Excellent question. It speaks volumes of you that you seek to learn and plan prior to executing.
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Never Eat Alone (Keith Ferazzi). I have provided an interesting link to the blog for your reference;
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The Toyota Way (Jeffrey Liker). Before a better business, comes a better you and before one does, one should have a coherent philosophy for why one does.
I found many of the principles articulated in the Toyota Way to be useful in terms of thinking about how I might make my own life “processes” more conducive to greater efficiency, more amenable to the surfacing of errors/inefficiencies quickly, thereby rendering me more capapble of constant growth of…perpetual evolution. I found it to be a worthy book - more than I imagined (but, perhaps, it just resonated with me personally). In any event, and again, for your reference and convenience, I have provided a link to an executive summary of the 14 principles espoused in Toyota Way.
I hope that you find these materials to be useful.
To digress at great length, I offer the following thoughts (from a piece that I wrote in April 2006).
Some Speculative Thoughts on Connection:
Everything is connected. Everyone is connected.
A butterfly could break wind somewhere in Guatemala and this could result in me getting a headache.
Fascinating.
Really.
(Incidentally, do butterflies break wind)?
So, distance notwithstanding, there is already a relationship between you and I. An as yet undiscovered one, to be sure, but a relationship nonetheless.
This notion, that everything and everyone are somehow connected gives rise to an interesting question:
How would our interactions differ if we treated each other not as strangers but rather as people who know that they already share some connection? How would we treat “strangers” (take for instance, the people on this site) if we approached our interactions with them as a means to discover what our connections were?
Would we be warmer? More positive? More inquisitive and open to listening (as opposed to being self-centred and preoccupied with ensuring that our perspective and priorities were well on their way to being firmly rammed down another’s throat)?
Would a warmer, more positive, more inquisitive and open approach, in turn lead to a better quality of interaction and more respectful and/or enduring relationships (much in the manner of a self-fulfilling prophesy)?
I dunno. Maybe.
And…
If we viewed ourselves as connected, again in an unknown but very real way, to all other people, would we go out of our way to not just avoid hurting other people but to actively foster their well-being and help them achieve their objectives? If we did this, if we all did this, would not each of us benefit from having a community of people that in their individual capacities was, in some small or large way, doing something to foster our well-being and help us clarify and/or move towards our goals?
I dunno. Maybe.
And…
If we viewed ourselves as connected in a very real way to all other people around us, could we somehow claim this pre-existing connection as giving us a right…an entitlement to seek dialogue with or solace from any other human being and thereby relieve the sense of isolation that overcomes all of us from time to time
(What, after all, is so ignoble, disgraceful or dishonourable about one human being wanting to reach out to another to gain solace, to share joy, to increase awareness or understanding, to know, to be known)?
Maybe it’s time for all of us to allow for a little intellectual drifting and paradigm shifting.
That’s the interesting thing about a change in perspective: The sky is still blue. The grass is still green. Nothing changes. Everything changes.
What if - your outcomes in life depend upon not what happens to you but rather, what you decide to make happen?
What if - everything (big or small) that you do or refrain from doing affected literally EVERYONE else?
What if we all reached out to nurture the talent that resides in the people around us?
In a completely connected and interrelated universe, a change in one, results in a change in all. What if, your next idea changed everything…for absolutely everyone?
Yours, is the magnificent power of one. Be a butterfly. Move your wings. Change the universe.
“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”
John Muir - environmentalist, naturalist, traveler, writer, scientist.
(1838 - 1914)
Acquire knowledge. Share knowledge. Learn. Grow. Together.
Quest
http://nevereatalone.typepad.com/blog/2006/05/best_life_possi.html
http://www.si.umich.edu/ICOS/Liker04.pdf
