How Petreaus prepped to command in Iraq

Question: How did you come to the “big ideas” when you were in command in Iraq?

Petraeus: Well, first of all is what I did to get the big ideas right in my own head. To help our Army and indeed the Marine Corps—because we did this in partnership with General Mattis and the US Marine Corps—what we sought to do to help those institutions develop the right big ideas as well. So during that fifteen month period that I was back in the United States [commanding the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth], having returned from a fifteen-and-a-half month tour as a three star heading the train and equip mission in Iraq, we spent a great deal of time working our way through ideas and concepts of what the strategy should be. This included the counterinsurgency field manual, and it included articles for Military Review magazine—indeed we had a writing contest for counterinsurgency using Military Review which was also under my purview at that time. We worked very, very hard and with considerable rigor to try to get this set in our heads so when I actually did deploy—you know, I’d been told that it was quite likely I was going to go back to Iraq. There was only one position to which I could return presumably, and that would be to be the commander of the Multi-National Force in Iraq. The call came, frankly, a bit earlier than I expected when the President decided to conduct the surge, and decided to make a change in leadership.

But when I went back over there, and having already had nearly two-and-a-half years on the ground, I had a pretty good idea—as did our other leaders, who had been seized with this issue for a number of years. Most of the commanders who came to Iraq during the surge had at least one tour, one full-year tour on the ground by then. Many had two. And so we were a reasonably experienced group, and, again, we’d worked our way through this. We’d made the doctrinal changes, we’d tweaked our organizations, we’d overhauled the training, the so-called road to deployment, every activity along it. We’d completely changed our leader development courses. And so we’d made a number of institutional changes to ensure our leaders and our units were prepared for the tasks required in Iraq and of course in Afghanistan as well.


Lesson: perhaps to give people lots of time to prepare for new positions, and the freedom to rethink ideas.

Interview at the Belfer Center at Harvard

http://strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/parameters/issues/Winter_2015-16/10_Petraeus.pdf

Benefits of silence

A 2013 study on mice published in the journal Brain, Structure and Functionused differed types of noise and silence and monitored the effect the sound and silence had on the brains of the mice. The silence was intended to be the control in the study but what they found was surprising. The scientists discovered that when the mice were exposed to two hours of silence per day they developed new cells in the hippocampus. The hippocampus is a region of the brain associated with memory, emotion and learning.

The growth of new cells in the brain does not necessarily translate to tangible health benefits. However, in this instance, researcher Imke Kirste says that the cells appeared to become functioning neurons.

In this sense silence can quite literally grow your brain.

• If you live in a consistently noisy environment that you are likely to experience chronically elevated levels of stress hormones.
• The effect that noise pollution can have on cognitive task performance has been extensively studied. It has been found that noise harms task performance at work and school. It can also be the cause of decreased motivation and an increase in error making.  The cognitive functions most strongly affected by noise are reading attention, memory and problem solving.

http://www.lifehack.org/377243/science-says-silence-much-more-important-our-brains-than-thought?dgs=1

Asking questions

On [Hillary] Clinton’s first trip to Iraq in November 2003, Petraeus, then a two-star general commanding the 101st Airborne Division, flew from his field headquarters in Mosul to the relative safety of Kirkuk to brief her congressional delegation. “She was full of questions,” he recalls. “It was the kind of gesture that means a lot to a battlefield commander.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/magazine/how-hillary-clinton-became-a-hawk.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fmagazine&action=click&contentCollection=magazine&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0

Benefits of having a broad network

But in today’s world, networking is a necessity. A mountain of research shows that professional networks lead to more job and business opportunities, broader and deeper knowledge, improved capacity to innovate, faster advancement, and greater status and authority. Building and nurturing professional relationships also improves the quality of work and increases job satisfaction.

• If you are an introvert, you can’t simply will yourself to be extroverted, of course. But everyone can choose which motivational focus to bring to networking. Concentrate on the positives—how it’s going to help you boost the knowledge and skills that are needed in your job—and the activity will begin to seem much more worthwhile
• Another factor that affects people’s interest in and effectiveness at networking is the primary purpose they have in mind when they do it. In the law firm we studied, we found that attorneys who focused on the collective benefits of making connections (“support my firm” and “help my clients”) rather than on personal ones (“support or help my career”) felt more authentic and less dirty while networking, were more likely to network, and had more billable hours as a result.

https://hbr.org/2016/05/learn-to-love-networking?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits

Reading habits of highly successful people

https://medium.com/life-learning/the-reading-habits-of-ultra-successful-people-d565b26f15f5#.yyrk9gcdm

In fact, when Warren Buffett was once asked about the key to success, he pointed to a stack of nearby books and said, “Read 500 pages like this every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it.”

Buffett takes this habit to the extreme — he read between 600 and 1000 pagesper day when he was beginning his investing career, and still devotes about 80% of each day to reading.

And he’s not alone. Here are just a few top business leaders and entrepreneurs who make reading a major part of their daily lifestyle:

• Bill Gates reads about 50 books per year, which breaks down to 1 per week
• Mark Cuban reads more than 3 hours every day
• Elon Musk is an avid reader and when asked how he learned to build rockets, he said “I read books.”
• Mark Zuckerberg resolved to read a book every 2 weeks throughout 2015
• Oprah Winfrey selects one of her favorite books every month for her Book Club members to read and discuss

And these aren’t just isolated examples. A study of 1200 wealthy people found that they all have reading as a pastime in common.

But successful people don’t just read anything. They are highly selective about what they read, opting to be educated over being entertained. They believe that books are a gateway to learning and knowledge.

In fact, there is a notable difference between the reading habits of the wealthy and the not-so-wealthy. According to Tom Corley, author of Rich Habits: The Daily Success Habits of Wealthy Individuals, rich people (annual income of $160,000 or more and a liquid net worth of $3.2 million-plus) read for self-improvement, education, and success. Whereas poor people (annual income of $35,000 or less and a liquid net worth of $5,000 or less) read primarily to be entertained.

Successful people tend to choose educational books and publications over novels, tabloids, and magazines. And in particular they obsess over biographies and autobiographies of other successful people for guidance and inspiration.

There are many examples of successful people dropping out of school or foregoing a formal education, but it is clear that they never stop learning. And reading is a key part of their success.

If reading as a pathway to success isn’t enough to get you motivated, consider these health benefits of reading: Reading has been shown to help prevent stress, depression, and dementia, while enhancing confidence, empathy, decision-making, and overall life satisfaction.

Use of derivatives for speculation, not hedging

American regulators refuse to challenge the financial-services industry’s claim that derivatives are used primarily for legitimate hedging and arbitrage. In truth, as the 2009 report by the U.K.’s FSA concluded, derivatives trading is mainly used for speculation, meaning creating risk and leverage.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/04/new-york-primary-financial-crisis-wall-street-213822#ixzz46USuxhPO 
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Problems with big banks and their regulation

Public dissatisfaction with the failure to prosecute bank executives has only increased as stories of bank lawlessness—ranging from the manipulation of Libor (the London Interbank Offered Rate, which is the average of interest rates estimated by each of the leading London banks that they would be charged were they to borrow from other banks), foreign exchange and Treasury market manipulation, money laundering, and, with the Panama Papers, facilitation of tax evasion—have become almost a daily staple. Another vote of no confidence comes from new Minneapolis Fed President Neal Kashkari, who is hosting a series of high-profile conferences and soliciting a wide range of ideas as input for presenting the Minneapolis Fed’s own plan for solving the too-big-to-fail problem toward the end of the year.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/04/new-york-primary-financial-crisis-wall-street-213822#ixzz46USOpnNa 
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lots of stores = energy

Key takeaway: "I knew I needed to create lots of energy, and the way you do that is by having lots of small stores."

Commuters walking through Columbus Circle will have a multitude of new shopping options whenTurnStyle, an underground retail complex four years in the making, opens for business Tuesday. A long, hallway-style mall that features over a dozen boutique stores decked out in warm lighting and industrial fixtures, the space was designed with the intent of getting New Yorkers to slow down, open their eyes, and, of course, shop.

TurnStyle's lead developer Susan Fine worked on the remodeling of Grand Central Market, and used that space as a reference point for her new Columbus Circle project. "I knew I needed to create lots of energy, and the way you do that is by having lots of small stores," Fine said Tuesday.

A dingy, 325-foot-long subway passageway between 57th Street and 59th Street along 8th Avenue has been transformed to create the space, which boasts 30,000-square-feet of food and retail. All together, there are 39 different vendors in the space, including 20 food service establishments, 12 boutiques and other rotating vendors.

"These shops understood what we're trying to do, and they're into it," says Fine. "Our eyes are deadened in a lot of ways. Screens deaden them, and I think we'll open your eyes. I hope we do."

Boutiques are the defining feature of TurnStyle, and its stores offer just about everything from high-end dog toys to fine menswear to artisanal hats to books to wine. In terms of food, sweets from Chelsea Market fixtures Doughnuttery and The Nut Box complement a host of coffee options including FIKA and Starbucks. A Melt Kraft grilled cheese stand is tucked near the space's entrance. The space is geared toward the urban gourmand on the go, but Fine also hopes TurnStyle will become a destination itself. A late evening program of live music is currently in the works.

"It was hard to figure out how to be subversive and cool and industrial, but warm. You have to be inviting," Fine said as she oversaw the last stages of construction before Tuesday evening's opening. Each boutique is required to be open for 12 hours each day, but opening and closing times will be in flux for the next few weeks.

"Luxury can't be fast, delivered in every corner of the world and loved by all"

Since founding his namesake brand in 2013 after stints at Miu Miu, Yves Saint Laurent and Dior, Mr. [Francesco] Russo has concentrated on gaining an intimate relationship with his clients, inspired by the designer-client experience common in the 1950s.

A staunch believer that “luxury just can’t be fast, delivered in every corner of the world and loved by all,” Mr. Russo said the time it takes for him to work with a client and to fabricate a customized shoe, however labor intensive, produces both a desirable investment piece meant to last and an enduring customer relationship.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/05/fashion/luxury-goods-retail.html

Martha Graham says to Agnes de Mille

Presentation skills of Bob B.

When Bob B. gave a speech at the company LGBT summit, he made sure the screen was blacked out behind him, and that a spotlight was projecting onto him, so that the audience could focus and see his face clearly.

He gave a talk / lead a conversation about the state of the business for over an hour without any notes. He talked about finances, people, and innovation, and he knew the points he wanted to make on each subject, providing specific examples on each. It wasn't rehearsed at all, it just showed his in depth knowledge of the subject matter.

Dov Charney on cultural relevancy

“I’m not interested in doing something that’s not culturally relevant,” Charney said. “With American Apparel, I wasn’t selling to Middle America. I went into the heart of New York, L.A. and London. I went for the most challenging markets. I want to do that again.”

Power of habits

Creating habits can reduce the number of decisions you have to make each day. By waking up at the same time every day to wake up, for example, you eliminate the decision to get up and go to the gym, increasing the likelihood that you'll follow through.