shock-o-late

what is really israeli?

shoko (chocolate milk) in a bag for breakfast is high on the list. 

it looks slightly less pretty when one drinks it

why it is so deeply en-grained in our culture?

maybe because it is breakfast, early memories, mom, and a certain body part….

but i am here to write about a more serious topic,boards.

just one more reference to the delightful shoko bag. one summer morning i left it on the kitchen counter. in the afternoon, the shoko was not that good. shoko-late and shock-o-late

and now, focus. attention. silence.

one of the most important parameters in having an effective board meeting is ‘when do you send the board package’.

in the past i have even read academic research to support this.

you send a board package late, board will not be effective.

it will be  shock-0-late

remember. boards do not like surprises.

again. boards do not like surprise.

and some board members like to come in prepared.

now for the tough part. how late is late?

i have seen management teams  send the package the morning of the board meeting. this is often as people land in the city of the board from an over-night flight.

what is the message? you really want the board members effective? more importantly, it probably means the CEO and the CFO and other members of the team worked on it all night. how effective are you going to be running a meeting with so little time to prepare?

back to basics. no extremes. is a day before the board good enough?

i say ‘no’. it does not give enough time to prepare.

best is the weekend before the board. this, however, is either not practical or does not have the latest information. still, i encourage you to try it. delight.

how about at least 48 hours in advance? i think it is achievable, allows people time to go over and ponder, and even call and discuss misunderstandings or disagreements.

nopposition

a combination of no opposition and no position

as in zippi livne ציפי לבנה and kadima in israel at this time

if you want to elaborate:

there are times when you are so powerful, you have little opposition. often, it is a moment before your biggest fall

think of america in 2000

another angle:

you have no position, you do not care

it is perhaps the ultimate zen state, but can also be perceived as a zombie state

how do you tell the difference?

Cashtration

The Washington Post’s Mensa Invitational  once  again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by   adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.

i welcome you to do the same.

Here are the 2009 notable entries and winners:

Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.

Gemini and confusionism and ‘in be-twin’

‘Identical twins, Roselle, N.J.,’

“A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know.”

Diane Arbus

trying to coin a new phrase for the following feeling, i shall call it ‘confusionism’. but as guy suggested it is perhaps better called ‘in be-twin’

Are you familiar with it?:

there are a set of twins somewhere in your family or in a close group of friends.

when they were babies, you could hardly tell them apart. once in a while you would find a way to differentiate, but next time you saw them, it did not work anymore. it was temporary.

over the next few years, you meet them every 3 months or so in some family function or friends get together. you try to find something that differentiates them, but it escapes you. the next time you see them they start talking. from now on, every time y0u see them, you try to find out something different in their clothing, then ask them for their names. for the rest of the evening, or afternoon, depending on the function, you can tell them apart if you can hold on to that thought, do not drink too much wine, or are not pre-occupied in your own thoughts. as they years go by, and they grow older. every time you talk to them you are under pressure.

‘who am i speaking to?’

‘ dani or rani?’, ‘zili or gili?’

should not these feeling have a word?

do you know what i am talking about?

in our home, this issue comes up as well:

my oldest daughter, and her brother, 6 years her young, have the same voice over the phone.

boy, it is really tough to tell them apart.

every time i call home, i am worried what if one of them answers and i get it wrong?

please send suggestions for how to name this feeling

identical mirage?

gemini spin?

confusionism!    (for now)

droption

an option you do not intend to use, but you still see value in getting it, rather than dropping it.

Q: “want to go to a movie Friday night?”

A: “i usually stay home and watch tv, but lets discuss Friday eve”

as human beings, we know it ain’t going to happen, but we still want to obtain the droption, not realizing its value may be close to zero, and usually negative

VCs are a prime example of people obtaining and using droptions. especially not getting to back to a company with a ‘no’ early. they think that by waiting a week to a month something good will happen

tactually

as part of the new words series:

tactually

tactics to change reality.

e.g today is the first day of the rest of my life.

googol it

The name “Google” is an accidental misspelling of the word googol which was invented by a 9 year old boy, Milton Sirotta (who does not have a wikipedia entry – so much for words, coining them,  and fame).

A googol is the large number 10¹⁰⁰, that is, the digit 1 followed by one hundred zeros.

Columbia University Mathematics Professor,Edward Kasner is perhaps best remembered today for introducing the term “googol” in or about 1920^[2]. In order to pique the interest of children, Kasner sought a name for a very large number: one followed by a hundred zeros.

On a walk in the New Jersey Palisades with his nephews, Milton and Edwin Sirotta, Kasner asked for their ideas. Nine-year-old Milton suggested “googol.”

Kasner popularized the concept in his book Mathematics and the Imagination (1940). A googol is of the same order of magnitude as the factorial of 70 (70! being approximately 1.198 googol, or 10 to the power 100.0784). In binary it would take up 333 bits. A googol has no particular significance in mathematics, but is useful when comparing with other very large quantities such as the number of subatomic particles in the visible universe or the number of possible chess games. Edward Kasner created it to illustrate the difference between an unimaginably large number and infinity, and in this role it is sometimes used in teaching mathematics.

News it!

Lately i am fascinated by words.

it is remarkable to me that we actually understand each other.

usually, when we talk, we understand each other quite well.

despite the fact that our brains and souls are very individual.

my appeal to you is let’s invent new words.

comments and suggestions are highly welcome. perhaps we can make some words really popular?

if i understand correctly, ‘quiz’ was invented in the University of Chicago in the 60s.

Wikipedia adds this note:

There is a well-known myth about the word “quiz”, which says that in 1791 a Dublin theater owner named James Daly made a bet that he could introduce a word into the language within twenty-four hours. He then went out and hired a group of street urchins to write the word “quiz”, which was a nonsense word, on walls around the city of Dublin. Within a day, the word was common currency and had acquired a meaning (since no one knew what it meant, everyone thought it was some sort of test) and Daly had some extra cash in his pocket. However, there is no evidence to support the story, and the term was already in use before the alleged bet in 1791.^[1]

my new word for this post is:

‘News it’.

what does it mean? ‘

news it! – something you say to someone who just bought a new item. ‘תתחדש’ in hebrew

perhaps the salespeople at Banana Republic will great you on the way out with ‘News it’,  instead of ‘have a nice day’ or ‘thanks for shopping with us’