We have two shared values
at the Center for Information and Communication Sciences that are similar:
Commitment, and Quality Commitment
Both the values underscore "commitment"--
you commit yourself;
you make a choice to be involved;
you live the life you intend,
in our case, the life of a professional.
Or you hold back, hang back,
wait for somebody else;
for example, the issue of leadership,
well, that's somebody else's job.
And then we're a short step to
"the swearword phrase" in the Center,
not said in polite company--
"it's not my job."
Along these lines,
I was reading in the Internet's sources of sacred texts.
I came across a famous set of phrases,
dealing with commitment.
They represent serious
information from a classic teacher,
a teacher with a hard head and a soft heart.
(That's the optimum combination, not the other way around,
which you find in some people, especially in political life.)
Here are the teachings, after the jump:
The teachings are all about commitment,
and mutatis mutandis
[a logic phrase from Latin, "the necessary changes being made"],
the teachings constitute
excellent advice for professionals:
Matthew 8:18-20: "When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other side of the lake.Then a teacher of the law came to him and said,
'Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.'"Jesus replied, 'Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests,
but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.'"Another disciple said to him, 'Lord, first let me go and bury my father.'
"But Jesus told him, 'Follow me, and let the dead bury the dead.'"
------------------
Luke 9:59-62
And he said unto another, Follow me.
But he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father.Jesus said unto him,
Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God.And another also said,
Lord, I will follow thee; but let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house.And Jesus said unto him,
No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.
Just time for a piece of information I recovered for myself,
from hearing a discussion of Mozart Requiem
on USA's National Public Radio
on 13 December 2005.
Here's the information:
Source URL = http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5051353
Must-Have MozartMozart's Finale: The Requiem K. 626
Hear Nicholas Kenyon Discuss Requiem, K. 626 [go to NPR URL above to hear the interview]Performance Today, December 13, 2005 · A whole world of myth has grown up around Mozart's mysterious Requiem.
Nicholas Kenyon of the BBC joins PT host Fred Child to help us unravel its mysteries.
Kenyon's favorite recording of the Requiem is on the Philips label (B0005520-02). It's a recording Kenyon says "unlocks the power of Mozart's Requiem without taking it out of its 18th century framework."
Sir John Eliot Gardiner conducts the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists with soprano Barbara Bonney, alto Anne Sofie von Otter, tenor Hans Peter Blochwitz and bass Willard White.
Tom Peters has one of the best weblogs on the Internet.
I read it at regular intervals, though not daily, and always get new ideas.
Tom Peters is a classic information networker: he moves and uses information.
Below is a way he uses information in the form of a challenge.
He has a challenge at this entry, titled "Your Nickel"
Your NickelFor a forthcoming event, I was asked to provide some possible "sayings" on leadership, six words or less, fit to go on coffee cups distributed as gifts. Well, I got a little carried away. (That's not news.) The results are listed below.
"Passion!"
"Energy!"
"Enthusiasm!"
. . . .
"You must care!"
"Listen."
"Ask. 'Why?'"
"'Different' beats 'Better.'"
"'Distinct' or 'Extinct.'"
"Innovate or Die."
"'Me Too' = 'Me Dead.'"
"Talent Time!"
"Best Talent Wins."
. . .
If you were given the same assignment, what other pithy, world-changing, cup-suitable pearls would you suggest?
There are more of his ideas in his list, and here's the URL for backup if the link in the title above doesn't work:
http://www.tompeters.com/entries.php?note=008590.php
I took his challenge on, and commented on his blog entry here where you will find a bunch of commenters offering their suggestions.
Here is my suggestion, which my students will recognize as a central teaching of my courses
at the Center for Information and Communication Sciences:
_________________________________________________For the coffee cup message entry, I nominate my favorite Asian proverb:
"Even the gods cannot help those who lose opportunities."
Source:
This is a close rephrasing of a version found in the Guy A. Zona (1997) collection of Chinese proverbs,
_If You Have Two Loaves of Bread, Sell One and Buy a Lily_. NY: Touchstone, p. 29._________________________________________________
Posted by Jay Gillette--Center for Information and Communication Sciences at February 13, 2006 07:59 PM
Yes, his rule is six words or less, but the Chinese proverb is only nine words in this form,
and it could be set as four lines, like poetry:
Even the gods
cannot help
those
who lose opportunities.
Tom Peters has set us a good challenge. Give it a try. Why not post your entry to his blog as a comment,
or to this one? Or post to your blog and link to both of these source blogs?
Yesterday, Friday 10 February 2006,
I saw a flock of robins
in the trees in front of the Ball Communications Building at Ball State University.
Around 1 PM I was coming back to my office after a business lunch.
There they were.
Robins in a flock like that are probably passing through.
This morning, Saturday, 11 February 2006, at dawn, I heard some singing.
This may be “singing on territory” and indicate some robins are here to stay.
Robins are the harbinger of spring in North America.
You can track the migration progress
on the superb Journey North education website on the American Robin.
Winter is hard and can be gloomy in the American Midwest.
While winter isn’t over, the presence of robins means spring is coming soon,
even now.
Love and redemption come like that.
A few birds. Some singing in the dawn.
Your life lifts up.
Things change, a little at a time. You find hope.
Keep alert for the robins.
Research & Development (R&D) is a great phrase and a concept that everybody salutes.
It's actually complex as a subject, and realistically a difficult area in which to become a subject-matter expert (SME).
Since R&D is an intellectual activity, the best place to begin, as with all intellectual activity, is with the timeless phrase attributed to Socrates:
"The wise person knows he knows not."
Yet as the Latin American novelist, Julio Cortazar says, "there is a stage past knowing that you know not."
So in that spirit, I'll start this discourse on R&D with the model for R&D management that I use in my research institute at
the Center for Information and Communication Sciences,
the Human Factors Institute of User-Centered Design, Development, and Deployment (HFI-UCD3).
In practical terms, there are three main component parts to Research and Development management:
* Applied Science
* Project Management
* Operations, including Logistics
The last two component parts are the required competencies of most managers in the information and communication industries and fields. Project management and operations including logistics are challenges to every manager in our area.
Yet it is the addition of Applied Science that differentiates R&D management from other management areas.
You have be able able to do and direct applied science to do and direct R&D.
That's the real reason that R&D management is more challenging that other forms of challenging management.
Science is hard to grasp, and harder to do. It's hardest to manage science and scientists.
Start with this hypothesis: Science is a way of life.
So if you want to do R&D management, first, and literally foremost, you need to be a good scientist.
This is enough for the present entry. Let's discourse and dialogue together on the topic, as we choose.
JEG
07 Febrary 2006