A little story for you to enjoy and some questions afterwards:

A little bird got lost while flying and ended up flying over the north pole. The air was so cold that the little bird got all cold and crashed into the ground. Shivering of the cold, the little bird uttered weak chirps every now and then, hoping someone would come and rescue him.

A polar bear was nearby and heard the chirps of the little bird. Curious as he was he looked where the sound was coming from and found the little bird, all blue of the cold and shivering. The bear felt sorry for the little bird and wanted to help him. So he turned around, squatted and took a massive dump on the bird.

This startled the bird, now he was all covered in shit. What did this bear do!?

But then the warmth of the shit was slowly warming up the little bird, and he felt happier as his blood started to flow again. To show this he started to chirps some more and even sang an enthusiastic song.

Satisfied with helping out, the polar bear took off. The little bird was happy with the warmth and continued chirping and singing.

This was noticed by a polar fox who was nearby. Curious as he was he followed the sounds and found this little bird in a big pile of shit.

Now that was a funny and sorry sight, and the fox took the bird out of the pile of shit and washed him in some water to really clean him up. As soon as the bird was all warm and clean again, the fox ate him.

The morals of the story?

1) Someone who puts you in shit, isn’t necessarily an enemy.
2) Someone who takes you out of shit, isn’t necessarily a friend.
3) When you are in shit…please shut up!

Are there management lessons in this story? Hardly, yet my experience is that a lot of people recognize this in the organization they work for, or know friends that are in similar situations.

Do you recognize this behavior? Please share your story.
Is something missing in the organization that makes people do this?
What do you think is needed to stop it?

For fun. Actions of people I actually observed during meetings and more or less in order of appearance. If you see this happening when you’re presenting, you are boring the people! Redo your story, redo your presentation or drop it altogether.

1. People start staring outside
2. People make strange faces suppressing a yawn
3. People start looking at their watch every 5 minutes
4. People start to review notes of past meetings
5. People start to discuss something whispering
6. People start processing notes in their calender or pda
7. People start to read and reply to text messages
8. People start to pour another cup of coffee
9. People start biting their nails and admiring the results
10. People are disassembling and reassembling their pen
11. People are drawing mindless drawings
12. People are yawning without any attempt to hide it
13. People start to pour another cup of coffee…for everyone
14. People start to fold papers in strange forms
15. People are cleaning their nasal cavities vigorously
16. People start daydreaming
17. People start looking at their watch…every minute
18. People are opening their laptops and start typing
19. People start to clean the table
20. People are falling asleep
21. People start to walk away

Today is Fun and Freedom Friday, the day that anything goes.

A trip down memory lane
I’m a sucker for video games. I played them a lot, starting with my brother way back in the 80’s on Apple and IBM clones with games like Apple Panic and Lode Runner. Lode Runner was really challenging, since we played that with paddles instead of a joystick or keyboard. We both had one paddle and we really had to cooperate all the time. One of us controlled vertical movement and filling of holes, and the other horizontal movement and digging holes. We had great times working our way through the levels.

Later came newer computers with newer games. We loved the adventures like the King’s Quest series, Leasure Suit Larry-series and the likes. They in fact formed a large part of our early lessons in English. We got very creative when we had to type in commands to get things done. Imagine the look on our parents faces when we were discussing what on earth we should do with a “Spanish fly”

Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe brings back great memories as well, and Wolfenstein 3D was quite a hit too. After that the magic faded in time. Sure there were Doom, Quake and Duke Nukem 3D (deathmatch on university LAN…yeah!) loads of other games, but I grew old I guess and the wonder faded. I played games a lot, but after Quake II the video games disappeared pretty much from my field of view. Got an XBox two years back, loved it for a while, but it’s gathering dust in the mean time.

Last week I stumbled upon something new

When we visited family from my wife’s side, her nieces had a Nintendo DS. On it was the “game” Brain Age. I liked it! You already know I love lateral riddles and other brain training exercises. This was so much fun to do, shout colors in the stupid thing, solve sudoku, do simple math exercises as fast as you can and so on. I have to admit I tested at 38 instead of 31. So I’m more mature than I thought But less is better (so they say). I need to practice! That’s in the game as well, but if you want more there’s also Big Brain Academy for the DS.

The same game (or similar?) is also available for the other Nintendo console: Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree. This version is meant for the Nintendo Wii, a very cool game console that sets people in motion. This is a game console that I might just buy, it would be a great combo to get some exercise and relax playing video games at the same time. And have a game to train your brain.

A very useful waste of time

My previous post with riddles turned out to be my most popular post so far. In the meantime all the riddles have been solved, so it’s time to present new ones. Enjoy!

1. She has tasteful friends
   And tasteless enemies
   Tears are often shed on her behalf
   Yet never has she broken a heart
2. What goes with a wagon that
   doesn’t benefit the wagon
   but the wagon cannot move without it?
3. Passed from father to son
   And shared between brothers
   Its importance is unquestioned
   Though it is used more by others
4. Never resting, never still
   Moving silently, hill to hill
   It does not walk, run nor trot
   All is cool where it is not Click to continue »

Edward de Bono introduced the term Lateral Thinking. Nowadays it is used quite commonly. Lateral thinking requires an open mind and you need to be very aware of hidden assumptions. It’s an important skill in finding different solutions than the obvious ones to all kinds of questions. Einstein even took it a level deeper:

The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.
- Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Riddles are a good way to train your lateral thinking skills. Here’s a list of 21 riddles (Update: here’s 21 more)

1. The strongest chains will not bind it
   Ditch and rampart will not slow it down
   A thousand soldiers cannot beat it
   It can knock down trees with a single push
2. The one who made it
   Didn’t want it
   The one who bought it
   Didn’t need it
   The one who used it
   Never saw it
3. Buckets, barrels, baskets, cans;
   What must you fill with empty hands?
4. Five pieces of coal, a carrot and a scarf are lying on a hill near a
   remote house. Nobody put them on the lawn but there is a perfectly
   logical reason why they should be there. What is it?
5. Every creature in the world has seen it
   But to their dying day they’ll never see
   The same one again
6. Look in my face
   I am somebody
   Look at my back
   I am nobody
7. A man leaves home and makes 3 left turns.
   When he returns home he is met by two men
   one of whom is wearing a mask. Who are they?
8. We love it more than life
   We fear it more than death
   The wealthy want for it
   The poor have it in plenty
9. The light one breaks but never falls
   His brother falls but never breaks
10. Which four letter sport begins with a ‘T’ ?
11. Assume there are approximately 6,000,000,000 (6 billion) people on
    Earth. What would you estimate to be the result, if you multiply
    together the number of fingers on every person’s left-hands? (For the
    purposes of this exercise, thumbs count as fingers, for five fingers
    per hand.) If you cannot estimate the number then try to gues how long
    the number would be.
12. An archeologist proudly told that he had found four silver coins which, according to the inscription “649 B.C.”, should now be 2720 years old. The press considered him a fraud and a dreamer. Why?
13. He got it in the woods
    And brought it home in his hand
    Because he couldn’t find it.
    The more he looked for it
    The more he felt it. When he
    finally found it he threw it away.
14. This wondrous thing, though not
    An herb, can help comfort the weak
    And the dying. It can even be used to
    Rally the troops, or make one start
    Laughing or crying
15. A New York city hairdresser recently said that he would rather cut the hair of three Canadians than one New Yorker. Why?
16. This sparkling globe
    Can float on water
    And weighs no more
    Than a feather
    Yet despite its weight
    Ten giants could
    Never pick it up
17. How could a baby fall out of a twenty-story building onto the ground and live?
18. Whoever has it is angry
    Whoever loses it is even angrier
    Whoever wins it has it no more
19. This engulfing thing
    Is strange indeed
    The greater it grows
    The less you see
20. It can pierce the best armor
    And make swords crumble with a rub
    Yet for all its power
    It can’t harm a club
21. Today he is there to trip you up
    And he will torture you tomorrow
    Yet he is also there to ease the pain
    When you are lost in grief and sorrow

Please post your answers in the comments. I’m sure you’ll be able to solve all of them

Warning: If you scroll down from here, there are answers and spoilers in the comments!

Numbers 7, 10 and 12 are from Creative Puzzles
Numbers 4, 11 and 15 are from Lateral Thinking Problems
Visit their sites for a lot more riddles.