General Counsel's Last Lecture

As the general counsel for our company left, he gave a great speech on what the common attributes of a star are. These notes are valuable to me, so they might be to you too.

1. Emotional intelligence




• You need other people to help you


• Ability to know others' needs and fears




• What are people thinking about and feeling and where are they coming from


• Imposter complex - everyone is afraid of being exposed in a group


• You constantly have to communicate to people that they are safe


• Confession of weakness






2. Judgment




• Moving an answer around in time and space. How would this decision look in a year? In front of Congress?


• Figuring out what things mean


• Gained by screwing up and remembering the effects of your mistakes


• You must step away from what you do to maintain perspective. Judgmnt requires perspective.


• Sleep a lot. It helps your brain interconnect everything you learned.


• Keep up hobbies, family activities.




3. Effective Communication




• All knowledge is wasted that is not communicated to someone else.


• People need to breathe




• make your messages easily digestible




• You need someone who loves you to give you honest feedback in order to improve your public speaking skills.


• Presentations are not the time to be cool; it's distracting


• Don't let your equipment and materials distract from you: you are the show




4. Dare to Be Dumb




• Ask the "dumb" questions when no one else will.


• People appreciate it that they didn't have to reveal their own ignorance and need the knowledge




5. Building Reputation




• It's built all the time with every encounter with every person you meet


• There's no time off


• There's no difference between the person who empties the trash and the CEO

How To Obfuscate Something

Uncyclopedia, on the topic of Obfuscation offers this wisdom:

The art of obfuscation has only one requirement, that is for the obfuscator to be a bit of a [jerk].... The following will be a step by step guide to obfuscation.

1. Let's begin with a simple sentence: "Gramma stole my axe."


2. Next we must identify our object, axe, our verb, stole, and our intellect pronoun, Gramma.


3. Now we will identify the intention of the sentence. In this case, the intention is to frame Gramma for a murder we have recently committed by placing the key evidence in her possession.


4. We are now ready to obfuscate.


5. Take a break, have some casserole.


6. First we will obfuscate the first word, Gramma, the woman who is of a most considerable age, but in good health nontheless, but who has had trouble in situations that involve (or in some very rare cases involving time and space, don't) one or more variables, and who has had a persistent outward dislike of the newspaper delivery boy, stole my axe."


7. Repeat this process for each newly introduced subject in the sentence until you run out of paper to write it on.


8. Visit Gramma in prison to gloat about your superior intellect.