The art of public speaking

I am just new to my job and thinking to solve one of my future problem that I will be facing soon.

And it is a big one:Recognition from the peers in the company.

When I scrutinize the situation, it came to me clear that to solve this problem , I need to in:

Long term : Work hard to earn my recognition

Short term : In the coming annual sales meeting cum company open house in Headquarter ,Germany to convince people with my speech as my director introduces me to the heads of our subsidiaries.

I guess what can be done is to get the 1st contact and impression correct.

therefore some research in public speaking is really necessary here.

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Company Background :
Headquarter in Herne, Germany
16 wholly-owned subsidiaries worldwide
2 Joint Ventures
30 agencies and offices in 24 countries
1000 employees worldwide.

Strong message from the owner of company:

Since 1889 the company has been in the sole ownership of the xxxx family.

For generations it was always important for all the family members to be honest and serious in matters concerning employees and business partners.

It is still the desire of all the members of the family to remain an independent family business.

How we can accomplish this together can be seen in the following Value Concepts and Management Guidelines '

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Here will be the draft of the speech:

- My short background review
- Introduction
What bring us here together? Business? Its the family value that company emphasized and insisted on!!

- My expectation
-To know every individual in depth day by day. Have dinner, drink together and even watch a movie!
- To learn intensively from everyone , grow and be apart of the family!

- Closing
Once again My name is Eric Boon , This job is my passion , VULKAN is my family!!

Thank you. (about 5 mins)
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The above is the initial draft , I am not sure if it sound convincing though.
My point of view is that besides business, there should be something touches a human's heart, and that is ethical issue and value.

Family value is a good common ground for a international speech although we come from different countries with different background , family is still remain an important value to everyone of us.

Learning Materials:

There are actually some free material online and people can learn from it!!

click here to learn Public speaking

and some clear steps from Mr Mohnot:

INQUIRE about background of audience, purpose of meeting and speeches which will be delivered before yours.

TIP 16
RESEARCH and collect data, exact figures, latest developments, interesting little known facts, expert opinions, any other relevant information which would humor, fascinate or surprise the audience.

TIP 17
BRAINSTORM carry a rough paper or spiral book with you all the time. Let your mind play freely, lazily, on all facets of the subject. Whenever and whatever flashes of ideas, phrases, thoughts and interesting remarks, come to your mind, immediately jot down. Do not select or reject any idea at this stage. Keep playing more on them, wildly, like a child. Give free hand to your creativity.

TIP 18
SIT down with your DATA & SCRAPS, organize them into few major points and discard all the rest unnecessary data .

TIP 19
WRITE a systematic sequential essay ie. The Body of your Speech.

EDIT it for contents, ruthlessly.

TIP 20
AUDIO-EDIT. Read the write up aloud, and hear it as the audience will.
Replace difficult to ears words & phrases with simpler, sweeter ones.
Speech is not an Essay, which can be read again to understand .

TIP 21
THINK of an attention catching, sparkling, luring line of OPENING, and momentous, impact-making, memorable PUNCH-LINE for CLOSING.

TIP 22
SPEAK the complete speech once. Polish Opening & Punch-line.

I hope we learn bit by bit and stay curious!!

Here I end with a memorable speech by Roberto Benigni when he won the Oscar Award

Roberto Begnini - 1999
Roberto Begnini gave us some of the most entertaining Oscar speeches in 1999 when he swept the board with his masterpiece, Life is Beautiful. He started the ceremony by aping around shouting ’Thank you! Thank you! I want to be rocked by the waves of your love!’ when presented with the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. He followed up with a collection of the Best Actor Oscar, ’This must be a mistake because I’ve used up all my English,’ he cried before going on to ramble about ’egg salad sandwiches in the aisles of liquid,’ and how he was ’besiding myself’. As if that wasn’t enough the hilarious chap was invited back the next year to present the Best Actress Oscar, ’I have run around like a dog! Look at me bark! Look at me happy as a yellow wicked film clam!’

view video here

Case Studies: Increasing Throughput with Lean Concepts

Mar 17, '08 9:11 AM for everyone

What was once an area so full of pallets, totes and parts that it took a team member up to three hours per day to find orders is now an organized, visually controlled lean work cell. Source: Argent Global Services Inc.

February 22, 2008

Joe Oakley, powdercoat team leader for Edmond, OK-based Pelco Products Inc., manufacturer of traffic signal hardware, structural poles, decorative lighting and utility hardware, knew he wanted to use lean in his department. After attending a Lean 101 class, Oakley returned to work and saw other departments and work cells implementing lean concepts all over the manufacturing floor at Pelco. The problem was he did not know where or how to start.

Oakley approached Pelco’s lean consultants from Argent Global Services (Oklahoma City, OK) and asked what he could do. “I wanted so badly to do something, because our department was viewed as the biggest bottleneck in the plant.” The lean team explained to Oakley that there was a plan in place to implement lean company-wide. Powdercoat was not at the top of the implementation list, and Oakley was told, “Use what you have learned. Don’t wait for a lean project to be facilitated for you.”

The results were impressive. Oakley’s team saw their daily totals go from painting less than 800 parts per day, with an occasional “great day” being around 1,000 pieces, to producing an average of 1,016 pieces per day. “We thought we had really done something great by using visual aids to create inbound and outbound lanes labeled with due dates on signs for each lane. Our throughput increased by more than 32%, and we eliminated more than 2.5 man-hours per day of searching for orders that needed to be painted,” says Oakley.

Not Good Enough

Enlarge this picture

“What we thought initially was going to be big, actually just increased our frustration,” says Oakley of the first lean attempt. “We were still being called the bottleneck. We didn’t know what to do. But we stuck to the plan and hoped a lean facilitator would soon come to lead us in a project.”

That day came in April 2007. Unfortunately, the timing was not in Oakley’s favor. A lean project led by Trevor Mann, senior engineer at Argent, started while Oakley was out on leave. When he returned a week later he did not recognize his powdercoat area. “The team had totally changed the way we were operating—the way we hung parts, the way we packaged some parts, even the way we were applying powder had changed. I was extremely frustrated. But Trevor stayed by my side and worked with me. He didn’t force things on me. He asked me questions and made me discover the answers for myself. Even my team worked with me to make sure I understood all the changes they had made in my absence,” explains Oakley.

“Every day it got a little easier. And then we thought we had it made. Our throughput numbers leveled out in the 1,500 to 1,700 parts per day range.” The improvements resulted in an average throughput increase of more than 52%. Supermarkets for the higher volume parts made it easier to hang and paint larger jobs at one time.

The results were a welcome relief to Oakley and his team. But there were still days when they had both the warehouse, which fed them parts, and the assembly cells pointing fingers directly at powdercoat. And there appeared to be a pattern forming. “We would get caught up, refill our supermarkets and clear the inbound lanes,” says Oakley. “And then, all of a sudden, we would be swamped, several days behind and not have a clue what had gone wrong. The frustration was returning and I didn’t know how to solve the problem.”

A meeting in July 2007 between Oakley, his team, the warehouse team leader, assembly team leader and the production manager, Kevin Shook, brought the issue to light. Shook explains, “I, along with our assembly and warehouse team leaders, had been trying to change powdercoat’s rules. In our desire to satisfy our customers and get orders out the door, we were demanding things of Oakley and his team that in hindsight didn’t really make sense.”

A 15-minute meeting and a little point kaizen went a long way in addressing powdercoating’s issues. The inbound lanes were changed. One lane for each of the three major paint colors was established. A fourth lane was added for “all other colors,” and a “hot lane” for late orders caused by parts shortages was set up next to the parts hanging station.

Each of the four color lanes is now worked one hour at a time. “Hot orders” are worked into the mix for that color at the beginning of each lane. Oakley also has the freedom to rearrange which lane is worked and in what order. The goal is to use the lean concept of EPE (the every part every interval) to run every color at least once each morning and once each afternoon during every 10-hour day.

The results have been dramatic. On the first day after the changes were made in July, the powdercoat cell produced 3,114 parts, a 91.6% increase over the previous daily average of 1,625 parts. On the second day after the change, the cell produced 4,712 parts. The cell began to settle down on the third day because the entire backlog had been eliminated. All these results were accomplished by the same seven-person team that had been struggling for several years.

The Optimized Process

Joe Oakley of Pelco Products in front of some of the redesigned parts trees on the powdercoat line. Source: Argent Global Services Inc.

As of November 15, 2007, the powdercoat cell is averaging 3,429 parts painted per day. There is no backlog, and the warehouse is worried that because the lanes are not full they are not doing their job correctly. Oakley points out, “We are constantly reminding the order fillers in the warehouse that if we are doing our job correctly and they are balancing their order pulling to our speed, they won’t ever fill up the lanes. As long as we have some work sitting in a lane, we’re happy. And if there is no order sitting to be painted we immediately begin 5S activities (sorting, simplifying, sweeping, standardizing and sustaining) to clean up and organize the area and start talking to assembly, warehouse and sales about what the schedule looks like for the future. If things are slowing down over all, then it gives us the opportunity to shut down the ovens early, save some money as a company and possibly even do some maintenance work on the oven and track system, or do another lean event.”

But this is not the end of the story. Lean never ends and Oakley and his team know this. The team is already focused on taking it to the next level. “Our entire team wants to hit 5,000 parts in a day. We now have the knowledge and processes to do that. All we are waiting for is an increase in sales. Until then, we will keep our supermarkets full, the customer happy and wait for the increase that will result in a lower Takt Time and the signal to set another record. And it goes without saying that we will always look for a more efficient way to do our job.”

Argent Global Services Inc.
(800) 731-6388
www.argentglobal.com
Reply 12

Definitions

Supermarket. A controlled inventory that is used to supply a process with the next unit of work or parts for the next unit of work. Supermarkets usually have replenishment signals associated with them to signal automatic replenishment.

Point Kaizen. Improvements made at an individual process step, usually completed in less than one day.

EPE. Refers to the every-part-every interval, which is a measure of process size and length. For example, if a computer system is able to change over and produce all required checks, regardless of type (for example, accounts payable, payroll), during a three-week cycle, then the batch size for each individual check type is three weeks. Thus this process is covering every part every (EPE) three weeks.

Takt Time. The rate or time in which a completed product must be finished to meet customer demand.

Benefits

Through the implementation of lean concepts, Pelco’s powdercoat department raised its throughput from an average of less than 800 parts per day to an average of 3,429 parts per day.

Once considered the bottleneck of the company, the powdercoat department is now able to process parts arriving from the warehouse quickly, eliminating backlog.

When there are no orders waiting to be processed, the powdercoat team cleans and organizes the area.

Manufacturing Excellence:Reducing Cost of Failures

Manufacturing Excellence:Reducing Cost of Failures by Praveen Gupta January 2, 2008 Good preparation is required to produce virtually perfect output. Sustaining profitable growth must be the mandate for every business in order to create opportunities for employees, value for stakeholders and contributions to the community. Without profit, growth is borrowed, and without growth, the profit margin shrinks. However, many manufacturing businesses suffer from limited profit margins because of lower yields and excessive waste. Low yields, poor process flows, excessive inventories and inefficient management systems all contribute to the loss of profits and job loss. But the high failure rate leads to consequential wasteful activities. Product or service failure rate is the key differentiator between good and bad companies. My experience has shown that the difference between a superior and the average company may be a 10% to 40% difference in yields. Even a 3% to 5% extra loss in yield can create a competitive disadvantage because loss of yields and cost of handling the loss directly affects the bottom line. Almost every company has a quality improvement program such as statistical process control, design of experiments, lean or Six Sigma. Sometimes, these quality improvement programs cost more than the improvement they drive because of incorrect application without paying attention to the intent of the method. Most process improvement teams look for the root cause on the surface and the symptom level. As a result, the corrective action is ineffective and poor performance perpetuates. The process outputs are continually inspected, verified and reviewed. We have learned that instead of performing root cause analysis and taking corrective action, if one spends a little extra effort in setting up the process correctly, it pays huge dividends. In order to set up a good process, one must create a sense of preparing for the process that involves ensuring good material, method, machine and employee training for achieving the defined target performance. We all know the saying, garbage in garbage out, but we still do not ensure good inputs. Planning for the quantities to be produced, as taught by the PDCA (plan-do-check-act) model, is not sufficient. Instead good preparation is required to produce virtually perfect output. Spending another dollar in setup can lead to savings of multiple dollars in production, and contribute ‘big’ to the corporate profit. There is a caveat, though, to having good preparation. The design engineering team must specify target values for setting up the process. The setup cannot be acceptable—it must be virtually perfect, that is, on target. The challenge setup technicians face is that prints, drawings or procedures define range of values for setup, thereby creating fuzzy targets leading to shoddy products, loss of customers and loss of jobs. A small electronics manufacturer practiced the methodology in documenting procedures for their quality management system. They have been able to improve productivity about 3% to 5%. A testing process at University of Military Intelligence deployed better preparation ensuring the necessary material, information, tools, machines, methods and skills were available. More than 2,000 people hours were saved at the testing process. Again, we all know that good preparation pays dividends but we fail or forget to practice it in favor of rushing to finish work and having the mindset of ‘just do it.’ Thus, it is the responsibility of each and every employee to prepare well for one’s process, be it production or support. To prepare for a task at hand, it is important to ask or know what is needed—which should be captured in processes documentation or work instructions—so one can modify the procedures to ensure preparation is spelled out. Conventionally, the preparation has been left out in order to rush to get to the job to be done. We all have seen chaos in absence of improper preparation or the panic to meet the process output demand in absence of process problems. Try out your process yourself. Take the current process and add the necessary steps to ensure the good preparation to run the process virtually perfectly.

Praveen Gupta
praveen@accelper.com
Praveen Gupta, president of Accelper Consulting (Schaumburg, IL), helps corporations in achieving excellence and profitable growth. He has published books including Six Sigma Business Scorecard and Business Innovation in the 21st Century. He can be reached at praveen@accelper.com.

The one thing you need to know - Marcus Buckingham

I read this book about 2 months ago, finally having time to update some summary about this nice book.

Chapter 1

A few things you should know about the “One Thing”

The one thing you need to know:

• Great managing
• Great leading
• Sustained individual success

Chapter 2

Managing and Leading: What’s the Difference?

In this chapter, the author mainly discussed about the how one defines leadership and what need to be posses to become a leader:

1) Leaders, apparently, are not born, but rather are made by their training and their diligence.

2) Varies traits leader need to posses:

In the book ‘Prima Leadership’: emotional self control, transparency, initiative, building bonds.

Leadership by Rudy Giuliani :know your values, be hopeful, be prepared, show courage, build great teams, LOVE people.

Be, Know , Do, Leadership the Army Way: A combination of loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honour, integrity, and personal courage ,coincidently spell out LDRSHIP

3) Great Leaders rally people to a better future. An effective leader might also be competitive, achievement oriented, and a good coach. But these are not characteristics that make him a leader. He is a leader if, and only if, he is able to rally others to the better future he sees.

4) Leaders are fascinated by the future. They are restless for change, impatient for progress, and deeply dissatisfied with status quo.

5) As a leader you must believe, deeply, instinctively, that thing can get better.

6) The Leader sees things differently. He starts with his image of the future. Only with this image clear in his mind does he turn his attention to persuading other people that they can be successful in the future he envisions.

Chapter 3

Great Managing

This chapter mainly covered: What skills will prevent you from failing as a manager?

The Author believes strongly in these 4 practices:

1) Selecting good people

Know what talent you looking for is important: Do you want someone who is competitive, or altruistic, or focused, or entrepreneurial, or creative, or analytical?

2) Define clear expectations.

How good managers bring clarity to the team? The Suggestion was:’Constantly’. Goal setting should be done constantly to check progress, offer advice, and agree on course of corrections.

3) Praise and recognition.

Excellence is rarely a function of one achievement, but rather is a result of repeated practice and incremental improvement. Managers should notice this incremental improvement and celebrate them. The person will be more likely to repeat them and climb towards excellence.

4) Show care for the people.

With care, people start to feel more secure, more willing to share our confidences, more willing to take risks, and more willing to support one another.

Mediocre managers assume that their employees will be motivated by the same things, driven by the same goals, desire the same kind of relationships, and learn in roughly the same way.

Great managers do the opposite. They discover what is unique about each person and capitalize on it.

Why is that so?

Firstly, capitalizing on each person’s uniqueness saves time.

Instead of coaching someone to be a well-rounded, managers could have better spent on cultivating employees natural ability.

Second, finding and capitalizing each person’s uniqueness make each person more accountable.

Third, capitalizing what is unique about each person builds strong sense of team.

By identifying, emphasizing, and celebrating each person’s uniqueness, there will be ‘I’ in a team.

What are the three things to know about a person in order to manage him effectively?

1) Learn his strengths and weakness

2) What triggers him to perform

3) His unique style of learning

Chapter 4

Great Leading

The Truly effective leader, while not denying the truth that each person is uniquely different, would choose instead to focus on a separate but equally powerful truth: despite our differences, we all share a great deal.

Leader should able to identify the five fears and create attention:

1) Fear of Death (Need for serity)

2) Fear of Outsider (Need for Community)

3) Fear of Future (Need for clarity)

4) Fear of Chaos (Need for Authority)

5) Fear of insignificance (The Need for respect)

To be a successful leader, one simply must find a way to engage our fear of the unknown and turn it spiritedness.

Chapter 5

The twenty Percenters

The twenty percenters are those few individuals who, by dint of their ability, hard work, persistence, contacts, some measure of good fortune, manage to experience extraordinary, repeated, and sustained success. They choose wisely in their careers and then, as the years goby, they build on their early successes, navigating around life’s obstacles, or bulldozing through them, or clambering over them, making one right move after another, in a seemingly unending series of smart bets and excellent performances.

One Thing we need to know to sustain our success:

Discover What You Don’t Like Doing and Stop Doing it

Sustained success means making the greatest possible impact over the longest period of time.

Success requires two things:

1.Targeting the learning toward those area where we possess some kind of comparative advantage over everybody else.

‘Something special must leave the room when you leave the room’ Peter Drucker

2. Success requires that one not only get good at something, but stay good and get better.

Long term success demand one be resilient, flexible, open to learning, innovative, confident, optimistic, and, sufficiently devoid of stress to maintain your energy for the long haul.

Chapter 6

The three Main Contenders

Contender 1

‘Find the right tactics and employ them’

Here is where I think is interesting: Permission paradox

Translation: You can’t get the job without experience, but you can’t get the experience without the job.

Solution: One should proactively seek out special project s and one off assignments because these will allow one to claim to have skills and experiences not supplied by current job.

Contender 2

‘Find your flaws and fix them’

“Start with the flaws that prevent you from achieving minimal performance standards for key tasks. When you’ve taken care of those, move on to the weakness that are preventing you from advancing your career.

Contender 3

‘Discover your strengths and cultivate them’

Some ways to discover your strength: StrengthsFinder, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Kolbe profile.

Chapter 7

So, How Do You Sustain Success IF…..?

You are bored

When the content of your job proves deeply uninteresting to you, you must change the job.

You’re unfulfilled

You may enjoy the activities of the job and even perform them well, but your values are not engaged.

To stay in the job for the money or the security is, in the long run, a bad bargain.

You’re frustrated

This happens when the interest and the values are both engaged, but somehow the strengths are not in play.

Tweak your role so that a part of it plays to your strengths, experience some success, and then parlay this success into a new, changed role that plays to your strengths entirely.

You’re drained

Find someone else to do what you hate to do. One can be best in all fields. Do what you best in and let the other jobs done by other people who also good in that.

Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005

This is a speech text by Steve Jobs during convocation.

I copy the speech text from following website and i dont take credit for that. The credit goes to the respective corresponding author.

Below is the translated version (Chinese) of his speech.

Thank to youngyew, i include the speech (actual speech clip).

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今天，很榮幸能跟從世上最棒大學之一畢業的諸位一同參加畢業典禮。我從來沒從大學畢業過，說實話，這是我離大學畢業最近的一刻。今天，我只說三個故事，不談大道理，三個故事就好。

第一個故事，是關於人生中的點點滴滴如何串連在一起。

我在里德學院（Reed College）待了六個月就辦休學了。到我退學前，一共休學了十八個月。那麼，我為什麼休學？（聽眾笑）這得從我出生前講起。

我 的親生母親當時是個研究生，年輕的未婚媽媽，她決定讓別人收養我。她強烈覺得應該讓有大學畢業學歷的人收養我，所以我出生時，她就準備讓我被一對律師夫婦 收養。但是這對夫妻到了最後一刻反悔了，他們想收養女孩。所以在等待收養名單上的一對夫妻，我的養父母，在一天半夜裡接到一通電話，問他們「有一名意外出 生的男孩，你們要認養他嗎？」而他們的回答是「當然要」。後來，我的生母發現，我現在的媽媽從來不曾大學畢業，我現在的爸爸則連高中都沒畢業，她拒絕在認 養文件上做最後簽字。直到幾個月後，我的養父母保證將來一定會讓我上大學，她的態度才軟化。

十七年後，我上大學了。但是當時我無知地選了 一所學費幾乎跟史丹佛一樣貴的大學（聽眾笑），我那工人階級的父母將所有積蓄都花在我的學費上。六個月後，我看不出唸這個書的價值何在。那時候，我不知道 這輩子要幹什麼，也不知道唸大學能對我有什麼幫助，只知道我為了唸這個書，花光了我父母這輩子的所有積蓄，所以我決定休學，相信船到橋頭自然直。

當時這個決定看來相當可怕，可是現在看來，那是我這輩子做過最好的決定之一。（聽眾笑）

當 我休學之後，我再也不用上我沒興趣的必修課，把時間拿去聽那些我有興趣的課。這一點也不浪漫。我沒有宿舍，所以我睡在友人家裡的地板上，靠著回收可樂空罐 的退費五分錢買吃的，每個星期天晚上得走七哩的路繞過大半個鎮去印度教的 Hare Krishna 神廟吃頓好料，我喜歡 Hare Krishna 神廟的好料。

就這樣追隨我的好奇與直覺，大部分我所投入過的事務，後來看來都成了無比珍貴的經歷（And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on ）。 舉個例來說。當時里德學院有著大概是全國最好的書寫教育。校園內的每一張海報上，每個抽屜的標籤上，都是美麗的手寫字。因為我休學了，可以不照正常選課程 序來，所以我跑去上書寫課。我學了serif與sanserif字體，學到在不同字母組合間變更字間距，學到活字印刷偉大的地方。書寫的美好、歷史感與藝 術感是科學所無法掌握的，我覺得這很迷人。

我沒預期過學這些東西能在我生活中起些什麼實際作用，不過十年後，當我在設計第一台麥金塔時， 我想起了當時所學的東西，所以把這些東西都設計進了麥金塔裡，這是第一台能印刷出漂亮東西的電腦。如果我沒沉溺於那樣一門課裡，麥金塔可能就不會有多重字 體跟等比例間距字體了。又因為 Windows 抄襲了麥金塔的使用方式（聽眾鼓掌大笑），因此，如果當年我沒有休學，沒有去上那門書寫課，大概所有的個人電腦都不會有這些東西，印不出現在我們看到的漂 亮的字來了。當然，當我還在唸大學時，不可能把這些點點滴滴預先串連在一起，但在十年後的今天回顧，一切就顯得非常清楚。

我再說一次，你無法預先把點點滴滴串連起來；只有在未來回顧時， 你才會明白那些點點滴滴是如何串在一起的（you can't connect the dots looking forward;you can only connect them looking backwards ）。所以你得相信，眼前你經歷的種種，將來多少會連結在一起。你得信任某個東西，直覺也好，命運也好，生命也好，或者業力。這種作法從來沒讓我失望，我的 人生因此變得完全不同。（ Jobs停下來喝水）

我的第二個故事，是有關愛與失去。

我很幸運－年輕時就發現自己愛做什麼事。 我二十歲時，跟 Steve Wozniak 在我爸媽的車庫裡開始了蘋果電腦的事業。我們拚命工作，蘋果電腦在十年間從一間車庫裡的兩個小夥子擴展成了一家員工超過四千人、市價二十億美金的公司，在 那事件之前一年推出了我們最棒的作品－麥金塔電腦（ Macintosh），那時我才剛邁入三十歲，然後我被解僱了。我怎麼會被自己創辦的公司給解僱了？（聽眾笑）

嗯，當蘋果電腦成長後，我請了一個我以為在經營公司上很有才幹的傢伙來，他在頭幾年也確實幹得不錯。可是我們對未來的願景不同，最後只好分道揚鑣，董事會站在他那邊，就這樣在我30歲的時候，公開把我給解僱了。我失去了整個生活的重心，我的人生就這樣被摧毀。

有 幾個月，我不知道要做些什麼。我覺得我令企業界的前輩們失望－我把他們交給我的接力棒弄丟了。我見了創辦 HP 的 David Packard 跟創辦 Intel 的 Bob Noyce，跟他們說很抱歉我把事情給搞砸了。我成了公眾眼中失敗的示範，我甚至想要離開矽谷。

但是漸漸的，我發現，我還是喜愛那些我做過的事情，在蘋果電腦中經歷的那些事絲毫沒有改變我愛做的事。雖然我被否定了，可是我還是愛做那些事情，所以我決定從頭來過。

當時我沒發現，但現在看來，被蘋果電腦開除，是我所經歷過最好的事情。成功的沉重被從頭來過的輕鬆所取代，每件事情都不那麼確定，讓我自由進入這輩子最有創意的年代。

接 下來五年，我開了一家叫做 NeXT 的公司，又開一家叫做 Pixar 的公司，也跟後來的老婆（Laurene）談起了戀愛。 Pixar接著製作了世界上第一部全電腦動畫電影，玩具總動員（ Toy Story），現在是世界上最成功的動畫製作公司（聽眾鼓掌大笑）。然後，蘋果電腦買下了 NeXT，我回到了蘋果，我們在 NeXT 發展的技術成了蘋果電腦後來復興的核心部份。

我也有了個美妙的家庭。我很確定，如果當年蘋果電腦沒開除我，就不會發生這些事情。這帖藥很苦口，可是我想蘋果電腦這個病人需要這帖藥。有時候，人生會用磚頭打你的頭。不要喪失信心。我確信我愛我所做的事情，這就是這些年來支持我繼續走下去的唯一理由（ I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did）。

你得找出你的最愛，工作上是如此，人生伴侶也是如此。

你的工作將佔掉你人生的一大部分，唯一真正獲得滿足的方法就是做你相信是偉大的工作，而唯一做偉大工作的方法是愛你所做的事（ And the only way to do great work is to love what you do ）。如果你還沒找到這些事，繼續找，別停頓。盡你全心全力，你知道你一定會找到。而且，如同任何偉大的事業，事情只會隨著時間愈來愈好。所以，在你找到之 前，繼續找，別停頓。（聽眾鼓掌， Jobs喝水）

我的第三個故事，是關於死亡。

當 我十七歲時，我讀到一則格言，好像是「把每一天都當成生命中的最後一天，你就會輕鬆自在。（If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right ）」（聽眾笑）這對我影響深遠，在過去33年裡，我每天早上都會照鏡子，自問：「如果今天是此生最後一日，我今天要做些什麼？」 每當我連續太多天都得到一個「沒事做」的答案時，我就知道我必須有所改變了。提醒自己快死了，是我在人生中面臨重大決定時，所用過最重要的方法。因為幾乎 每件事－所有外界期望、所有的名聲、所有對困窘或失敗的恐懼－在面對死亡時，都消失了，只有最真實重要的東西才會留下（ Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important ）。

提醒自己快死了，是我所知避免掉入畏懼失去的陷阱裡最好的方法。人，生不帶來、死不帶去，沒理由不能順心而為。

一 年前，我被診斷出癌症。我在早上七點半作斷層掃瞄，在胰臟清楚出現一個腫瘤，我連胰臟是什麼都不知道。醫生告訴我，那幾乎可以確定是一種不治之症，預計我 大概活不到三到六個月了。醫生建議我回家，好好跟親人們聚一聚，這是醫生對臨終病人的標準建議。那代表你得試著在幾個月內把你將來十年想跟小孩講的話講 完。那代表你得把每件事情搞定，家人才會儘量輕鬆。那代表你得跟人說再見了。

我整天想著那個診斷結果，那天晚上做了一次切片，從喉嚨伸入 一個內視鏡，穿過胃進到腸子，將探針伸進胰臟，取了一些腫瘤細胞出來。我打了鎮靜劑，不醒人事，但是我老婆在場。她後來跟我說，當醫生們用顯微鏡看過那些 細胞後，他們都哭了，因為那是非常少見的一種胰臟癌，可以用手術治好。所以我接受了手術，康復了。（聽眾鼓掌）

這是我最接近死亡的時候，我希望那會繼續是未來幾十年內最接近的一次。經歷此事後，我可以比先前死亡只是純粹想像時，要能更肯定地告訴你們下面這些： 沒有人想死。即使那些想上天堂的人，也想活著上天堂。（聽眾笑）

但是死亡是我們共同的終點，沒有人逃得過。這是註定的，因為死亡很可能就是生命中最棒的發明，是生命交替的媒介，送走老人們，給新生代開出道路。現在你們是新生代，但是不久的將來，你們也會逐漸變老，被送出人生的舞台。抱歉講得這麼戲劇化，但是這是真的。

你們的時間有限，所以不要浪費時間活在別人的生活裡。不要被教條所侷限-- 盲從教條就是活在別人思考結果裡。不要讓別人的意見淹沒了你內在的心聲。最重要的，擁有追隨自己內心與直覺的勇氣，你的內心與直覺多少已經知道你真正想要成為什麼樣的人（ have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become），任何其他事物都是次要的。（聽眾鼓掌）

在我 年輕時，有本神奇的雜誌叫做《Whole Earth Catalog》，當年這可是我們的經典讀物。那是一位住在離這不遠的 Menlo Park 的 Stewart Brand 發行的，他把雜誌辦得很有詩意。那是 1960年代末期，個人電腦跟桌上出版還沒出現，所有內容都是打字機、剪刀跟拍立得相機做出來的。雜誌內容有點像印在紙上的平面 Google，在 Google 出現之前35年就有了：這本雜誌很理想主義，充滿新奇工具與偉大的見解。

Stewart 跟他的團隊出版了好幾期的《Whole Earth Catalog》，然後很自然的，最後出了停刊號。當時是 1970年代中期，我正是你們現在這個年齡的時候。在停刊號的封底，有張清晨鄉間小路的照片，那種你四處搭便車冒險旅行時會經過的鄉間小路。在照片下印了 行小字： 求知若飢，虛心若愚（Stay Hungry , Stay Foolish）。

那是他們親筆寫下的告別訊息，我總是以此自許。當你們畢業，展開新生活，我也以此祝福你們。

求知若飢，虛心若愚（Stay Hungry , Stay Foolish）。

非常謝謝大家。（聽眾起立鼓掌二分鍾）

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Enjoy the speech.

Harnessing the Science of Persuasion

The Idea in Brief

Do you have it—that magical power to capture your audience, sway undecideds, convert opponents? In an era of cross-functional teams and intercompany partnerships, masters of persuasion exert far greater influence than formal power structures.

But is persuasion really magic? Must we ordinary types struggling with leadership's greatest challenge—getting things done through others—despair of ever mastering this art?

Good news—from behavioral science: Persuasion works by appealing predictably to deeply rooted human needs. The rest of us can learn to secure consensus, cut deals, win concessions—by artfully applying six scientific principles of winning friends and influencing people.

The Idea in Practice

Persuasion Principles

Principle: LIKING: People like those like them, who like them.

Example: At Tupperware parties, guests' fondness for their host influences purchase decisions twice as much as regard for the products.

Business Application: To influence people, win friends, through: Similarity: Create early bonds with new peers, bosses, and direct reports by informally discovering common interests—you'll establish goodwill and trustworthiness. Praise: Charm and disarm. Make positive remarks about others—you'll generate more willing compliance.

Principle: RECIPROCITY: People repay in kind.

Example: When the Disabled American Veterans enclosed free personalized address labels in donation-request envelopes, response rate doubled.

Business Application: Give what you want to receive. Lend a staff member to a colleague who needs help; you'll get his help later.

Principle: SOCIAL PROOF: People follow the lead of similar others.

Example: More New York City residents tried returning a lost wallet after learning that other New Yorkers had tried.

Business Application: Use peer power to influence horizontally, not vertically; e.g., ask an esteemed "old timer" to support your new initiative if other veterans resist.

Principle: CONSISTENCY: People fulfill written, public, and voluntary commitments.

Example: 92% of residents of an apartment complex who signed a petition supporting a new recreation center later donated money to the cause.

Business Application: Make others' commitments active, public, and voluntary. If you supervise an employee who should submit reports on time, get that understanding in writing (a memo); make the commitment public (note colleagues' agreement with the memo); and link the commitment to the employee's values (the impact of timely reports on team spirit).

Principle: AUTHORITY: People defer to experts who provide shortcuts to decisions requiring specialized information.

Example: A single New York Times expert-opinion news story aired on TV generates a 4% shift in U.S. public opinion.

Business Application: Don't assume your expertise is self-evident. Instead, establish your expertise before doing business with new colleagues or partners; e.g., in conversations before an important meeting, describe how you solved a problem similar to the one on the agenda.

Principle: SCARCITY: People value what's scarce.

Example: Wholesale beef buyers' orders jumped 600% when they alone received information on a possible beef shortage.

Business Application: Use exclusive information to persuade. Influence and rivet key players' attention by saying, for example: "…Just got this information today. It won't be distributed until next week."

Provided by Harvard Business—Where Leaders Get Their Edge

Mankiw's "Ten Principles of Economics"

. How People Make Decisions People Face Tradeoffs. To get one thing, you have to give up something else. Making decisions requires trading off one goal against another. The Cost of Something is What You Give Up to Get It. Decision-makers have to consider both the obvious and implicit costs of their actions. Rational People Think at the Margin. A rational decision-maker takes action if and only if the marginal benefit of the action exceeds the marginal cost. People Respond to Incentives. Behavior changes when costs or benefits change. How the Economy Works as A Whole Trade Can Make Everyone Better Off. Trade allows each person to specialize in the activities he or she does best. By trading with others, people can buy a greater variety of goods or services. Markets Are Usually a Good Way to Organize Economic Activity. Households and firms that interact in market economies act as if they are guided by an "invisible hand" that leads the market to allocate resources efficiently. The opposite of this is economic activity that is organized by a central planner within the government. Governments Can Sometimes Improve Market Outcomes. When a market fails to allocate resources efficiently, the government can change the outcome through public policy. Examples are regulations against monopolies and pollution. How People Interact A Country's Standard of Living Depends on Its Ability to Produce Goods and Services. Countries whose workers produce a large quantity of goods and services per unit of time enjoy a high standard of living. Similarly, as a nation's productivity grows, so does its average income. Prices Rise When the Government Prints Too Much Money. When a government creates large quantities of the nation's money, the value of the money falls. As a result, prices increase, requiring more of the same money to buy goods and services. Society Faces a Short-Run Tradeoff Between Inflation and Unemployment. Reducing inflation often causes a temporary rise in unemployment. This tradeoff is crucial for understanding the short-run effects of changes in taxes, government spending and monetary policy.

Please review again the video again to figure out what he was talking about .