Life’s little instructions book

I came across this very interesting website of a regular person who seems to have had enough experience in life. Mr. Jackson Brown wrote simple notes for his son before going to college, so he doesn’t get messed up in his life and for him to know basically what’s right and what’s wrong, and those points ended up to be in a book. I quote this sentence from his website: “I read years ago that it was not the responsibility of parents to pave the road for their children, but to provide a roadmap, and I wanted to provide him with what I had learned about living a happy and rewarding life.”

Few point from the book as written in the website:

1. Never give up on anybody. Miracles happen every day.

2. Be brave. Even if you’re not, pretend to be. No one can tell the difference.

3. Think big thoughts, but relish small pleasures.

4. Overtip breakfast waitresses.

5. Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all they have.

6. Never resist a generous impulse.

7. Become the most positive and enthusiastic person you know.

8. Never go to bed with dirty dishes in the sink.

9. Leave everything a little better than you found it.

10. Call your mother.

The modern bookshelf

Would that be the case in the near future? Books publishers would be in real danger if yes!

Reading Jack’s

Spending the vacation reading his book was something great and extraordinary, but knowing who’s Jack and what he has done to GE was just amazing.

Jack Welch, from Massachusetts, served as Chairman and CEO of GE from 1981-2001. During his 20 years of leadership in this position, Welch increased the value of the company from $13 billion to several hundred billion.

Mr. Welch was born in 1935. He received his B.S. degree in chemical engineering from the University of Massachusetts in 1957 and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in chemical engineering from the University of Illinois in 1960.

In 1960, Mr. Welch joined GE as a chemical engineer for its Plastics division in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He was elected the company’s youngest Vice President in 1972 and was named Vice Chairman in 1979. In December 1980 it was announced that he would succeed Reginald H. Jones, and in April 1981 he became the 8th Chairman and CEO. He served in that position until he retired in September 2001.

As CEO of GE, Mr. Welch’s management skills became almost legendary. He had little time for bureaucracy and archaic business ways. Managers were given free reign as long as they followed the GE ethic of constant change and striving to do better. He ran GE like a small dynamic business able to change as opportunities arose or when a business became unprofitable.

In 1980, the year before Welch became CEO, GE recorded revenues of roughly $26.8 billion; in 2000, the year before he left, they were nearly $130 billion. The company went from a market value of $14 billion to one of more than $410 billion at the time of his retirement, making it the most valuable and largest company in the world, up from America’s tenth largest by market cap in 1981.

In 1999, Fortune named him the “Manager of the Century,” and the Financial Times recently named him one of the three most admired business leaders in the world today.