4.Creative people
Two things are implied in the word “Creativity,” as I have come to understand it: novelty and significance. What is created is new, and the new opens up path that expand human possibilities.
Creative people, then, often look at something from the past that is the result of convergent thinking and by thinking about it divergently come up with a novel use of a familiar object. They look in the common place to find the strange. Instead of thinking toward to old solutions, they think away from them, making the leap from the unexpected to the inspired. Poets do it with metaphors and similes. Journalists can do it with garbage. Yes, garbage. It was the first subject we decided to explore because we sensed that it would be a usual vehicle for demonstrating that you can think creatively about almost anything, if you learn how to relate and connect what at casual glance seems odd to couple. In our research, we found an Arizona professor, a garbologist, teaching contemporary civilization through what people throw out; a New York artist turning ordinary things off the street into works of art; and an East Texas sewage plant where earthworms are used to turn sludge into topsoil.
Creative people tolerate ambiguity. They have unremitting desire to create a satisfying new order out of chaos, and the courage to persist to create that order on one’s own terms. This makes them often cantankerous, sometimes exasperating, always unconventional. What matters to them is not what others think o them, but what they think of themselves.
5.The lowest animal
Indecency, vulgarity, obscenity---these are strictly confined to man; he invented them. Among the higher animals there is no trace of them. Of all animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it. It is trait that is not known to the higher animals.
The higher animals engage in individual fights, but never in organized masses. Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, war.
Man is the only slave. And he is the only animal who enslaves. He has always been a slave in one form or another, and has always held other slaves in bondage under him in one way or another.
It seems pain to me that what ever he is, he is not a reasoning animal. His record is the fantastic record of a maniac. In truth, man in incurably foolish. Simple things which the other animals easily learn, he is incapable o learning.
6.Decision by Consensus
Westerners tend to make major decisions at the top, in board meetings, among department heads, and the like. They then pass the word down the line to managers and others, to implement and carry out the decision. The Japanese do the opposite. Their system, commonly known as ringi, is the corporate version of “government by consensus.”
Decisions are not made “on high” and handed down to be implemented. Rather, they are proposed from below and move upward, receiving additional input and approvals after deliberation through all levels of the company.
In Japan, in contrast, once the decision is finally and actually arrived at, all relevant staff members understand it thoroughly. They are familiar with its various ramifications. During the talking stages, they will have pretty well mastered the “what-when-how” of their own responsibilities vis-à-vis the project in question. So, although it may take a long time to arrive at the decision, once approval has been given they can put it into practice rapidly and smoothly. The final time difference between the two system, therefore, may not be as far apart as it can sometimes seem.
Furthermore, in the Japanese system, those in low echelons feel that they have been involved. They have been able-often urged—to suggest proposals, projects, for refinements. Japanese bosses believe in encouraging suggestion from the rank and file. The idea o creating a consensus that incorporates the whole organizational hierarchy is at the heart of Japanese business philosophy and methods.