BUSINESS: Tom Peter's rules

via Tom Peters

Don't know if you follow the Tom Peters' blog (yes THE Tom Peters), very interesting stuff there, very inspiring and empowering. In one of his last post, Tom is speaking about his "rules". I personally like them a lot, very simple but very powerful. Have a look:

• Hire Great People (Resilient, Passionate)


• Try a Lot of Stuff (S.A.V.-Screw Around Vigorously/R.F.A.—Ready. Fire. Aim.)


• All "Wow" All the Time (Shoot for the moon—in every circumstance)


• Enjoy It While It Lasts (And it ain't gonna last forever, so you might as well keep swinging)

In the same post, Tom is also bringing two very nice quotes:

From BusinessWeek
In business, you reward people for taking risks. When it doesn't work out, you promote them because they were willing to try new things. If people come back and tell me they skied all day and never fell down, I tell them to try a different mountain.

From Bloomberg by Bloomberg
We made mistakes, of course. Most of them were omissions we didn't think of when we initially wrote the software. We fixed them by doing it over and over, again and again. We do the same today. While our competitors are still sucking their thumbs trying to make the design perfect, we're already on prototype version #5. By the time our rivals are ready with wires and screws, we are on version #10. It gets back to planning versus acting: We act from day one; others plan how to plan—for months.

Tags: tom peters - strategy

PRIVATE and BUSINESS: I see - Innovation

So, again, let's mark this very special day :-)

Take a lot of innovation on the business and technology sides - inno.
Put a Latin verb which means "I see" - veo.
Extended by some very nice solutions - solutions.

Add the most important and central part: the core, the "reason why", the driver, a completely great motivated and compact team, made of very nice professionals who are sharing strong values, some dreams, and a vision. And who would absolutely like to continue to work together for some years.

And you have: innoveo solutions

Next chapter in some days/weeks. Stay tuned.

Tags: innoveo solutions - innoveo

BUSINESS: Project-based work

via Seth Godin

What kind of people are you hiring? Are you sure you are looking at the right kind of persons?

Most fast-growing organizations are looking for people who can get stuff done.
There is a fundamental shift in rules from manual-based work (where you follow instructions and an increase in productivity means doing the steps faster) to project-based work (where the instructions are unknown, and visualizing outcomes and then getting things done is what counts.)

And yet, we're still trying to hire people who have shown an ability to follow instructions.

Tags: seth godin - hiring

PRIVATE: Happiness, compassion and sharing

via Joi Ito

I am sick, at home, and ... thinking ;-)
Just read this post from Joi Ito. Great!

I'm reading The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler. In it, they suggest that we should focus on pursuing happiness as our goal in life and the we should be careful to make a distinction between happiness and pleasure. [...]

We then realize that we need to develop patience to build compassion. Our patience grows by being challenged by annoying or hurtful people and events. It is these people and events that ultimately are our teachers. We should learn to cherish and be thankful for these annoying things, because without them we would not grow and become even happier. [...]

Compassion vs greed is something that we've been talking a lot about in the context of amateur vs professional. I think that compassion and the happiness one gains from giving and sharing is one of the fundamental driving forces of the sharing economy just as greed and the "economic man" are fundamental elements of capitalism and neo-classical economics. I think that in order to really understand how the sharing economy works, we need to understand how happiness works and what makes people choose compassion over greed.

We often make decisions which involved trying to decide which decision will make us happier. Often, we mistake pleasure for happiness and make the choice that may be more pleasurable instead of the choice that would provide more long-term happiness. The Dalai Lama says that just framing questions to yourself in terms of what will give you more happiness and making a distinction between happiness and pleasure will help us make the right decisions. [...]