Global Workplace Success Blog with Pat Tith

I just finished reading Paul B. Carroll’s review of “The Snowball ” by Alice Schroeder in the Wall Street Journal (10/15/08). The headline reads “ Why Panic Passes Him By ”. The “him” is Warren Buffet, the well-known investor.

The reviewer points out that while Mr Buffet’s methods can’t be duplicated (“genius is genius after all”), there are some useful core Buffet imperatives.

1. Take a close look at an investment’s intrinsic value brutally calculating the risks involved as well as calculating a margin of safety
2. Learn from failures
3. Turn a situation upside down. Look at it backwards. What is in it for the other person?
4. What happens if all your plans go wrong? Where don’t you want to go and how do you get there?
5. Make a list of how to fail instead of ONLY looking for success

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Well the big show is over in Beijing. Being a “China” person I was fascinated by it all.

My first encounter with China was from a vantage point in the New Territories of Hong Kong. In those days you could only look at China in the distance over a duck farm. I was told, “there is China” …all I could see were foothills. I remember feeling so frustrated. I told myself at that moment that I would get to China one day.

I made that pledge many years ago and am happy to report I have been to China 12 times both living and working there, as well as traveling all over the country by train. I experienced the sleeping giant while it was still asleep for the first time in 1979. That was a very special moment in time.

BUT those times have changed and the sleeping giant is no longer sleeping in case you hadn’t notice. All hosting nations to the Olympics are like coming out parties. This coming out party was unlike any the world has ever seen, or for that matter will ever see again. China was out to prove to the world that it was back BIG TIME. It was a major investment in its future.

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The bottom line for global workplace success is well stated by Marcel Proust (1871-1922), French novelist and essayist.

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscape,

but in having new eyes.”

In dealing with all the factors needed to make sure yours is a high-performing workplace, this is a good philosophical umbrella to keep in mind.

Happy Weekend!

P.S. I have this quote on the back of my business card.