1. Be willing to support the purpose, values, rules and goals
2. Be an active part of the group
3. Speak with good purpose
4. Be polite and respectful at all times
5. Make your statements brief and clear
6. Not more than one person should speak at the same time
7. Acknowledge whatever is being communicated as true for the speaker at that moment. If you disagree or do not understand, ask for clarification.
8. Keep the discussion on track. If it gets sidetracked, bring it back to the main subject by suggesting there are some other important points which need to be covered in the limited time.
9. Agreement should be in writing to prevent misunderstanding
a. Make only agreements that you are willing and intend to keep
b. Communicate any potential broken agreement at the first appropriate time
c. Clear up any broken agreement at the first appropriate opportunity
10. Have the willingness to win and to allow others to win
11. Be responsible - don't lay blame or give excuses
12. Criticise or comment on ideas or issues not people
13. Hold the person "innocent" until proven "guilty"
14. Quickly summarise the conclusion in such a way that everyone will realize the important facts brought out in that discussion.
Source: Unknown (Discovered recently in my compilations of lessons learnt/good advice).
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Friday, April 22, 2011
How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships
After last week's review of the Black Swan, one of the key lessons I learnt from the book is "Go to parties". But technically inclined people like engineers are naturally lacking in social skills and they may find going to parties more daunting than constructing the Petronas Twin Towers. Anyway, the key is just go out and have fun. People have tremendous ability to adapt and as long as the mindset is correct, why can't engineers become more "interesting"? Hahaha
Anyway, some guidelines would do no harm. The way I treat reading this book is like reading a novel. Some of the points are useful but please do not refer to it as a bible during social occasion. We have to be natural and real. No one likes a fake.
Some useful points which is worth considering:
1) What it boils down to is their (successful people) is their more skillful way of dealing with fellow human beings.
2) The way you look and the way you move is more than 80 percent of someone's first impression of you. Not one word need be spoken.
3) Just give 'em great posture, a heads-up look, a confident smile, and a direct gaze.
4) Technique #1 - The Flooding Smile
Don't flash an immediate smile when you greet someone, as though who walked into your line of sight would be the beneficiary. Instead, look at the other person's face for a second. Pause. Soak in their persona. Then let a big, warm, responsive smile flood over your face and overflow into your eyes. It will enqulf the recipient like a warm wave. The split-second delay convinces people your flooding smile is genuine and only for them. (Again, if you cannot do it naturally, DON'T do it. I can imagine the situation if it is not natural).
5) The secret to making people like you is showing how much you like them!
6) Small talk is about putting people at ease.
7) The first step in starting a conversation without strangling it is to match your listener's mood, if only for a sentence or two.
8) How do you put people at ease? By convincing them they are OK and that the two of you are similar.
9) Whenever people ask you what you do, given them some mouth-to-ear resuscitation so they can catch their breath and say something.
10) When talking with anyone, keep your ears open and, like a good detective, listen for clues.
11) 85 percent of one's success in life is directly due to communication skills.
12) Whenever people mention an activity or interest you share, let them enjoy discussing their passion. Then, when the time is right, casually mention you share their interest.
13) So big winners (when they wish to control, inspire, be loved by, sell to people, or get them to go to dinner) do the thinking for them. They translate everything into the other person's terms by starting as many sentences as they can with that powerful little three-letter word, you. Thus, I call the technique "Comm-YOU-nication."
14) All pros think of holes they might fall into and then memorize great escape lines.
15) Soon you'll become addicted to the high that establishing rapport with so many people gives you. All it takes is reading different sections of the newspaper.
16) In practically every industry, vendors give two prices on goods or services - one to insiders and one to you and me.
17) Home advise: Salute the Spouse. Office advise: Salute the Secretary.
18) The first challenge in Eyeball Selling is discovering who the real decision maker is.
19) ......the world goes 'round on favors.
20) Top customer service folks welcome mistakes because they know it gives their firm a chance to shine.
21) Nobody gets to the top alone.
In summary, the book does give some useful pointers on how you deal with people. But most of it are just common sense but it is still worthwhile to remind us sometimes on how small things matter with relationships. On personal note, I have seen many brilliant people lamenting why some less brilliant people gets all the credit but they fail to see that they miss the important skill of getting along with people or working in a team. On a final note, I quote the following from Leil Lowndes:
Remember, repeating an action makes a habit.
Your habits create your character.
And your character is your destiny.
May success be your destiny.
I wish you all the best and enjoy the journey known as life.
Anyway, some guidelines would do no harm. The way I treat reading this book is like reading a novel. Some of the points are useful but please do not refer to it as a bible during social occasion. We have to be natural and real. No one likes a fake.
Some useful points which is worth considering:
1) What it boils down to is their (successful people) is their more skillful way of dealing with fellow human beings.
2) The way you look and the way you move is more than 80 percent of someone's first impression of you. Not one word need be spoken.
3) Just give 'em great posture, a heads-up look, a confident smile, and a direct gaze.
4) Technique #1 - The Flooding Smile
Don't flash an immediate smile when you greet someone, as though who walked into your line of sight would be the beneficiary. Instead, look at the other person's face for a second. Pause. Soak in their persona. Then let a big, warm, responsive smile flood over your face and overflow into your eyes. It will enqulf the recipient like a warm wave. The split-second delay convinces people your flooding smile is genuine and only for them. (Again, if you cannot do it naturally, DON'T do it. I can imagine the situation if it is not natural).
5) The secret to making people like you is showing how much you like them!
6) Small talk is about putting people at ease.
7) The first step in starting a conversation without strangling it is to match your listener's mood, if only for a sentence or two.
8) How do you put people at ease? By convincing them they are OK and that the two of you are similar.
9) Whenever people ask you what you do, given them some mouth-to-ear resuscitation so they can catch their breath and say something.
10) When talking with anyone, keep your ears open and, like a good detective, listen for clues.
11) 85 percent of one's success in life is directly due to communication skills.
12) Whenever people mention an activity or interest you share, let them enjoy discussing their passion. Then, when the time is right, casually mention you share their interest.
13) So big winners (when they wish to control, inspire, be loved by, sell to people, or get them to go to dinner) do the thinking for them. They translate everything into the other person's terms by starting as many sentences as they can with that powerful little three-letter word, you. Thus, I call the technique "Comm-YOU-nication."
14) All pros think of holes they might fall into and then memorize great escape lines.
15) Soon you'll become addicted to the high that establishing rapport with so many people gives you. All it takes is reading different sections of the newspaper.
16) In practically every industry, vendors give two prices on goods or services - one to insiders and one to you and me.
17) Home advise: Salute the Spouse. Office advise: Salute the Secretary.
18) The first challenge in Eyeball Selling is discovering who the real decision maker is.
19) ......the world goes 'round on favors.
20) Top customer service folks welcome mistakes because they know it gives their firm a chance to shine.
21) Nobody gets to the top alone.
In summary, the book does give some useful pointers on how you deal with people. But most of it are just common sense but it is still worthwhile to remind us sometimes on how small things matter with relationships. On personal note, I have seen many brilliant people lamenting why some less brilliant people gets all the credit but they fail to see that they miss the important skill of getting along with people or working in a team. On a final note, I quote the following from Leil Lowndes:
Remember, repeating an action makes a habit.
Your habits create your character.
And your character is your destiny.
May success be your destiny.
I wish you all the best and enjoy the journey known as life.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
Following my earlier reviews of Ascent of Money and Crisis Economics, "The Black Swan" would complete the three books which I would recommend for anyone who is interested to know more about crisis in the financial markets like the latest one in 2007/2008. The book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb is very insightful and it would definitely reshape the way we think about events surrounding our daily life. I may be wrong but I have the impression that "The Black Swan" is used by others to explain events which they may have missed but then, later justified as a black swan event just like the recent financial crisis. I don't think it is the author's intention to justify financial crisis as something which is unpredictable. But anyway, this is just my opinion. Reading the three books will hopefully give readers a good base to form their own opinions as Ascent of Money is like a history book of major financial events, while Crisis Economics provides opinions on the causes of the recent crisis and "The Black Swan" highlights the importance and impact of the highly improbable.
As usual, the followings are some of the important points (in my humble interpretation of the book):
1) Black Swan logic makes what you don't know far more relevant than what you do know.
2) The more unexpected the success of such a venture, the smaller the number of competitors, and the more successul the entrepreneur who implements the idea.
3) The payoff of a human venture is, in general, inversely proportional to what it is expected to be.
4) .........(on investment and business)......to tinker as much as possible and try to collect as many Black Swan opportunities as you can.
5) Financial markets, commodity prices, inflation rates and economic data are matters that belong to Extremistan. In Extremistan, one unit can easily affect the total in a disproportionate way. In this world, you should always be suspicious of the knowledge you derive from data. This is a very simple test of uncertainty that allows you to distinguish between the two kinds of randomness.
6) Black Swan is a sucker's problem. In other words, it occurs relative to your expectation. (Sounds familiar, don't tell me you have never been suckered. Ever wondered why the rich just seems to get richer and the poor just get poorer?).
7) It remains the case that you know what is wrong with a lot more confidence than you know what is right.
8) Mechanism of conjectures and refutations, which works as follows: you formulate a (bold) conjecture and you start looking for the observation that would prove you wrong. This is the alternative to our search for confirmatory instances.
9) Patients who spend fifteen minutes every day writing an account of their daily troubles feel indeed better about what has befallen them. You feel less guilty for not having avoided certain events; you feel less responsible for it. Things appear as if they were bound to happen.
10) Lottery buyers overestimate their chances of winning because they visualize such a potent payoff - in fact, they are so blind to the odds that they treat odds of one in a thousand and one in a million almost in the same way. (Ever wondered why Tan Sri Lim and his family, Vincent Tan and Ananda Krishnan is wealthier than his customers? :p)
11) Researchers have mapped our activities into (roughly) a dual mode of thinking, which they separate as "System 1" and "System 2", or the experiential and cogitative. In brief, "System 1" is what we call "intuition" while "System 2" is what we call thinking. Most of our mistakes in reasoning come from using System 1 when we are in fact thinking that we are using System 2. Much of the trouble with human nature resides in our inability to use much of System 2, or to use it in a prolonged way without having to take a long beach vacation.
12) We can use our ability to convince with a story that conveys the right message.
13) .......it is tough to deal with the social consequences of the appearance of continuous failure.
14) ....to have a pleasant life you should spread these small "affects" across time as evenly as possible. Plenty of mildly good news is preferable to one single lump of great news.
15) It is better to lump all your pain into a brief period rather than have it spread out over a longer one.
16) Humans will believe anything you say provided that you do not exhibit the smallest shadow of diffidence; like animals, they can detect the smallest crack in your confidence before you express it. The trick is to be as smooth as possible in personal manners. The problem with business people, is that if you act like a loser they will treat you as a loser - you set the yardstick yourself. It is not what you are telling people, it is how you are saying it. But you need to remain understated and maintain an Olympian calm in front of others.
17) One Diagoras, a nonbeliever in the gods, was shown a painted tablets bearing the portraits of some worshippers who prayed, then survived a subsequent shipwreck. The implication was that praying protects you from drowning. Diagoras asked, "Where were the pictures of those who prayed, then drowned?" (Gets you thinking right? We always see this tactic in salespeople where they show you the benefits and rosy pictures to justify what they are selling but it would be interesting if we ask the "right" question like Diagoras and see how they react.)
18) It is much easier to sell "Look what I did for you" than "Look what I avoided for you". (This explains why strikers get higher paid compared to defenders in football. A striker always appear to win the game with their goals but it is very difficult for a defender to claim how many goals he has prevented).
19) We are explanation-seeking animals who tend to think that everything has an identifiable cause and grab the most apparent one as the explanation.
20) Note here that I (Nassim Nicholas Taleb) am not saying causes do not exist; do not use this argument to avoid trying to learn from history. All I am saying is that it is not so simple; be suspicious of the "because" and handle it with care - particularly in situations where you suspect silent evidence.
21) In addition to the confirmation error and the narative fallacy, the manifestations of silent evidence further distort the role and importance of Black Swans.
22) Ludic fallacy - the attributes of the uncertainty we face in real life have little connection to the sterilized ones we encounter in exams and games. (The trap which academics with little practical experience often falls into. This can possibly explains why street-smart people are generally more successful compared to PhD holders).
23) It is why those who "study" and fare well in school have a tendency to be suckers for the ludic fallacy.
24) We respect what has happened, ignoring what could have happened. In other words, we are naturally shallow and superficial - and we do not know it.
25) Train yourself to spot the difference between the sensational and the empirical.
26) Epistemic arrogance bears a double effect: we overestimate what we know, and underestimate uncertainty, by compressing the range of possible uncertain states (i.e., by reducing the space of the unknown).
27) The more information you give someone, the more hypotheses they will formulate along the way, and the worse off they will be. They see more random noise and mistake it for information.
28) The problem with experts is thay they do not know what they do not know.
29) Those who had a big reputation were worse predictors than those who had none.
30) Plans fail because of what we have called tunneling, the neglect of sources of uncertainty outside the plan itself.
31) ........it is the lower bound of estimates (i.e., the worst case) that matters when engaging in a policy - the worst case is far more consequential than the forecast itself.
32) We see flaws in others and not in ourselves.
33) We have a natural tendency to listen to the expert, even in fields where there may be no experts.
34) Do not listen to economic forecasters or predictors in social science (they are mere entertainers), but do make your own forecast for the picnic.
35) "Barbell" strategy used by Taleb as a trader. If you know that you are vulnerable to prediction errors, and if you accept that most "risk measures" are flawed, because of the Black Swan, then your strategy is to be as hyperconservative and hyperaggressive as you can be instead of being mildly aggressive or conservative.
36)........the most successful businesses are precisely those that know how to work around inherent unpredictability and even exploit it.
37) Go to parties! (This is where you may get breakthrough ideas rather living in our own small world. But there is a catch, choose wisely which parties to attend ;)
38) This idea that in order to make a decision you need to focus on the consequences (which you can know) rather than the probability (which you can't know) is the central idea of uncertainty.
39) Random outcomes, or an arbitrary situation, can also explain success, and provide the initial push that leads to a winner-take-all result.
40) It is easier for the rich to get richer, for the famous to become more famous.
41) Measures of uncertainty that are based on the bell curve simply disregard the possibility, and the impact, of sharp jumps or discontinuities and are, therefore, inapplicable in Extremistan.
42) Probabilities are dependent on history, and the first central assumption leading to the Gaussian bell curve fails in reality.
43) In the end it is those who derive consequences and seize the importance of the ideas, seeing their real value, who win the day.
44) In the end this is a trivial decision making rule: I am very aggressive when I can gain exposure to positive Black Swans - when a failure would be of small moment - and very conservative when I am under threat from a negative Black Swan. I am very aggressive when an error in the model can benefit me, and paranoid when the error can hurt. This may not be too interesting except that it is exactly what other people do not do.
45) Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that's what you are seeking.
46) Be aggressive, be the one to resign, if you have the guts.
47) It is more difficult to be a loser in a game you set up yourself.
48) In Black Swan terms, this means that you are exposed to the improbable only if you let it control you. You always control what you do; so make this your end. (You control your own life, don't let others determine your fate and most importantly, your happiness)
This book is definitely worth reading as it jolts the way you think about events. I really like the example about the well-fed turkey and how dangerous it is for us to extrapolate future events. We certainly do not want to be the turkey assuming that we will be continuously well-fed based on past experience (or data) but in reality, each day of being well-fed means closer towards being slaughtered! Personally, I have also made a note to re-read Chapter 19 if the day seems gloomy and sad. I wish you the same joy as I have in reading the book.
As usual, the followings are some of the important points (in my humble interpretation of the book):
1) Black Swan logic makes what you don't know far more relevant than what you do know.
2) The more unexpected the success of such a venture, the smaller the number of competitors, and the more successul the entrepreneur who implements the idea.
3) The payoff of a human venture is, in general, inversely proportional to what it is expected to be.
4) .........(on investment and business)......to tinker as much as possible and try to collect as many Black Swan opportunities as you can.
5) Financial markets, commodity prices, inflation rates and economic data are matters that belong to Extremistan. In Extremistan, one unit can easily affect the total in a disproportionate way. In this world, you should always be suspicious of the knowledge you derive from data. This is a very simple test of uncertainty that allows you to distinguish between the two kinds of randomness.
6) Black Swan is a sucker's problem. In other words, it occurs relative to your expectation. (Sounds familiar, don't tell me you have never been suckered. Ever wondered why the rich just seems to get richer and the poor just get poorer?).
7) It remains the case that you know what is wrong with a lot more confidence than you know what is right.
8) Mechanism of conjectures and refutations, which works as follows: you formulate a (bold) conjecture and you start looking for the observation that would prove you wrong. This is the alternative to our search for confirmatory instances.
9) Patients who spend fifteen minutes every day writing an account of their daily troubles feel indeed better about what has befallen them. You feel less guilty for not having avoided certain events; you feel less responsible for it. Things appear as if they were bound to happen.
10) Lottery buyers overestimate their chances of winning because they visualize such a potent payoff - in fact, they are so blind to the odds that they treat odds of one in a thousand and one in a million almost in the same way. (Ever wondered why Tan Sri Lim and his family, Vincent Tan and Ananda Krishnan is wealthier than his customers? :p)
11) Researchers have mapped our activities into (roughly) a dual mode of thinking, which they separate as "System 1" and "System 2", or the experiential and cogitative. In brief, "System 1" is what we call "intuition" while "System 2" is what we call thinking. Most of our mistakes in reasoning come from using System 1 when we are in fact thinking that we are using System 2. Much of the trouble with human nature resides in our inability to use much of System 2, or to use it in a prolonged way without having to take a long beach vacation.
12) We can use our ability to convince with a story that conveys the right message.
13) .......it is tough to deal with the social consequences of the appearance of continuous failure.
14) ....to have a pleasant life you should spread these small "affects" across time as evenly as possible. Plenty of mildly good news is preferable to one single lump of great news.
15) It is better to lump all your pain into a brief period rather than have it spread out over a longer one.
16) Humans will believe anything you say provided that you do not exhibit the smallest shadow of diffidence; like animals, they can detect the smallest crack in your confidence before you express it. The trick is to be as smooth as possible in personal manners. The problem with business people, is that if you act like a loser they will treat you as a loser - you set the yardstick yourself. It is not what you are telling people, it is how you are saying it. But you need to remain understated and maintain an Olympian calm in front of others.
17) One Diagoras, a nonbeliever in the gods, was shown a painted tablets bearing the portraits of some worshippers who prayed, then survived a subsequent shipwreck. The implication was that praying protects you from drowning. Diagoras asked, "Where were the pictures of those who prayed, then drowned?" (Gets you thinking right? We always see this tactic in salespeople where they show you the benefits and rosy pictures to justify what they are selling but it would be interesting if we ask the "right" question like Diagoras and see how they react.)
18) It is much easier to sell "Look what I did for you" than "Look what I avoided for you". (This explains why strikers get higher paid compared to defenders in football. A striker always appear to win the game with their goals but it is very difficult for a defender to claim how many goals he has prevented).
19) We are explanation-seeking animals who tend to think that everything has an identifiable cause and grab the most apparent one as the explanation.
20) Note here that I (Nassim Nicholas Taleb) am not saying causes do not exist; do not use this argument to avoid trying to learn from history. All I am saying is that it is not so simple; be suspicious of the "because" and handle it with care - particularly in situations where you suspect silent evidence.
21) In addition to the confirmation error and the narative fallacy, the manifestations of silent evidence further distort the role and importance of Black Swans.
22) Ludic fallacy - the attributes of the uncertainty we face in real life have little connection to the sterilized ones we encounter in exams and games. (The trap which academics with little practical experience often falls into. This can possibly explains why street-smart people are generally more successful compared to PhD holders).
23) It is why those who "study" and fare well in school have a tendency to be suckers for the ludic fallacy.
24) We respect what has happened, ignoring what could have happened. In other words, we are naturally shallow and superficial - and we do not know it.
25) Train yourself to spot the difference between the sensational and the empirical.
26) Epistemic arrogance bears a double effect: we overestimate what we know, and underestimate uncertainty, by compressing the range of possible uncertain states (i.e., by reducing the space of the unknown).
27) The more information you give someone, the more hypotheses they will formulate along the way, and the worse off they will be. They see more random noise and mistake it for information.
28) The problem with experts is thay they do not know what they do not know.
29) Those who had a big reputation were worse predictors than those who had none.
30) Plans fail because of what we have called tunneling, the neglect of sources of uncertainty outside the plan itself.
31) ........it is the lower bound of estimates (i.e., the worst case) that matters when engaging in a policy - the worst case is far more consequential than the forecast itself.
32) We see flaws in others and not in ourselves.
33) We have a natural tendency to listen to the expert, even in fields where there may be no experts.
34) Do not listen to economic forecasters or predictors in social science (they are mere entertainers), but do make your own forecast for the picnic.
35) "Barbell" strategy used by Taleb as a trader. If you know that you are vulnerable to prediction errors, and if you accept that most "risk measures" are flawed, because of the Black Swan, then your strategy is to be as hyperconservative and hyperaggressive as you can be instead of being mildly aggressive or conservative.
36)........the most successful businesses are precisely those that know how to work around inherent unpredictability and even exploit it.
37) Go to parties! (This is where you may get breakthrough ideas rather living in our own small world. But there is a catch, choose wisely which parties to attend ;)
38) This idea that in order to make a decision you need to focus on the consequences (which you can know) rather than the probability (which you can't know) is the central idea of uncertainty.
39) Random outcomes, or an arbitrary situation, can also explain success, and provide the initial push that leads to a winner-take-all result.
40) It is easier for the rich to get richer, for the famous to become more famous.
41) Measures of uncertainty that are based on the bell curve simply disregard the possibility, and the impact, of sharp jumps or discontinuities and are, therefore, inapplicable in Extremistan.
42) Probabilities are dependent on history, and the first central assumption leading to the Gaussian bell curve fails in reality.
43) In the end it is those who derive consequences and seize the importance of the ideas, seeing their real value, who win the day.
44) In the end this is a trivial decision making rule: I am very aggressive when I can gain exposure to positive Black Swans - when a failure would be of small moment - and very conservative when I am under threat from a negative Black Swan. I am very aggressive when an error in the model can benefit me, and paranoid when the error can hurt. This may not be too interesting except that it is exactly what other people do not do.
45) Missing a train is only painful if you run after it! Likewise, not matching the idea of success others expect from you is only painful if that's what you are seeking.
46) Be aggressive, be the one to resign, if you have the guts.
47) It is more difficult to be a loser in a game you set up yourself.
48) In Black Swan terms, this means that you are exposed to the improbable only if you let it control you. You always control what you do; so make this your end. (You control your own life, don't let others determine your fate and most importantly, your happiness)
This book is definitely worth reading as it jolts the way you think about events. I really like the example about the well-fed turkey and how dangerous it is for us to extrapolate future events. We certainly do not want to be the turkey assuming that we will be continuously well-fed based on past experience (or data) but in reality, each day of being well-fed means closer towards being slaughtered! Personally, I have also made a note to re-read Chapter 19 if the day seems gloomy and sad. I wish you the same joy as I have in reading the book.
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