Roh.am

Entrepreneur, investor, product strategist. Building the future with @AxiomZenTeam.

[rohamgh-blog]

Utopia is on the horizon. You take two steps, and it takes two steps. You take ten steps, and it moves away ten. So then what's the point? To keep walking.

Eduardo Galeano, HT @stefanotirloni

[rohamgh-blog]

We have even a stranger idea: that we will finally fall in love with ourselves only when we have become the totally efficient organized organism we have always wanted to be and left all of our bumbling ineptness behind.   Yet in exactly the way we come to find love and intimacy with others through vulnerability, we come to those same qualities in ourselves through living out the awkwardness of not knowing, of not being in charge.

David Whyte, hat tip @danputt

[rohamgh-blog]

And when you crush an apple with your teeth, say to it in your heart: Your seeds shall live in my body, And the buds of your tomorrow shall blossom in my heart, And your fragrance shall be my breath, And together we shall rejoice through all the seasons.

Khalil Gibran

[rohamgh-blog]

Tibetan sand mandala. After painstakingly building this beautiful structure over days or weeks, the monks will ritualistically dismantle it to symbolize the impermanence of this world #commitment (at Wisdom 2.0 2015)

[rohamgh-blog]

"i imagine a world where we smile when we have low batteries, because that'll mean we'll be one bar closer to humanity"

Did you know the average person spends 4 years of their life staring down at their cell phones?

Prince Ea waxes poetic with Can We Auto-Correct Humanity? - this resonated with me.

[rohamgh-blog]

And still, after all this time, the Sun has never said to the Earth: "You owe me." Look what happens with love like that. It lights up the sky.

Hafez

[rohamgh-blog]

“Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.”

Rumi

[rohamgh-blog]

The truth was a mirror in the hands of God. It fell, and shattered into pieces. Everybody took a piece of it, and they looked at it and thought they had the truth.

Rumi

[rohamgh-blog]

May our thoughts, our words, and our actions always be in line with our intentions #QualityIsFractal

[rohamgh-blog]

Of course, when programmers are peers of the program managers, the programmers tend to have the upper hand. Here’s something that has happened several times: a programmer asks me to intervene in some debate he is having with a program manager. “Who is going to write the code?” I asked. “I am…” “OK, who checks things into source control?” “Me, I guess, …” “So what’s the problem, exactly?” I asked. “You have absolute control over the state of each and every bit in the final product. What else do you need? A tiara?”

Joel Spolsky, Joel on Software "How to be a Program Manager"  (link)

[rohamgh-blog]

Blame is not for failure, but for failing to help - or failing to ask for help.

Jørgen Vig Knudstorp (CEO, Lego Group)

[rohamgh-blog]

“Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.”

Thích Nhất Hạnh, Vietnamese Buddhist monk

I'm feeling especially grateful today. 

[rohamgh-blog]

Michael Bloomberg on loyalty: "an obligation to do everything you can"

Bloomberg on company loyalty:

Bloomberg, like a lot of founders, describes a business world consisting only of "us" and "them." But his conception includes a third class of characters, for whom he reserves a special circle of hell. Call them "those who used to be us"--the people who, by leaving Bloomberg's company to work elsewhere, have contravened his code of loyalty. He won't rehire them. He won't permit a good-bye party. He won't even--if he can help it--shake their hand. "Why would I?" he asks rhetorically. 

On his reaction when employees tell him they're leaving:

I say OK. That's the end of the conversation. Then I sit there. If they want to stagger on for a couple of minutes and tell me why, that's fine. But I think "OK" is an appropriate answer. To say, "I understand"--that would be lying. I don't understand why anybody would want to leave. Say "Good luck"? Obviously, I would never do that. Tell them to go screw themselves? That doesn't make a lot of sense. It's over and done with. As for asking why, I don't much care.

And on the obligation the company owes to employees:

You have an obligation to do everything you can, no matter what it costs. They get into trouble, you pay their legal fees. They have a financial problem, you help them out. They have an emotional problem, you provide the best doctors and counseling. They have a physical problem, you get them into the best hospitals--and if your insurance plan doesn't cover it, you pay for it. 

Source: Inc

The biggest problem I see with this perspective is it strongly discourages entrepreneurial types from considering working for you. Compare it to Reid Hoffman's concept of "Tours of Duty"; night and day. 

[rohamgh-blog]

Use no way as the Way, no limitation as the limitation. Absorb what is useful and reject what is useless for you.

[rohamgh-blog]

Whether in sports, business, education or politics, effective leadership requires building high-performing teams and, when it comes that, the critical ingredients for success are competence rather than confidence, altruism rather than egotism, and integrity rather than charisma

HBR

[rohamgh-blog]

Use times of progress to brighten your virtue, recognizing that it is your commitment to proper principles that brought success in the first place.

I Ching

[spiritualmama]

If something comes to life in others because of you, then you have made an approach to immortality.

Norman Cousins (via spiritualmama)