You can see the determination in his eyes

That's the way a friend described someone she had just met. She was sure (just as I'm sure) that he's going places. Once the determination is in his eyes, the learning will take care of itself.

On the other hand, if I can see the fear in your eyes, then I'm not sure that learning alone will take care of the problem. No one can prove that the path you're on is risk free or guaranteed to work. Searching for more proof is futile. Searching for more determination makes more sense. (Seth Godin)

In loads of AIESECers you can see the determination in fact. And it's pretty. I would just enjoy that people would see it more often - the world sometimes seems a bit blind.

Or maybe just with fear in their own eyes.

When Project Managers have the key

When Project Managers have the key

by Juan Cajiao

2500 years after Sun Tzu, McKinsey Quarterly publishes: "Senior executives and nonexecutive managers are unhappy with the performance of their companies’ frontline managers, according to a McKinsey survey".

The frontline managers (aka as Project Managers, Line Managers, LCPs, etc) are the corner stone in translating the strategy into action. Sun Tzu said that Officers are to blame when orders are clear but not follow, when you know what it needs to get done but it doesn't happen.

The great front line managers are CEOs of their processes, projects and initiatives. The ownership they take on what they do and the acknowledgement that success is a direct consequence of the actions of their teams are the ticks for the turn around: "empowering frontline managers to make decisions, anticipate problems, and coach their direct reports (rather than simply following and giving orders and solving crises) generates higher productivity and other benefits"

- Manage the process: and you will get the job done.

- Lead the people: and you will be able to get many jobs done.

- Connect your team to others: and you will release a chain of success that will spread through your organization and your partners.

Source:

https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Organization/Talent/How_companies_manage_the_frontline_today_McKinsey_Survey_results_2537

Too much data leads to not enough belief

by Seth Godin

Business plans with too much detail, books with too much proof, politicians with too much granularity... it seems as though more data is a good thing, because data proves the case.

In my experience, data crowds out faith. And without faith, it's hard to believe in the data enough to make a leap. Big mergers, big VC investments, big political movements, large congregations... they don't usually turn out for a spreadsheet.

The problem is this: no spreadsheet, no bibliography and no list of resources is sufficient proof to someone who chooses not to believe. The skeptic will always find a reason, even if it's one the rest of us don't think is a good one. Relying too much on proof distracts you from the real mission--which is emotional connection.

What we value is really valueless

I happen to be an artistic photography fan (I don't really understand nothing about it, but I appreciate the beauty of well taken shots) and I follow this blog called The Big Picture. They happen to have some amazing pictures, whatever, that's not what I want to talk about.

In this Big Picture blog, by coincidence I assume, there are very close together 2 series of pictures: one about gold and the other about all the mess that is on Haiti right now.

This made me think how stupid can we be to value such thing as a metal so highly. Why people pay so much for a damn rock? Yeah, scarcity rules the market, but, if shit would be scarce, would you still pay money for it? Why? Would you say "wow, this guy is damn cool, his bed is 100% pure shit, he must be super rich". Come on, how idiot. Get any metal, paint it gold (the color, not the metal) and, ta-da, same thing. I am simplistic, yes, there are some medical usage of gold and so on, but, forget this, I am talking about gold for its intrinsic value - for me, more or less on the value of scarce stinky shit.

What if - and there's a big if - some celebraty/charity/saints/media hot shots would start valuing people who make the world better (like these dudes helping out in Haiti)? I don't know exactly how, but some sort of status coming out from helping others. Yeah, that's more or less the whole principle of charity, but taken to another level.

Maybe what I say doesn't make any sense, I didn't think much about it, but, hey, helping others should be a huge value making operation. No?

To work better, try working less

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203803904574429151858232582.html?mod=rss_careers (via @LinusKendall)

Our team blog

The amazing Big Bang team began to write a blog that should be updated once a week at least with a variety of perspectives from our day to day work. Check it out: One Year in AIESEC Norway.

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.