The unfulfilled promises of Hugo Chavez

Most people who follow the news on Latin America, myself included, tend to think Hugo Chávez has done much good for the poor. Unfortunately, this is not true.  ”Neither official statistics nor independent estimates show any evidence that Chávez has reoriented state priorities to benefit the poor,” writes Francisco Rodriguez, Chief Economist of the Venezuelan National Assembly 2000-2004. Read his article and learn what’s really going in.

Tobacco in Asia: addiction spreads faster than information

In an article on the battle to curb smoking worldwide, The Economist reports that “the number of smokers in China, India and other developing countries is continuing to grow, as addiction spreads faster than information.”

But we have good news from New York City: health commissioner Tom Frieden reports that the mayor’s anti-smoking efforts “reduced smoking among the adults in New York by 20% and among teenagers in public schools by 50%.”

How can we stop the pro-smoking trends in Asia? In the article (linked above) the WHO recommends six things we should be doing globally to curb tobacco use.

One thing that surprised me about this article: the WHO insists most smokers don’t understand the full negative effects of smoking.

This is sad — the tobacco companies are winning a race to get young people addicted to their products before governments can reach them with information they need. I agree with the WHO that people essentially need to be bombarded with anti-smoking information in order to “get it” and grasp how harmful smoking is. This needs to happen before addiction sets in which means the anti-smoking campaigns need to target our youth around the world, especially in poor countries.

Six myths of creativity

Take a look at this excellent FastCompany article on creativity. Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School heads the Entrepreneurial Management Unit there. She studies creativity. The FastCompany article describes how she researched this:

[Amabile] collected nearly 12,000 daily journal entries from 238 people working on creative projects in seven companies in the consumer products, high-tech, and chemical industries. She didn’t tell the study participants that she was focusing on creativity. She simply asked them, in a daily email, about their work and their work environment as they experienced it that day. She then coded the emails for creativity by looking for moments when people struggled with a problem or came up with a new idea.

 What are the six myths? 

1. Creativity Comes From Creative Types
2. Money Is a Creativity Motivator
3. Time Pressure Fuels Creativity
4. Fear Forces Breakthroughs
5. Competition Beats Collaboration
6. A Streamlined Organization Is a Creative Organization

Myers-Briggs and the Presidential Candidates

The NPR blog has an article about the personalities of Obama, Clinton, and McCain, from the lens of the Myers-Briggs personality inventory. Quick summary: Clinton is a “supervisor”, McCain is a “promoter” and Obama is a “champion.” All are extroverts. Emily Yoffe at Slate expands on on her findings. She did the same test back in 2000 to assess the  personalities of Gore and Bush.

The more that people feel you care about them, the more open they will be to your influence

“The more that people feel you care about them, the more open they will be to your influence.” Brian Tracy writes in an excellent blog post called The Friendship Factor.

I have to say this quote captures one of the most important realizations I’ve had in my professional life. When people really “get” that you care about them, they open up and listen to what you have to say. They trust that what you tell them is likely to be in their best interest. Unfortunately, many people try to gain influence over others through the use of negative tactics such as finding fault, attacking and criticizing. Time and time again, I see these people fail. And it is only because they failed to realize this important truth: if you want to change a person, group or organization: you have to first show you care, and they have to “get” that you care.

The real race is for ownership of your mobile phone? From Scoble.

Robert Scoble says the real race isn’t for search but for ownership of your mobile phone. Scoble writes:

Well, the real race today isn’t for search. Isn’t for email. Isn’t for IM. It’s for ownership of your mobile phone. I met the guy who runs China’s telecom last week in Davos. He’s seeing six million new people get a cell phone in China every month. So, every month that Microsoft and Yahoo will be stuck in some courtroom arguing out why [Microhoo] is a good deal means money in the bank for Google as they close mobile phone deal after mobile phone deal.

Celebrate failure? Richard Watson of FastCompany

Richard Watson says we should celebrate failure. I have to say this is one of the more original articles I’ve read lately.  He writes:

So here’s my idea. Rather than putting up statues to people who did something that was successful, let’s build a monument to the people who didn’t. Let’s celebrate the lives of people who invented things that didn’t work or tried to do something that was just plain crazy. A monument to the unknown innovator in pursuit of an impossible dream. The people we watch with perverse envy when we are too scared, too self-conscious, or too constrained to fail ourselves. Because without these wonderful people, there would be no progress or success. 

This is a wonderfully disturbing, bold and mind-bending post. I agree that we need to celebrate failure and embrace the lessons learned from our own failures as well as the failures of others.

Productivity enhancers – “Eat That Frog” and “Getting Things Done”

Getting Things Done by David Allen and Eat That Frog by Brian Tracy: two books that have helped me become much more productive. These two go very well together with basically no overlap. I highly recommend them to everyone.Getting Things Done, in short, got me in the habit of writing things down — all my commitments, important knowledge, appointments, thoughts, insights, and products of analysis all get written down now. I’ve found that by writing or typing things out, it frees my mind from the burden of having to carry those things around and then remind myself of them when needed. Free of this burden, my mind is more focused in the present moment and more able to formulate new ideas or novel approaches to problems.Eat That Frog distills Brian Tracy’s advice on productivity into 128 well-written pages. It is remarkably thin and easy to read. He points out that we often procrastinate on that one big task that will likely lead to the greatest results for our clients and/or our employer. This is what Tracy calls your “frog.” His advice is to come in to the office each morning and eat that frog first thing. So before you do anything else, you tackle that frog. This is very simple advice but remarkably effective. I highly recommend this book and all other books by Brian Tracy.

Expect belt-tightening but no collapse in tech spending

An article in NY Times gives me confidence that tech spending in the corporate world will drop but not collapse. The weakening economy is unlikely to produce an effect similar to the 2001 recession when technology spending fell 11% over a 2 year period.

Philanthropy – the 50% league

A Boston Globe article about a group of people giving 50% of their income to charity. http://tinyurl.com/38l4cm