commitment. By weighing these two dimensions and multiplying them, we can determine the effectiveness factor.
• When people become involved in the problem, they become significantly and sincerely commitmented to coming up with solutions to the problem.
• Until our information system accounts for people as well as things, we will operate our organizations in the dark.
• People believe what they want to believe, and what is strongly desired is easily believed.
• The purposes of human resource accounting are continuous quality improvement, team building, and individual progression--of course, even people who get some feedback can get mired and plateaued.
• It takes an exceptional chief executive to expose himself voluntarily to external scrutiny and to set up information systems that make him accountable to the other stakeholders.
• If you measure it and post it, you will improve it.
• Accurate feedback should be highly valued.
• It’s hard for someone who’s divorced from the day-to-day operations of a company, as well as for someone who’s totally immersed in the operations, to know what’s really going on. Hence there’s a need for good feedback.
• Effective human resource management begins with effective delegation, with making the best possible use of the time and talents of people. Often we delegat out of necessity: we simply have more work to do than we can do alone.
• We simply must delegate to increase our discretionary time for high-priority tasks. Time spent delegating, in the long run, is our greatest time saved.
• The effective executive asks people to think through problems and issues and make a final recommendation.
• People cannot be held responsible for results if they are “bailed out” in the middle of the fact-finding or decision-making process.
• Use the following five-step process for getting completed staff work.
• First, provide a clear understanding of the desired results.
• Second, give a clear sense of what level of initiative people have.
• Third, clarify assumptions.
• Fourth, provide those people charged to do completed staff work with as much time, resources, and access as possible.
• Fifth, set a time and place for presenting and reviewing the completed staff work.
• In organizations, people usually perform one of three essential roles: producer, manager, or leader. Each role is vital to the success of the organization.
• If there is no producer, great ideas and high resolves are not carried out. The work simple doesn’t get done. Where there is no manager, there is role conflict and ambiguity; everyone attempts to be a producer, working independently, with few established systems or procedures. And if there is no leader, there is lack of vision and direction. People begin to lose sight of their mission.
• Although each role is important to the organization, the role of leader is most important. Without strategic leadership, people may dutifully climb the “ladder of success” but discover, upon reaching the top rung, that it is leaning against the wrong wall.
• Peter Drucker teaches that within a few years of their establishment, most organizations lose sight of their mission and essential role and become focused on methods or efficiency or doing things right rather than on effectiveness or doing the right things. It seems that people tend to codify past successful practices into rules for the future and give energy to preserving and enforcing these rules even after they no longer apply.
• Leadership focuses on the top line. Management focus on the bottom line. Leadership derives its power from values and correct principles. Management organizes resources to serve selected objectives to produce the bottom line.
• The paradigm of total quality is continuous improvement. People and companies should not be content to stay where they are, no matter how successful they seem to be. And very few people or companies could possibly be content with the status quo if they were regularly receiving accurate feedback on their performance from their stakeholders.
• Quality begins with an understanding of our stakeholders’ needs and expectations, but ultimately it means meeting or exceeding those needs and expectations.
• Proactive leadership springs from an awareness that we are not a product of our systems, that we are not a produce of our environments, that those things powerfully influence us, but we can choose our responses to them.
• Proactivity is the essence of real leadership.
• Quality will give any individual or organization a long-term competitive advantage. And if it’s in the culture of the organization, it can’t be duplicated by anyone.
• Total Quality represents the century’s most profound, comprehensive alteration in management theory and practice.
• American management has given lip service to tapping the potential of its most important resource--its people. “The greatest waste in American is failure to use the abilities of people,” laments Demming.
• Management must empower its people in the deepest sense and remove the barriers and obstacles it has created that crush and defeat the inherent commitment, creativity, and quality service that people are otherwise prepared to offer.
• Management's key objective is to stabilize all systems and accurately predict process results. Once stable and predictable, processes can be controlled and improved and variation reduced. Statistical analysis is the basic tool to understand, predict, and thus reduce variation in systems and their components.
• Proactivity is more than being aggressive or assertive. It is both taking initiative and responding to outside stimuli based on one’s principles. Leadership focuses more on people than on things; on the long term rather than the short term; on developing relationships rather than on equipment; on values and principles rather than on activities; on mission, purpose, and direction rather than on methods, techniques, and speed.
• Perhaps the most powerful principle of all human interaction; genuinely seeking to understand another deeply before being understood in return.
• At the root of all interpersonal problems is failure to thoroughly understand each other.
• Summary of Deming’s 14 Points
• Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to be competitive, to stay in business, and to provide jobs.
• Adopt the new philosophy--top management and everybody.
• Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for mass inspection by building quality into the product initially.
• End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag alone.
• Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.
• Institute job training, to develop skills in new hires, to assist in management to understand all processes of the organization.
• Teach and institute leadership. Supervision of management and production workers should help people and machines, working together, to do a better job.
• Drive out fear to increase everyone's effectiveness. Create trust. Create a climate for innovation.
• Break down barriers between departments. Optimize toward the aims and purposes of the company the efforts of teams, groups, staff areas.
• Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and production targets for the workforce.
• Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and production targets for the workforce.
• Eliminate numerical goals and quotas for production. Instead learn and institute methods for improvement. Eliminate management by objective. Instead, learn the capabilities of processes and how to improve them.
• Remove barriers that rob hourly workers, as well as management, of their right to pride of workmanship. Eliminate the annual rating or merit system.
• Institute a rigorous program of education and self-improvement for everyone.
• Institute an action plan, and put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation.
• Many companies and their managers are not transforming with the trends.
• Our society values capitalism, but many organizations practice feudalism.
• A written corporate constitution can be a priceless document for both individuals and organizations.
• Mission statements, whether personal or corporate in scope, empower people to take control of their lives and thereby gain more internal security.
• If you want to get anywhere long-term, identify core values and goals and get the systems aligned with these values and goals. Work on the foundation. Make it secure.
• If you identify your essential purpose and set up shared vision and values, you can be successful with any situation that comes along.
• Principles are timeless, universal laws that empower people. Individuals who think in terms of principles think of many applications and are empowered to solve problems under myriad different conditions and circumstance.
• Keep in mind that you can never build a life greater than its most noble purpose. Your constitution can help yo be your best and perform your best each day.
• Effective senior executives give most of their time and energies to issues at the meta and macro levels of leadership. They focus on maintaining and enhancing relationships with the people they work with most.
• Meta leadership deals mainly with vision and stewardships--with what is being entrusted to you as a leader and as a manager.
• Macro leaderships deals with strategic goals and how you organize structure and systems and set up processes to meet those goals.
• To be functional, mission statements should be short so that the people can memorize and internalize them. But they also need to be comprehensive.
• Whenever someone feels like a master of something, learning seems to stop. When learning stops, people begin to protect the status quo and adopt behaviors antithetical to good positive relating. When good relations is limited, the learning environment is affected.
• People are trained to think win-lose and lose-win. Consequently their response is to give up, fight, or flee.
• In a very real sense there is no such thing as organizational behavior. There is only individual behavior. Everything else flows out of that.