Max Ugaz's List: Leadership

• During the middle third of the 20th century, Americans had impressive faith in their own institutions. It was not because these institutions always worked well.
• But there was a realistic sense that human institutions are necessarily flawed.
• People should be grateful for whatever assistance that government can provide and had better do what they can to be responsible for their own fates.
• That mature attitude seems to have largely vanished.
• We seem to be in the position of young adolescents — who believe mommy and daddy can take care of everything, and then grow angry and cynical when it becomes clear they can’t.

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• • Se cataliza un proceso en marcha. Qué proceso hacia la nube tenía Microsoft cuando llegó Ray?
• helped catalyze our drive to the cloud.
• Ray helped ensure we have a tremendously rich platform foundation that will enable app-level innovation across the company and by customers for years to come.
• Ray and I are announcing today Ray’s intention to step down from his role as chief software architect
• Following the natural transition time with his teams but before he retires from Microsoft
• Ray will be focusing his efforts in the broader area of entertainment where Microsoft has many ongoing investments
• Ray has no plans at this time
• CSA role was unique and I won’t refill the role after Ray’s departure
• We have a strong planning process, strong technical leaders in each business group and strong innovation heading to the market.
• • Steve tiene un strong ego!
• Ray has played a critical role in helping us to assume the leadership position in the cloud, and positioned us well for future success.

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• The best bosses work doggedly to stay in tune with this relentless attention and use it to their advantage.
• That view is invaluable for bosses as they try to carry out their first and most important task: convincing others that they are in charge.
• The best bosses also boost performance by watching their people’s backs: making it safe for them to learn, act, and take intelligent risks; shielding them from unnecessary distractions and external idiocy of every stripe; and doing hundreds more little things that help them achieve one small win after another—and feel pride and dignity along the way.
• 1. Express confidence even if you don’t feel it
• 2. Don’t dither
• 3. Get and give credit
• 4. Blame yourself
• The key, though, is not just to accept blame and apologize. You must also take immediate control in whatever way you can, show that you and your people have learned from failure, announce new plans, and, when they are implemented, make sure everyone understands that things are improving because of them
• Bosses who ignore and stomp on their subordinates’ humanity sometimes generate quick gains. But in the long run, such short-sightedness usually undermines their followers’ creativity, efficiency, and commitment.
• The best bosses focus on boosting the performance of their people through stratagems such as the three that follow
• 1. Provide psychological safety
• 2. Shield people
• The best bosses invent, borrow, and implement ways to reduce the mental and emotional load heaped on their followers—and protect them from the incompetence, cluelessness, and premature judgments of fellow bosses or others who can undermine their followers’ work and well being. Followers who enjoy such protection (and who may be bosses themselves) have the freedom to take risks and try new thing
• Good bosses are especially adept at protecting their people’s time—for example, by eliminating needless meetings
• The broader lesson for bosses is the importance of “the attitude of gratitude,”
• the best managers take time to express appreciation.
• Good bosses don’t just get more from their people and do it in more civilized ways; they attract and keep better people.
• If you think your employees are deadbeats, downers, and jerks, look in the mirror.
• Of all the skills and aspirations good bosses must have, self-awareness is probably the most important.
• Cornell University’s David Dunning has shown that poor performers consistently overestimate their intellectual and social skills. In contrast, the best performers accurately judge both their strengths and their flaws.
• The best and worst bosses alike suffer from overconfidence and insecurity, from weaknesses and blind spots. Such is the human condition. Yet the best bosses are keenly aware of their flaws, work to overcome them and to reverse the resulting damage, and enlist others who can compensate for their weaknesses.
• The most effective bosses devote enormous effort to understanding how their moods, quirks, skills, and actions affect their followers’ performance and humanity.
• Perhaps the most crucial is, “What does it feel like to work for me?”

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• is an internalized inferiority complex which causes people in a country to dismiss their own culture as inferior to the cultures of other countries.
• It explored ingrained feelings of inferiority that local intellectuals struggled against,
• The cultural cringe is tightly connected with "cultural alienation", that is, the process of devaluing or abandoning one's own culture or cultural background. A person who is culturally alienated places little value on their own or host culture, and instead hungers for that of a — sometimes imposed — colonising nation
• Culturally alienated societies often exhibit a weak sense of cultural self-identity and place little worth on themselves.

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