This was positively hilarious. It’s a clip of comedian Alan King talking about how women live longer than men.
This was positively hilarious. It’s a clip of comedian Alan King talking about how women live longer than men.
I like to think that I’m someone who doesn’t make snap judgements about people based on their looks, job title, educational qualifications, the car they drive etc. But I think that sometimes (much to my dismay), these sorts of external facets of someone’s life do prejudice my impressions of them. If someone’s driving an expensive car: “Wow, they’re rich”. If someone’s got a Ph.D. from M.I.T: “Wow, they’re smart”. And so on.
What drives this, I wonder? Why do people (including me) tend to think this way? I guess some of it is logical. I mean if someone went to M.I.T. and got a doctorate from there, they have to be, relatively speaking, quite bright. But what I wonder about more is how such impressions shape our attitudes towards people…specifically when it comes to respect. At the end of the day, it must begin and end with what it is that we value, or take pride in.
I recently read Carly Fiorina’s autobiography, Tough as Nails and want to briefly reflect on it. Fiorina used to be CEO of Lucent and most recently, H.P.
As a written piece of work, I was rather disappointed. I found various editing issues that should really have been caught before the book went to print. However, it was interesting to read about her experience and actually validate some of my assumptions about H.P.s resurgence in recent times. Here were some of my take-aways:
On being a woman in business: Learning to work in a world where there are subtle and sometimes in-your-face biases against women was clearly an an issue that Fiorina dealt with many times in her career and I have no doubt that this is true for for scores of other businesswoman out there. While I feel that times have changed and men are far more accepting of women as peers and superiors, there is still a way to go before true equality emerges.
On socializing and alcohol: I’m not a big fan of alcohol. I don’t have any ideological reasons against it. I just don’t like the taste of most alcoholic beverages. Fiorina talks about how she just didn’t like getting drunk. But drinking and business go hand in hand since enough people enjoy a good alcoholic buzz (especially after work). In business related social situations, after she’d had a drink or two, she would often pull the bartender aside to tell him/her to bring her non-alcoholic beverages even if she asked for alcoholic. This way, she wouldn’t make her business associates uncomfortable by not participating in the drinking ritual.
On a non-technical person leading a technical company: As someone with a graduate technical education, I often feel that someone who doesn’t have at least an undergraduate technical education cannot lead a technical organization. Fiorina’s book convinced me otherwise. One just needs a smart person who is willing to learn and keep the big picture in mind to run ANY organization.
On leadership: Fiorina talks about several examples where she failed as a leader because she made decisions with the heart, rather than the mind. Sometimes it’s hard to divorce the two and resulting decisions are tough. But that’s the responsibility that leadership comes with.
On running a large complex organization: Larger organizations such as H.P. and the one that I work in are highly resistant to change. Whether it’s because of the fear of the unknown or whether it’s blamed on archaic policies or the tagline “that’s the way it’s always been done”, it is extremely detrimental to business success. Fiorina had to battle a lot of this during her tenure at H.P. and at AT&T/Lucent. Pity she did not have a chance to relish the fruit of her labor. I always thought that Mark Hurd took over reigns at H.P. after Fiorina did much hard work. She set up the stage for his and H.P.’s success. Granted Hurd is a strong, analytical leader in his own right. But if Fiorina hadn’t set up the structure, processes and impetus for change, Hurd’s results would not be nearly as strong as they show up to be.
Those of you who know me will remember how anal I can get about things being neat. Worse, I tend to impose this on family and friends. My brother and wife will be the first to testfiy. So, *yet another* New Year resolution for me is to avoid judging or measuring based on whatever ridiculous notions I have. <do I hear clapping?> After all, Einstein is credited with having said something like this: “If a cluttered desk is indicative of a cluttered mind, then what is an empty desk indicative of?”
In an earlier post, I commented on how I felt that women in Europe tend to wear boots far more than the U.S. On further reflection, I think I have this notion because people in the U.S. dress far more casually than folks in Europe. Here I go with another generalization, but I daresay this is closer to the truth.
It’s Monday again. . What is it about Mondays that make them so darn depressing. I wonder sometimes if it’s because I dislike my job with an intensity that rivals the munchkin’s love for chocolates. But I guess Mondays are universally disliked by most except a select few (who I am sure do not hail from this planet).
Yesterday was Easter and we went for the Catholic service at the Stanford Memorial Cathedral. It wasn’t a particularly inspiring service. The music ministry did a good job although the acoustics in the cathedral didn’t do them much justice. The Director of the Music Ministry almost always does quite an impressive job of selecting an amazingly eclectic array of choral pieces for the mass. There is almost always Latin and Spanish mixed in with the standard English hymns. Hats off to her…
For Easter lunch, I made a traditional Syrian Catholic dish : Chinese Potatoes and Pork Curry. It’s more a stir fry than a curry. I don’t mean to blow my horn, but it was good enough that my beloved granny would heartily endorse it. Speaking of Chinese Potatoes, has anyone eaten a chinese meal that had potatoes in it? I haven’t. Isn’t that really strange. Potatoes are quite a ubiquitous vegetable but I haven’t for the life of me seen it in a chinese restaurant menu.
It seems that the Iraq situation is steadily worsening. I hope that one way or the other, the allies can finish off this job that they’ve started. Altogether it seems so senseless – all the killing. (chords from John Lennon’s “Imagine” come to mind)
I’ve been slowly but sure degenerating into what is going to be a long and nasty cold. This is abnormal for me. It’s been a week that I’ve been on the verge of getting a full blown cold and it’s only today that I am finally weathering the full effects of the infection.
Historically, I find myself in the middle of a cold quite suddenly. In India, where catching a cold for me was almost as regular in frequency as a haircut, I used to get all kinds of wonderful ancillary infections accompanying the original virus. This was attributed to my deviated septum and infection prone tonsils. This would cause me to develop an inner ear infection that would almost certainly require antibiotics. Of course, I’d also acquire a wonderfully painful case of sinusitis too. All in all, every two months or so, I used get a cold and be extremely unwell for about two weeks after.
At age 13, the powers to be (read ENT surgeon and my Mom) decided that something needed to be done. the tonsils had to come out…
Well, I’m jumping on the blogging bandwagon. I’ve been hearing about this concept for a while now and figure that the time is right for me to give this a whirl. So stand by for more updates as I figure out how this works…
