Month: November 2015

Yes!

Quote: “….The purpose of transferring the S-400 system to the military base was not explained by Shoigu.”

Here are a few more rules that help in life and work:

1. The client has the right to want/demand/ask for anything, including the impossible and a day before the project deadline. This is their right as a client. Your right is to say no and/or include it in the project, but ask for money and/or do it for free. If it “works” and you do it “for free” or “because they nagged you!” for even one out of ten requests, then this unpleasant strategy will further reinforce itself in their mind. If you do nothing, then they probably won’t come back to you. Understanding this helps to work with “difficult” and “irrational” clients. They are actually good people, they just chose such a tactic to achieve their goals 🙂

2. The client has the right to be obtuse and deliberately fail to understand/accept obvious things. Sometimes this is explained by the mental abilities of specific individuals, but sometimes it is a deliberate tactic that gives an advantage in negotiations. For example, “empathizing with your situation” and “understanding how difficult this is” significantly impedes bargaining. Exhaustion in contract negotiations, for instance, forces one to make quick and ill-considered decisions. Therefore, you should always understand whose favor time plays – yours or the client’s, and whether there is any reason for the client to drag it out.

3. Even the dumbest and most irrational decisions sometimes have hidden reasons that are not visible to you, but evident to those making these decisions.

4. Personal goals often outweigh work-related goals. Often, a client chooses a product/service not because it is genuinely useful to the business, but because this particular manager or specialist, after a year of working with them, will be worth twice as much in the job market. Generally, the market values people with such experience for a reason – meaning, the product is good, too, but very, very many decisions are based precisely on this logic. Therefore, it’s always useful to think ahead for them and even estimate which achievements they could add to their CV. This is partly why quick wins are so beloved 🙂

A very interesting article about the events in the Middle East, which sheds a lot of light on the situation. The style deserves special praise 🙂 about 50 minutes reading time

I love things like that. Smart and beautiful.

Do you see the column on the right? Well, it exists. And I have already successfully crashed into it.

Who are the geniuses making mirrored columns in store aisles!!!!

My vision of how an employee/department/company should develop:

stage 1) work steadily/predictably (i.e., meet expectations; even if it means working slowly and making mistakes sometimes, but within an expected scope)

stage 2) +work with quality (even if not quickly, but steadily)

stage 3) +quickly/efficiently

stage 4) +with others’ hands (but with one’s own mind)

stage 5) +with others’ minds (but with one’s own as well)

If you reach stage 5 and want to go further, you need to find another area/level of complexity/scale and start with stage 1.

The results of the Istanbul marathon have been published. Couldn’t resist – quickly put together some statistics.

Out of 2918 people who ran the marathon, 144 were Russians.

Out of 5000 people who ran 15 km, there were only 61 Russians. Turks were the majority (75%), 4% were Germans, British, Russians, Americans, and French together made up 5%. The remaining share consisted of 68 other nationalities.

The top three spots were claimed by Kenyans in both the 42km and 15km races. Kenyans just don’t know how to run slowly – there were only six of them there, and the two slowest girls finished the 15 km within fifty minutes. In the marathon, all three Kenyans took first, second, and third places. How one can run nearly twice as fast for forty minutes is beyond me. Probably, one must be born in Kenya.

By the way, seven out of the ten best marathon results in history are held by Kenyans. In 2011, only seven Russian athletes managed to run a marathon in less than 2 hours and 15 minutes. This barrier was easily overcome by 150 Kenyans. Interestingly, most of them are from Iten – 2400 meters above sea level.

I took a modest 738th place (out of 5000). Next time, my goal is to be twice as close – for that, I need to finish within 1:10. And the next distance – 21 km. I still don’t know in which country.

Update: the official statistics lied about the average speed. They have the fastest Kenyan running at an average speed of 27 km/h when in reality it was 21 km/h

Did you win this heavy medal?

Finished 15 km – 1:15:08. Just as I wanted #istambulmarathon