Jack Ma co-founded Alibaba Group, one of the world’s largest e-commerce businesses.

His current net worth is over $44 Billion dollars, and his work has impacted the entire economy and internet industry of China.

He started with a $12 per month salary as an English teacher.

But before even getting to this level, he faced multiple rejections in his life.

At school, he failed primary exams, two times.

In middle school, he failed three of his main exams

When applying for university, he failed entrance exams three times, before finally joining Hangzhou Normal university.

He had dreamed of being at Harvard for so long that he applied 10 times, and was rejected in all.

After university, luck didn’t come his way still.

The police force rejected his application 5 times.

When KFC first opened in China, they hired 23 people out of the 24 who applied. Guess who didn’t make it. 

Two ventures he started failed, before finally Alibaba saw the first light in his apartment, backed by 17 friends who saw something in his resilience to failure.  

The rest is history. The failures are very hard. Yet he took each one of them as a learning opportunity, accepting the fact that he just didn’t do good this time, and next time he’ll do better. But his resilience and attention to details helped him to never stay fallen after rejection. For some reason he wouldn’t stop. 

How’s your resilience pulse checking?

It’s impossible to learn something if you think you already know it.
If you find yourself responding to every question asked, commenting on all conversation topics, or talking about your experiences without a breathing moment, you’re manifesting ignorance more than anything else.

When we pretend to know what we think we know, we ignore anything that will contradict our beliefs. When we strive to give others the impression that we know-it-all, we portray the image of being better, more important and smarter. We also shut off incoming signals from outside sources that can greatly educate us, leaving us less smarter than what we thought we were.

There’s nothing more powerful than a leader who says eloquently “I don’t know.”
This is the ultimate wisdom from those who know.
It opens mind, ears and attention to what might be the answer. It grounds the person and connects with others who are eager to explore the question together.
Are you open for knowledge?

Organizations pay heavily for a big desk and a washed wall paint, yet little attention is paid for hallway interaction. How many ideas have sprung from the corner where the water cooler existed to host so many conversations with hidden opportunities of intra-departments idea collaboration? This is where creative ideas from different corners of the office floor emerge.

The situation of intra-disciplinary (or intra-departmentally) collaboration worsened is when we moved our work remotely and didn’t design for such interaction. Those non-essential conversations that don’t usually fall nicely into our over-crowded meeting schedules are the essence of creative ideas.

Some of us moved back into offices after long months of silo survival work. Others chose a hybrid situation, and some decided to move entirely online. Yet the question remains: How to design spaces that promote inter-department impromptu conversations? How to have more chance encounters and welcome serendipity into our manicured meeting schedules?

There are many ideas on this subject. Some with proven track record and others that don’t fit every situation. Back to you:

What have you done to design randomness into your daily work life?
How are you creating chance encounters with your team members?
What norms are you building to nurture a culture of innovation?
What have you done to create such spaces of loosely fit connections?