N R Narayana Murthy, chief mentor and chairman of the board, Infosys Technologies, delivered a pre-commencement lecture at the New York University (Stern School of Business) on May 9. It is a scintillating speech, Murthy speaks about the lessons he learnt from his life and career. We present it for our readers:
Dean Cooley, faculty, staff, distinguished guests, and, most importantly, the graduating class of 2007, it is a great privilege to speak at your commencement ceremonies.
I thank Dean Cooley and Prof Marti Subrahmanyam for their kind invitation. I am exhilarated to be part of such a joyous occasion. Congratulations to you, the class of 2007, on completing an important milestone in your life journey.
After some thought, I have decided to share with you some of my life lessons. I learned these lessons in the context of my early career struggles, a life lived under the influence of sometimes unplanned events which were the crucibles that tempered my character and reshaped my future.
I would like first to share some of these key life events with you, in the hope that these may help you understand my struggles and how chance events and unplanned encounters with influential persons shaped my life and career.
Later, I will share the deeper life lessons that I have learned. My sincere hope is that this sharing will help you see your own trials and tribulations for the hidden blessings they can be.
The first event occurred when I was a graduate student in Control Theory at IIT, Kanpur, in India. At breakfast on a bright Sunday morning in 1968, I had a chance encounter with a famous computer scientist on sabbatical from a well-known US university.
He was discussing exciting new developments in the field of computer science with a large group of students and how such developments would alter our future. He was articulate, passionate and quite convincing. I was hooked. I went straight from breakfast to the library, read four or five papers he had suggested, and left the library determined to study computer science.
Friends, when I look back today at that pivotal meeting, I marvel at how one role model can alter for the better the future of a young student. This experience taught me that valuable advice can sometimes come from an unexpected source, and chance events can sometimes open new doors.
The next event that left an indelible mark on me occurred in 1974. The location: Nis, a border town between former Yugoslavia, now Serbia, and Bulgaria. I was hitchhiking from Paris back to Mysore, India, my home town.
By the time a kind driver dropped me at Nis railway station at 9 p.m. on a Saturday night, the restaurant was closed. So was the bank the next morning, and I could not eat because I had no local money. I slept on the railway platform until 8.30 pm in the night when the Sofia Express pulled in.
The only passengers in my compartment were a girl and a boy. I struck a conversation in French with the young girl. She talked about the travails of living in an iron curtain country, until we were roughly interrupted by some policemen who, I later gathered, were summoned by the young man who thought we were criticising the communist government of Bulgaria.
The girl was led away; my backpack and sleeping bag were confiscated. I was dragged along the platform into a small 8×8 foot room with a cold stone floor and a hole in one corner by way of toilet facilities. I was held in that bitterly cold room without food or water for over 72 hours.
I had lost all hope of ever seeing the outside world again, when the door opened. I was again dragged out unceremoniously, locked up in the guard’s compartment on a departing freight train and told that I would be released 20 hours later upon reaching Istanbul. The guard’s final words still ring in my ears — “You are from a friendly country called India and that is why we are letting you go!”
The journey to Istanbul was lonely, and I was starving. This long, lonely, cold journey forced me to deeply rethink my convictions about Communism. Early on a dark Thursday morning, after being hungry for 108 hours, I was purged of any last vestiges of affinity for the Left.
I concluded that entrepreneurship, resulting in large-scale job creation, was the only viable mechanism for eradicating poverty in societies.
Deep in my heart, I always thank the Bulgarian guards for transforming me from a confused Leftist into a determined, compassionate capitalist! Inevitably, this sequence of events led to the eventual founding of Infosys in 1981.
While these first two events were rather fortuitous, the next two, both concerning the Infosys journey, were more planned and profoundly influenced my career trajectory.
On a chilly Saturday morning in winter 1990, five of the seven founders of Infosys met in our small office in a leafy Bangalore suburb. The decision at hand was the possible sale of Infosys for the enticing sum of $1 million. After nine years of toil in the then business-unfriendly India, we were quite happy at the prospect of seeing at least some money.
I let my younger colleagues talk about their future plans. Discussions about the travails of our journey thus far and our future challenges went on for about four hours. I had not yet spoken a word.
Finally, it was my turn. I spoke about our journey from a small Mumbai apartment in 1981 that had been beset with many challenges, but also of how I believed we were at the darkest hour before the dawn. I then took an audacious step. If they were all bent upon selling the company, I said, I would buy out all my colleagues, though I did not have a cent in my pocket.
There was a stunned silence in the room. My colleagues wondered aloud about my foolhardiness. But I remained silent. However, after an hour of my arguments, my colleagues changed their minds to my way of thinking. I urged them that if we wanted to create a great company, we should be optimistic and confident. They have more than lived up to their promise of that day.
In the seventeen years since that day, Infosys has grown to revenues in excess of $3.0 billion, a net income of more than $800 million and a market capitalisation of more than $28 billion, 28,000 times richer than the offer of $1 million on that day.
In the process, Infosys has created more than 70,000 well-paying jobs, 2,000-plus dollar-millionaires and 20,000-plus rupee millionaires.
A final story: On a hot summer morning in 1995, a Fortune-10 corporation had sequestered all their Indian software vendors, including Infosys, in different rooms at the Taj Residency hotel in Bangalore so that the vendors could not communicate with one another. This customer’s propensity for tough negotiations was well-known. Our team was very nervous.
First of all, with revenues of only around $5 million, we were minnows compared to the customer.
Second, this customer contributed fully 25% of our revenues. The loss of this business would potentially devastate our recently-listed company.
Third, the customer’s negotiation style was very aggressive. The customer team would go from room to room, get the best terms out of each vendor and then pit one vendor against the other. This went on for several rounds. Our various arguments why a fair price — one that allowed us to invest in good people, R&D, infrastructure, technology and training — was actually in their interest failed to cut any ice with the customer.
By 5 p.m. on the last day, we had to make a decision right on the spot whether to accept the customer’s terms or to walk out.
All eyes were on me as I mulled over the decision. I closed my eyes, and reflected upon our journey until then. Through many a tough call, we had always thought about the long-term interests of Infosys. I communicated clearly to the customer team that we could not accept their terms, since it could well lead us to letting them down later. But I promised a smooth, professional transition to a vendor of customer’s choice.
This was a turning point for Infosys.
Subsequently, we created a Risk Mitigation Council which ensured that we would never again depend too much on any one client, technology, country, application area or key employee. The crisis was a blessing in disguise. Today, Infosys has a sound de-risking strategy that has stabilised its revenues and profits.
I want to share with you, next, the life lessons these events have taught me.
1. I will begin with the importance of learning from experience. It is less important, I believe, where you start. It is more important how and what you learn. If the quality of the learning is high, the development gradient is steep, and, given time, you can find yourself in a previously unattainable place. I believe the Infosys story is living proof of this.
Learning from experience, however, can be complicated. It can be much more difficult to learn from success than from failure. If we fail, we think carefully about the precise cause. Success can indiscriminately reinforce all our prior actions.
2. A second theme concerns the power of chance events. As I think across a wide variety of settings in my life, I am struck by the incredible role played by the interplay of chance events with intentional choices. While the turning points themselves are indeed often fortuitous, how we respond to them is anything but so. It is this very quality of how we respond systematically to chance events that is crucial.
3. Of course, the mindset one works with is also quite critical. As recent work by the psychologist, Carol Dweck, has shown, it matters greatly whether one believes in ability as inherent or that it can be developed. Put simply, the former view, a fixed mindset, creates a tendency to avoid challenges, to ignore useful negative feedback and leads such people to plateau early and not achieve their full potential.
The latter view, a growth mindset, leads to a tendency to embrace challenges, to learn from criticism and such people reach ever higher levels of achievement (Krakovsky, 2007: page 48).
4. The fourth theme is a cornerstone of the Indian spiritual tradition: self-knowledge. Indeed, the highest form of knowledge, it is said, is self-knowledge. I believe this greater awareness and knowledge of oneself is what ultimately helps develop a more grounded belief in oneself, courage, determination, and, above all, humility, all qualities which enable one to wear one’s success with dignity and grace.
Based on my life experiences, I can assert that it is this belief in learning from experience, a growth mindset, the power of chance events, and self-reflection that have helped me grow to the present.
Back in the 1960s, the odds of my being in front of you today would have been zero. Yet here I stand before you! With every successive step, the odds kept changing in my favour, and it is these life lessons that made all the difference.
My young friends, I would like to end with some words of advice. Do you believe that your future is pre-ordained, and is already set? Or, do you believe that your future is yet to be written and that it will depend upon the sometimes fortuitous events?
Do you believe that these events can provide turning points to which you will respond with your energy and enthusiasm? Do you believe that you will learn from these events and that you will reflect on your setbacks? Do you believe that you will examine your successes with even greater care?
I hope you believe that the future will be shaped by several turning points with great learning opportunities. In fact, this is the path I have walked to much advantage.
A final word: When, one day, you have made your mark on the world, remember that, in the ultimate analysis, we are all mere temporary custodians of the wealth we generate, whether it be financial, intellectual, or emotional. The best use of all your wealth is to share it with those less fortunate.
I believe that we have all at some time eaten the fruit from trees that we did not plant. In the fullness of time, when it is our turn to give, it behooves us in turn to plant gardens that we may never eat the fruit of, which will largely benefit generations to come. I believe this is our sacred responsibility, one that I hope you will shoulder in time.
Thank you for your patience. Go forth and embrace your future with open arms, and pursue enthusiastically your own life journey of discovery!

I have a dilemma – I’m an experienced IT Project Manager with extensive Fortune 500 experience – a high achiever with excellent education and professional credentials – but I have a career problem. In the midst of a high-conflict divorce my ex alleged that I grabbed her arm – and I wound up eventually pleading no contest to the charge of simple battery (PC 242). I was innocent – and the victim of her drunken rage – but nothing I could say or do seemed to matter. The more I protested my innocence, the more legal pressure I was subjected to. In the end, I was blackmailed by the legal system into pleading guilty to something – anything so they would lift restraining orders that forced me to move out and have no contact with her or my kids. The moment I plead “no contest”, they lifted the restraining orders and sent me on my merry way – but with a criminal conviction that now prevents me from getting hired. The unfairness, inequity, and humiliation I was subjected to was beyond reason – and now to add even further injury, I am seemingly unemployable – by any firm that conducts background checks. The divorce and legal costs have left me with no significant assets, and I can’t last 2 years without a source of income. I’m looking for advice – a solution to my dilemma. Perhaps a firm that would be willing to hire me despite this issue – and I can and will substantiate my outstanding character, honesty, and integrity. Maybe a strategy to remove this from my criminal record and/or background reports. Maybe a law enforcement organization that would be willing to “clear” this in exchange for assistance in an investigation, sting operation, or other law enforcement activity. I’m open to suggestions – and I welcome and appreciate any helpful guidance or advice. I’m not a batterer trying to squirm out my predicament – I am an honest, kind, helpful person that was victimized by a person with very serious emotional issues (bpd, depression, and alcoholism) and a legal system that assumes all allegations are just, true, and above challenge. Thank you for reading this, and I encourage you to educate yourself on the dysfunctional state of California’s domestic violence laws. I’m opposed to violence (domestic or otherwise) in every way – but the current legal system is being abused and manipulated in a well-intentioned but misguided effort to prevent further suffering my women. It is a noble and righteous goal – but the results have not been realized and many men have suffered the same fate.

Alot of Americans think that Japanese are better than Germans in WW2 just because they would rather commit suicide or die fighting than surrender.But the facts I found state that Japanese were very ineffective in battles compared to Germans!For example,strategy.Japanese officers would recklessly waste their troops and equipment.They would command Japanese soldiers to charge at machine gun entrenchment(and a lot of Japanese troops were wasted this way).Germans on the other hand relied on cautious tactics such as flanking and ambushing.From what I read,German tactics were more effective overall!Secondly,casualties.From what I read the most Americans lost fighting the Japanese were very low(from what I read,50,000 at most)In fact,a historian stated that ”For Every American killed at least 10 Japanese were killed”!Now for the Germans.Even though America only began focusing on the German front 1944(a year before the war ended)the losses against them were much heavier than the overall losses against the Japanese!At most,Americans lost about 300,000 or 400,000(depending on your source) fighting the Germans!And its important to keep in mind that Germany has already exhausted most of her troop,money,resources,and equipment fighting the Russians by the time Americans joined!Not to mention the strategies Japanese commanders did were EXTREMELY STUPID!Japanese generals stubbornly told their troops to defend strategically useless land,and that Japanese generals stubbornly refused to adapt their tactics and strategies(see British invasion of Korea)!German generals usually did their best to adapt to the situation and did the best strategies they were able too!
Additionally the Germans had far better weaponry and mechanized vehicles than the Japanese!Also German soldiers used tactics carefully!
So how come most Americans ridiculously overrate the fighting skills of the Japanese and think the Japanese fought better than Germans?

Law 1
Never Outshine the Master
Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity. Make your masters appear more brilliant than they are and you will attain the heights of power.
Law 2
Never put too Much Trust in Friends, Learn how to use Enemies
Be wary of friends-they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused to envy. They also become spoiled and tyrannical. But hire a former enemy and he will be more loyal than a friend, because he has more to prove. In fact, you have more to fear from friends than from enemies. If you have no enemies, find a way to make them.
Law 3
Conceal your Intentions
Keep people off-balance and in the dark by never revealing the purpose behind your actions. If they have no clue what you are up to, they cannot prepare a defense. Guide them far enough down the wrong path, envelope them in enough smoke, and by the time they realize your intentions, it will be too late.
Law 4
Always Say Less than Necessary
When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike. Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.
Law 5
So Much Depends on Reputation – Guard it with your Life
Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once you slip, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unassailable. Always be alert to potential attacks and thwart them before they happen. Meanwhile, learn to destroy your enemies by opening holes in their own reputations. Then stand aside and let public opinion hang them.
Law 6
Court Attention at all Cost
Everything is judged by its appearance; what is unseen counts for nothing. Never let yourself get lost in the crowd, then, or buried in oblivion. Stand out. Be conspicuous, at all cost. Make yourself a magnet of attention by appearing larger, more colorful, more mysterious, than the bland and timid masses.
Law 7
Get others to do the Work for you, but Always Take the Credit
Use the wisdom, knowledge, and legwork of other people to further your own cause. Not only will such assistance save you valuable time and energy, it will give you a godlike aura of efficiency and speed. In the end your helpers will be forgotten and you will be remembered. Never do yourself what others can do for you.
Law 8
Make other People come to you – use Bait if Necessary
When you force the other person to act, you are the one in control. It is always better to make your opponent come to you, abandoning his own plans in the process. Lure him with fabulous gains – then attack. You hold the cards.
Law 9
Win through your Actions, Never through Argument
Any momentary triumph you think gained through argument is really a Pyrrhic victory: The resentment and ill will you stir up is stronger and lasts longer than any momentary change of opinion. It is much more powerful to get others to agree with you through your actions, without saying a word. Demonstrate, do not explicate.
Law 10
Infection: Avoid the Unhappy and Unlucky
You can die from someone else’s misery – emotional states are as infectious as disease. You may feel you are helping the drowning man but you are only precipitating your own disaster. The unfortunate sometimes draw misfortune on themselves; they will also draw it on you. Associate with the happy and fortunate instead.
Law 11
Learn to Keep People Dependent on You
To maintain your independence you must always be needed and wanted. The more you are relied on, the more freedom you have. Make people depend on you for their happiness and prosperity and you have nothing to fear. Never teach them enough so that they can do without you.
Law 12
Use Selective Honesty and Generosity to Disarm your Victim
One sincere and honest move will cover over dozens of dishonest ones. Open-hearted gestures of honesty and generosity bring down the guard of even the most suspicious people. Once your selective honesty opens a hole in their armor, you can deceive and manipulate them at will. A timely gift – a Trojan horse – will serve the same purpose.
Law 13
When Asking for Help, Appeal to People’s Self-Interest,
Never to their Mercy or Gratitude
If you need to turn to an ally for help, do not bother to remind him of your past assistance and good deeds. He will find a way to ignore you. Instead, uncover something in your request, or in your alliance with him, that will benefit him, and emphasize it out of all proportion. He will respond enthusiastically when he sees something to be gained for himself.
Law 14
Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy
Knowing about your rival is critical. Use spies to gather valuable information that will keep you a step ahead. Better still: Play the spy yourself. In polite social encounters, learn to probe. Ask indirect questions to get people to reveal their weaknesses and intentions. There is no occasion that is not an opportunity for artful spying.
Law 15
Crush your Enemy Totally
All great leaders since Moses have known that a feared enemy must be crushed completely. (Sometimes they have learned this the hard way.) If one ember is left alight, no matter how dimly it smolders, a fire will eventually break out. More is lost through stopping halfway than through total annihilation: The enemy will recover, and will seek revenge. Crush him, not only in body but in spirit.
Law 16
Use Absence to Increase Respect and Honor
Too much circulation makes the price go down: The more you are seen and heard from, the more common you appear. If you are already established in a group, temporary withdrawal from it will make you more talked about, even more admired. You must learn when to leave. Create value through scarcity.
Law 17
Keep Others in Suspended Terror: Cultivate an Air of Unpredictability
Humans are creatures of habit with an insatiable need to see familiarity in other people’s actions. Your predictability gives them a sense of control. Turn the tables: Be deliberately unpredictable. Behavior that seems to have no consistency or purpose will keep them off-balance, and they will wear themselves out trying to explain your moves. Taken to an extreme, this strategy can intimidate and terrorize.
Law 18
Do Not Build Fortresses to Protect Yourself – Isolation is Dangerous
The world is dangerous and enemies are everywhere – everyone has to protect themselves. A fortress seems the safest. But isolation exposes you to more dangers than it protects you from – it cuts you off from valuable information, it makes you conspicuous and an easy target. Better to circulate among people find allies, mingle. You are shielded from your enemies by the crowd.
Law 19
Know Who You’re Dealing with – Do Not Offend the Wrong Person
There are many different kinds of people in the world, and you can never assume that everyone will react to your strategies in the same way. Deceive or outmaneuver some people and they will spend the rest of their lives seeking revenge. They are wolves in lambs’ clothing. Choose your victims and opponents carefully, then – never offend or deceive the wrong person.
Law 20
Do Not Commit to Anyone
It is the fool who always rushes to take sides. Do not commit to any side or cause but yourself. By maintaining your independence, you become the master of others – playing people against one another, making them pursue you.
Law 21
Play a Sucker to Catch a Sucker – Seem Dumber than your Mark
No one likes feeling stupider than the next persons. The trick, is to make your victims feel smart – and not just smart, but smarter than you are. Once convinced of this, they will never suspect that you may have ulterior motives.
Law 22
Use the Surrender Tactic: Transform Weakness into Power
When you are weaker, never fight for honor’s sake; choose surrender instead. Surrender gives you time to recover, time to torment and irritate your conqueror, time to wait for his power to wane. Do not give him the satisfaction of fighting and defeating you – surrender first. By turning the other check you infuriate and unsettle him. Make surrender a tool of power.
Law 23
Concentrate Your Forces
Conserve your forces and energies by keeping them concentrated at their strongest point. You gain more by finding a rich mine and mining it deeper, than by flitting from one shallow mine to another – intensity defeats extensity every time. When looking for sources of power to elevate you, find the one key patron, the fat cow who will give you milk for a long time to come.
Law 24
Play the Perfect Courtier
The perfect courtier thrives in a world where everything revolves around power and political dexterity. He has mastered the art of indirection; he flatters, yields to superiors, and asserts power over others in the mot oblique and graceful manner. Learn and apply the laws of courtiership and there will be no limit to how far you can rise in the court.
Law 25
Re-Create Yourself
Do not accept the roles that society foists on you. Re-create yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience. Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define if for you. Incorporate dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions – your power will be enhanced and your character will seem larger than life.
Law 26
Keep Your Hands Clean
You must seem a paragon of civility and efficiency: Your hands are never soiled by mistakes and nasty deeds. Maintain such a spotless appearance by using others as scapegoats and cat’s-paws to disguise your involvement.
Law 27
Play on People’s Need to Believe to Create a Cultlike Following
People have an overwhelming desire to believe in something. Become the focal point of such desire by offering them a cause, a new faith to follow. Keep your words vague but full of promise; emphasize enthusiasm over rationality and clear thinking. Give your new disciples rituals to perform, ask them to make sacrifices on your behalf. In the absence of organized religion and grand causes, your new belief system will bring you untold power.
Law 28
Enter Action with Boldness
If you are unsure of a course of action, do not attempt it. Your doubts and hesitations will infect your execution. Timidity is dangerous: Better to enter with boldness. Any mistakes you commit through audacity are easily corrected with more audacity. Everyone admires the bold; no one honors the timid.
Law 29
Plan All the Way to the End
The ending is everything. Plan all the way to it, taking into account all the possible consequences, obstacles, and twists of fortune that might reverse your hard work and give the glory to others. By planning to the end you will not be overwhelmed by circumstances and you will know when to stop. Gently guide fortune and help determine the future by thinking far ahead.
Law 30
Make your Accomplishments Seem Effortless
Your actions must seem natural and executed with ease. All the toil and practice that go into them, and also all the clever tricks, must be concealed. When you act, act effortlessly, as if you could do much more. Avoid the temptation of revealing how hard you work – it only raises questions. Teach no one your tricks or they will be used against you.
Law 31
Control the Options: Get Others to Play with the Cards you Deal
The best deceptions are the ones that seem to give the other person a choice: Your victims feel they are in control, but are actually your puppets. Give people options that come out in your favor whichever one they choose. Force them to make choices between the lesser of two evils, both of which serve your purpose. Put them on the horns of a dilemma: They are gored wherever they turn.
Law 32
Play to People’s Fantasies
The truth is often avoided because it is ugly and unpleasant. Never appeal to truth and reality unless you are prepared for the anger that comes for disenchantment. Life is so harsh and distressing that people who can manufacture romance or conjure up fantasy are like oases in the desert: Everyone flocks to them. There is great power in tapping into the fantasies of the masses.
Law 33
Discover Each Man’s Thumbscrew
Everyone has a weakness, a gap in the castle wall. That weakness is usualy an insecurity, an uncontrollable emotion or need; it can also be a small secret pleasure. Either way, once found, it is a thumbscrew you can turn to your advantage.
Law 34
Be Royal in your Own Fashion: Act like a King to be treated like one
The way you carry yourself will often determine how you are treated; In the long run, appearing vulgar or common will make people disrespect you. For a king respects himself and inspires the same sentiment in others. By acting regally and confident of your powers, you make yourself seem destined to wear a crown.
Law 35
Master the Art of Timing
Never seem to be in a hurry – hurrying betrays a lack of control over yourself, and over time. Always seem patient, as if you know that everything will come to you eventually. Become a detective of the right moment; sniff out the spirit of the times, the trends that will carry you to power. Learn to stand back when the time is not yet ripe, and to strike fiercely when it has reached fruition.
Law 36
Disdain Things you cannot have: Ignoring them is the best Revenge
By acknowledging a petty problem you give it existence and credibility. The more attention you pay an enemy, the stronger you make him; and a small mistake is often made worse and more visible when you try to fix it. It is sometimes best to leave things alone. If there is something you want but cannot have, show contempt for it. The less interest you reveal, the more superior you seem.
Law 37
Create Compelling Spectacles
Striking imagery and grand symbolic gestures create the aura of power – everyone responds to them. Stage spectacles for those around you, then full of arresting visuals and radiant symbols that heighten your presence. Dazzled by appearances, no one will notice what you are really doing.
Law 38
Think as you like but Behave like others
If you make a show of going against the times, flaunting your unconventional ideas and unorthodox ways, people will think that you only want attention and that you look down upon them. They will find a way to punish you for making them feel inferior. It is far safer to blend in and nurture the common touch. Share your originality only with tolerant friends and those who are sure to appreciate your uniqueness.
Law 39
Stir up Waters to Catch Fish
Anger and emotion are strategically counterproductive. You must always stay calm and objective. But if you can make your enemies angry while staying calm yourself, you gain a decided advantage. Put your enemies off-balance: Find the chink in their vanity through which you can rattle them and you hold the strings.
Law 40
Despise the Free Lunch
What is offered for free is dangerous – it usually involves either a trick or a hidden obligation. What has worth is worth paying for. By paying your own way you stay clear of gratitude, guilt, and deceit. It is also often wise to pay the full price – there is no cutting corners with excellence. Be lavish with your money and keep it circulating, for generosity is a sign and a magnet for power.
Law 41
Avoid Stepping into a Great Man’s Shoes
What happens first always appears better and more original than what comes after. If you succeed a great man or have a famous parent, you will have to accomplish double their achievements to outshine them. Do not get lost in their shadow, or stuck in a past not of your own making: Establish your own name and identity by changing course. Slay the overbearing father, disparage his legacy, and gain power by shining in your own way.
Law 42
Strike the Shepherd and the Sheep will Scatter
Trouble can often be traced to a single strong individual – the stirrer, the arrogant underling, the poisoned of goodwill. If you allow such people room to operate, others will succumb to their influence. Do not wait for the troubles they cause to multiply, do not try to negotiate with them – they are irredeemable. Neutralize their influence by isolating or banishing them. Strike at the source of the trouble and the sheep will scatter.
Law 43
Work on the Hearts and Minds of Others
Coercion creates a reaction that will eventually work against you. You must seduce others into wanting to move in your direction. A person you have seduced becomes your loyal pawn. And the way to seduce others is to operate on their individual psychologies and weaknesses. Soften up the resistant by working on their emotions, playing on what they hold dear and what they fear. Ignore the hearts and minds of others and they will grow to hate you.
Law 44
Disarm and Infuriate with the Mirror Effect
The mirror reflects reality, but it is also the perfect tool for deception: When you mirror your enemies, doing exactly as they do, they cannot figure out your strategy. The Mirror Effect mocks and humiliates them, making them overreact. By holding up a mirror to their psyches, you seduce them with the illusion that you share their values; by holding up a mirror to their actions, you teach them a lesson. Few can resist the power of Mirror Effect.
Law 45
Preach the Need for Change, but Never Reform too much at Once
Everyone understands the need for change in the abstract, but on the day-to-day level people are creatures of habit. Too much innovation is traumatic, and will lead to revolt. If you are new to a position of power, or an outsider trying to build a power base, make a show of respecting the old way of doing things. If change is necessary, make it feel like a gentle improvement on the past.
Law 46
Never appear too Perfect
Appearing better than others is always dangerous, but most dangerous of all is to appear to have no faults or weaknesses. Envy creates silent enemies. It is smart to occasionally display defects, and admit to harmless vices, in order to deflect envy and appear more human and approachable. Only gods and the dead can seem perfect with impunity.
Law 47
Do not go Past the Mark you Aimed for; In Victory, Learn when to Stop
The moment of victory is often the moment of greatest peril. In the heat of victory, arrogance and overconfidence can push you past the goal you had aimed for, and by going too far, you make more enemies than you defeat. Do not allow success to go to your head. There is no substitute for strategy and careful planning. Set a goal, and when you reach it, stop.
Law 48
Assume Formlessness
By taking a shape, by having a visible plan, you open yourself to attack. Instead of taking a form for your enemy to grasp, keep yourself adaptable and on the move. Accept the fact that nothing is certain and no law is fixed. The best way to protect yourself is to be as fluid and formless as water; never bet on stability or lasting order. Everything changes.

Hi i have just completed my graduation in computer enginerring.Cracking codes and struggling with encrypted codes have always facinated me.I want to know what can be best strategy to be a successful hacker.Right now i m a java programmer.
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My 6 year old boy told me “he hates school” and do not want to go to school. I think this was not the firts time, but it made me worry too much.
I asked why?
He said, “kids in his class do not play with him in play ground, so I have to sit down and watch them play rather than participate”. This happen at PE class and even some times at lunch”.
1. Does anyone has similar experience ?
2. What could be the source of such problem at school ?
3. What is the best strategy to solve shuch issues ?

1. a) What strategies (minimum 2) does your organisation want to achievein the next 2-5 years? (5 marks)
b) Using your knowledge and perspective as the HR Director, explain
why you believe the organisation has chosen to pursue these particular
strategies? (20 marks)
This question can be set up in a table, with the strategies in Column A
and the explanation as to “why the strategy” in Column B in dot point
format.
2. a) As the HR Director, discuss how you would see this strategy
impacting on your HR goals and objectives? Include clear links between goals and organisational goals. (30 marks)
3. a) What are five (5) HR interventions will you need to undertake to
make sure that you are delivering the right outcomes to match your
Organisational strategy. (20 marks)
b) Why would you select these particular interventions? List each
intervention in a table format, with column A listing the intervention and
column B including the explanation as to why it is being used. (25
marks)
Hints:
_ In answering Question 3 – you need to use either PEST scan or SWOT analysis to frame your response, referencing the source of framework
_ In answering Question 3b – activities such as Job Analysis and Job Descriptions to help define the skills and competencies needed to deliver recruitment, selection process, training etc will need to be clearly linked to the strategy). Hint: A good way of presenting this question would be in table format to clearly show your
answer.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local…
MEXICANS IN CHICAGO: A NEW KIND OF POLITICS
Influence on both sides of the border
Activists’ political power is rising in Chicago and their homeland, as they seek reforms through marches and money
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By Antonio Olivo and Oscar Avila
Tribune staff reporters
April 6, 2007
To outsiders, the men and women gathered inside a sleepy West Side restaurant may have seemed unlikely power brokers: a janitor, a real estate agent and others hardly known outside their circuit of neighborhood dances and back-yard barbecues.
Jose Luis Gutierrez, who plotted strategy with the group as a soccer match flickered on a nearby TV, was himself a wholesale grocer until last year.
But Gutierrez is now a top aide to Gov. Rod Blagojevich, and he was joined at the table by leaders of Chicago-area Mexican immigrant clubs, the engines behind a new political movement that is making itself felt from Illinois to Michoacan.
Gutierrez received smiling nods when he likened the political muscle of the region’s 563,000 Mexican immigrants to the power of Irish-Americans in the 19th and 20th Centuries, who came to control the Chicago machine.
In May, the strength of Mexicans will be on display when many of the region’s 300 immigrant clubs — known as “hometown associations” — will help organize a march in downtown Chicago a year after their political coming-out party, demonstrations that flooded the Loop last spring and charged the national immigration debate.
For decades Mexican hometown associations have functioned as social networks whose members pooled their money earned here to help build new schools or churches back in Mexico.
But leaders in Chicago’s largest immigrant group have a more ambitious worldview than their predecessors, even more than the ethnic blocs that preceded them decades ago.
Some, like Gutierrez, wield growing influence in both countries. One morning, he’s unveiling a blueprint for more immigrant services in Illinois as director of the state’s Office of New Americans Policy and Advocacy. The next night, he’s brainstorming with activists in his home state of Michoacan about a slate of candidates for Mexico’s congress.
An active role in Mexican politics might seem at odds with building political influence here. But Gutierrez and others say they form a budding new political consciousness among Mexican immigrants — a “third nation” of sorts that transcends the border, advancing the community’s cause on both sides.
“The nation-state concept is changing,” said Gutierrez, 46, who came to Chicago in 1986 and led one of the Midwest’s largest federations of hometown associations. “You don’t have to say, `I am Mexican,’ or, `I am American.’ You can be a good Mexican citizen and a good American citizen and not have that be a conflict of interest. Sovereignty is flexible.”
That concept worries some U.S. officials and scholars who see the dual loyalty as undermining the assimilation of Mexican immigrants.
Irish, German and Polish immigrants eventually melded into Chicago’s landscape, their ties to their native soil largely sentimental. But Mexican immigrants today are linked to their homeland like no group before, scholars say, connected by NAFTA, satellite TV, the Internet, cell phones and cheap non-stop flights.
In Mexico, their power stems from the nearly $25 billion these immigrants send home every year, the country’s second-highest source of income behind oil.
Their political influence surfaces in places like Teloloapan, far up in the cactus-filled hills of the state of Guerrero, where a Chicago restaurateur helped build new roads and business. Grateful townspeople elected him mayor in a landslide.
In the U.S., immigrants’ power is driven by numbers and a growing deftness at the levers of this country’s political machinery. That recently manifested itself in a fledgling political action committee called Mexicans for Political Progress, which raised $23,000 for Blagojevich’s re-election and rallied volunteers to walk precincts during November’s election.
An unfolding movement
Fabian Morales, a soft-spoken Realtor with a well-clipped mustache, stands at the center of the unfolding movement. He handled logistics for three massive immigration marches in Chicago last year — including a four-day walk to suburban Batavia — and co-founded Mexicans for Political Progress.
After coming to Chicago in 1970, Morales helped launch one of the city’s then-few hometown clubs, devoted to his tiny native village of Xonacatla, Guerrero.
Back then, Xonacatla was without roads, potable water or electricity. It was a slow journey from other towns by foot or horseback, Morales said. The club members in Chicago resolved to change that.
Collecting $50 to $100 at a time, Morales and others raised enough through barbecues and door-to-door soliciting to replace a house used for worship services with a towering marble church that rises from the green hillside.
Morales has since helped develop CONFEMEX, an umbrella organization for most of the hometown clubs in the Midwest. Among other things, the group is a central voice in economic development in Mexico, representing an estimated $340 million in projects generated by U.S.-based hometown associations in the last five years, according to Mexican federal officials.
“We want to focus on creating more jobs there so they don’t have to think about emigrating,” Morales said.
The rising activity of hometown associations caught the eye of the Mexican government, which eventually created a “3-for-1″ matching project, where federal, state and local governments split the cost of a new bridge or computer center with the U.S.-based groups.
Those projects have given Mexican immigrants “a great moral authority” in their homeland, as well as political cachet, said Carlos Gonzalez, executive director of the Institute for Mexicans in the Exterior, or IME, a Mexican federal government agency that fosters stronger ties with expatriates.
“During the 1970s, [Mexicans] called the people who left Mexico and acclimated to the U.S. ‘pocho,’ which, if you look in the dictionary, means ’spoiled fruit,’
” Gonzalez said. “The change we’ve seen in the public perception of Mexicans in the exterior has been 180 degrees.”
In 2006, citizens abroad were allowed to vote in Mexican presidential elections for the first time. Leaders are also pushing for changes that would allow expatriates to vote in local elections and even hold elective offices while residing abroad.
Recently, Gutierrez and others persuaded Michoacan to become the first state in Mexico to extend voting rights to expatriates. Their rationale: Almost half of those born in Michoacan, Zacatecas and several other Mexican states now live in the U.S.
Timoteo “Alex” Manjarrez, 44, is among a small but growing number of Mexican immigrants making a bolder claim in their motherland.
Arriving from his native town of Teloloapan, Guerrero, in 1980, Manjarrez spent 19 years in Chicago. The stocky, boyish-looking immigrant worked for years as a dishwasher at the Columbia Yacht Club and, eventually, became owner of three Mexican restaurants in the city.
Fulfilling a desire shared by many immigrants, Manjarrez moved back to his native town in 1999 with enough money for his family to live comfortably.
But the place he had longed for all those years was still frustratingly poor, despite the investments Manjarrez’s hometown club made in new roads and other improvements.
Manjarrez, who holds both Mexican and U.S. citizenship, settled in and quickly built a new health club and a hacienda-style restaurant named La Condesa, after the three he still owns in Chicago.
In 2004, he ran for mayor of Teloloapan. With long-distance backing from his hometown club friends in Chicago, who sent money and telephoned friends and local officials on his behalf, Manjarrez won handily.
‘The city that works’
Since taking office, the man who sees Mayor Richard M. Daley as a political role model has pushed to remake Teloloapan into a Mexican version of “the city that works.”
The effort includes newly paved streets, a recreation center that replaces a local swamp known as “black waters,” and a towering hotel being built privately by Manjarrez’s family.
Next to a new medical clinic, a donated Chicago ambulance sits in the parking lot. Its emblem has been painted over, but it serves as a reminder of the continued links Manjarrez has to his former city, where he maintains a home near Midway Airport, votes in U.S. elections and checks in on his businesses.
Aurelio Santamaria Bahena, mayor of a town near Manjarrez’s called Tlapehuala, labeled such changes “a blessing” for an area of Mexico dominated by crumbling lean-to houses and children in bare feet pulling bone-thin donkeys.
But, as with other parts of the country where the immigrant handprint is deepening, the introduction of U.S.-style governance has also bred resentment.
Local leaders of Manjarrez’s own Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD) are trying to drum him out of office, arguing he is too brash and condescending. The mayor counters the fight is about his efforts to take away “a plate of corruption that they’ve been able to eat from for years.”
The conflict was an uncomfortable backdrop during a recent PRD strategy meeting at a restaurant in Chilpancingo, Guerrero’s capital. Headlines that morning featured a march against Manjarrez, orchestrated by his opponents.
“People see you as an outsider,” a worried Santamaria cautioned Manjarrez. “People don’t think you see things as they are here.”
Manjarrez, wearing a black “La Condesa” windbreaker, patted his friend on the back and smiled. He had a media plan, one that might have made Daley proud.
“We’ll publish photos of the streets of Teloloapan before and after I came into office,” Manjarrez said. “And, we’ll ask the people: `Which would you prefer?’
”
That same week, Mexican immigrants from the U.S. and Canada met in Mexico City, as members of an advisory council created by the Mexican government.
With a brash American style, they soon escalated their advice to demands, the members’ voices echoing through the meeting hall.
Morales, the Chicago Realtor, and about 100 other council members pushed Mexico to lobby the U.S. harder on immigration reform. They chastised their hosts for not creating more jobs. Buttonholing federal legislators in hallways, they reminded elected officials how much their districts relied on money sent from the U.S.
They want ‘results now’
Gregorio Luke, a blond member of the council from Los Angeles partial to designer suits, observed that this kind of behavior wouldn’t exist in a purely Mexican forum, where deference toward authority guides nearly all dialogue.
“These people come here speaking Spanish, but they’re negotiating as Americans,” said Luke, a museum director who once oversaw cultural affairs at the Los Angeles Mexican Consulate. “They want to see results now.”
The meeting of the advisory council also illustrated the provocative overlap of Mexican and American political action.
In addition to all-day strategy sessions on how to improve Mexico, council members brainstormed over late-night drinks on next moves in the fight for U.S. immigration reform. Many members had used their existing e-mail network to coordinate simultaneous demonstrations in Chicago, Los Angeles and other cities.
Though not active participants in the U.S. immigrant movement, Mexican officials urged their compatriots to keep on fighting.
“Let there be no barriers or walls between Mexicans here on the inside and the outside,” former Mexican President Vicente Fox told the group, referring to a 2006 U.S. law that allows for a 700-mile fence to be built at the border. The audience stood and cheered.
The idea that the Mexican government might be helping its nationals shape U.S. politics has raised red flags, both in the halls of academia and in the more volatile world of talk radio and the Internet.
Robert Leiken, director of the immigration and national security program at the right-leaning Nixon Center in Washington, argued that binational activism among Mexican immigrants is bad for both countries. In the U.S., the meetings in Spanish and the often-passionate interest in Mexico’s future hinder assimilation, he said.
In Mexico, the relationship to hometown associations fosters an unhealthy economic dependence on U.S. remittances.
“If I went out to Pilsen and spent some time with people from a hometown association, I’d think these are really cool people,” Leiken said. But, “Standing back and looking at this from a social policy standpoint, I see some real problems.”
James McCann, a Purdue University political science professor, found that immigrants interested in Mexican affairs were more likely to participate in U.S. politics. He helped interview about 1,100 Mexican immigrants and found that hometown clubs promoted activism.
“The conventional wisdom is that any transnational engagement is going to suck the oxygen out of your civic life in the States,” McCann said. “But it seems that if you open a new avenue of expression in Mexico, that new avenue might pay some other dividends in the U.S.”
Some of those dividends went directly to the Blagojevich campaign last fall, when the governor found himself being serenaded by a trumpet-playing mariachi band inside the Hacienda Tecalitlan restaurant on the Near Northwest Side.
Near a trickling courtyard fountain, Morales praised the governor in Spanish at the kickoff dinner for the Mexicans for Political Progress PAC. While Morales once raised money for his hometown with $1 tamales, the price here was as much as $500 a plate.
“Let us demonstrate our political power by voting in the election, by voting for our friends interested in the prosperity of Mexicans. Friends like Gov. Rod Blagojevich!” Morales told the crowd.
Blagojevich, who speaks a hint of Spanish, took the microphone and shouted: “Viva Chivas!” a reference to a popular Mexican soccer team.
When the laughter and applause subsided, he switched to English and added: “By organizing, you are empowering a community. Your voice will be heard.”
The mood is darker in northwest suburban Carpentersville, where a growing Mexican community has rallied in large numbers in the face of a local backlash against undocumented immigrants.
Last fall, about 3,000 Mexican immigrants and their supporters turned up outside Carpentersville’s City Hall in an unexpected show of opposition to a proposed ordinance that would penalize landlords who rent to illegal immigrants and employers who hire them. The crowd was so riled a vote on the ordinance was postponed and has yet to be taken.
The quick response came largely due to the hometown association representing the village of La Purisima, Michoacan, local activists said. The club turned to its telephone list of 400 families, said Salvador Balleno, the group’s president.
The turnout was a victory, but it has not deterred Carpentersville trustees from other proposals that would allow local police to trigger deportation proceedings against illegal immigrants and make English the village’s official language.
And as Balleno has struggled to register voters and rally volunteers for this month’s village elections, even sympathetic politicians have seemed hesitant to link themselves too closely with the hometown association. Balleno now fears the village’s hard-liners have the upper hand, intimidating some of the immigrants who protested last fall.
“The [club] members know that if these people stay [in office] it is going to affect their kids,” Balleno said, sounding anxious that an opportunity was slipping through his fingers.
Jose Artemio Arreola, a key organizer of next month’s march in Chicago, has been actively monitoring the battle in Carpentersville.
He sees the activity there as part of a plan to create a political empire for Mexican immigrants, one linking hometown associations in Chicago and other cities to labor unions and Mexico’s congress.
His strategy includes moving back to his native state of Michoacan to run for congress there, something Arreola never imagined doing when he left a town overrun by poverty and ruled by local drug kingpins.
He got his start in Chicago working in a plastics factory. Frustrated by the union representation there, he ran for shop steward and won. Unable to speak English, he relied on his bilingual co-workers to help him negotiate union contracts.
He has since become a school janitor in Oak Park. The position pays little, but it has allowed Arreola to climb the ranks of the Service Employees International Union, where he has become key in that union’s national efforts to tap further into the country’s exploding Mexican immigrant workforce.
All the while, Arreola has used the sharp elbows and old-school union tactics acquired in Chicago to become a power broker in his hometown of Acuitzio del Canje.
He started in 2004 when the local mayor refused to back projects proposed by his hometown association. Arreola, a burly backslapper partial to gold neck chains, recalled thinking: “I need to take them out.”
He recruited a teacher to run for mayor in the Mexican town. Arreola then brought back a town phone book and, with others in Chicago, called voters one by one, promising a stream of U.S. investment if his candidate won. The incumbent opted for traditional rallies and car tours through town with a bullhorn.
More than two years later, sitting in a Pilsen restaurant, Arreola opened a laptop computer and showed off the fruits of what proved to be an easy victory. Pictures of a new retirement home popped onto the screen, one featuring a grinning Arreola at a groundbreaking ceremony.
Another showed a new computer lab with 40 computers for local schoolchildren, an investment in the future of Acuitzio del Canje.
The town’s name comes from an 1865 decision to make it the site for a “canje,” or exchange of prisoners between warring Mexican and French troops.
Sitting deep in the dusty mountains of Michoacan, it was neutral ground back then, Arreola explained, territory that didn’t fully belong to either country but, in some ways, belonged to both.
———-
aolivo@tribune.com
oavila@tribune.com
- – -
IN THE WEB EDITION
Jose Artemio Arreola is one of several Mexican hometown association leaders in Chicago with multiple connections in Mexico and the U.S. From helping organize last year’s massive immigration marches to slating political candidates in his home state, he wields influence on both sides of the border. To learn more about Arreola, watch videos and see photo galleries, go to chicagotribune.com/mexicansinchicago.
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

A widely use of differentiated strategy in various parts of the academic field has been frequently searched and verified the efficacy of using differentiated strategy in gifted education (Parsons, 2004; J. Denise Drain’s, 2008). Parsons (2004) applies differentiated strategy in teaching reading for gifted students, and indeed improves their reading competent. Moreover, a successful performance of differentiated strategy has been conducted from J. Denise Drain’s (2008) research; the result shows a significantly high academic growth by using differentiated strategy among elementary gifted children. Differentiated strategy indeed satisfies the needs of gifted students.
Differentiation enriches the learning environments of gifted students. The differentiated strategy lies in making the same content more accessible through a variety of resources and scaffolds. The classroom with a rich source of books, pictures, materials and journal creates an ideal classroom climate where students learn from small group and share opinions with each other. The strategy of differentiated content helps a development of cognition, and engages all students into the learning activities effortlessly. In the other words, differentiation will facilitate active rather than passive learning (Joyce VanTassel-Baska.al.et, 2008). Also, teacher as scaffolding access gifted students’ level of ability and further to forward students moving to the next level of knowledge (LiaMonique Scott, 2008).

“The Ex-Gay Story in the Pop Music World”
By Roberto Marchesini
NARTH International Representative – NARTH Italia
http://www.narth.com/docs/popmusic.html
The singer, Giuseppe Povia, winner of the festival in 2006, presented a song entitled, “Luca Era Gay” (Luca was once gay) — SEE VIDEO HERE http://www.narth.com/videos/povia.html The title of his song, implying that some gays can change to heterosexuality, was sufficient to destabilize the Italian gay movement…”Luca Era Gay” recounts the transformation of a man named Luca from the gay lifestyle. Without the help of psychologists and psychiatrists, he digs deep within himself to understand the sources of his homosexual attractions…The popularity of “Luca Era Gay” has given courage and dignity to the ex-homosexual community in Italy, who, until now, have been thoroughly intimidated by gay activists. The text’s real-life insights regarding the ex-gay experience are undeniable.
* * * * *
“Why Isn’t Homosexuality Considered a Disorder On the Basis of Its Medical Consequences?” by Kathleen Melonakos, M.A., R.N.
http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/narth/medconsequences.html
Lest we think that APA officers justify their neglect of medical consequences of homosexuality on the basis that sexual orientation cannot be changed, we note that Robert Spitzer acknowledged in his original 1973 position paper on Nomenclature that “modern methods of treatment enable a significant proportion of homosexuals who wish to change their sexual orientation to do so.” (Spitzer, R.L., et al. “Symposium: ‘Should Homosexuality Be in the APA Nomenclature?’” p.1215.) He has now confirmed the fact that sexual orientation can be changed with his recent study. We know that changing sexual orientation only became “impossible” in the nineties, as part of a political strategy by gay activists.
* * * * *
“Homosexuality: Seeing Past the Propaganda”
Views and analysis by Jeff Lindsay
http://www.jefflindsay.com/gays.html
“Produced by Dr. Warren Throckmorton, I DO EXIST http://www.drthrockmorton.com/idoexist.asp is a documentary about homosexuals who have changed their identity to one that is heterosexual. The documentary explores the different types of homosexuality from the people who dabble in it and people who adopt a gay identity… The most important part of the documentary is interviews with people who had identified as gay for many years and decided to change… This is a wonderful and necessary video to dispel some of the confusions of our age, and it is highly recommended by MOVIEGUIDE®.” -Ted Baehr, PhD, Publisher of MOVIEGUIDE® and MOVIEGUIDE.ORG
The documentary, I Do Exist, is not an attack on gays. Rather, it is aimed at those who are gay but wish to change. Rather than shouting them down or pressuring them to give up and remain gay, denying the possibility of change, Dr. Throckmorton appeals to case studies and scientific evidence that affirm an important and objective truth, verified by research: change is possible. Those who deny it are simply wrong.

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