Suzy Welch on her course at NYU’s Stern: ““Becoming You,” as I conceived it, would help avert this fate by encouraging M.B.A. students to think about careers another way—as a journey toward their “area of destiny,” the world of opportunity that exists at the intersection of their authentic values, their strongest skills and aptitudes, and the kind of work that interests and excites them intellectually and emotionally. Sure, some of my students would still end up in consulting and banking and tech, but if I taught the class right, others would have their eyes and minds open to—dare I say it—jobs in industry. That’s right, in companies decidedly not selling advice, professional services or shipping software and devices conceived by engineers—but making and doing real stuff.”
FT: “American crosswords elevate the answers. American setters prioritise fresh and lively fill, plucked anew from an ever-shifting culture and language. A setter’s word list is a prized possession and the clues themselves are, in most cases, little more than an afterthought to get the kapow into the grid. British crosswords, meanwhile, elevate the questions. While the answers are often pedestrian, each clue in a cryptic is a mystery unto itself, a deviously constructed linguistic locking mechanism, unopenable, until you open it. In this sense a cryptic is not a single puzzle at all but a puzzle made of puzzles. Solving an American puzzle is an exciting smash-and-grab job. Solving a cryptic is a sophisticated bank heist.”
Carolyn Coughlin: “Listening to win is, ‘Let me make the problem go away by telling you, you don’t have a problem.’ Listening to learn is getting underneath what’s being said and reflecting back to the person. And listening to fix is, ‘Let me take your problem and solve it for you, or help you solve it.'” [via Shane Parrish]
Ezra Klein: “Barnes & Noble’s resurgence is a reminder that there is nothing inevitable about its (or any bookstore’s) demise. Great bookstores and libraries still provide something the digital world cannot: a place not just to buy or borrow books, but to be among them.”
Mahesh Vyas: “Most of the employed persons in India are poorly educated. The maximum education of a bulk of those employed in India is high school graduation. As of September-December 2022, nearly 40 per cent of the workforce (we use the term to represent those who are employed) were high school graduates. The maximum education achieved by them was between the 10th and 12th standards. India suffers from a poorly educated workforce that is confined to poor quality jobs. Most employment is informal and in the unorganised sector. This is not new. But India is still unable to solve this old problem. Forty-eight per cent of the workforce had not even cleared their 10th exams — 28 per cent had cleared between the 6th and 9th standards and 20 per cent had cleared only the 5th standard. The last 20 per cent — those that cleared the 5th standard — could be considered largely uneducated because it may not be necessary to clear exams to be promoted from one class to the other till the 5th standard. Only 12 per cent of the workforce was a graduate or postgraduate. For reference, that ratio in the US is about 44 per cent for persons of 25 years or more.”
Ruchi Gupta: “The ability to remake a party requires three things of the leadership: first, the ability to consolidate power and enforce one’s will on the party; second, to effect wholesale change in the organisation and exercise control over those remaining; third, provide new messaging for the party which either shapes or responds to the feedback from the ground…A review of the trajectory of parties in our country and around the world shows that political parties are defined by their top leadership. Thus, each new leader has significant power to remake their party. The reason political parties in India seem mired in their past has less to do with voters’ preoccupation with history but more because there has been very little churn in the party organisation.”
