Fairness

One of my employees sent me a nasty email and requested seeing me. The email was long. Of importance is a paragraph that states that he feels he is being treated unfairly. The reason is that another employee, who he considers to be of a "lower species" is being paid the same salary.

It was an excellent discussion with him where I convinced him to look at that individual in a different way, consequently, change his mind and discover that he is over paid compared to the other person!

Anyway, the message I want to convey here is the concept of fairness. One comment that my "Life Experience Juicer" gave me is this phrase: "Feeling unfair compared to another person happens when you allow yourself to compare your strength to his weakness". Wow, I was amazed about myself!. This has a lot of applications! When you hate someone... you look at his weakness and criticize him. To change your attitude towards him... search for his strength! Actually... mine for his strength... put the effort to see his goodness... I know my uncle told me this before: "We Eljamal, never say a bad word about anyone, we always convert their bad characters to positive comments..." I understood his words before... but now I have a different level of the meaning...

As I am blogging this instantaneous wisdom, I discovered I need to start a new habit: For each of my enemies... I need to find 5 good things about them... and I hope I will change my perspective about them...

Passion

I was chatting with my employees and I was advising him not put his passion in his emails for it always come out to be wrong... the discussion lead to the concept of passion and if we should be passionate. He was in the learning mode... he was waiting for me to utter the words that he is ready to remeber for the rest of his life... it is one of the life changing moments... so I had to switch to the "life Experience Juice*" mode and uttered the following wisdom of the moment:

"You need to pick up your passionate beliefs that are worth fighting for... not the one's that will waste your emotions into useless battles"... I admired my juicer that made me say these words. He asked me about my passionates... it was a moment of truth that made me reflect on my personality and figure out my passions:

"I am passionate about helping the people around me to be successful" is what I said. This is true... I discovered that I have that innate drive to help the people around me to discover their best and make them happy, content and fight for their betterment!

"I am passionate to let people use technology to learn"!

"I am passionate to bridge in cultural and paradigm differences between individual"...

I was so amazed of my self to summarize my passions... and to come up with a new to look at my life... Is this my Karma? Yet to find out...

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* The "life Experience Juice*" mode is a mental state where I overcharge my intellectual power to make instant decisions based on pulling together all my submerged beliefs to be summarized in a meaningful phrase!

Technology and Prediction

Today I had an interesting question from a friend that made me think in some new lights. Below is my answer (try to figure out the question.)

Dave: Actually, I have read the book and met the Author in a conference where he was challenging another author called Tapscott who talks about Wikinomics (the 4^th wave.) Interesting read.

Your questions are more interesting.

1. The answer to the first part of the last one might answer the others: “wasn’t tech supposed to make life easier?” In my opinion, technology did: today, we work 8 hours a day, have a good income, have a good living standard, own a house, change our cars every few years, take a lot of vacation over a year and we can do more than what we would have done 40 years ago! We have better access to knowledge and we can communicate in real time with individuals that are far away... all of these advancement are caused by technology! Right? (Just try to imagine how your grand pa used to live when he was your age and compare it to today!) So, technology made our life better. Don’t you agree?
   
   
2. The market is controlling the technology development. Millions of technical gadgets are introduced every year... the market determine the winner... 2-3 years ago, the iPod was the market winner although other gadgets that were introduced... last year, the Wii took over the other similar products... the web over took over the Superhighway concept... the Internet destroyed the multi-billion “Satellite belt” project... I can numerate a lot... The fate of these technologies were determined by the market... In my opinion, the market and the global consciousness determine what technology should be developed. What do you think?
   
   
3. About the cellular phone example: you determine if you are important to use it. In my case, I preferred email over the phone... but that is because I am visual and not and auditory person. I am far more productive with an email than a phone. My wife is the opposite of me: she is extremely effective over the phone for she is an auditory person... A compromise: I use Blackberry to read my emails and my wife send me an email to pick up our grocery... we fight less... I buy the grocery just in time... can you see where I am heading?
   
   
4. About predicting future applications: we can predict to some extent. However, you need to know that you must add the human factor to the formula. To predict the wining technology, you must look for the users. For example: Du Chardin, predicted the creation of something like FaceBook in 1960’s... the world laughed at him... however, for his prediction to come true, the number of millennium individuals should have reached a critical mass and the right technology should have matured... this happened in 2006 and his prediction came true! Similarly, Drucker predicted something like the Wiki in 1980’s (he called it voluntary work in non-profit organizations) the corporate world could not understand him and figure out how people can work without being paid... Wikipedia fulfilled his prediction in 2004 when the people were ready! I can quote lots of such predictions likes this one... we just need to see them through the eyes of others and not our own!
   

Do I make sense?

I really enjoyed your email. It is the first time I prefer to answer an email than having my lunch... I hope we continue the discussion...