This week Adam Bryant interviews Marla Malcom Beck, the chief executive of Bluemercury, a beauty products and spa services retailer. I really appreciate her no-nonsense, common sense approach to life and business! Regarding hiring she states, “In about two minutes, I can ascertain skill based on what they’ve done… Will is about hunger so I’ll ask what do you want to do in five or 10 years.”
Every week in Los Angeles I walk a mile or so from my apartment to the putting green at Rancho Park Golf Course and work on the rhythm of my stroke for about twenty minutes then walk across the street to the Main Course restaurant for a taste of Eastern Europe! Each week I try a different dish just for fun. Last week I tried the Ukrainian stuffed cabbage, this week the Hungarian Beef Goulash and the week before the Romanian stuffed pepper. I love the diversity of LA, especially the food! A few weeks ago, Veronica and I tried Moroccan food. Persian is next!
Brent Frei, the co-founder of Smartsheet.com, a project and software management company, looks for people who are “mentally athletic and agile.” He prefers attitude and aptitude over experience. I like his perspective, a lot!
This Aaron Chang photograph of the Milky Way Galaxy reminds me of the limitless nature of life and the cosmos! It’s easy to become caught up in the day to day challenges of living and forget that we live on a rock spinning on its axis at thousands of miles per hour, hurling around the sun in a system that rotates around our galaxy which is interconnected with other galaxies trillions of light years away. Sometimes, dI coach people to look up at the sky every once in a while to remind oneself how truly amazing this whole experience is!
An article by David Busis in the Sunday Styles section of the New York Times entitled ‘Meanwhile in a Parallel Universe,’ is very interesting. The author is frustrated and uncertain about his career while a college buddy has made millions doing what he loves as an entrepreneur. Mr. Busis and his wife vacation with his buddy and his new flame setting the stage for discomfort as everything seems better for his buddy than himself.
Robert Reid, the C.E.O of Intacct, a cloud-based software company, believes that most issues with execution come down to training and process. He states, “If somebody is not doing what you expect or you have a different viewpoint, you need to seek to understand what’s going on and help them.”
I really appreciate Thomas Friedman’s perspective on a wide range of issues! In his post in the Sunday Review section of the New York Times, Mr. Friedman summarizes the climate change issue. Essentially, climate change awareness and action as nations is crucial to our future and the future of mankind. He writes, “as the I.E.A warned, “no more than one-third of proven reserves of fossil fuels can be consumed prior to 2050″ – otherwise we’ll bust through the limit of 2-degree Celsius rise in ocean temperature that scientists believe will unleash truly disruptive ice melt, sea level rise, and weather extremes.”
Nicholas Kristof, a celebrated New York Times columnist, has written a series of articles on racial issues in America several entitled, “Why whites don’t get it.” This poignant article on a 13 year-old black male who was sentenced to life in prison for shooting Debbie Baigrie in the face causing severe and lasting injuries. Though she suffered immensely from her ordeal, Ms. Baigrie has been in correspondence with her attacker, Ian Manuel, for over two decades even arguing on his behalf for early release.
I found the New York Times Sunday Review cover article by Arthur C. Brooks particularly interesting having lived in relatively affluent environments on and off for decades. People who are overly focused on acquiring and maintaining things often miss a huge part of the process of happiness which is more related to experiences and our perception of them. The swami Mr. Brooks interviewed, a Western educated enunciate, agrees that the problem lies not in abundance but in out attachment to abundance which is one way of defining materialism. The solution, according to the author, is to celebrate abundance but not be hung up on it by collecting experiences, avoid doing things only as a means to an end and cultivating one’s faith.
