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Archives for November 2010

Beware the Undoable Job

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Drucker:

“[The effective executive is] forever on guard against the ‘impossible’ job, the job that simply is not for normal human beings.

Such jobs are common. They usually look exceedingly logical on paper. But they cannot be filled. One man of proven performance capacity after the other is tried — and none does well. Six months or a year later, the job has defeated them.

Almost always such a job was first created to accomodate an unusual man tailored to his idiosyncrasies. It usually calls for a mixture of temperaments that is rarely found in one person. Individuals can acquire very divergent kinds of knowledge and highly disparate skills. But they cannot change their temperaments. A job that calls for disparate temperaments becomes an “undoable” job, a man-killer.

The rule is simple: Any job that has defeated two or three men in succession, even though each had performed well in his previous assignments, must be assumed unfit for human beings. It must be redesigned.

(From The Effective Executive)

Price Check by Amazon

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Amazon’s Price Check looks like a helpful app if you still have some Christmas shopping to do — as well as just being useful in general.

Here’s the first part of the description:

Ever wondered if you were getting the best price on a product when you were out shopping? With Price Check by Amazon, you can use your iPhone to instantly compare prices with Amazon.com and its merchants while on-the-go. Price Check enables you to search Amazon products quickly using barcode, picture, voice, and text search. All prices are in US Dollars and search the Amazon US catalog. Compatible with iPhone 3Gs and iPhone 4 devices with auto-focus cameras and iOS 4 or greater.

Price Check by Amazon provides access to Amazon.com product descriptions and customer reviews to guide you in making informed purchase decisions. When you find a low price while using the app, simply log into your Amazon account to complete a secure purchase. Price Check by Amazon supports 1-Click check-out and Prime memberships.

The Human Brain Has More Switches Than All the Computers on Earth

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This was an interesting article at CNET. Here’s the first part:

The human brain is truly awesome.

A typical, healthy one houses some 200 billion nerve cells, which are connected to one another via hundreds of trillions of synapses. Each synapse functions like a microprocessor, and tens of thousands of them can connect a single neuron to other nerve cells. In the cerebral cortex alone, there are roughly 125 trillion synapses, which is about how many stars fill 1,500 Milky Way galaxies.

(HT: Challies)

Give the Gift of Safe Water

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Carlos Whittaker has blogged about an initiative of Water Missions International to provide clean water to as many of their remaining communities as they can through text donations of $10.

Water Missions International is an engineering relief and development Christian nonprofit that seeks to provide sustainable and safe water solutions to people in 40 developing countries and disaster victims worldwide. They currently have 125+ communities waiting for funding to get safe water, with the communities averaging around 2500 people. This initiative is focused on providing the funding for as many of those communities as possible.

A Right Understanding of Strengths

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This is from an Amazon review of Marcus Buckingham’s DVD resource, The Truth About You. It describes what a strength actually is very well:

Buckingham’s advice to success is simple: Work on your strengths. But it is his definition of “strength” that makes a world of difference.

To him, strength is not something you’re good at but something that excites you, something that you look forward to, something that makes you strong. The idea of focusing on how it feels when we’re doing something rather than on how well we perform it has changed the way I look at my life and my work for the better. Now I don’t feel embarrassed that I’m not good at math or regretful that I did not follow my teacher’s advice (you’re good at writing; therefore, you should be a lawyer). Instead, I give myself permission to concentrate on using what I’m good at in ways that make me feel accomplished and fulfilled. That does not necessarily mean it will translate into buckets and buckets of money. However, it sure beats waking up every morning to go to a job you do well but dread and hate.

Related to this is my post from a few months ago, “Your Weaknesses Are Not What You Are Bad At.”

For those seeking to get a better picture of their vocational direction (and I mean first of all in your current job, rather than finding a different job), I would recommend Buckingham’s DVD set.

The most helpful thing about it is actually this little book that comes with it in which you record, over the course of a week, the things that weakened you and the things that strengthened you. By reviewing going through this exercise and then reviewing your entries you can get a better idea of your strengths and weaknesses (and remember: your weaknesses are not necessarily what you are bad at; they are what drain you).

If you are interested in a more in-depth treatment of strengths and how to get a better picture of what your own strengths are, I would also recommend Buckingham’s book Go Put Your Strengths to Work.