My women's tennis album 9 - Teeners winners at the US Open

Some may not have won all the way, but here are some sexy successes at the US Open.
Photos from SI.com.

 

See also Album 8.

White Hair Chronicles VII - Stroke may be striking at a younger age

A female office mate was rushed to the hospital yesterday after exhibiting signs of a stroke. She is just a couple of years older than me. She is the second or third colleague in recent memory to suffer such disease. While we continue to pray and hope for her full recovery, her predicament and the continuous prayers we offer for our ill parents, make me realize that we are irreversibly going into that part of aging demographics.

As I am wont to do, I googled what causes strokes. I came across this news that stroke may be striking at a younger age in the United States. Research on stroke patients at a St. Louis hospital between 1999 and 2008 found that 45 percent were under 65 and 27 percent were under the age of 55. Although they say it is hard to know from this single study whether this is a trend throughout the United States, I think this could be happening as well elsewhere. My female colleague is a year short of 50. The other colleagues I know are also below 65.

Suddenly, it's not just the white hairs we should worry about.

Autonomy + Mastery + Purpose = Real Change

The above video shows Dan Pink talking about motivation and rewards at the TED conference. He argues that the traditional carrot-and-stick approach is only suitable for defined tasks with a clear set of rules to follow. However, rewards do not work for tasks that require any kind of thinking.

He says that for real change to occur employees need to have a sense of autonomy, mastery and purpose. Autonomy is the urge to direct our own lives; mastery refers to the desire to get better at something that matters; and purpose is the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.

"...There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does. And here is what science knows. One: Those 20th century rewards, those motivators we think are the natural part of business, do work, but only in a surprisingly narrow band of circumstances. Two: Those if-then rewards often destroy creativity. Three: The secret to high performance isn't rewards and punishments, but that unseen intrinsic drive. The drive to do things for their own sake. The drive to do things cause they matter...

"...The science confirms what we know in our hearts. So, if we repair this mismatch between what science knows and what business does, If we bring our motivation, notions of motivation into the 21st century, if we get past this lazy, dangerous, ideology of carrots and sticks, we can strengthen our businesses, ... and maybe, maybe, maybe we can change the world."

My women's tennis album 8 - US Open 2009

Looks like dark colored shorts are in vogue at the US Open. Not many interesting shots yet.

See Also: Album 1, Album 2, Album 3, Album 4, Album 5, Album 6, Album 7

Just do it.

The passivity and incompetence in Philippine bureaucracy can be partly traced to its segurista attitude. The tendency of upper management to be aristocratic and dictatorial together with their underlings' sipsip ways (unhealthy managing up) likewise lead to the lethargy. Many are unwilling to take initiative outside of what upper management hints, wary of their bosses' capacity to hold grudges.

So risk-aversion is ever the order of the day. Maybe the workforce should revisit the Grace Hopper quotations "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission" and "A ship in a harbor is safe, but that is not what a ship is built for."

We need to remember that "winners take imperfect action while losers are still perfecting the plan" (Gina Graves).  Or as the commercial says "Just do it".