Michael Jordan: "To win, you got to lose. To be happy, you got to have disappointment."
"I really don't have regrets. As soon as you look back in your history and you come up with something you feel like you want to change, something else has to change."
On disappointment:
"To win, you got to lose. To be successful, you got to have something that's not successful. To be happy, you got to have disappointment. All of those things have evolved to make me who I am and understand the benefits and privileges I have for being who I am."
Jordan shares what his parents taught him:
"Don't wear your reputation. Don't wear your accolades. Don't wear your personality on your sleeve. Let it happen. Let it be you. It is who you are, don't hide from it. But don't rub it in people's faces."
On being voted the greatest athlete:
"It's ironic that I'm the youngest of the three. It's all relevant based on who is watching now. If you ask 20 years from now, I'm pretty sure LeBron may beat me based on who's going to be making the voting. I say that to understand: it is what it is. I don't wear it. I don't showcase it. Someone else's opinion. As an athlete, all you want to do is be the best athlete you can be."
Jordan reflects on his father:
"I had him for 32 years. Obviously, he was murdered. Rarely do I get the chance to talk about him. But the thing I remember, I think about him practically every day. For a person like myself, who lives in the spotlight and is so critical from people all the time, what I do, what I say, where I go, the thing he always said: 'Take a pause before you make a decision. And say: what if.'"
He explains the purpose:
"Whatever decision you make is always going to have consequences, pros and cons. If you think about the consequences, you make the right decisions. Now, all the decisions I made, other people may view them as not the right decisions from their perspective."
Jordan addresses his "failed" baseball career:
"Everybody says it was a failed opportunity to play baseball. That's what they think. For me, it was the best thing that could have happened. It allowed me to go back to the game with stronger passion. At the same time, I was able to understand the love these minor league baseball players have, making $1,500 a month. Which is nothing. But for them, it was big."
He continues:
"To see that helped me put things in perspective to understand the platform I was on in '93. When I went back to it in '95 and '96, I appreciated it even greater. When we won those championships, those things mattered to me far greater than what I did in '91, '92, '93. People don't see that. People will never understand that."
Jordan shares the deeper lesson:
"All they think about is, well, he batted .202, he struck out a certain number of times. Yeah, okay. But the effort was there. The learning curve and the passion was there. That has transcended not just to me, but to other people who are afraid to do things because they're worried about the perception from other places. To me, that's more gratifying than anything. That's what my father and mother instilled in me: take a negative and turn it into a positive. Don't be afraid to fail."
On his mother's constant reminder:
"My mother calls me practically every day. The last words are always: 'Keep your nose clean.' That's her constant reminder: people are watching, people are learning, people are paying attention."
On why he stepped back from the spotlight:
"I want my life to be my life. My time in the spotlight is dwindling, and I want to be able to control what I do and what I don't want to do. I need no more admiration. I've had enough. And it's been great."
Jordan shares what retirement means to him:
"Sometimes I surprise myself saying, 'I got nothing to do today. I got nothing to do tomorrow. I got nothing to do on Wednesday.' That's ultimately retirement. That's where I want to be. Not worrying about what I have to do tomorrow while I'm living in the moment right now."
You were not trained to perform under pressure. You were trained to avoid it.
Every system you grew up in taught you the same thing.
Minimise risk.
Follow the path.
Do not deviate.
Your family taught you that safety was the priority.
Your education taught you that the right answer was more important than the right question.
Your profession taught you that following protocol was more valuable than challenging it.
And now you are in a role where the single most important skill is performing when the stakes are highest.
Making decisions with incomplete information.
Holding your ground when the room is pushing back.
Staying clear when your nervous system is telling you to retreat.
You were never given that training. Not in medical school. Not in your MBA. Not in any leadership programme you have attended.
Every institution you passed through optimised you for compliance. For safety. For staying inside the lines.
The result is a career full of moments where you knew exactly what to do and could not bring yourself to do it.
Moments where you played it safe and spent the next week wishing you had not.
It’s time to break the programming.
@ChronicleZim@CityofBulawayo This has been going on since 2020, so if 4yrs later they still have come up with a plan to deal with this problem then it's high time competent people are employed in their positions.
@andrea_hoxbucks Bank charges and transaction fees are promoting pillows banking and also the fact that a small portion of diaspora is going through the banking system speaks volumes on this issue, hence our economy will continue to be cash-based till the levels are at par with banks outside zim
"Millions of Africans travel to Europe for jobs and to have a better life. A united Africa would utilize its resources and create jobs that will keep Africans back home. It is either we live or die in Africa. Africa is our mother, how can we leave our mother?" ~Muammar Gaddafi
Your comments on this
@makakaseni It's now a culture of modern parenting where delegating has become the order of the day. Don't blame entrepreneurs taking advantage of a demand in the market. Supply and demand is not restricted to commodities.
@ChadMhako It's a good example of starting small and growing big while taking advantage of opportunities that present themselves along the way. It's a mindset issue that should be taught in order for us to develop as a people.
Delete these from your CV:
1. Marital status (You not coming in for sex and home building).
2. Your high school and primary details if you have attended college (Overtaken by events).
3. Your Religion (It’s not about brotherhood and sisterhood).
4. Your hobbies. (Nobody is going to shortlist your CV because you love traveling. Unless it is a travel agent job).
5. Non-professional email addresses. Ensure that your email address is professional and appropriate for job applications.
6. Long Paragraphs, instead use bullet points to present information clearly and concisely.
7. Irrelevant work experience. (Example: you are applying for an accounting job and you indicate that you have been working as a sales executive of XYZ company).
Adding extra stuff just to make your CV longer can hurt your chances. Keep it short and to the point by only including what matters.
Sourced from C Cherry, LinkedInn Page
In brackets are my additions.
@Min_of_IC I am interested to know what the ministry has done to lead the way in reducing these exports. It's of no help to our country when they're no initiatives coming from them. Let's us be the leaders of the change that we want.
@ChadMhako One of the key shortcoming is assuming that you are supposed to produce a glorified document, which 90% of the times has no bearing on the reality on the ground. Do an honest assessment of the company even if it makes you unpopular. This provides a reality check
Seven years ago, My good friend, Dr. Tariro Manyanga sent me the article below. Read it, it will blow your mind.
An army barracks had four soldiers guarding a concrete slab in front of the barracks at all times.
Different commanders came and went but the tradition remained; the soldiers changed shifts guarding the slabs.
After 80 years, a new commander was assigned to the barracks. Amongst the things he did was to ask why things were done the way they were. When he asked why soldiers were guarding the slab, he was told, We've always done it this way. It's our tradition. Our former commanders instructed us to do that.
The commander was bent on finding out the reason for this practice. He went to the Archives to look for answers and came across a document that had the explanation.
The document was very old. It had instructions written by one of the retired commanders who had even passed away. The new commander learnt that over 80 years ago, the barracks wanted to build a platform where events could be performed. When the concrete slab was laid, wild animals walked over it at night before the slab would dry.
The soldiers would fix it the next morning but when evening came the same thing would happen. So the commander ordered that four soldiers should guard the concrete slab for three weeks to allow it to dry.
The following week the commander was transferred to handle another assignment elsewhere, and a new commander was brought in. The new commander found the routine and continued to enforce it without asking any question.
And since then, every other commander that came did the same.
Thus, eighty years later; soldiers continued guarding the concrete slab. An assignment that was ordinarily designed to last just three weeks. . . 80yrs of ignorance with hard labour has passed.
Are you carrying on obsolete beliefs, attitudes and traditions that were relevant to certain people or a certain time?
What is your opinion about yourself, people of a different race, the opposite sex, religion, politics, certain business opportunities, new products etc.?
You might just be guarding a concrete slab. Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.
Think about it.
@FingazLive The reason why this will remain a continuous exercise for years to is because it's costly. In Zim it's difficult for you to be compliant as the process are cumbersome. The ease of doing business is missing
@jobucks@memorynguwi No. At board level all you want is general info, when then this becomes too specific it becomes an operational issue. That's for the managers
@memorynguwi Give me an example of such a sector. As long as you employ there is always a correlation between headcount and revenue. NGOs, gov or even charity organizations use it