Author Archive
Loud Thinking July 01, 2013 at 01:44PM
July 1st, 2013 | 
Author: Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.
Loud Thinking July 01, 2013 at 01:39PM
Build a Strong Relationship with Your New Boss
Your boss has more impact than any other person on your success or failure at work. When starting a new job, it pays to invest in this relationship. Here’s how to get off on the right foot:
Don’t stay away. Even if she gives you a lot of freedom, resist the urge to take it. Get on your manager’s calendar regularly to communicate any issues you’re facing and gather her input.
Don’t run down a checklist. Assume she wants to focus on the most important things you’re trying to do and how she can help. Focus on no more than three things in each meeting.
Clarify expectations early and often. Start during the interview process then check in regularly to make sure they haven’t shifted.
Adapted by HBR from The First 90 Days, Updated and Expanded.
Loud Thinking July 01, 2013 at 08:32AM
Can Pakistan take on IMF?
(Sadly, it is doubtful that Pakistan’s current leaders will be able to take the IMF bull by its horns. They lack the competence, integrity and, yes the intelligence, to do so. What a tragedy for the poor people of Pakistan who will continue to pay for their leaders’ larceny).
Nadeem M Qureshi
In 2008 when the PPP government of President Asif Zardari took office Pakistan’s total foreign debt was about $40 billion. Today, at the end of the PPP government’s term, it is $60 billion. Twenty billion dollars of new debt has been added. As the Government of Nawaz Sharif begins negotiations with the IMF to seek more loans, the people of Pakistan need to ask two basic questions. The first is: What happened to this money?
By almost any economic indicator people are worse off today than they were five years ago. Unemployment and inflation are higher. Vital infrastructure – railways, roads, public transport, hospitals, schools, water supply and sewage systems – have deteriorated to unprecedented and unacceptable levels. It is almost as though the $20 billion has vanished into thin air.
Well, some of it has. Consider, for example, the single case of the purchase of Boeing 777 aircraft by Pakistan International Airlines in 2011. Transparency International Pakistan maintains that of the $1.5 billion paid for the aircraft, $500 million were diverted as kickbacks to the government functionaries. Multiply this by dozens of multibillion dollar deals over five years, across different economic sectors, and it is clear that many of the billions taken in the name of the people of Pakistan have disappeared into private bank accounts.
Not all of the $20 billion is unaccounted for. Some of it is on rude display in the fleets of bullet proof luxury vehicles of politicians and bureaucrats. Less visible is the money spent on acquiring and maintaining the fleet of private jets at the disposal of the country’s ‘leaders’ and their acolytes. Also hidden from view but widely reported are the luxurious lifestyles of the people’s ‘servants’. A distasteful example of this was the news that the government planned to spend Rs. 260 million to renovate the President’s kitchen.
The second question that the people of Pakistan are entitled to ask is this: Should they be liable to pay back money taken in their name but used almost exclusively to enrich the ruling coterie? It is clear that the highly paid international bureaucrats who work for the IMF are not stupid. It cannot have escaped them that the money they are doling out is misused, or worse, stolen. Why then should the people of Pakistan pay for their willful negligence? This raises issues of legality and precedent. Is it lawful for a country to refute debt taken on by corrupt politicians? And, are there any precedents for this? The answer to both questions is yes.
The concept of odious debt was established in international law by Alexander Nahum Sack, a Russian born jurisprudence expert, in a paper published in Paris in 1927. Odious debt “is a legal theory that holds that the national debt incurred by a regime for purposes that do not serve the best interests of the nation, should not be enforceable. Such debts are, thus, considered by this doctrine to be personal debts of the regime that incurred them and not debts of the state.”
The doctrine further suggests that since odious debt is deemed the personal debt of the rulers in power at the time the debt was secured, recovery should be from their personal assets. There are also several precedents in which countries have repudiated national debt. The United States set the first precedent of odious debt when it seized control of Cuba from Spain. Spain insisted that Cuba repay the loans made to them by Spain. The U.S. repudiated that debt, arguing that the debt was imposed on Cuba by force of arms and served Spain’s interest rather than Cuba’s, and that the debt therefore ought not be repaid.
The debt was annulled. In recent times, there is the example of Haiti. When the dictator Jean Claude Duvalier was overthrown in 1986, 66 US senators supported a resolution calling for cancellation of Haiti’s debt on the grounds that the money was misused. In the end, half of Haiti’s debt was written off.
By far the most effective use of the ‘odious debt’ doctrine in recent times is by President Rafael Correa of Ecuador. In 2008 he repudiated Ecuador’s national debt of $ 3 billion and announced the country would default and fight creditors in international courts. He succeeded eventually in getting a 60% write off on Ecuador’s debt.
Sadly, it is doubtful that Pakistan’s current leaders will be able to take the IMF bull by its horns. They lack the competence, integrity and, yes the intelligence, to do so. What a tragedy for the poor people of Pakistan who will continue to pay for their leaders’ larceny.
(The writer is Chairman of Mustaqbil Pakistan)
Loud Thinking June 30, 2013 at 01:14PM
“Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is
taking the risk to be alive — the risk to be alive and
express what we really are.”
— Don Miguel Ruiz
Loud Thinking June 30, 2013 at 07:24AM
Altaf Hussain quits as MQM chief after raid on his London house
June 30, 2013 – Updated 440 PKT
From Web Edition
34 5 0 0
LONDON: Deeming a recent police raid on his apartment as a disgrace to his reputation, Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) leader, Altaf Hussain, has announced to voluntarily relinquish the party leadership henceforth, Geo News reported.
“Metropolitan Police raided my house and took away many things. When the home of a person, who also happens to be the political leader of millions, is subjected to such an investigatory action, then it becomes imperative for him to step down on moral grounds”, said he talking exclusively to Geo News.
Altaf Hussain’s statement comes at a time when British Prime Minister, David Cameron, is vising Pakistan. Cameron called on President Asif Ali Zardari on Saturday and will hold a meeting with Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif today (Sunday.
He said he was renouncing the leadership of his party since New Scotland Yard ransacked his house in North West London and seized many items/documents in connection with Dr Imran Farooq murder case investigation. He said whatever happened called into question the name of the leader of his stature.
“I am abdicating my responsibility as the Quaid-e-Tehreek. I am transferring my powers to MQM Coordination Committee”, said he.
He said that if a court of law took up Dr Imran Farooq murder case then he would not engage any lawyer, solicitor, or barrister, rather he would fight his case himself.
“I would plead my case personally and embrace the ruling of the honourable court openheartedly regardless of which way it goes”, he added.
Vowing to continue his Haqparastana (righteous) struggle Altaf advised his followers to stay convinced no matter what happened.
“Hold your heads high and repose your full trust in the party leadership”, said Altaf Hussain.
More than a week ago, Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command Unit searched two North West London “residential addresses” for 55 hours with one of them belonging to Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) chief, Altaf Hussain.
The New Scotland Yard, which raided the houses, rooted both the apartments during the painstaking search and confiscated many important documents.
According to sources, Altaf Hussain is the proprietor of one of the two houses, however the details of the ownership of the other apartment are yet unknown.
Dr Farooq, the former convener of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) was stabbed to death outside his home on 16th September 2010 as he was returning home.
The UK police is investing the murder of Dr Farooq case on several lines, including one strong line of investigation that Dr Farooq was in discussions with his colleagues and members of the public to start his own independent political career.
These searches were carried out under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE).
Subsequently London police arrested a British man of Pakistani origin questioned him for 34 hours before he was released on bail.
Loud Thinking June 29, 2013 at 10:31PM
“Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”
Vaclav Havel (born 1936);
poet, playwright, 1st president of Czech Republic
Loud Thinking June 29, 2013 at 08:58PM
Great Leaders Know When to Forgive
by Rosabeth Moss Kanter |
Leaders must be firm and foster accountability, but they also must know when to forgive past wrongs in the service of building a brighter future. One of the most courageous acts of leadership is to forgo the temptation to take revenge on those on the other side of an issue or those who opposed the leader’s rise to power.
Instead of settling scores, great leaders make gestures of reconciliation that heal wounds and get on with business. This is essential for turnarounds or to prevent mergers from turning into rebellions against acquirers who act like conquering armies.
Nelson Mandela famously forgave his oppressors. After the end of apartheid, which had fostered racial separation and kept blacks impoverished, Mandela became South Africa’s first democratically elected President. Some in his political party clamored for revenge against members of the previous regime or perhaps even all privileged white people. Instead, to avoid violence, stabilize and unite the nation, and attract investment in the economy, Mandela appointed a racially integrated cabinet, visited the widow of one of the top apartheid leaders, and created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that would clear the air and permit moving forward.
If revenge is not justice, it is not strategy either. The founder of a second-tier computer company was pushed out a few years after the company went public. I watched him gather investors and regain control with something to prove — that they were wrong to push him out. Once back at the helm, he had no clear alternative direction. The company foundered and was sold at a low valuation. Let’s hope that revenge against critics isn’t the motivation for Michael Dell to take Dell private or the founder of Best Buy to attempt a takeover.
Anger and blame are unproductive emotions that tie up energy in destroying rather than creating. People who want to save a marriage, for example, must let go of the desire to hurt a partner the way they think the partner has hurt them and instead make a gesture of reconciliation.
Those whose main motivation is to settle scores and get payback — to obstruct rather than construct — are on the wrong side of history. Their legacy is not rebuilding, but rubble. From (ahem) members of Congress to leaders in any turnaround situation, it’s a lesson worth remembering: Taking revenge can destroy countries, companies, and relationships. Forgiveness can rebuild them.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter is a professor at Harvard Business School and the
author of Confidence and SuperCorp. Her 2011 HBR article, “How Great Companies Think Differently,”
Loud Thinking June 29, 2013 at 01:52PM
“It’s not who you are that holds you back. It’s who you think
you’re not.”
— Denis Waitley
