I’m unsure if any of you have seen this youtube video before… it’s the story of a young Indian kid named Ravi. He sells peacock feather fans at the Hanging Gardens of Mumbai.
What’s particularly amazing is that he can speak in a variety of different languages (ie. in the specific context of selling his wares). What’s even more amusing is that he knows the accents, specific gestures and non-verbal expressions of the various cultures as well.
The person who took the video returned a couple of years later to find the boy now a teenager, still proficient in the various languages and now an even more convincing salesman. What’s even more impressive is that he learnt everything he needed to learn on the streets. What’s this guy doing on the streets anyway? My money’s on him to be a millionaire by 30.
I’m absolutely impressed with some of these Indians. I was in Mumbai about 2 years ago, and my Indian friend and I went to a shop to do some shopping. I chose a pair of pants and they had an instant turnaround alteration service. So the helpful sales assistant quickly measured me up, and asked me for my mobile number so that they can call me when they are done. I quickly looked around for my friend because he had the Indian mobile number and I didn’t. As my friend turned around the sales assistant immediately recognised my friend as the customer he served some 10 or so minutes earlier. My jaw dropped when the sales assistant went “Sir, don’t worry. Your friend’s number is 8261739874″.
I was simply awestruck, as any non-Indian would be. My Indian friend said it’s not that surprising. Everywhere in the shopping centre, sales assistants can tell you the exact price of every garment you touch, before and after discount.
This is efficiency and customer service at a whole new level.
International Languages Week in New Zealand starts tomorrow (Sunday, 17 August). My bet is most Kiwis would not even be aware of the existence of International Languages Week, let alone know when this takes place. The organisers and participants (largely school teachers and students learning foreign languages) have been faithfully running activities and programmes, celebrating ILW since 2003. ILW offers language teachers and students the ideal opportunity to inspire the wider community to learn more about foreign cultures and languages.
However, it is disappointing that ILW doesn’t get a fraction of the support or publicity afforded to the recently concluded Maori Language Week. Of course, the promotion of foreign languages in New Zealand shouldn’t be at the expense of Maori language. After all, the preservation and promotion of Maori language is of great importance to our nation. There are also more speakers of Maori than any other single language except English in New Zealand.
However, at the same time, it is worth noting that 1 in 5 New Zealanders, and 1 in 4 Aucklanders was born overseas, and my guess is the majority of these migrants would speak English as a second language.
Looking at the Census figures, the number of multilingual people has increased increased by 19.5 percent between 2001 and 2006. In the ten years between 1996 and 2006, this number increased by 43.3 percent, from 468,711 people (1996) to reach 671,658 (2006).
Given the sheer number of New Zealanders who speak a second language other than English or Maori, it is at the very least discouraging to see the underwhelming support for the promotion of foreign languages.
For those of you in Auckland, do take advantage of the free language classes offered this week.
International Languages Week is happening soon. (Sunday 17 – Saturday 23 August 2008)
In conjunction with ILW, Euroasia is offering a series of FREE language lessons for Spanish, French, German, Italian, Chinese and Japanese.
These lessons are for complete beginners. No previous knowledge of the language is required.
We will cover the first unit of our standard Level 1 course. At the end of the lesson, you will be able to greet people, give your name and ask how people are.
Limited to 12 participants on a first-come-first-served basis. Feel free to invite your friends. If you can’t make this session, check our timetable for other sessions.
We are also running a few interesting seminars that may be of interest.
At the start of this year, I sent an email to my friends telling them that I will do more reading this year. And to widen my reading to include more non-business books. I figured if I halved my internet surfing time and replace this with book-reading time, I should be able to go through 2-3 books/month. As it turns out, 7 months into 2008, I’ve ended up spending about the same amount of time on the net. I need to stop myself from getting distracted by Facebook, Youtube and RSS news feeds.
I want to share an article written by Good to Great author Jim Collins on books to read, that prompted me to search out a few non-business books to read this year. I’m currently reading Gavin Menzies’ 1421. Pretty interesting theory on Chinese expeditions sailing to America, Africa, Australia / NZ long before the Europeans did. It does sound pretty far fetched, but plausible. What makes it more interesting is that Menzies is not a historian, but a retired submarine commander. A few more chapters to go.
Then maybe I’ll finally embark on my long walk to freedom, and read Mandela’s biography, which I have put off for so long, because it’s a hard read. I’m feeling inspired after reading a recent Time Magazine interview with Mandela, where he shared 8 lessons of leadership.
Executives should read fewer management books. I don’t mean that reading is a waste of their time; on the contrary, they should read more. The question is what to read. My own view is that only one book in 20 should be a business book.
That may sound odd coming from an author of three management books, but I’m convinced that you can improve your leadership capabilities by drinking deeply from the well of great books that have been published in a wide variety of disciplines. For one thing, the business and management genres offer precious few superb books with new insights, good writing, and timeless value. I can think of fewer than 10 published in the last 50 years.
More important, outstanding leaders and thinkers often get their best insights by reading outside their primary field. Abraham Lincoln, for example, forged his thinking on the slavery question by reading Euclid’s ancient treatise on geometry and then applying the concept of ligical proof to the great issue of the day. Charles Darwin read about Adam Smith’s economic concept of the “invisible hand” while struggling to formulate his biological concept of natural selection (which, of course, became the invisible hand in the theory of evolution). Peter Drucker told me that the most influential author in his intellectual development was the Danish existentialist philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. The great entrepreneur Henry Ford avidly read essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson and applied Emerson’s ideas to his company.
Here are a handful of my most highly recommended selections:
Chimpanzee Politics, by Frans de Waal. Even more enlightening than Machiavelli’s The Prince, this book describes power takeovers and social organizations in a chimpanzee colony and argues that power politics is part of the evolutionary heritage that we share with our closest nonhuman relatives. I’ll never look at academic or corporate politics the same way, and I understand their machinations much better for having read this book. Chimps, unlike humans, do not cloak their political pretenses in rhetoric, so we can see more clearly the process at work and thereby learn much about ourselves.
The Guns of August, by Barbara W. Tuchman. This book may well have saved the world from nuclear holocaust. During the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, President Kennedy drew directly upon the lessons of Tuchman’s book-which chronicles how, in August 1914, European nations locked themselves into irreversible political and military positions and thereby needlessly brought about the slaughter of World War I. In the midst of the missile crisis, Kennedy said, “I am not going to follow a course which will allow anyone to write a comparable book [about the missile crisis].” Superbly-written, this book teaches valuable lessons about how an organization can be led or driven into calamity through pride, arrogance, and misunderstandings.
Influence, by Robert B. Cialdini and The Psychology of Attitude Change and Social Influence, by Philip B. Zimbardo. I don’t see how anyone can hope to be an effective manager without having a basic understanding of social psychology-the forces of human influence and the dynamics of social behavior. These two classic works, both jam-packed with specific examples and fascinating research studies, teach invaluable managerial lessons. For example, revolutionary change can best be accomplished by “incremental revolutionaries,” who lead people from A to Z by taking small steps from A to B, then from B to C, then from C to D, and so on, so that the step from Y to Z hardly looks like a revolution at all. Another tidbit: explicitly assign people to play devil’s advocate-to “consider the opposite”-and thereby dilute the influence of groupthink that so often plays a role in disastrous decisions.
In Love and War, by Jim and Sybil Stockdale. As the highest-ranking POW in the Hanoi Hilton-in captivity and under physical and psychological torture for seven years-Jim Stockdale displayed iron-willed integrity under the most severe conditions. Stockdale teaches that freedom is a state of mind and that the two greatest weapons of enslavement are guilt and fear, not bars and walls. Stockdale drew strength from Job in the Bible, with its central lesson that if you persist in asking, “Why me?”-if you fail to accept that life is not fair-you cannot endure.
Means of Ascent, by Robert Caro, and Truman, by David McCullough. I love biographies. They offer us a chance to learn from the experiences of others and to develop role models and antimodels. Caro shows through the rise of LBJ how those consumed by ruthless, amoral ambition can become influential in democracy-a tale that’s riveting, revealing, and depressing. McCullough, in contrast, inspires with the story of Harry Truman, a failed businessman with rock-solid midwestern core values, who rose to become one of the most important and effective presidents in U.S. history. Taken together, LBJ and Truman demonstrate that while a leader need not be morally grounded to become powerful, the judgment of history depends directly upon one’s own moral character.
The Panda’s Thumb, by Stephen Jay Gould. We cannot understand our complex world without grasping the basic elements of evolutionary theory. In fact, Jerry Porras and I dedicated an entire chapter of our book Built to Last to how visionary companies like 3M and Hewlett-Packard often “evolved” in a way that only in retrospect looks planned. All of Gould’s books on evolution and natural history are superb, but Panda’s Thumb is my favorite and is a good place to start.
The Plague, by Albert Camus. In this novel Camus wrestles with the question, How do we find meaning in a seemingly meaningless-and certainly brutal and alienating-world? His answer: we must create our own meaning by infusing our tasks with a sense of purpose and by seeking human connection. What does that have to do with management and leadership? Everything. The builders of great organizations appreciate people’s deep yearning for meaning, and they instill a shared sense of purpose and create tightly knit cultures that bond people together. Sam Walton made discount retailing a meaningful pursuit, as David Packard did with technology, and Mary Kay Ash did with selling cosmetics.
The Second World War, by Winston S. Churchill. This 5,000-page, six-volume autobiography and chronicle of the years 1919 to 1945 is the best book on leadership I’ve read. Churchill’s eloquence comes to life as he describes day by day the monumental task of holding Britain and, later, the allies together against the Axis powers-a burden he shouldered at age 65 and carried until age 70. I learned from Churchill the inspirational power of reframing difficult times into a broader goal. When in 1940 the whole world wondered, “Can Britain survive?” Churchill countered that the goal was not to survive, but to prevail. Brilliant!
How to Listen to and Understand Great Music: The Greenberg Lectures, by Robert Greenberg, as part of the Superstar Teacher Series. I’m going to cheat a little here and include a purely audio “book.” The Superstar Teacher Series, produced by the Teaching Co., in Springfield, Va., assembles the best teaching professors to present courses on tape. The Greenberg music series combines a history of western civilization with a history of great music from ancient Greece to the 20th century. Greenberg’s 48 lectures come alive with passion and knowledge while they rock and roll with music from Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Wagner, and others. The course illustrates the interplay between societal change and innovation, and offers a unique perspective on the acceleration of change wrought by the 20th century.
Someday perhaps I’ll write a column recommending the few business books of the past 50 years that are actually worth reading, but until then you might want to stick to reading a wide variety of nonbusiness selections. It will give you a better return on investment.
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