Loud Thinking

Archive for 2013

Responsibility is to be accountable for your actions.

“It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do.”

Moliere (1622-1673);
French playwright, actor

Sun Tzu; The Art of War,

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.

If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.

If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

Test Candidates Before Interviewing Them

In most organizations, recruiters review résumés, conduct interviews with promising candidates, and then use tests to determine which applicant is the best fit. But recent research shows that using short, web-based aptitude tests as the first screening step efficiently weeds out the least-suitable applicants, leaving a smaller pool for the more costly aspects of the hiring process. These tests more accurately predict performance than an interview, especially in the service industry. For example, a company concerned about absenteeism found that workers who scored in the highest 30% were more than twice as likely to have perfect attendance as workers in the bottom 30%. A security company learned that the bottom 30% of test-takers had five times as many accidents as the top 30%. One organization began testing to screen out the bottom quarter of applicants before reviewing applications. The candidates called in for interviews were better qualified, the average number interviewed for each successful hire fell, and managers saved thousands of hours of effort.

Adapted by HBR from “When Hiring, First Test, and Then Interview,” by John Bateson, Jochen Wirtz, Eugene Burke, and Carly Vaughan.

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.'”

— Mary Anne Radmacher

Innovation is to come up with new ideas or new ways to apply an existing idea.

“The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.”

John F. Kennedy (1917-1963);
35th US President

True-Beauty is a truly beautiful or pleasing thing or person.

“A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.”

Roald Dahl (1916-1990);
British novelist

Today South African B team has given a thrashing of the year to our cricket team.

It was not for nothing that we stood at the last rung of the ladder and got the 8th position at Champions trophy cricket tournament held few months ago in the UK and also got defeated in an ODI and a Test match by the lowest ranked Zimbabwe’s cricket team.