Press on regardless - never give up

I haven't done a scientific study, but I am guessing leadership courses and books do not favor quitting in the face of adversity. I can almost hear a determined martial arts voice saying define your goal and don't let anything stop you from achieving it. And it even sounds true. But it is only true if you have the right goals.

I had a goal today. I wanted to trike from home to Donkey's beach and back in 50 minutes. And that included time to take my iPhone out of its ziplock bag and take a picture of the waves with a strong NE wind and a rising SE swell.

When I do the ascent to Kealia I like to meditate. Usually I pick a verse from one of the Psalms of the Ascents, because, well, I am going uphill. I usually use the verse for a week or so. However, today I started with 2 Samuel 11:1 "In the spring of the year, when kings normally go out to war, David sent Joab and the Israelite army to fight the Ammonites."

I was making pretty good time, (for a 60 pound, 3 speed trike), when I rounded the turn to Pineapple Dump. Still had a lot of gas left in the tank, pretty good considering I had been facing a 15 mph headwind the entire ascent, (going down was going to be a blast).

And then I saw the squall. Quick wind direction/distance calculation, yup, collision course. I don't mind getting rained on, in fact I got rained on later that day. But North of Kealia is a rockslide area, the path puddles up with red clay and I was wearing a white t-shirt. Did I really want to do this. No! Spun around, if I can keep 15 MPH or greater downhill with the wind at my back, I get to avoid the squall. Let's roll.

Did I fail to reach my goal to get to Donkey's? Yes. Do I care? No. Let's look at goal setting for a minute. Home to Donkey's beach and back in 50 minutes is a tactical goal. The reason I was on the trike was a strategic goal and strategic trumps tactical big time. When I had the PICC line in my heart, I was resolved, that if I got to keep my foot, I would do at least one 30 minute aerobic activity every day and at least one other physical activity, strength, endurance, stretching all count as physical). When I am in Hawaii and I live by the path that leads along the ocean, (Ke Ala Hele Makalae), I prefer to trike as my aerobic activity. It is breathtakingly beautiful, especially as you approach Kealia and beyond. Sometimes God even throws in a gorgeous girl in a bikini, (hey, I don't stare, I am pedaling fast).

The meditation for week concerns a tactical decision, send Joab to do the fighting, which ended up dinging David's strategic goal, (be a great king and a man after God's own heart). Because if you read a bit further you get to the steamy bit with Bathsheba, (talk about the law of unintended consequences).

And the meditation is timely. I face a major life change in the coming weeks. A new boss, that knows even less about me than my current boss. That won't change my most strategic goals, (yes, they are in a hierarchy), but it could very well scramble everything else.

Got home, put the bike in the garage, opened a beer, (hey it is memorial day and I only have four of them and won't be buying more before I fly), and sat on my lanai to watch the rain come about a minute later.

Mindful versus Unintended Consequences

According to Psychology Today, "Mindfulness is a state of active, open attention on the present. When you're mindful, you observe your thoughts and feelings from a distance, without judging them good or bad. Instead of letting your life pass you by, mindfulness means living in the moment and awakening to experience."

Sometimes, a less than fortunate event reminds us of what we need to do to improve, stay safe, or avoid problems. This morning I had an experience that reminded me of the importance of mindfulness. Yogi and were doing our Hound Around Town, (HAT) exercise.  This is a working dog moment, he wears his "In Training" vest and that means he is working. This is where we walk through a town on the sidewalks. around people, passing outside seating in restaurants, cross streets etc. It is to prepare for the Canine Good Citizen test and certification which we want to attempt when we get back to Washington. I usually start up the bike path along the ocean, where we run into bicycles, other walkers, walkers with dogs, skateboards and such, it is much wider and there are fewer bottlenecks. Also, if he is going to poop on the walk I would prefer he do it in the grass than in town.

And poop is exactly what happened. I pulled my biodegradable bag out of my pocket and wasn't really paying attention, wasn't being mindful, and I ended up getting poop on one of the fingers of my left hand. Bummer. I wiped my finger off in the grass to the extent possible. Decided to keep the bag in my left hand. Now Yogi is trained to walk on my left side especially when he is working. Found myself holding the lead in my right hand with him walking on my left, not ideal. When Yogi was younger walking was stressful for him and I would sometimes let him pick up a stick and carry it in his mouth, it calmed him down. However, when he is working and especially during a HAT exercise he is never allowed to put his mouth on anything. With one hand, the wrong hand, I could not maintain positive control and he picked up a stick. I decided not to make an issue of it. The good news is that there was a public beach bathroom 100 yards away with a trashcan and outdoor sink. I threw away the bag, cleaned up, gave him a Drop It command for the stick and we resumed the HAT exercise.

As we worked our way from the bike path to the sidewalks of Kapaa town I was reflecting on Mindfulness and Unintended Consequences. Here is hoping I learn something!

The definition of unintended consequences, Business Dictionary puts it this way, "A term used to describe a set of results that was not intended as an outcome. Though unintended consequences may be anticipated or unanticipated, they should be the product of specific actions within the process. The concept of unintended consequences is part of the Six Sigma philosophy and encompasses three types of results: positive effects, potential problems that may result in a reduction of quality, and negative effects."

Jim Manico - Learn something new every day

Yesterday, I was talking Yogi for a Hound around Town walk, (where we intentionally go where we will meet other people on busy sidewalks), and I ran into software security expert Jim Manico on a bicycle.  What an opportunity to put Yogi in a Sit Stay and chat with Jim.

He said, "I remember what you told me, to try to learn something new every day and I want you to know that I do that." I smiled, and shared I was currently practicing DNS decodes, (I've got it all figured out expect the way the put the dots between the labels). He replied, Yeah, I was just looking at how a couple browsers implement same-origin policy. An origin is defined as a combination of URI scheme, hostname, and port number. So when I got up this morning, I poured a cup of Kona coffee, (thanks Kathy), and started to read about it. It shouldn't be very hard to write a tshark script to strip that data out of a pcap and see if there is anything interesting.

Being willing to learn something new everyday is an important life discipline. A thousand years ago, I was doing an employee semi-annual eval and one of the standard eval question is what skill or ability do you intend to develop over the next performance review interval. She said, "Nothing, I know how to do everything I need to do." I gently pushed, but she was adamant. She resigned before the next performance appraisal and I have to say, I was not surprised.

So be my accountability partner. When you see me or email me, ask me what did you learn new recently. If you want to explore this further consider reading the 12 Laws of IT Security Power.

Genuine People - Forge your own path

I was reading a Forbes article on leadership.  It starts with a premise that EQ is important: "People with high EQs make $29,000 more annually than people with low EQs. Ninety percent of top performers have high EQs, and a single-point increase in your EQ adds $1,300 to your salary. I could go on and on."

The author, Travis Bradberry, goes on to say, "But there’s a catch. Emotional intelligence won’t do a thing for you if you aren’t genuine." and "It’s not enough to just go through the motions, trying to demonstrate qualities that are associated with emotional intelligence. You have to be genuine.

You can do a gut check to find out how genuine you are by comparing your own behavior to that of people who are highly genuine. Consider the hallmarks of genuine people and see how you stack up."

Then he starts to list the characteristics of genuine people. It is a good list in the style of 12 characteristics of genuine people, but one characteristic stood out for me: "They forge their own paths. Genuine people don’t derive their sense of pleasure and satisfaction from the opinions of others. This frees them up to follow their own internal compasses. They know who they are and don’t pretend to be anything else. Their direction comes from within, from their own principles and values. They do what they believe to be the right thing, and they’re not swayed by the fact that somebody might not like it."

In a sense this is a circular reference. You can't lead if you do not know where you are going. Stephen Covey coined the term, "Begin with the end in mind". If you know where you are going you have a much better chance of getting there.

Covey, is talking about the absolute end, death, "In your mind's eye, see yourself going to the 
funeral parlor or chapel, parking the car, and getting out.    As you walk inside the building, you notice the flowers, the soft organ music.    You see the faces of friends and family you pass along the way.    You feel the shared sorrow of losing, the joy of having known, that radiates from the hearts of the people there. 

As you walk down to the front of the room and look inside the casket, you suddenly come face to 
face with yourself.    This is your funeral, three years from today.    All these people have come to honor you, to express feelings of love and appreciation for your life."

All well and good and it is important to think about your life's final goals.  I am all in. However, life is like sailing in the ocean. Say you want to sail from Kauai to French Polynesia. You know it will take about three weeks and you know the general direction. But the winds and currents will entail numerous course corrections. The only way to achieve the master goal is by many, many minor goals.

Right now I have several. We fly from Hawaii to Washington State for the summer in ten days. Kathy and I both want to close out our apartment well. We have been blessed to be able to minister to some hurting people this trip; Covey's analogy was brought into focus as a number of friends and acquaintances suffered the loss of a loved one. We hope to do this one more time before we fly. We have made a lot of progress training our high spirited Rottweiler, as soon as I post this, I will take him on another walk through town. And, I am trying to hone my skills to decode DNS, fast, accurately, and with a nose for the unusual. These are all tactical goals and they don't mean I have lost sight of the ultimate goals, but this is the path to get there. What are your ultimate goals, what are your tactical goals and do they align.

Leadership in a Barrel

When I first get back to Kauai, the first restaurant I visit is the Kapaa Chicken in a Barrel. I get the chicken plate, 1/4 chicken, scoop of brown rice, chili. The box comes with a reference to John 3:16 and an Ichthys, Mike is an elder at Calvary Chapel North Shore. Kathy and I had the pleasure of eating there today with the founder, Mike Pierce.  This blogpost is about two leadership traits, vision and persistence. As John Ryan said in Forbes, "Compelling visions can truly change the world. But staying invested in them can be extremely difficult when hard times arrive."

The first CiaB opened November 2011.

Well, that is not exactly correct, it opened in March on a Friday, sold out, had a roaring Saturday, was off to a good start Monday when the health department showed up. Mike would later say, "I knew nothing about the restaurant business including the fact you needed a permit."

Turned out nothing whatsoever was permitted about the building he had leased from Richard Jasper, owner of JJ's Broiler. For the next six months, every week involved trips to the building and health departments on Kauai. Mike would bring what ever they asked for from the last trip and they would give him a new list.

Finally, they were open. Jimmy from U Turn for Christ was the first employee. Mike's struggles were far from over, CiaB lost money as they were trying to figure out how to run a restaurant, (Mike's background was construction and that funded the restaurant). After two years the accountant asked Mike, "What are you doing?" Mike believed in the product, people told him they liked it and after two and a half years, CiaB had a profitable month.

He still ran his construction business and at one point painting slowed down. Patrick Pepper, his son in law, moved over to the restaurant in Kapaa that he manages today. Every time I see him there he has a big smile on his face. He loves it.

Mike believed the island would support another restaurant and Hanalei was his target location. However, space was impossible to find. He was friends with Patti Ewing who owned a shopping center in Kilauea, a space was opening up, but due to the number of parking stalls, he could only open for takeout. Later, Mitch McPeek would run into the same problem. Today, that location is a wine bar with 28 seats?

Mike spoke with a Liz Grout, a seasoned real estate agent on the North shore. She confirmed that Hanalei was a white hot market, before something gets listed, it is already gone by word of mouth. Mike continued to believe. Then one day he got a call from Samantha Williams. She had a lease in Hanalei for Samantha's Place and was tired of doing it. She liked eating at CiaB and thought it would do well in Hanalei. There was one condition. Mike and his wife Anne, needed to take over everything that day including the employees. For the first month it continued to be Samatha's Place with Mike and Anne running it, till they could convert.

CiaB Hanalei was the first restaurant in the state of Hawaii to be approved to use carbon based fuel, charcoal, indoors. The hood was designed by Peter Taylor and crafted in Stockton. The special barrels they cook in had to be UL listed.

The construction business is uneven as everyone in the trades knows. Sometimes there is more work than you can handle, sometimes it is slow. During a slow period, another son in law, Brent, moved over, this time to the Hanalei location.

After, the two restaurants were stable and managed by his sons in law Mike started to think about franchising. That too is a long journey with multiple LLCs, protections for intellectual property and a 279 page franchise agreement. But sometime in the next year, a CiaB will open in Santa Barbara. At lunch today the couple just in front of us in line, picked up the franchise interest postcard and started filling it out. I thought about it myself long and hard. However, as I shared with Mike, "It is a great product and the way to win in the franchise business is to get in early. However, I have to be honest with you, a restaurant is just too much work." Mike smiled and said, "I'll be honest with you, it is a lot of work." I am not lazy BTW, I have been involved in eight startups, three of them at the helm, six of which succeeded and Kathy and I have promised each other we won't do it again.

Every time that we come back to Kauai we find they have added to the menu. Mike says he expects to be able to offer beef ribs and wild boar sausage soon. I don't know that they will ever make a fortune, but it is fun to see a God honoring family business succeeding. And Mike's story is a great example of the leadership qualities of vision and persistence.

Screen shot from CiaB Facebook page

Which way is North?

Kathy and I know another couple well that sail. He does more than she does, (motion sickness). We have bare boat chartered in French Polynesia and Belize and they have a boat. I have learned a little about a lot when it comes to sailing from them, but this was the most important thing of all.

He taught me that I need to know where the boat is heading at all times. To do that you have to be aware of your compass points.  Sailing in the Belize lagoon is a bit tricky, nothing is marked, coral is everywhere, and the GPS is only roughly right. At one point this couple was having a heated discussion about the route we were going to take. "You need to listen to me, she said, I know a lot to." He replied, "Which way is North?" She fell silent.

I had been working on my situational awareness, but this inspired me to work even harder. And not just in terms of the compass North, but the "True North" in life as well. Can't say I have arrived, but can say, "I am working on it".

Eli Whitney - no one trick wonder

Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, (gin is short for engine). Everyone knows that. And he patented it. Most people know that. And his intellectual property was essentially stolen and increased the value of slavery.

When creators are ripped off many of them quit creating. The number of first time inventors with a successful invention that are crushed by large organizations can't be counted.

And Eli was down in the dumps. But he did not give up. Instead he did something audacious. He asked for and received a contract to manufacture 10,000 guns for the United States military, something that was literally impossible in the state of the art in 1797. Guns were hand built one at a time. Eli, decided to make all the parts the same so they were interchangeable.  He did it, perhaps not in the two years the contract stated, but he changed the arms industry for all time.

http://www.history.com/topics/inventions/cotton-gin-and-eli-whitney
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/how-the-government-launched-the-us-gun-industry-213892?curator=MediaREDEF&utm_medium=email&utm_source=digg

Leadership and Evacuation

Evacuations have saved thousands of lives in incidents ranging from small building fires to massive regional disasters. For many personnel security threats, facility evacuation is effective. In addition, for regional disasters, personnel evacuation is the important first step for families to reconvene and evacuate to another region. Leaders are responsible for ensuring that procedures for evacuation are prepared and practiced; and coordination with Human Resources, Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Planning, and Executive management should be tested and refined.


Case study Richard Rescorla

When Islamist terrorists bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 (see World Trade Center bombing, Rescorla was instrumental in evacuating the building. He was literally the last man out. He and his friend Dan Hill prepared a report that warned authorities of another attack, but was ignored. At Rescorlas insistence, all employees practiced quarterly emergency evacuations.

On September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 11 hit World Trade Center Tower 1 at 8:46 a.m. (see September 11, 2001 attacks). Rick Rescorla ignored officials advice to stay put, and began the orderly evacuation of Morgan Stanley's 2,800 employees on 20 floors of World Trade Center Tower 2, and 1,000 employees in WTC 5. Rescorla reminded everyone to "be proud to be an American", and sang God Bless America and other songs over his bullhorn to help evacuees stay calm as they left the building. Rescorla had most of Morgan Stanleys 3800 employees, as well as people working on other floors of WTC 2, safely out of the buildings by the time United Airlines Flight 175 hit WTC 2 at 9:07 a.m.

After having reached safety, Rescorla returned to the building to rescue others still inside. He was last seen heading up the stairs of the tenth floor of the collapsing WTC 2. His remains were not recovered. He leaves a wife and two children. A memorial stone was erected in Hayle to commemorate his life. We learn three things from Rescorla:

Strong situational awareness, his perceptions matched reality and he anticipated upcoming events
Selflessness, bravery, extreme determination
Exceptional leadership, he was able to save so many people because they followed his leadership in a time of stress and confusion
A biography of Rescorla, Heart of a Soldier by James B. Stewart, was described by Time Magazine as "the best non-fiction book of 2002".

Why Evacuation Matters

We would like to share four quick stories and then ask you a question to help drive home the point that evacuation is an important issue for senior managers to personally oversee.

My first professional job after college was at Defense Mapping Agency (now NIMA) at the Brookmont MD facility. He worked on the fifth floor, and one day they had a fire drill and it took him over 15 minutes to get out of the building. There were simply too many employees and too few stairwells. He remembers thinking "this is not good". In a real fire, people would panic and trample one another. As he drove home, he started pondering finding a new employer, if they care that little about their employees, it would be wisest to move on. Three months later he was working at a new location. This story is the genesis for one of the core concepts we teach in Management 512, SANS Security Leadership Essentials. If you are technically competent you can always find employment. The trick is to find the right employment that allows you to develop your career.

Only two years after 9/11, we were on the 24th floor lounge of the Sheraton New Orleans when the fire alarm sounded. There were about six SANS attendees in the lounge; we looked at each other and we all headed for the stairs. No one else moved. As we were descending, someone mentioned that on 9/11, only the people that started immediately to get out of the building made it. That is not entirely true, but it certainly motivated us to keep working down the stairs expeditiously. The really scary thing is, that as the six of us worked our way down, we only saw one other family enter the emergency exit. The hotel was sold out; if it had been a major fire or a terrorist act, the loss of life would have been considerable just because people did not bother exiting the building.

We teach evacuation as a small part of Security Leadership Essentials.[4] At a class at Silver Spring, we were covering that exact section talking about the importance to commit the evacuation route to memory and to test it when the fire alarm goes off. The class headed for the fire escape under our leadership. We were carrying our laptops with us, because of the sensitive data that resides on our hard drives. When we got to the exit, the stairs were so narrow, we could not fit our feet on the rungs. It was impossible to get down without holding onto both handrails. We had to jump back and put the laptops on the floor. We had known that we ought to encrypt our laptops, but it took this event to push us to do the right thing.

We were running a conference on the Disney property and while one of the instructors was teaching, another took some time off to attend a business meeting. On the way back to the Security Leadership Essentials[4] classroom, he noticed another classroom that was completely empty and all of the laptops were sitting unattended. What an incredible data risk! He was getting ready to hunt down a conference manager and ask "how can this be?" when the Disney security personnel caught up with him and briskly escorted him out of the building. While he had been gone, there had been an alarm and the building had been evacuated.

Try it now! Most people have an evacuation story, take a minute to write yours down or use one of ours. Now practice telling it and time yourself. Try not to take more than 40 seconds, we have tested all of these, you have to speak quickly with the first, but you can do it. People do not want to think seriously about evacuation and stories can make them think. As long as you can keep the story under 60 seconds there is a good chance you can keep their attention.

And finally, our question to you is, has your organization held a fire drill in the past year?

The University of Minnesota Deluth has a Word template Building Evacuation and Exit Plan (BEEP). We strongly encourage you to download, read, and either update yours or create one. Here are a few of the points they make:

Evacuation route postings should be posted near elevators and other prominent locations. Every evacuation procedure should include evacuation routes and meeting points. Each procedure should show clearly the route from the current location to the nearest exit, to a second exit, and should be able to be removed easily and carried with the evacuating individual.

The procedure should include instructions for safety techniques:

Know your exits, primary and backup
Keep your exit paths clear
Count doors to find the emergency exit
Know where the nearest fire alarm and fire extinguisher are located
Move quickly, but do not run
Remain close to the floor if smoke is present
Test doors for heat before opening
Procedures should be posted liberally throughout the work area, not forgetting auxiliary areas such as break rooms, rest rooms and lobbies. Sample procedures from UMN.edu[5] are shown below:

Remain calm, do not give in to panic
Do not ignore alarm.
Leave the building immediately, in an orderly fashion.
Do not use elevators.
Classes in session must be dismissed and students directed to leave.
Follow quickest evacuation route from where you are (see posted floor evacuation diagram/map).
Do not go back to your office area for any reason.
Proceed to the designated emergency assembly point for your area. If the designated assembly point/area is unsafe or blocked due to the emergency, proceed to the alternate assembly point.
Report to your Work Area Rep at the assembly point to be checked off as having evacuated safely; also report any knowledge you may have of missing persons.
Return to the building only after emergency officials or building monitors give the all-clear signal. Silencing the Alarm doesn mean the emergency is over
Signage should be marked clearly and printed in high contrast with a large font size. Use of the color red is highly recommended since the color is associated with emergency procedures - with the exception that the text should not be colored in a manner that makes it difficult to discern for individuals with red-green color blindness.

Meeting Point - Each procedure should identify specific meeting points for personnel evacuating from the facility. The meeting points should be within easy walking distance from their respective locations. Simple signs, "Meeting Point A", for example, should be visible for convening employees. Depending on the size of your building, you may have an initial meeting point close to the building and a secondary meeting point further away. Think worst case, what if your building falls down.

Practice - Periodic evacuations should be performed to ensure employees can execute the procedures in a genuine emergency. Employees should be required to take these drills seriously and should be subject to disciplinary action if they ignore alarms or instructions from personnel managing the drill. Employees should be trained to quickly secure sensitive materials if possible, since an emergency or false emergency could be prime opportunity for spies and saboteurs. If securing materials puts an employees life in danger, or their immediate safety is threatened, their first priority is to get to safety. Once employee testing has shown that employees can exit the building in an orderly manner and within the time frame recommended for the facility, the organization can consider conducting drills with emergency services teams. These drills, often conducted by emergency services for their own practice, accept volunteers from local businesses.

City State Evacuation

Ibibiliois a tremendous resource to plan evacuations within the USA. Every place your organization is located in should be reviewed for the natural disaster threats, and even in so called safe zones, a plan should exist to evacuate your employees. Working with your local authorities in advance to create a plan is highly advisable.

These links were tested and were working at the time this document was created. In some cases we keep a link after it is no longer available.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:World_Trade_Center
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11%2C_2001_attacks
3. http://www.amazon.com/Heart-Soldier-James-B-Stewart/dp/product-description/0743244591
4. http://www.sans.org/training/description.php?tid=452
5. http://www.d.umn.edu/ehso/beep/
6. http://www.ibiblio.org/rcip/evacuationroutes.html

Pearls of wisdom from Linkedin

If you are careful who you follow on Linkedin, the odds are high you are going to come across some nuggets of wisdom. Here are some that I found interesting and maybe we can add to this as time goes on!

Paul Wayne Every new innovation, bright idea, new management theory or best practice begins with one of two types of curiosity. The first is a state of curiosity, where you wonder how on earth anybody can drive so slow in the “fast lane” while still calling himself a driver. The other is a character trait -- a perpetual mindset of inquiry that distinguishes the intellectually curious from the mentally stagnant or apathetic.

John Clifford Rule #1, Don't lose money. Rule #2 If you forget, go back and read rule #1.
Warren Buffett

This may not sound like leadership but it has the essence of clarity of purpose and that is the true secret of leadership.

Rob Davis "If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader." John Quincy Adams

Dr. Terilyn J. Goins "A testimony is a life lived, not a word spoken."

Krishna Kumar Ramamoorthy

1. Mutual respect - Stephen R Covey ( 7 Habits of highly effective people)
2. Trust and openness - Covey Junior ( The Speed of Trust)
3. Humility - Gandhi

Rich Primo

While I have - and continue to - study leadership, one thing that stands out to me is something I read in Fortune Magazine concerning current-CEO of Intel Andy Grove.

At the time Intel was in the computer memory business and they were failing fast due to stiff competition. Grove and then-CEO Gordon Moore needed a solution, but were having a hard time finding one. Then, according to the article, Grove asked Moore this: "If we got kicked out and the board brought in a new CEO, what do you think he would do? ...Why shouldn't you and I walk out the door, come back, and do it ourselves?"

This jumped out to me right away. As a business should always be evolving, it is important to think of things from a different perspective, to not get caught up in traditional solutions because they may not be the best solutions. Take a moment to step outside of yourself, and your organization, and look at a problem with new eyes. You will be surprised what you might see.

krishna koney Control your destiny or someone else will. I agree, in fact I posted something similar. If we do not manage change, change manages us.

Heeral Kothari

The rags to riches story of Dhirubhai Ambani (Founder of Reliance Industries) is a story that must be motivating millions of people. It was his determination, conviction, need for perfection, vision and his charisma that made him one of the most famous business icon in India. That is what he has taught me.

Some quotes by him:

"Our dreams have to be bigger. Our ambitions higher. Our commitment deeper. And our efforts greater. This is my dream for Reliance and for India."

"You do not require an invitation to make profits."

"If you work with determination and with perfection, success will follow."

"Pursue your goals even in the face of difficulties, and convert adversities into opportunities."

"Give the youth a proper environment. Motivate them. Extend them the support they need. Each one of them has infinite source of energy. They will deliver."

"Between my past, the present and the future, there is one common factor: Relationship and Trust. This is the foundation of our growth"

"We bet on people."

"Meeting the deadlines is not good enough, beating the deadlines is my expectation."

"Don't give up, courage is my conviction."

"We cannot change our Rulers, but we can change the way they Rule Us."

"Dhirubhai will go one day. But Reliance's employees and shareholders will keep it afloat. Reliance is now a concept in which the Ambanis have become irrelevant."

Glain Roberts-McCabe "What lies behind us, and what lies before us are but tiny matters compared to what lies within in." by Oliver Wendall Holmes or Ralph Waldo Emerson (they both get credited with this quote).

To me, this is the essential lesson of leadership. If you aren't in touch with your own core and who you are as a leader... how can you lead others? This is where we have to look first and from that place we can bring our best to our organizations and teams.

And my personal favorite:

Barbara Garabedian "I don't judge a person when they make a mistake...everyone makes mistakes. I judge a person by how they deal with the mistakes."

Intellectual Property - Creative Commons

According to Tim Wu,[1] a Columbia University law professor, there is a new force that impacts authors of material, and Google is at the center of it: "Google has become the new ground zero for the "other" culture war. Not the one between Ralph Reed and Timothy Leary, but the war between Silicon Valley and Hollywood; California's cultural civil war. At stake are two different visions of what might best promote authorship in this country. One side trumpets the culture of authorial exposure, the other urges the culture of authorial control."[2]

Tim goes on to say, "Did you know you can search television? That you can type in "yada yada yada," and find the exact frames where George Costanza's girlfriend Marcy said it first? Weird as it may seem, you can do it with one of Google's little-known products"

So, I decided to try it. I have always enjoyed the Noisy Cricket scene in Men in Black, found from a fragment of one of the quotes, (the long tail search term is illustrated below):

The famous book, The Long Tail,[3] by Chris Anderson,[4] points out these two major perspectives change how the creators of content feel about copyright. "At the top of the curve, the studios, major labels and publishers defend their copyright fiercely, in the middle, the domain of independent labels and academic presses, it's a gray area. Further down the tail, more firmly in the noncommercial zone, an increasing number of content creators are choosing explicitly to give up some of their copyright protections."[5] "Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved."[6]

Let's take a look at Wikipedia's write up on some rights reserved. They are:

• Attribution (by): Permit others to copy, distribute, display and perform the work and make derivative works based upon it only if they give the author or licensor the credits in the manner specified by these.
• Noncommercial or NonCommercial (nc): Permit others to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and make derivative works based upon it only for noncommercial purposes.
• No Derivative Works or NoDerivs (nd): Permit others to copy, distribute, display and perform only verbatim copies of the work, not derivative works based upon it.
• ShareAlike (sa): Permit others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.[7]

How well this will hold up in courts of law, since this is a fairly new idea, remains to be seen, but case law will be developed as we see from, "On March 9, 2006 the District Court of Amsterdam, judging in summary proceedings, decided the first court case in the Netherlands involving the validity of a Creative Commons license. Local media celebrity, Adam Curry (see http://curry.podshow.com/?p=49) had published photos of his family on www.flickr.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Sharealike license. The photos also carried the notice 'This photo is public'. The Dutch weekly Weekend, a gossip magazine, had reproduced four photos in a story on Curry's children without seeking Curry's prior permission."[8]

Publishers are starting to receive requests to release material under the Creative Commons license. For instance, here is a section of a letter to Republican National Committee posted on lesig's blog, "We, the undersigned, request that the Republican National Committee publicly urge state parties and other Republican debate sponsors to specify in debate contracts that video footage will be put into the public domain or licensed under a Creative Commons (Attribution) license - so that after the debate, the video will be free for anyone to access, edit, and share with others with proper attribution."[9]

Of course, there are concerns. This BusinessWeek blog talks about finding a cool picture on Flickr, the photo site in the Dutch lawsuit mentioned earlier, but was unwilling to use it since BusinessWeek is clearly commercial. However, Heather Green[10] goes on to say, "But what if I'm not BusinessWeek. What if I want to use it on my personal blog, but I use AdWords on my blog? Isn't that also a commercial use? I wonder if people who choose some rights reserved like this realize that they are actually limiting it this much."[11] Perhaps, no one has put it quite so well as Frankston, Reed, and Friends: "If someone were to repeat any of my ideas, anywhere (for example, the "end-to-end argument") they would be infringing my copyright in that expression, and probably my trademark. If you were to want to build on that idea, or criticize it, you'd have to find a different way of expressing it. And of course, if the different expression cites my work, a mere rewording shows that you almost certainly derived the new expression as a translation, which is a copy, so it may indeed be insufficient (because translation is protected by copyright, as well) to protect yourself from my suing you."[12] So, the some rights reserved is an interesting modification on the limited monopoly rights granted by copyright, but depending on the restrictions may not work in the real world, so we will have to see. These articles get updated every year or so, so it will be interesting to see how things are going then.

For now, in the course we author and teach, Management 512: SANS Security Leadership Essentials For Managers,[13] we suggest the wise information security manager may want to consider the body of intellectual property that your organization currently has under copyright; and, if you feel that some of it might benefit your organization by favoring authorial exposure rather than authorial control, then consider a test where you mark some of the material with a creative commons mark. As you can see in this article, if you try to keep too much authorial control, it will impact the point of the exercise, to put your material to work for your organization. So, consider the Attribution by would be our advice. The Creative Commons folks make it easy; you select a license,[14] they generate the HTML[15] and then you put that in your web page. In text, the license would look like this, "You are free to share X” to copy, distribute and transmit the work, Under the following conditions: Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). No Derivative Works. You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. The best way to do this is with a link to this web page. Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder. Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author's moral rights.[16]

And yes, that is the license we would prefer be used to govern this web page.

References:

1. http://www.timwu.org/writings.html

2. http://www.slate.com/id/2128094/

3. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1401302378/bookstorenow600-20

4. http://www.thelongtail.com/about.html

5. The LONG TAIL, Chris Anderson, ISBN 1-4013-0237-8

6. http://creativecommons.org/

7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_licenses

8. http://www.creativecommons.ca/blog/archives/2006/03/14/dutch-court-upholds-creative-commons-license/

9. http://www.lessig.org/blog/

10. http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/blogspotting/techteam.html#heather_green

11. http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/blogspotting/archives/2006/01/photos_whats_ri.html

12. http://www.satn.org/archive/2003_04_27_archive.html

13. http://www.sans.org/training/description.php?tid=452

14. http://creativecommons.org/license/

15. http://creativecommons.org/license/results-one?q_1=2&q_1=1&field_commercial=yes&field_derivatives=n&field_jurisdiction=&field_format=Text&lang=en&language=en&n_questions=3

16. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/