In this day of information overload, the art of information distillation is now possibly prized above the art of knowledge creation.

Doonesbury.com’s The War in Quotes is a startling account of the Iraq War, told entirely in the words of those who conceived, planned, advocated, and executed it. Presented in chronological order in thematic groups against a timeline of key events, …

I like these:

Share everything.

Play fair.

Don’t hit people.

Put things back where you found them.

Clean up your own mess.

Don’t take things that aren’t yours.

Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.

Wash your hands before your eat.

Flush.

Warm cookie and cold milk are good for you.

Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.

Take a nap every …

In his book On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not, author Robert A. Burton made the point that:

Certainty is neither a conscious choice nor even a thought process. That unmistakable sense of certainty arises out of involuntary brain mechanisms that, like love or anger, function independently of reason.

This is something for business leaders to be mindful of. To embrace the …

My friend Kris Rao’s new book Living and Working in India has just been released. If you have ever thought about working in India, this book gives you heaps of insights into how business works in India.

Unlike the western countries, Indian government has not placed any restrictions on foreign nationals working in India.

(’foreign’, especially ‘western’ credentials carry a lot of weight, with experience …

The marks of the top 1,000 companies in America can be roughly categorized as follows:

35% are purely typographic
27% are initials
14% integrate typography with a graphic
13% are pictorial
11% are abstract

From The Art of Looking Sideways by Alan Fletcher. ISBN978-0-7148-3449-8.

“History has demanded … that intelligent beings choose between order and anarchy, between creation and destruction, between reason and unreason.” Autifon Deliamber in Lord Valentine’s Castle by Robert Silverberg.

From The Tao of Pooh and The Te of Piglet by Benjamin Hoff (ISBN 0-416-19526-1), this story illustrating the Taoist principle of Effortless Action or Wu Wei ??:

The Old Master and the Horse

A horse was tied outside a shop in a narrow Chinese village street. Whenever anyone would try to walk by, the horse would kick him. Before long, a small crowd of villages had gathered near the …

Moral Intelligence - Enhancing business performance and leadership success.
By Dough Lennick and Fred Kiel PhD, ISBN 0 13 149050 8

Some highlights:

Moral intelligence – the mental capacity to determine how universal human principles should be applied to out values, goals and actions.

We are hardwired to be moral but often stray from the path.

Cultural relativism – everyone has their own morality based on their situation and culture.

Without a high degree …

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
ISBN-10: 0439813786
ISBN-13: 978-0439813785

A beautiful combination of novel, graphic novel, and movie. Selznick has really created a new approach here to the idea of a book. And it is a great story to boot.

Here’s a “deleted scene” from the book on Amazon, typical of the beautiful drawings therein.

The author’s passion and dedication really showed through. I …

“The first thing that we have to remember is that the good guys need to win – it makes the world better.”

By Max McKeown & Philip Whiteley. ISBN 0-273-65614-7.

There are plenty of oh-too-believable horror stories of show-pony bullies, egomaniacs, and win-at-all-costers who do bad things, hurt people and spoil businesses. More importantly, the authors present plenty of evidence that the nice guys …