Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives

Since I got my Kindle, Amazon instant ebook delivered has pushed me to buy (and read) more books. Way of the Peaceful Warrior was recommended to me by a friend (thanks, Phil!) and I devoured it in just 3 days, so much I enjoyed it (and so little it allowed me to sleep if I just would let it go).

“The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.”

Way of the Peaceful Warrior has a novel format, but is in reality a self-biography of the author Dan Millman (and it is not hidden or anything, the main character is Dan Millman). Basically the novel tells the story when Dan was in the university and randomly met an old man which he called Socrates. Socrates is a very special and intriguing man and Dan starts being mentored by him in the way of the peaceful warrior.

The above paragraph is a dry description of the book and might make you think of “uff, yet another self-help book, give me a break, Sergio”. But the book is much more than that, it shows a whole philosophy of living every moment as unique moments, the secret of unreasonable happiness (happiness without reason), about life, the universe and everything. And it does in a pretty compelling way.

If you read Castañeda, you might recognize Socrates clearly as a Nagual, but surprisingly much more accessible than the enigmatic “ask the wind” or whatever shamanistic BS Castañeda’s Nagual would throw on the poor student. The book depicts Dan’s journey on the way of the peaceful warrior, but not to the peaceful warrior (that actually makes sense, believe me). While searching for happiness outside and never finding, then suddenly realizing what true happiness is and how useless is to struggle to find it. In the end, Way of the Peaceful Warrior is a book that teaches people how to live a fulfilling and joyful life, without the common tricks of “it is easy to do be happy” and “5 clear steps to happiness”. It is not easy and it is not a destination, it is a path. There is no "achieving" a peaceful warrior. It is forever the way that makes the warrior (and vice-versa). The book is enlightening, inspiring, emotional and, indeed, may change lives. But only if you go through the way yourself. If not, than it is just like any other good book.

I had been acting lethargic; Socrates suddenly grabbed me and shook me. “Wake up! If you knew for certain that you had a terminal illness—if you had little time left to live—you would waste precious little of it. Well, I’m telling you, Dan—you do have a terminal illness: It’s called birth. You don’t have more than a few years left. No one does. So be happy now, without reason—or you never will be at all.”

Then, once you read it, I hope you can answer these questions:

-          Where are you?

-          What time is it?

TED Talk: The child-driven education

Can non-English speaking children in a village in India learn by themselves using a pc and only English instructions?



Via Sokanu

I Scientist - What education should be? What about work?

This is around 30min documentary about kids spending 5 days doing real science how it should be done: in practice and having fun. It's absolutely brilliant to see the kids coming in as students and then evolving into scientists to the point that they run the experiments while the adults become the "lab rats". So moments are so sublime that almost brought me a few tears, like for example one little girl that says it's the happiest thing on her life. If you are interested in education, you certainly will find it fascinating.


I Scientist film from Storymakers TV on Vimeo.


But to be sincere, if you are minimally interested in the subject of education, at this point of time you probably already realized that practical education, experimentation, facilitation, engagement, etc are the way to go to improve the education system. So, for me, for sure education should be like the video - no doubt about it. But what about work? In our knowledge society, shouldn't work be more like the video? If it should, more importantly, could it be done? How? Have you seen anything like this in any company?

(via Sokanu)

Free to Learn: A Radical Experiment in Education (Documentary)

Free to Learn is a 70 minute documentary that offers a "fly on the wall" perspective of the daily happenings at The Free School in Albany, New York. Like many of today's radical and democratic schools, The Free School expects children to decide for themselves how to spend their days.

The Free School, however, is unique in that it transcends obstacles that prevent similar schools from reaching a economically and racially diverse range of students and operates in the heart of an inner-city neighborhood.

For over thirty years in perhaps the most radical experiment in American education, this small inner-city alternative school has offered its students complete freedom over their learning. There are no mandatory classes, no grades, tests, or homework, and rules are generally avoided. As a last resort, rules are created democratically by students and teachers, often at the prompting of a student. At a time when our educators are mandated to march forward with no child left behind, the students of the Free School, many of whom would have fallen through the cracks of today's failing public school system, have managed to slip out of education's back door and have run away free.

Free to Learn follows a handful of these children courageously meeting the daily challenges of hope, acceptance, loss, friendship, conflict, and the difficult task of deciding, for themselves, what to do with each day.

Free to Learn: A Radical Experiment in Education from Isaac Graves on Vimeo.
Via: Education Revolution

I would call The Free School a linchpin school, a place where there are no factory workers being raised, where influence is more important then authority and problem solving is the key to get an A+ (as if they had any grading system).

Made to Stick: why some ideas survive and others die

"Tell me who your friends are, and I will tell you who you are” is an sticky idea, it survived a long time and it exists in several languages. The book Made to Stick knows why – and it teaches you how to do the same. Made to Stick is for people who need to communicate (which should be all of us who don’t live in a cave while wearing a bathing suit made of bear skin). It is the best book I ever read about communication (I graduated in communication, I had to read my fair share of McLuhan and Walter Benjamin).

For the authors, the brothers Chip and Dan Heath, an idea is like Velcro: which is basically a lot of small hooks that connects to small rings. The more “hooks” and idea has, the more sticky it will be to the “rings” on our brains. And that is the best part of Made to Stick, it’s not about HOW to say (like with firm tone of voice, posture, use maximum 3 phrases in a Powerpoint, look people in the eye, bla bla bla). No, instead it helps us to DESIGN a great sticky message (WHAT to say).

The whole book is made to explain how to make an idea stick. They use a “system” called SUCCESs. Corny as it may sound, the SUCCESs thing is awesome and stands for Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional and Stories. Again, they don’t look like much, but the explanation is really outstanding - mostly because they use their own principles to write the book, which means it is filled with juice examples, crisp and plain talk statements without corporate jargon, incredible stories and so on.

Made to Stick is somewhat like the Unleashing the Idea Virus book from Seth Godin, but useful in the day to day life for people that doesn’t need to know anything about communication or marketing. If the Idea Virus is about viral marketing, Made to Stick is about viral communication (even though they never use this term). An example of viral communication/sticky ideas are the urban legends, like the one that a guy wakes up in a bathtub filled with ice and without a kidney (see how sticky this idea is, you already know).

The book explains why the best teachers are the best, how companies can succeed by talking strategy, how the army uses the commander’s intent to overcome the problem that “no plan survives the contact with the enemy”, how sayings are so sticky even across languages, how to make people care, how to generate interest…

“Tell me which books you read and I will tell you how sticky your communication is”.

When something is wrong, just do it harder (NOT)

When I was President of AIESEC Norway (my all time preferred starter phrase) and we were doing really dangerously bad financially, I pushed the team to go to sales. Every single person, including the ones who had no clue on how to do it and didn't want to learn also. After that, there was a lot more effort on the sales, but, the results kept the same: not good enough. A bunch of amateurs trying harder something that was already not working with the pros didn't work. (Who could guess that?)

When you read it, it sounds so obvious: who is idiot enough to push harder on something that is not working? Who believes that crushing the square shape into the circle hole is the answer? Well, most people, including myself, when the thing that is not working was/is the base for the business. Anyone sees the whole of the music industry pushing harder on something that is not working anymore?

After that we used a bit our heads and then decided to use more efforts into a product we were able to sell, but we needed to sell much more to make it more relevant to the business. Well, we did. And we did a hell of a good job doing it - so much that around 60% of our financial year profit came from it. Doing more of what was working actually helped more (again, who could guess that?)

Next time you solve a problem, check this out: do you need to solve that specific problem (lack of sales) or can you just solve the situation by using a different approach altogether (sell more of the product that is selling and leave untouched the product that is not selling)?

You can't microwave leaders, but companies are most certainly overcooking them

I read somewhere the phrase "you can't microwave leaders", the context was about companies' leadership development programs - a.k.a. a bunch of trainings and assignments to form company leaders. I agree, you can't microwave leaders, but I want to challenge that it takes "time" to build a leader.

It doesn't take "time" to build leaders. It takes "experience".

How so? Ok, here you go: how many times have you seen senior leaders, people who are in the company for 10, 20, 30 years, that cannot run a meeting? That doesn't know the basics about delegation? Team management? Coaching? I am not sure what you answered, but for sure I have seen more than it would be possible to believe it is by chance. So the only way I can see it is that it happens by design. Fear of change design. Risk aversion design. Control and command design. Lack of feedback design.

How come AIESEC can develop great leaders in 2-5 years and a company can't do it in 10? Is it
just me or there is something fundamentally wrong with that?

The answer is simple: experience. AIESEC has very little fear of failure (or has a lot of hope in individuals, who knows?) and there is a lot of room for trying and taking responsibility. Would you give the CEO role of a organization with 50.000 employees, present in 100 countries, founded in 1948 to someone with around 6 years experience in the organization (which also means 6 years of experience in any sort of job)? Well, AIESEC does, every single year. Yes, it changes it's CEO (and all the other thousands of leadership roles) annually. You learn, you move on - individuals and organization grow.

If you are in a company and you are in charge of the leadership development, all I ask you is to TRY to change this mindset. Don't think about leadership development as time bound, but experience bound. Experience takes time, of course, but time in itself doesn't build leaders. If you don't give your people the experience, they won't develop the skills.

Give people responsibility and freedom, they will surprise you positively around 80% of the time.

IDEO: 3 ideas about the future of books

Nihilists always announce the death of stuff when new stuff shows up. The radio was announced dead after the TV, but it just changes. Same thing about books, we won't get rid of them (thanks god!), but they will for sure evolve. How will the book evolve? Check out the amazing 3 ideas from IDEO's video:


The Future of the Book. from IDEO on Vimeo.


I liked specially the last one, where we can turn books into interactive fiction. Imagine the appeal a Harry-Potter-like book would have in millions of children if you also would include game elements in it? Imagine the potential of interactive books can have in education (if of course our educational system evolves at all).

15 leadership lessons learned through AIESEC

In no particular order, the lessons I learned in my AIESEC experience:

1. It’s better to have no people than the wrong people – self-explanatory, but the thing is that when you don’t have anyone, at least you know you have a problem. When you have the wrong people, you fight to make them right and this generally fails.

2. Your team is a reflection of your behavior – when a team is down or up or anything, look at yourself as team leader. Inevitably you will be in the same state, so don’t get pissed off with them. Change yourself!

3. Get out of the throne and rush to the battle, your Majesty – it’s very pretty to say you are an strategic leader and sit in your office commanding the troops. Get out there and do stuff. Be present where the things are happening, because you can impact a lot by being an example in the battlefield, not in the board room.

4. People are different, accept and act accordingly – we all like to think we are unique, except when we want people to agree with us. Accept that people are different, they value different things and need to be treated not as you would like to be treated, but as they would like/need to be treated. Some people need pushing, some people need pulling, most people need both in different times.

5. Top down looks smart, but it’s dumb – top down approach is a nice temptation, but it will work much better if you can involve the bottom and middle (or parts of it) in the change. It’s dumb to come up with solutions that considers only the upper organization ‘s viewpoint, use multiple perspectives.

6. If middle management is not onboard, your boat won’t sail – leaders and managers that make things happen are a huge bottle neck for change (or the most awesome lever). What do you want them to be? Get them onboard early.

7. Make it simple, as simple as you can – complexity looks professional, but it’s just a lame way to solve problems. Look at Google, anyone knows how to use it because it’s damn simple.

8. You can’t build Rome in a day – change takes time. Plan accordingly – or conservatively.

9. Focus, focus, focus – you know you can’t build Rome in a day, but you also can’t build it all at the same time. So choose wisely what you want your organization to be doing and focus on it as hell with consistent behavior and messages that reinforce what you want to focus on.

10. Whole human-being is not a theory, is a fact – humans are not rational machines. There is at least 3 equal parts in humans: emotion, sensation and rational. Tap into those 3 human perspectives to lead effectively.

11. Adapt the job to the people, not the other way around – use people’s strengths when allocating responsibilities and don’t be trapped in functional job descriptions. In the end, the only thing that matters is to achieve the vision while making the mission happen. Complicated organization structures and systems should help you perform, not make it harder.

12. Accept reality and act upon it – it’s very easy to get trapped in an ideal world where things should be different. Accept what things really are and act as they are, not as they hypothetically should be.

13. Simple and visible plan – Simple plan, with clear and measurable goals, clear action, responsible and deadline. Make it visible also – we’ve put our plan and scoreboard on the wall, it was simple perfect.

14. Trust the team – if you heard hint number 1, you should have only quality people. Stretch their potential by giving them more and more trust and larger and larger responsibilities. You will be 80% of the time surprised positively.

15. Have a strong vision for direction and put all your efforts in it – and then use hint number 9: focus, focus, focus, while also taking an active decision to not focus on some things, important or urgent as they might be. If you need to do many things that are not on the vision or your vision is wrong/incomplete or your work is wrong.

I am leaving AIESEC series

30^th of June 2010 is my last day in AIESEC (that is a bit more than 5 years in the organization). Since I decided to leave, lots of thoughts crossed my mind about this amazing organization that gave me experiences that changed me and my whole life.

But one post with everything I wanted to say about AIESEC would be impossibly long and unpractical to read in a screen (even if you had a fancy iPad), so I will make a series of post the coming days about it.

I hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing about these 5 years of leadership development, challenge and peak experiences.

If you still don’t know what is AIESEC (which world do you live?), here is a brief about it:

What is AIESEC?

“AIESEC is amazing” was one of the best answers I heard in reply to this question. But I can say it in a more understandable way: AIESEC is a platform for youth leadership development. It offers young people the opportunity to be global citizens, to change the world, and to get experience and skills that matter today. AIESEC is quite large: present in over 107 countries and territories and with over 45,000 members, AIESEC is the world's largest student‐run organisation.

Our product:

It's what we call "the AIESEC experience", which is compromise of leadership opportunities inside the organization and professional exchange experiences.

What kind of exchange?

We offer students of higher education and recent graduates to go on professional exchanges that can be on 1) management/business, 2) engineering/IT/technical and 3) social development/NGOs/educational.

Education that prepares you for life

It's funny how every video about improving education could be in the end an advertising to join AIESEC. That's exactly what we are doing - for 62 years. I've been really lucky to join this organization.

TED Talk - Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

Awesome, funny and true:

(thanks for the link, George!)

How to get a job interview without a CV

I have been job hunting for some time now, since my term as President of AIESEC Norway is ending now in June 30th. In the best of Maslow's style, I was trying to get absolutely anything anywhere so I could survive, get some money and then try to find a place that is cool and a better position. I was practically a CV-sending-machine-gunner.


This didn't work well - or, well, putting in my own words: it failed supreme. I couldn't even get an interview. Are you serious? Do you know how much experience I have? How do you prefer a fresh graduate with no experience? I can't understand. 


Then in a spree of lucidity I decided to apply what I've learned in these 5 years of AIESEC and I decided to scrap all the sh*t out of the way and go only for the important stuff. I thought "to hell with it, if I am going to get rejected, I am going to get rejected by companies and jobs that I really wish to work!"


Then I sent 4 e-mails to 4 companies that I would love to work in - mostly because of the business they are in, such as leadership development, culture management consultancy and this sort of thing. The sort of thing that I am not only passionate for, but I am good at it - and, sincerely, I love it so much that I would pay people to work on this (if I had money, which is not exactly the case - or, putting in my own words: I am a serious candidate for the worst paid CEOs documentary). Ah, I forgot to mention: none of these companies had any job opening.


From the 4 e-mails sent, I received 3 answers in the same day asking me to have an interview, a lunch or anything. And one of these companies I didn't even send my CV, it was just a mail. 


What happened?


Here is the recipe (in order of importance - i.e. if you don't get the first, the 2nd will not help you):


#1 - Passion - I was not sending a job application, I was sending almost a love letter. I wanted to do it so much that I would do anything to contribute - I just want to be part of it and have fun. Just let me play with your toys! If you are not passionate for what you are applying for, you are just another guy. Passion is free and generates crazy commitment (like working until 22h for free just because you like it) - but no one can buy passion.


#2 - Add value first, then get valued - I just spoke from my heart that I was a talented guy wanting to contribute, even for free. This is quite obvious: I won't get any money anyway, I will be unemployed, so I can work even for free. It's much easier to get to know people that can give you a job when you are working and making the difference, than while sitting at home sending CVs. This paid off already: I met yesterday around 10 amazing people that was ultra-cool to work with.


#3 - Between big and agile, go for the agile - I know my mom would be proud of me if I worked in a huge well-known company. Good that I have self-perception enough to know that I am the one that I need to please, not my mom. Going to big companies you are just asking to be treated as a number from a boring HR person which has as the best tool to manage talent monetary incentives. Bypass the HR people, talk to the owners and CEOs of smaller and faster companies. They can smell talent and that's not a commodity largely available to smaller companies. If you have talent, stand out and talk to the boss.


And that was it. Of course most of these things you really cannot do if you are a fresh graduate that has no clue about your strengths, dreams and so on - but that's why you should join AIESEC and stand out, be Linchpin.


I am having fun as hell. Spring feelings supreme.


PS: hey, you got interested? Talk to me (sergio.schuler AT gmail.com) or check out my CV.

Making a newly hired/promoted to perform instantly

Organizations tend to believe that you can't get value for newly hired people. The concept is simple "they need to understand first how to get things done in the organization, then they can get it done". Even though this mentality is changing in AIESEC Norway, still some local committees have this attitude too, letting their newly recruited into "learning mode" for too long.

I have 2 good reasons for not doing this, but instead put the person in deep water from the first day:

#1 - training is overrated, no one can truly learn the work without practicing the work. Even though most organizations still put more money in theoretical learning than in anything else that should generate learning.

#2 - because Halvard Business Review said so. See part of the article bellow:

Case Study #1: Working within the first five minutes on the job

Michelle Pomorksi, started her job as a contract programmer at the software design and development company Menlo Innovations after an intensive hiring process. Within five minutes of walking into the office in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Michelle was working on a project. This wasn't an "onboarding project" but a real one for clients. She was "tripled" (that's company lingo for teamed with two other people) and sent off to a client site to do interviews. Rather than observing, Michelle actively participated and was expected to contribute by asking questions.

Rich Sheridan, founder and CEO of Menlo, thinks he has created a unique process to get new people productive faster than at other software companies. Every new hire is immediately paired with a current employee to do design and development work, in what the company calls "paired programming." Pairs are switched every week so by the end of the first three weeks, a new person has three mentors to rely on for advice and help. Even better, after the initial three weeks, she is ready to mentor someone new. "The real power is in the pairing," Michelle says. "There isn't one day I've gone to work that I haven't learned and taught at least one thing."

The process is facilitated by an open work space: Menlo doesn't have offices, cubes or doors. Rich thinks his hiring and onboarding strategy gives him an advantage over competitors because he can seamlessly expand and contract his work force according to client demand. It also makes employees enjoy a task they might otherwise dread. He acknowledges that onboarding this way requires careful attention to how pairs are put together and a good deal of orchestration. But he does not see it as a loss to productivity. "I probably get four times as much work done with two people pairs than most people get with two individuals," he says.

Case Study #2: Start early and see the whole picture

Pat Lee, a top Marketing Director at Johnson & Johnson Asia, happily received a promotion to Vice President of Marketing. But, she was not fully prepared for the suddenness of the promotion and all that it entailed, including relocating to a different country. She immediately began planning the logistics of the move: deciding which town to live in, exploring job prospects for her spouse, investigating schools for her children. She expected to have all these details worked out in advance so that she could "hit the ground running" on her first day in the new job.

However, Joe, her HR business partner, urged her to begin the transition to the actual job before she made the move. He suggested she take a "transition risk assessment" to help her better understand the challenges she faced in the new role. This helped Pat to fully see the situation she was getting into and better understand herself. It uncovered several issues: she had never worked in another country before; she had never taken on a regional role; she had minimal understanding of how her company did business in other countries; and she had little knowledge of the people on her new staff, the office politics, and how things got done. She also didn't know what her new boss expected of her and what phase of operation her businesses were in — start-up, turnaround, downsizing, optimizing on-going, etc. She realized she needed to address these problems and so with Joe, developed a Transition Acceleration Plan and started working with a coach, who helped her by interviewing her boss, direct reports, and colleagues to get honest feedback about their expectations. Doug Soo Hoo, former Director of Learning and Development at J&J, explains that this intense process is "a good way to get out of 'sink or swim mode' and an investment in the company that also shows a caring for the success of the individual."

After three months on the job, Pat's boss and her peers gave her rave reviews on how quickly she had mastered the "ins and outs" of the new situation and taken actions to address them. One of her new reports said it was almost as if she had been in the division for years.

To read the full article, click here.

What I want to say with it? Simple: put your new executive board to work now and make sure that the new members joining are not expected to stay in "learning mode" for long time. Start working now!

AIESEC: MBA of life

My dear Brazilian friend, Maurício Schneider, is finishing his career in AIESEC and wrote one of the most touching (and truthful) posts I've seen about this organization where 35.000 young people develop their leadership potential. Bellow is the full post from his blog:

MBA of life called AIESEC!
Today I am finishing my 4 years MBA in the University of Life called AIESEC, and there is only one word that comes to my mind to summarize this experience… GRATITUDE!

Have you ever stopped to think why people do an MBA? What are the benefits of doing an MBA?
Usually the reasons are: Advancing in their career, changing their career, starting their own business, build a new and powerful network, learning how to solve complex problems in a practical way, and so on and so forth.

The University of Life called AIESEC and its MBA program aims to create change agents through the development of 11 competencies: Self-Awareness, Personal Effectiveness, Analytical Thinking, Awareness of Others, Inclusiveness, Effective Communication, Development of Others, Stakeholder Focus, Inner Strength, Innovation and Commitment to Results. (Check my competency assessment below, the green bars represent how it was in the beginning of my AIESEC MBA)



The methodology? Practical experience through international internships, a learning environment comprised by team experiences, conferences, seminars, virtual spaces and platforms, mentorship and coaching programs and much more, combined with a leadership program where individuals have the chance to lead a high performance team. The program is completely flexible and the student chooses its own path.

I started the AIESEC MBA going for exchange to India, Chennai, for a marketing internship in an organization called Campus abroad. This experience taught me the importance of being able to adapt, to react faster to different environment, to stretch our cultural understanding. I also have built a fair international network, while in touch with more than 40 other AIESEC trainees.

My second year was about getting some functional knowledge, so I was assigned to manage the finances of the AIESEC branch in Brazil (Sao Paulo), I have learned a lot about budgeting, scenario planning, return of investments and others.

The main projects I managed and main results I got: Development of a new financial model, Redesign of conference management (long term venue contract, increasing logistical capacity), Design of new financial management software and contract negotiation with vendor, Growth of 200% in operational revenue , Increase of 30% of reserves.

After managing finances, I decided to step up and go for a strong leadership experience, being responsible for leading directly a team of 6 people from 3 different countries, plus being responsible for the operations of 30 local AIESEC branches in Brazil, with more than 2,000 people.

During this experience, I have the chance to work in a Long Term Plan implementation (Adjustment of planning framework, design of road map, set up of long term organizational goals), Balanced Scorecard implementation (Development of new planning framework and tracking tools, revision of measurement tools and development of rewards & recognition based on the Balanced Scorecard, Delivery of the International Congress 2008 (a congress for 1000 people form 100 different countries with a budget of more than 1 million Euros).

Some of the results I got: Growth of 60% in exchange realization and general growth in all key performance indicators (200-325), Strategic Management ING Award winner – The best AIESEC office amongst 107 countries AIESEC is present in, Growth of 300% in operational revenue and increase of 75% of reserves.

My last year of the AIESEC’s MBA, took place in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. I was responsible for Strategy & Operations in the global headquarter of AIESEC, working directly with 22 amazing and smart individuals from 16 different countries, taking care of the strategic direction and operations of more than 600 offices, over a 100 countries, with more than 38,000 people.

Projects? What did I do? Leading global planning process with 107 Countries and more than 800 local offices, Balanced Scorecard education and Strategy Map revision, Redefining quality standards and measurement systems, Leading country development team (6 regional Directors), Leading the strategic development task force (Vice President of Talent Management, Exchange, External Relations, Information Systems, Finance and President) , Leading global competitive analysis process.

Results? 45% year-on-year growth in exchange results – Biggest growth in the last 15 years, and first time that we achieved the 2010 vision’s goals. In a year that the majority of the organizations failed to succeed!

I have tried to summarize how my 4 years AIESEC MBA contributed to my development and next steps, check this out:



I think now you understand why GRATITUDE is the word that express my feelings towards my AIESEC MBA! I wish more and more people can have the chance to join the university of life called AIESEC, and that more and more people can learn as much as I learned, can meet people as many as I’ve met, can travel as much as I traveled, can share ideas as much as I’ve shared and most importantly, can be happy as much as I am!

That's the truly spirit of leadership development, you do what you love, you deliver your promises in a sustainable way, you get people to do things you believe it is the right ones, you don't feel the time going away... you just enjoy the journey!

Thanks AIESEC and AIESECers, partners, alumni, sponsors, supervisory boards and groups, all stakeholders that make and made AIESEC possible and real!

Yours truly,
Mauricio Schneider
A proud AIESEC alumnus!

I had the privilege to see a little of the complete transformation in Maurício as he was living his AIESEC experience to it's fullest. He grew in an insane way and, with him, lots of others have grown to admire his work and be inspired by it. Congratulations and good luck on your next steps, nego veio.

Education at the crossroads

My all time favorite subject, education, in some insightful post from the status quo breaker, Seth Godin:

Education at the crossroads

Actually, there isn't one, there are three choices that anyone offering higher education is going to have to make.

Should this be scarce or abundant?

MIT and Stanford are starting to make classes available for free online. The marginal cost of this is pretty close to zero, so it's easy for them to share. Abundant education is easy to access and offers motivated individuals a chance to learn.

Scarcity comes from things like accreditation, admissions policies or small classrooms.

Should this be free or expensive?

Wikipedia offers the world's fact base to everyone, for free. So it spreads.

On the other hand, some bar review courses are so expensive the websites don't even have the guts to list the price.

The newly easy access to the education marketplace (you used to need a big campus and a spot in the guidance office) means that both the free and expensive options are going to be experimented with, because the number of people in the education business is going to explode (then implode).

If you think the fallout in the newspaper business was dramatic, wait until you see what happens to education.

Should this be about school or about learning?

School was the big thing for a long time. School is tests and credits and notetaking and meeting standards. Learning, on the other hand, is 'getting it'. It's the conceptual breakthrough that permits the student to understand it then move on to something else. Learning doesn't care about workbooks or long checklists.

For a while, smart people thought that school was organized to encourage learning. For a long time, though, people in the know have realized that they are fundamentally different activities.

The combinations...

Imagine a school that's built around free, abundant learning. And compare it to one that's focused on scarce, expensive schooling. Or dream up your own combination. My recent MBA program, for example, was scarce (only 9 people got to do it) and it was free and focused on learning.

Just because something is free doesn't meant there isn't money to be made. Someone could charge, for example, for custom curricula, or focused tutoring, or for a certified (scarce) degree. When a million people are taking your course, you only need 1% to pay you to be happy indeed.

Eight combinations of the three choices are available and my guess is that all eight will be tried. If I were going to wager, I'd say that the free, abundant learning combination is the one that's going to change the world.

Lessons Learned from 30 Years of Leadership

From Harvard Business Review Blog (obviously the hints wouldn't be mine, I didn't even completed 30 years old).


Recently, I had dinner with Dick Harrington, former CEO of Thomson Reuters and now my partner at Cue Ball, a Boston-based venture firm. We talked about his three most significant lessons learned over his very successful 25+ year career as a Fortune 250 executive.

Tony Tjan (TT): Dick- attempt the impossible and give us the top three business lessons learned over three decades!

Dick Harrington (DH): First, you have to have an "approximately correct" strategy -- you have to know where you are going, but directionally correct is the key. Two, you have to be highly focused and intensely execute that strategy by motivating and aligning the troops you have. And three, it always comes back to the customers and the fact that you have to manically know your customers and drive everything from that.

TT: Nicely done. So let's start with the first point. People often worry about architecting a perfect business plan or strategy and then get lost in the minutia. How do you know when you are "approximately correct," as you say?

DH: You want to be approximately correct instead of precisely incorrect. There is a point at which additional information or research will not change the basics of your strategy. When you get your strategy there, you have to "Nike it" - you just do it. If you continue to refine and refine, you'll never get into action, and the incremental value of research just won't be worth the time and money. Schedule time frames and be religious about them to launch, get feedback, and see if the strategy is acceptable to the customer or if you need to adjust.

TT: Your second point is about execution focus. What's the best way to rally people and spread that intensity?

DH: First, you have to communicate what you are trying to accomplish. And you need to know the team members who are going to make it happen and those who are going to keep it from happening. It's important to have time with them so they have an opportunity to discuss and debate what's critical.

At the same time, you have to draw the line at some point and say "Okay, we have everyone's input. These are the five most important things we need to accomplish and they are the only things we are going to work on." You want everyone - probably 4-5 key people, maybe 10-15 at larger organizations -- in the same boat so you can accomplish those things on a timely basis.

TT: Can you use operating metrics or dashboards to help imbue people with a sense of ownership?

DH: Absolutely. When you think about executing a strategy, you need operating metrics to see how you are doing. But keep them simple, so folks can easily see if they are being successful and adjust along the way as needed. This is the key, the dashboards or metrics a company uses should be simple and frequent enough so that all key members on the team can use them to keep score and see how their actions translate into performance (or not). Most companies don't internally communicate their metrics frequent enough, or if they do they are often measuring too many things or, even worse, the wrong things.

TT: The third big lesson from you is your "golden rule," which is that ultimately it just comes back to the customer. But how can people possibly forget this?

DH: It's an ego thing. The biggest reason people don't do this, and we've seen it a lot, is that they think working in an industry a long time means they know everything about the customers' needs.

What I've been able to do over the years is make sure we have appropriate customer intimacy and research - not a billion dollars worth, but enough -- to prove to others that they don't know their customers as well as they think they do or as well as they ought to.

TT: What is a simple first step someone can take for big impact customer research, particularly for the budget constrained firms that may be reading this?

DH: Find your smartest 10 customers and talk to them; those are the ones who can actually give you valuable information. It's about spending time with them and going over 10-15 questions to learn about how they use the product and what you can do to make their lives easier. From those questions you'll probably get another 15-20. That's a great start and you can use that information to consider other more structured methodologies for more specific feedback.

When I was tasked early in my career with running an auto repair manual business that had the leading market share, I first wanted to go talk to customers. I found out right away that customers didn't even like our product--they just hated our competitors' more! After some rounds of feedback, we were able to start producing what people wanted, not just what would suffice, and things took off from there.

I should also add that these days a lot of your customer feedback and research might already be out there - there are at least three of our portfolio businesses where we can just go to Twitter or Yelp to see what customers think. The web is an amazing customer research forum and more people should use it not just to search all the good things people are saying but more important to identify early possible areas of customer frustration and product improvement opportunities.

Starting point

So, today it really starts.

Between today and tomorrow, all my new team will arrive and we will be in the office together, for 13 months.

I love this "fear" feeling when I take huge responsibilities that demand me to learn new things I would never dare to think I would ever know. Such is the magic of AIESEC: we start one position as prepared as we can, but not as good as necessary, then we change, we develop and, by the end of this fast paced year, we are competent enough to say we can do it.

But then, it's time to leave for the new generation to learn.

I really love this organization :)

AIESEC Norway CEO's success 1 out of ?? - New Financial Model: approved

For context on this, read the previous post: AIESEC Norway CEO's failure 1 out of ?? - New Financial Model: rejected.

Just after the rejection (one full day) I was completly in shut down mode: blaming everyone, bad mooded and just plain disapointed with me, with others and with the organization as a whole. Then, at the end of this terrible day which I thought a lot, I just decided this is not a true leader reaction and I had to change it. I "fired" my old self for being so incompetent and "hired" the new me, which would turn the tide.

And we did turn it.

Looking back, I can see most mistakes were mine (because I was leading the project):

- No dialogue seeking - I didn't proactively approach the local presidents to discuss their views on the model and gather feedback. I thought that silence meant they didn't have any problem with it. So silly of me, sometimes I can't understand how I miss so much the obvious: silence doesn't mean agreement, means only that people think something you have no idea about.

- Argue against feedback - instead of acting upon the few received feedback, I argued and fought against them. (see the post "Communication technique: never fight people if you want them to do something to you" to see why I failed by doing that).

- No allies help - I steped into the room me against the world. No wonder it failed, I didn't have any one to advocate pro the new financial model. I didn't even spoke to my board collegues what kind of help I needed from them.

- Lack of hope dealing - "Leaders are dealers in hope": everyone was scared they would go bankrupt and I didn't address their fear and gave them hope.

The result of all this you know from previous post, I failed.

But them I acted upon them, I learned and that's what I did:

- Seek dialogue and feedback - I proacvelly schedule chats with the presidents and the board members interested. I also had an open door policy: whoever and whenever someone needed to talk to me about the model, I stoped everything to talk to them and trully listen their voices, ideas, feedback and negotiated agreed solutions.

- Incorporate feedback - by negotiating and reaching agreement of what should be changed on the new financial model, we addressed most of the problems and fears of everyone. Whoever gave feedback, I always made sure I would end up the conversation telling what I would do with the feedback and got the agreement of the other person. (And, of course, I fulfilled my word).

- Deal in hope - I made sure everyone understood how the new financial model would make AIESEC Norway grow and why. I also made it quite clear that in case things went wrong, we would push the stop button and rethink an approach together.

- Have a strong process to take the decision - thanks to the dialogue I created inside my own team this time, we worked together to create a very good process to facilitate the discussion during the legislation. So it would go in an orderly manner, addressing all the remaining doubts one by one and that everyone could speak their minds in an organized way.

- Have allies - I identified the key people that would be more keen on the model and took time to ally with them, to discuss their ideas. When I entered the room, this time I didn't need to sell the model for everyone, they already bought it, it was just about delivery.

The result is that the model was approved, almost all of it by full consensus. And, to be really sincere, the proposal in the model was not that different: the pillars of the model were still there. The only difference is that I dealed with the human aspect much differently than before.

Of course I couldn't have done anything if I didn't have the support of the local presidents, which were able to take a bold step towards own accountability. I am very proud of them, they are showing a level of maturity and engagement only dreamt in past terms. I have no doubt these people will strive for their goals and we will take, together, AIESEC Norway to a new level - where we, one of the countries that founded AIESEC 61 years ago, should always be.

Thanks a lot for the valuable leadership lesson, AIESEC Norway.

Good quote of the day

"You can't microwave leaders and expect a 5-Star Experience"

- Steve Roesler, from All Things Workplace