From: Caitlin Wilterdink (edited)
I’ve gotten five truly nasty responses from candidates in my career -- which is not much given how many emails I send.
And even though I was sorely tempted to write back and give these candidates what was coming to them, I didn’t.
It’s the age of the Internet and everything you write is discoverable by everyone.
So watch your words and treat everyone, even the nasty people, with kindness and respect.
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From: What happened to Lady Gaga? - Maureen Callahan
I have a lot of experience in this area,” says one longtime label executive and producer. “Artists have a lot of help on their first albums, and they’re open to a lot of help, and they are very smart collaborators and make great work.”
Once that work results in great success, he says, the artist invariably believes they are solely responsible. “Time and again, they feel like they could have done it themselves, and if they had done it their way, it would have been even bigger,” he says.
“So they jettison the people who helped them get where they are and hire people who are less powerful, who let them do what they want. I think that may be where Lady Gaga is.”
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From: Betashop Quartly (edited)
The most important hiring criteria for your executives is cultural fit. You need to work with people who work like you do, and who enjoy and appreciate your style and pace.
It doesn’t matter how smart or experienced people are, if they don’t match your style it’ll never work. You need to love working with them, and them with you.
Work with people who argue with you and tell you no. Be willing to fight like hell during the day but still love each other when you go home.
Don’t work with people you don’t love. There’s no short term gain that is worth sacrificing for working with someone you do not love working with. If you aren’t enjoying looking at each other each day, you’re working with the wrong people.
Here are the criteria I review Fab’s executives on:
Fab Culture. Does the executive personify our culture, cultivate it, and help us nurture it?
Fab Passion. Is the executive passionate for our specific Fab mission or could they be working at any company? Is Fab their life? Were they made to work at Fab?
As you grow, the hardest thing to manage is culture. We’ve probably worked harder on trying to make Fab Fab everywhere we operate than on any other initiative. Alignment amongst managers around who we hire, how we hire, and how we manage (and how we have fun doing it) is key to culture.
Follow your gut, and back it up with data. At Fab we like to say that we start with emotions and then support our emotions with data to learn whether our emotions were right. But, it’s emotions that come first. I firmly believe that’s how it should be.
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From: Eivind Kjørstad, on Quora (edited)
Rising divorce-rates in the modern world don't reflect a decline in marital happiness. There have always been happy and unhappy marriages. The difference between past and present lies in what people do when they find themselves in an unhappy marriage.
In some cultures, it's socially unacceptable to get a divorce. Also, if a woman is a housewife she might have little hope of providing for her family on her own. In these circumstances, few seek a divorce. Instead, marriages endure which are without passion, love or even friendship. Sometimes even without basic respect. One of my Iranian friends has parents who try to avoid being in the same room together. Such a couple would almost certainly divorce in a culture where it was more acceptable.
In modern countries, it is common for married people to divorce when neither partner is abusive or unfaithful and sometimes even when there is still a functional friendship - because one or both feel that the marriage is no longer providing what they want.
And, one should not consider divorce a failure. If two people live together happily for 3, 5 or 10 years but not for life, why is that a failure?
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"Stodin raised concerns about Wallin’s conduct toward her, which she said escalated after Wallin discovered Stodin had reviewed the senator’s expense accounts with the Senate Finance Department.
“I have never been subjected to the kind of treatment and disrespect I received from Senator Wallin,” Stodin wrote in the letter.
Wallin’s “personal attacks on me and my reputation started to be ramped up right after I told her on Friday, Aug. 10, 2012 that I was returning from a meeting with the Senate Finance Department where we had been working on reconciling outstanding American Express accounts and travel expenses.”
Wallin fired Stodin on Aug. 22, 2012, “stating incompetence, and inability to run her schedule,” the letter states.
Stodin’s letter is one of dozens of records sought by the RCMP in its investigation of fraud and breach of trust allegations against Wallin.
Wallin’s lawyer, Terrence O’Sullivan, said in an email Sunday that Stodin was fired during her probationary period after “several performance issues.” ... “There was no abuse of Ms. Stodin by Senator Wallin,”
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Rebekah Brooks to Andy Coulson:
Brooks wrote the letter to Coulson after he tried to break off the relationship, Edis said.
“The fact is you are my very best friend, I tell you everything, I confide in you, I seek your advice, I love you, care about you, worry about you, we laugh and cry together,” the letter said, according to Edis who read it out to the jury of nine women and three men.
“In fact without our relationship in my life I am not sure I will cope.”
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From David Frum. (edited)
In any conflict between extremists and non-extremists, the non-extremists start with one serious disadvantage. They tend to be conflict-averse.
Moderate-minded people tend naturally to be people of moderate temperament. When they encounter rage, hate, and paranoia, they flinch.
Extremists, on the other hand, delight in conflict.
Simply by being louder and nastier, they bully the non-extremists into silence, acquiescence, or exit.
What America needs now are moderate-minded people who are also tough-minded - who won't be shrieked down and who won't be intimidated.
Civility cannot mean: you yell, I yield.
It's not enough to have greater wisdom and greater tolerance if you don't also muster courage, endurance, and the will to win.
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From: The Wall Street Journal (edited)
In 1983, Jeff Sutherland saw how dysfunctional software development was. Companies followed the Waterfall Model in which ideas flowed from the top to the bottom.
So he designed an Agile Management System in which ideas would also percolate up from the bottom.
It worked so parents started taking the idea home with them.
The Starr family was exhausted by the earsplitting environment of their home.
Eleanor Starr: "I was trying the whole 'love them and everything will work out' philosophy but it wasn't working. I finally said, 'I can't take this any more.' "
So they started using the Agile Management program from husband David's work in which teams hold daily progress sessions and weekly reviews.
"The meetings transformed our relationships with our kids—and each other. And they took up less than 20 minutes a week."
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From: Joy by Zadie Smith (edited)
His most endearing quality was his generosity. For the length of one night Smiley would do anything at all for you.
Find you a cab, walk miles through the early morning streets looking for food, hold your hair as you threw up, and listen to you complain at great length about your parents and friends — agreeing with all your grievances — though every soul involved in these disputes was completely unknown to him.
Contrary to your initial suspicions Smiley did not want to sleep with you, rob you, or con you in any way. It was simply intensely important to him that you had a good time, tonight, with him. “How you feeling?” was Smiley’s perennial question. “You feeling it yet? I’m feeling it. You feeling it yet?” And that you should feel it seemed almost more important to him than that he should.
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