Husband, Father, Programmer, International Business Marketer
The more I learn about the NSA spying into emails and all other information I have to think if we really need to move to a secure way of communication. The problem with email is that the only way to have secure communication is if both endpoints encrypt the information going out and decrypt once the information is at the other endpoint. You can achieve this, like in most corporations, when you control both endpoints and the system in between.
A week ago I had the chance of participating in the Columbus Mill Race 5K. Although to many that might seem like an insignificant acomplishment, it was the first part of my journey. A few months back I laid a plan for me to get there. It had been almost 10 years since my last organized race, and this is only my second experience.
So I’m sure there are a lot of sites that can help you create a blog, what I want to detail here is for you to have a blog like this one. So it’ll be more of an introspection than a how to, but hopefully at the end you’ll say “YES, I can do this.”
I have been selected to help with the recruiting efforts for Cummins College Recruiting at Brigham Young University’s MBA Program. I am super excited, this is probably one of the best assignments I could have received.
Today I wanted to purchase these pants on your website, but alas you don’t have my size. It is true you probably created some algorithm that told you that this style might not appeal to certain waist/length combination, and I get that. My problem is that there is no way to let you know that there is one customer that wants it, mas the motivation to buy it, and the ability to do so. Your algorithm has no feedback, and unless you fix that it will never do.
So please, if you read this, adjust your algorithm so that on your next round you save one W40 x L30 Alpha Khaki Riviera pants for me.
Thanks
Arturo
I can’t say that I enjoy working on engines, just go and see my car and you will know. I have never changed the oil in my car. I did change the breaks in my car once in college, and later found out I put them wrong. I like the tough of mechanics, but I have so little knowledge that I just never do it.
Now I work for Cummins, a company that makes engines. Most of the people that I interact are mechanical engineers. The other day I asked someone if they had a mechanic that could help me with something in my car, he looked at me funny, thought for a bit then said: “I’ve never taken my car to a mechanic.”
But despite my limited knowledge on the line of work that the company engages in, I love what I do. I enjoy making plans and developing strategies to complete the work. I love learning about engines and how they operate. I can’t imagine the work that goes into creating some of the machines that Cummins produces, some are so big and complex.
My hope is that as time progresses I will be able to learn more about the products Cummins produces. I want to take some classes that will teach me about engines and get my hands dirty. Recently I traveled to Houston where we have a plant that focuses in the Oil and Gas Market. It was fascinating the engineering work that goes into some of the products that are manufactured in that plant.
I guess in the end what matters is loving the sphere in which you operate. Those engineers working on those engines, need people that create the business plans that will allow them to continue the work they do. I love what I do, and I’m trying to do my best.
Jeane Brett in her book, Negotiating Globally, writes the following:
Teams bring essential resources to big, complex tasks. Teams can produce creative ideas, meet deadlines with quality products, and negotiate decisions that generate corporate growth and prosperity. Research shows that when team minorities dissent, majorities are more likely to generate original and novel solutions to problems. Organizations grow faster when top-management teams engage in constructive debate. Companies with top-management teams that engage in debate have a higher return on investment. Cross-functional, new-product teams are more innovative when they have a lot of disagreement about task design if they have a norm for open expression of doubts or if they engage in collaborative problem solving. Constructive controversy, the open-minded discussion of opposing views for mutual benefit, appears to be the key to creating value during multicultural team decision making.”
As I’ve spent last year and this year working with groups that come from different backgrounds and different countries I can see the value in multicultural, multinational teams. Continue reading “Multinational teams – Are they doomed from the start?”
So it’s been about 30 days since I started working here at Cummins and so far it has been a wonderful experience. Today I’m writing from Des Moines, Iowa visiting Cummins Central Power , one of Cummins Distributors. I feel fully immersed in my job, and although I’m still a newbie, I am contributing. The book The First 90 Days although very good, almost seems written for a high executive and not for a newly minted MBA Graduate, but there are a few things that have shaped my experience in the past 30 days.
UPDATE (6/3/2013) – It has been 2 weeks that i have started, and I feel great. I’ve added a new short term destination which is a 5K run in Sept.
The last 3 weeks I’ve been reading about habits and change, now that I’m graduating from graduate school and starting a new job I wanted to start creating better habits. I want better habits for exercise, healthy eating, and spiritual development. I chose 2 books, because the reviews were good and I had seen them in different places and recommended by different people.
 The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg My rating: 3 of 5 stars |
 Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath My rating: 4 of 5 stars |
| The book is powerful in explaining the why of habits. The author offers great stories and studies on habits. While reading the book, I felt that I wasn’t getting a good framework for creating new habits or changing bad one. There are stories about both topics, but nothing was really concrete. At the end of the book, the author revisits all the topics and creates a framework for establishing new habits or changing old ones; but it seems like an after thought. | Great book, it does a great job of setting a road map that is easy to follow when determining change. The process is simple and straightforward. The book is set up in a way that the reader can find the information that they need in order to implement change. The book doesn’t go too deep into the theory, but rather points to practices that maybe implemented in order for change to happen. Each part of the book works independent, but for big changes to happen all pieces need to intertwine one with another. I truly like this book. |
I want to show some highlights from both books, and then for my sake create a plan for my morning routine that I want to start.
All habits have 3 parts to them, the Cue, the Routine and the Reward. The 2 most important parts are the cue and the reward. To change a habit you need to identify what is the cue, and what is the reward, and then change the routine that goes in the middle. For new habits you need to create a cue that will trigger the routine that you want to implement and a reward for doing it. Here is a link to 2 documents that diagram this very well: [UPDATE (09/10/2019) links are broken from the author’s site]
The framework from Switch is easy to understand and follow. Here are the basics:
My new habit for my morning routine: (I will update my progress)