Friday, August 29, 2008

Good to Great..Edition 15


HI Friends, Here comes a Sleek Edition 15 of Good to Great…Special thanks and credits for this week are to Srikanth, Srinath, Rajesh, Venkat.. Special theme for this week is Focus on Chennai Marathon.

Read in Leisure and please continue to share your articles, jokes, puzzles,


feedback to balajineela@gmail.com


Contents

1.Its all about YOU..Murthy
2.Thought for this week…B/f Ram
3.Lateral thinking…b/f Murali
4.Management quick tips.. Involvement..B/f Venkat
5.Jokes corner..B/f Vidhya
6.Management thoughts…Sharpen your skills..Priya
7.Inspiring Olympics..
8.Tip for this week..
9.Energy…crisis..Dev
10.Closing thoughts

1. Its all about YOU....Hands!
A cricket ball in my hands is worth about Rs 150.
A cricket ball in Ishant Sharma's hands is worth about a million.
It depends whose hands it's in.


A tennis racket is useless in my hands. A tennis racket in Nadal's hands is worth millions.
It depends whose hands it's in.
As you see now, it depends whose hands it's in.


So put your concerns, your worries, your fears, your hopes, your dreams, your families and your relationships in God's hands because... It depends whose hands it's in.









2. Thought for this week

In China there is a Bamboo tree that is planted, watered and fertilized for the first four years and nothing happens. There is no sign of growth. But sometime during the fifth year the Bamboo tree grows about 90 feet in just six weeks.

Now the question is: Did the tree grow in six weeks or did it take five years to grow even though there was no visible sign that it was taking root in the ground. When there was no sign of growth, if someone had stopped watering and fertilizing it, would this have happened? Certainly not.

The Bamboo tree would have died. We need to learn from nature and the lesson is pretty simple. Have patience and faith and keep doing the right thing. Though the result may
not be visible, something is happening.

3.Lateral thinking

Ram and shyam want to copy three 60 minute tapes. They have two tape recorders that will dub the tapes for them, so they can do two at a time.

It takes 30 minutes for each side to complete; therefore in one hour two tapes will be done, and in another hour the third will be done. Shyam says all three tapes can be made in 90 minutes. How?

Answers after Management thoughts…easy one guys, try a little more…

4.Management quick tips.. Involvement

A business can drastically improve the quality of its product by actively involving everyone in the organization: from the shop floor to top management.

Drawing from different pools of expertise helps to create a team that can solve problems effectively.

Foster a sense of teamwork amongst grassroots workers who can help management to find and solve problems; do not underestimate their intimate, and valuable, knowledge within their areas of expertise.

5.Jokes corner STRESS

I am not sure exactly how it works, but this is amazingly accurate. Read the full description before looking at the picture.

The picture below has 2 identical dolphins in it. It was used in a case study on stress levels at a Hospital.

Look at both dolphins jumping out of the water. The dolphins are identical. A closely monitored, scientific study revealed that , in spite of the fact that the dolphins are identical,a person under stress would find differences in the two dolphins .

The more differences a person finds between the dolphins, the more stress that person is experiencing. Look at the photograph and if you find more than one or two differences you may want to take a vacation

No Need to Reply, I'll be on Vacation . Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway




6.Management thoughts - Sharpening Our Skills from Time to Time is the Key to Success

Once upon a time a very strong woodcutter asked for a job with a timber merchant, and he got it. His salary was really good and so were the working conditions. For that reason, the woodcutter was determined to do his best.

His boss gave him an axe and showed him the area where he was supposed to fell the trees. The first day, the woodcutter brought down 15 trees. "Congratulations," the boss said. "Carry on with your work!" Highly motivated by the words of his boss, the woodcutter tried harder the next day, but he only could bring 10 trees down. The third day he tried even harder, but he was only able to bring down 7 trees. Day after day he was bringing lesser number of trees down.

"I must be losing my strength", the woodcutter thought. He went to the boss and apologized, saying that he could not understand what was going on. "When was the last time you sharpened your axe?" the boss asked. "Sharpen? I had no time to sharpen my axe. I have been very busy trying to cut trees..."

That's right. Most of us NEVER update our skills. We think that whatever we have learned is very much enough. But good is not good when better is expected. Sharpening our skills from time to time is the key to success.

Answer to Lateral thinking puzzle

Shyam will rotate the three tapes.
Let's call them tapes 1,2, and 3 with sides A and B.
In the first 30 minutes they will tape 1A and 2A,
in the second 30 minutes they will tape 1B and 3A (Tape 1 is now done).
Finally, in the last 30 minutes, they will tape 2B and 3B.

7. Inspiring Olympics.. Michael Phelps

So who is Michael Fred Phelps and what makes him the greatest Olympian in history?
Born in Baltimore in the US state of Maryland, Phelps – known as the Baltimore Bullet -- suffered Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder as a teenager and trained at the North Baltimore Aquatic Club under coach Bob Bowman, who was later an assistant coach to the US swimming team at Athens 2004.
He was a talented junior swimmer who became the youngest-ever US swimmer to compete in the Olympic Games when he represented his country at the age of 15 at the Sydney 2000 Games in the Men's 200 meters Butterfly. A few months later, at 15 years and nine months, he became the youngest man to set a swimming world record, again in the 200 meters Butterfly.
His first World Championship gold medal came in 2001, but the big breakthrough year was 2003, when Phelps won four gold medals and two silver at the World Championships in Barcelona.
At Athens 2004, Phelps extended that to six gold medals and two bronze (swimwear manufacturers Speedo offered Phelps one million dollars if he won all eight medals – an offer which has stayed on the table for Beijing 2008).

Phelps has vowed not to work under any other coach than Bowman. "I don't think I would be where I am today with any other coach. He's always on top of things. We've been through a lot."
He maintained his grip as the world's No. 1 swimmer by winning four gold and two silver at the 2005 World Championships and then six gold medals at the 2007 World Championships in Melbourne, Australia. Then came this week's incredible record-breaking feats.
The bad news for Phelps's rivals is that he hasn't lost his thirst for more titles.
"This is something we've been preparing for over the past four years. The hard work is paying off and it's starting to show."
That is surely the understatement of Beijing 2008. Debate among sports columnists will rage about whether Phelps is the greatest Olympian of all time. Conjecture, of course ... but the record book is firmly on his side.

8.Tip for this week….Want to find Day for a Date

If you want to find a "day" (say Friday, Saturday) for a date, follow the below steps.

I have date "09/07/2008" in Cell A1 (DD/ MM/ YYYY format)
Enter the function =Text(A1,"dddd") in B1
You will find the answer

9. Energy…Most energy efficient Countries

Next year in Copenhagen, world leaders will assemble and attempt to write the successor agreement to the 10-year-old Kyoto protocol. In order for countries to make dramatic reductions for a greener future, energy efficiency will likely be a big part of the equation.

What they'll find is a huge gap between countries with a head start, and those still in the blocks. Not surprising, the countries with the most energy-efficient economies are those who import their energy supplies.

Japan leads the way, being after all, birthplace of the Kyoto Protocols for climate change. More important, Japan has very little domestic energy production and is forced to import most of its fuel supply--creating a powerful economic incentive to use those expensive imports efficiently.
The island nation uses 4,500 BTUs per U.S. dollar of gross domestic product, a measure known as "energy intensity," the world standard for measuring how efficient an economy is at using energy.

A country with a very high GDP and relatively little energy consumed is likely to be a very energy-efficient economy. Conversely a country with huge energy consumption and relatively little GDP is unlikely to be efficient. A BTU, or British thermal unit, is the amount of heat energy needed to raise the temperature of one pound of water by one degree Fahrenheit.

Of course, the use of energy intensity as a measure is not perfect and the results can be misleading. By the EIA's data, the country with the lowest energy intensity is Chad. True, Chad uses little energy, but the country is largely reliant on low-tech subsistence farming. Comparing it with the U.S. makes little sense.

So look at the 75 largest countries in terms of total GDP. Not surprisingly, the countries are wealthy and among the world's greenest as well, according to the Environmental Performance Index, a joint product of Columbia University and Yale University, which measures performance against 25 indicators, such as measures of air pollution, water supply or use of natural resources.

Switzerland, which ranks third for efficiency, is ranked as the greenest country. Austria is not far behind at sixth, with Germany and the U.K. also in the top 15.
The most energy-efficient countries are all similar to Japan. In many cases, they do not have access to abundant sources of energy and have sought efficiency as a matter of energy independence--in the case of (No. 2) Denmark as an urgent national priority since the oil shocks of the 1970s. Hong Kong, Ireland, Israel and Italy all make the list as well.

The U.S. doesn't. Using energy intensity as a measure, the U.S. is using slightly more than 9,000 BTUs per dollar of GDP. The top 10 countries use 7,500 BTUs or less. China uses 35,000 BTUs per dollar of GDP.

They're far from the worst, though. At the other end of the scale are former Soviet countries: Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine. Ukraine uses 138,000 BTUs of energy for every dollar of GDP--roughly 30 times the level of consumption in Japan. The aging energy infrastructure of these countries, a remnant from the not-so-efficient days of Soviet planning, has much room for improvement.

10.Closing thoughts…Chennai Marathon

Run for a cause...save a life - no better words to put it across...Chennai our beloved, modest and mystical! On August 31 we come to run for you

To thank you for giving us a place and life here. To make a pledge and commitment that we care for your less fortunate underprivileged children. To resolve that we will find and nurture athletes who in future will bring glory and honor to the nation. Runners will come from all over Tamil Nadu and India to make the day a truly a historic occasion. It is GiveLife Chennai Marathon, wanting to be India’s biggest and South India’s richest run. But more importantly the run itself will be a message. A message reflecting true essence of human spirit and existence : Freedom, grit, compassion, reason and being a beautiful community – ideals which remained the raisandetre for human kind to claim pre-eminence in this planet. So friends come on, join the run and sing gently -

WE ARE THE HUMAN RACE!

Some celebraties whom you might brush across when you participate...Srikkanth, Joshnua Chinnappa, Anu (Koffee with Anu), Vijay Amitraj....

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