Dale Carnegie: How to succeed; Folksy tips from the father of self-help in America

Dale Carnegie: How to succeed; Folksy tips from the father of self-help in America

Nov 2nd 2013 |From the print edition

Self-Help Messiah: Dale Carnegie and Success in Modern America. By Steven Watts. Other Press; 582 pages; $29.95 and £21.99. Buy from Amazon.com,Amazon.co.uk

RUNNING US Steel at the turn of the 20th century, Charles Schwab was perhaps the first person in America to earn a salary of $1m a year. What made him so successful? Was he a genius? No. Did he know more about steel than other people? Certainly not. So how did he get ahead? Schwab knew how “to make people like him,” observed Dale Carnegie. With charm, confidence and a good smile, anyone can climb the ladder of success. Read more of this post

6 Famous People Who Have Received Brutal Rejection Letters

6 Famous People Who Have Received Brutal Rejection Letters

VIVIAN GIANG OCT. 31, 2013, 10:34 PM 3,723 2

What’s the most difficult thing every successful person has to deal with? Rejection. Recent Nobel Prize winner Alice Munro made headlines when an archive of her rejection letters were found through the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. One letter, written by Knopf editor Judith Jones in 1968 in response to Munro’s book “Dance of the Happy Shades,” says there is “nothing particularly new and exciting” about the short stories and calls Munro “not that young.” Today, Munro is the first Canadian and 13th woman to win the Nobel Prize in literature. She isn’t the only successful person to receive heart-wrenching rejection letters. C.S. Lewis received 800 rejections before he sold his first piece of writing, and Mary Higgins Clark spent six years trying to get her first novel published, which she sold for $100. Forty years after that first novel, Clark accepted a $64 million book deal with Simon Schuster in the 1990s. Below are six rejection letters that now-famous people once received: Read more of this post

Comvita CEO Brett Hewlett shares his thoughts on role models, the impact of leadership on internationalisation, and whether leadership can be displayed across all levels of an organisation

AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP

Brett Hewlett, winner of the ‘KPMG Outstanding International Business Leader’ category at the 2013 New Zealand International Business Awards, shares his thoughts on role models, the impact of leadership on internationalisation, and whether leadership can be displayed across all levels of an organisation.

Who is your top leadership role model?

Richard Branson is always top of mind for me as I find inspiration in his huge vision, but I can also identify with his rebellious, playful and passionate approach to business and life. In general terms I draw most inspiration from amazing acts of leadership from a vast array of people in everyday life, more so than having a following for a single role model – no one is perfect.

What are the top five character traits of a great leader?

Vision, passion, empathy, compassion, generosity – oh, and a good sense of humour helps. Credibility and effectiveness is what sustains great leadership. Over time you will be judged more on what you have done and less on what you have said.

How important is leadership when it comes to helping a company grow into new markets?

Doing anything ‘new’ involves elements of change and risk for an organisation. Not everyone will see it as exciting. It is also possible to be swept away by the pioneering enthusiasm of doing something new just for the sake of it. This is where empathy comes in. A good leader will attempt to understand all of the issues in a balanced way, have empathy for people’s concerns and build consensus and support for the decision. Read more of this post

14 Famous Business Books Summarized In One Sentence Each

14 Famous Business Books Summarized In One Sentence Each

MAX NISEN OCT. 31, 2013, 4:08 PM 24,821 9

Want to read 14 famous business books in under a minute? To save you some time and money, we’ve made it possible. We boiled down some of the most popular and influential business books out there to their central lessons. For those looking to bone up on some business theory, here are the highlights.

Deepavali is held to celebrate the death of evil at the hands of good, of darkness being vanquished by light. A time to celebrate, a time to ponder

Updated: Friday November 1, 2013 MYT 7:41:21 AM

A time to celebrate, a time to ponder

BY DORAIRAJ NADASON

Deepavali is held to celebrate the death of evil at the hands of good, of darkness being vanquished by light. But every so often, death is cruel and there is little to celebrate.

IT’S Deepavali, a time to celebrate. It’s also All-Souls Day, when Christians (the Catholics, the Protestants don’t bother) gather to remember the dead. In a sense, Deepavali is also a time to remember the dead. It’s said to be the day when Lord Krishna slew the evil demon Narakasura. And it was the dying Narakasura who begged a boon from the God that all in the land should celebrate his death, so there would be no evil on earth again. Read more of this post

Why a strategy is not a plan: Strategies too often fail because more is expected of them than they can deliver

Why a strategy is not a plan: Strategies too often fail because more is expected of them than they can deliver

Nov 2nd 2013 |From the print edition

Strategy: A History. By Lawrence Freedman. Oxford University Press USA; 751 pages; $34.95. Buy from Amazon.com

EVERYONE, it seems, is in need of a strategy. Governments have lots of them: strategies for health care, energy, housing, and so on. Each area of policy is made to seem more purposeful if there is a strategy behind it. Similarly, no company these days would dare to admit it lacks one. If things are going badly it will often be put down to the lack of good strategy. People even talk about using it to improve their lives—from coping with stress to losing weight or just making other people like them more. Read more of this post

Rocky royalty: An expert says that the Gulf monarchs have had it. A premature judgment? After the Sheikhs: The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies

Rocky royalty: An expert says that the Gulf monarchs have had it. A premature judgment?

Nov 2nd 2013 |From the print edition

After the Sheikhs: The Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies. By Christopher Davidson. Oxford University Press; 304 pages; $34.95. Hurst; £29.99.Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

IT IS bad luck that “After the Sheikhs”, which came out in Britain last year and is only now being published in America, went to press before the forces of revolution in the Arab world suffered their recent string of reverses. In 2012 the Muslim Brothers in Egypt, the most populous and pivotal of the countries in the region, were riding high. The Syrian opposition seemed to be winning. And the wind of change had begun to buffet the rulers of the Gulf, the butt of this book. Christopher Davidson’s message, implicit in the title, is that their number is up. It is just a matter of when rather than if they fall. “Most of these regimes—at least in their present form—will be gone within the next two to five years.” This is a bold proposition, to put it mildly. In the past few months the forces of reaction have been fighting back.

Read more of this post

Fixing Sweden’s schools: Swedish pupils have fallen behind their international peers

Fixing Sweden’s schools: Swedish pupils have fallen behind their international peers

Nov 2nd 2013 | STOCKHOLM |From the print edition

A NEW study from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) will land on the desks of policymakers around the world next month. It will make sobering reading for political leaders in many countries. In Sweden Jan Bjorklund, the education minister, is prepared for poor marks too. The triennial study by the OECD, a think-tank, measures the reading, maths and science proficiency of 15-year-olds. In the first study, in 2000, Swedish pupils performed a lot better than those in most other countries. But even as the country’s schools inspired imitators elsewhere, their results have deteriorated. In 2009 Sweden’s overall score fell below the OECD average. Other rankings show a similar trend. Read more of this post

Butterfly ball: How species separate is still mysterious. Lepidoptera make things clearer

Butterfly ball: How species separate is still mysterious. Lepidoptera make things clearer

Nov 2nd 2013 |From the print edition

Pinning down the truth

BIOLOGISTS love Heliconius. In the 19th century, the mimicry by edible butterflies and moths of the brash warning colours sported by members of this genus (Heliconius butterflies themselves are usually toxic) was one of the first-noted and best examples of natural selection at work. And the genus is still doing duty in evolutionary biologists’ laboratories. Marcus Kronforst of the University of Chicago, for example, is using it to understand how speciation happens. Read more of this post

Dark matter: Absence of evidence, or evidence of absence? Physicists are learning more about what dark matter isn’t. That will help them find out what it is

Dark matter: Absence of evidence, or evidence of absence? Physicists are learning more about what dark matter isn’t. That will help them find out what it is

Nov 2nd 2013 |From the print edition

COSMOLOGY and particle physics—or at least, the popular versions of them—tend to the grandiose. The Higgs boson, recently discovered at CERN, Europe’s particle-physics laboratory, is not just any old particle. To the despair of many physicists, it has been dubbed the “God particle”. Books on cosmology promise to reveal the “fabric of the cosmos”, while their academic authors discuss different flavours of a “theory of everything”. Read more of this post

Spain’s Richest Woman Emerges With $5 Billion Zara Stake

Spain’s Richest Woman Emerges With $5 Billion Zara Stake

By Tom Metcalf and Manuel Baigorri – Oct 31, 2013

The daughter of Inditex SA co-founder Amancio Ortega became Spain’s richest woman after inheriting her mother’s stake in the world largest clothing retailer. Sandra Ortega Mera received more than 90 percent of Rosalia Mera’s fortune, including all of holding company Rosp Corunna Participaciones Empresariales SL, after Mera died in August, according to a person with knowledge of the inheritance who asked not to be identified because the matter is private. The two had controlled the entity together prior to Mera’s death in August. Read more of this post

Where Contemporary Art Meets Buddhism

November 1, 2013, 12:11 PM

Where Contemporary Art Meets Buddhism

By Jeyup S. Kwaak

Haein Art Project

The Temple of Haeinsa, an ancient shrine on a mountainside southeast of Seoul, is playing host to a contemporary art show. See slideshow

A South Korean Buddhist temple is playing host to a contemporary art show, in an effort to throw a new perspective to the ancient religion and the age-old surroundings. The Temple of Haeinsa, a 1,211-year-old shrine located on a mountainside 280 kilometers (174 miles) southeast of Seoul, is home to the Tripitaka Koreana, the most complete collection of Buddhist texts, laws and treaties, engraved on more than 80,000 woodblocks carved in the 13th century. The woodblocks, their storage and the surrounding temple grounds are recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Read more of this post

In the Bomb-Detecting Dogs Business, iK9 Sniffs Out an Empire

In the Bomb-Detecting Dogs Business, iK9 Sniffs Out an Empire

By Josh Dean October 31, 2013

Vapor Wake training: (clockwise from top left) Zebow, Chachi, Boomer, Unser (twice), and Potsie

At the sight of his leash, Baxter explodes out of his crate. The leash means work, work means reward, and that’s Baxter’s entire reason for being. The adolescent yellow Labrador retriever has only eight months of training, so he yanks and skitters more than a fully trained dog. But once his handler clicks the lead onto his collar, he raises his nose and swivels his head side to side, sampling air currents, until he smells something he recognizes. Then his behavior visibly changes. Baxter is “on scent” and quickens his pace, his head and tail up, narrowing in on a cluster of vehicles. Read more of this post