Great management philosophy ("I miss the mob" video)

I miss the mob from Derek Sivers on Vimeo.

I have no time for important things because I waste 40% of it

From the Future of Work blog:

The paradox at the heart of work

So here is the thing… last week I heard two paradoxical facts:

Fact 1 – we have no time. 

We are nearing the end of our research consortium focused on the future of work and need to ensure that the ideas that have come from the research are translated into facts, ideas and actions for the companies that have participated. That’s going to take time – perhaps four hours a week of focused team-work to ensure the translation takes place. Yet when we ask executive teams about putting this amount of work in thinking about the actions for the future, the overwhelming response is that many teams are simply too busy to dedicate this time. It’s not that they don’t think this is important for the future – but as often happens at work, the short term is overwhelming the longer time priorities. So – the first fact I heard this week is that many executive teams simply have no time for this type of longer-term work.

Fact 2 – we waste 40% of our working time.

That reality was in my mind when I worked earlier in the week with a major US based multinational company. The team was mulling over the results of an analysis of the working patterns of hundreds of employees they had commissioned. What was clear was that more than 40% - yes you have heard it right – not 4% but a full 40% of work currently being undertaken was not actually productive work. Doing stuff that was not needed, working on projects that had no significance, going to meetings that had no outcomes.

Now the paradox emerges. At the very time that we are overwhelmed by the minutia of everyday work – we are simultaneously engaged in work that has no productive outcome. Now that’s interesting. 

So how has this happened? If you want to check what Lynda Gratton think about it, just go to the original post, but here is my simple take on why is that:

1 - Strategic direction / vision is not clear enough (not 100% actionable by every employee) - "increase sales", "grow", etc can be interpreted in a million ways. If it is not clear, at best, I will have my own take to do it. Which can lead to a lot of spinning wheels or rowing the boat to the wrong shore. This leads to problems in prioritization, which end up as the "everything is a priority" mindset. When everything is a priority, then you will be counting on luck to pick the really important things to get done. Work is infinite, time is not.

2 - Bad management skills - if the above problem is more connected to leadership, this one is purely management: effective meetings with clear output, clear delegation, scraping the BS and focusing on the priorities, etc. In my short corporate life (around 8 years), I am absolutely overwhelmed by the amount of people who cannot create a simple plan, run a meeting where people know the objective, delegate something with clear deliverables and satisfaction conditions, decide something when a decision is needed, etc. I strongly believe this should be tough in schools, that is basic education nowadays: getting stuff done.

What is a great place to work?

SOURCE: thegreatworkplaceonline.com 

My team management book – what do you think?

During a the new year’s eve collective delusion, I decided it would be fun to write a short ebook to help people to manage teams better. The idea come from the amount of people that came to me to get advice on how to run a team like I ran mine when I was AIESEC Norway’s President.

I set a deadline to finish the book by end May (geez…) and that before my birthday (21^st of January) I would have the basic structure in place. And this post is exactly about this last bit, the structure. I will post it here and I would appreciate if you could feedback or give some insights that could help me to improve it. Ah, and if you have ideas for the name of the book, please let me know also.

What I want the book to be:

-          - It’s a funny and easy to read book only about managing/leading a team

-          - If the readers put the tools/advices in the book in practice, it will help them to manage better their teams

-          - Examples to illustrate

What I don’t want the book to be:

-          - Full of theory or impractical

-          - Talk about other aspects of my leadership experience (Organization management/development, change management, strategy, recruitment, finance…)

-          - Personal leadership (I am unsure about this in fact, since there is a component that impacts quite a lot on the management of the team – so I think I will have to touch it a bit)

Structure:

-          Introduction

o   This is not about theory, it’s based on nothing else than my experience and observations.

o   Read and do it. If you don’t want to try anything or don’t have enough discipline to do it, this book will be useless.

o   Adapt and feel what is right for your leadership style as well as your team needs. There are no 100% formulas for team management, because in the end it is about people

-          Building and starting a new team

o   Build the team or it will build itself

o   What is the foundation of building a team?

§  Team purpose (team mission / vision -> what is success for this team?)

§  Individual roles and responsibilities

§  How we work (How we deal with each other in the team, outside the team and with work/challenges, team values, ground rules, expectations)

§  How we make the team work (team operating processes)

§  When dealing with humans, don’t forget the social stuff

§  Role modeling

o   When a newcomer joins a team that already exists

o   After it is built, it needs more building (Every day is team building day, even if you don’t realize it)

-          Team purpose

o   What is it?

o   How to do it? (both fluffy and hard core)

o   How to use it?

§  Visible

§  Take decisions / get directions

§  Assess current situation

§  Celebrate or change and tweak it

-          Individual roles and responsibilities

o   Breaking down the purpose into the individual (both responsibility and goals)

o   Adapt the job to the people, not the other way around

o   Don’t allow “support” roles to sprawl

o   Don’t allow silos, but don’t allow “everyone is responsible” also

o   Change roles as purpose evolves

-          How we work

o   Team values (building and using)

o   Expectations and Ground rules (building and using)

-          Team operational processes

o   Prioritizing what to do and what not to do (planning and stuff)

o   Decision making (who and when)

o   Team learning

o   Team Meetings

§  What to use it for? When not to use it?

§  How often

§  Calling

§  Preparing

§  Conducting

§  After the meeting and follow up

§  Tools for idea generation

§  Tools for decision making

o   Individual meetings

§  What to use it for? When not to use it?

·         Team member oriented

·         Professional oriented

·         Maximizing strengths and minimizing weaknesses

·         They really want your honest assessment

·         Don’t give all the answers, but don’t play riddles in the dark

§  How often

§  (ask, don’t assume)

§  Tools

-         Team members’ relationships

o   GTKEO (constantly)

o   Building trust in the team

o   Feedback

o   Social agenda

 -         The team is a reflex of the leader

o   As a leader, everything is your fault (seriously) -> consistency role model

o   Feel it and speak up (ask, don’t assume), even if you are unsure, test and listen

o   Doggie style: reinforce good behavior, call out bad behavior

o   Give honest feedback and ask for it (and then listen carefully!)

o   “I was wrong” and “I don’t know” are source of power, not weakness

o   Incentivizing mistakes, but not sloppiness

o   Solution oriented approach

 -         The easy team management checklist

Will the middle manager job disappear?

At least Lynda Gratton, from the Future of Work, think so. She thinks there are 4 reasons why the disappearance of the middle manager is on the cards: 

• Technology has become the great general manager. It can monitor performance closely, provide instant feedback, even create reports and presentations. When technology can play much of the role of the manager – why have one?

• Skilled team members are increasingly self-managed. That’s not to say they need a team leader – but this is likely to be taken from a member of the team who is highly skilled and it could well be a rotating role. So when teams can manage themselves – what can a general manager add? 

• Attitudes toward management have also changed. As my research makes clear, Gen Y workers see no value in reporting to someone who simply keeps track of what they do, when much of that can be done by themselves, their peers, or a machine. What they do value is mentoring and coaching from someone they respect. Someone, in other words, who is a master—not a general manager.

• It was possible in the past to manage ‘intuitively’ and for good management skills to come as part of the whole ‘decent person’ angle. Now management is fiendishly difficult – particularly if people are located virtually across the globe. These situations take extreme specialist skills to lead.

I couldn't agree more. But I also have another reflection on it: while the classic middle manager is subject to extinction from all the above, the job of the "middle leader" (?) will always be necessary. The leader, capable of shaking the status quo, driving change, inspiring, bring a strong team together like glue, pointing to the right direction and making people lose sight of distractions, will always be necessary. The difference might be that MAYBE we will evolve so much that anyone and everyone will be expected, capable and responsible for playing this role (which I think we still have a loooong way to go to get there).

For now, no machine can beat the gift of the linchpin.

Rework - book review

Rework is a smart book with an uncommon business logic, very little jargon and a lot of personal experience from the founders of 37 Signals. They challenge everything, from the need of being big (they don’t want to be) to doing more than the competition to win market (they preach their products do LESS, so the niche market who wants simpler stuff will choose them).

The book is well written, smart and interesting, but, sincerely, doesn’t quite pack a punch. Lots of good advices and personal sharing is nice, but in the end, it seems it lacks “substance”. Maybe the book is too superficial, I am not quite sure. Probably I am just comparing it with my favorite last books (which were very in depth and useful for me to take action, while this one is interesting, but I don’t see it as so useful).

Or maybe it is just that I am naturally more aligned with a “strange” way of working, like the belief that meetings should only involve the people necessary and should be as short as possible. 

My final comment: for the buzz it received, I was expecting more.

Or am I wrong? Anybody out there that used Rework to fundamentally change the way you/your business work?

"Retail Is War Without Blood": What Foot Locker's CEO Learned in the Army

Ken Hicks, the CEO of Foot Locker, formerly the president and chief merchandising officer of J.C. Penney's, graduated from the United States Military Academy and spent six years in the army just after the Vietnam War. HBR talked to Ken about how his time as a young officer prepared him for a career as a retail executive.

Tell me about a couple of things you learned from your military experience that have made you a more effective CEO.
When I took over my artillery battery, at age 25, I could shoot a cannon better than any of my section chiefs. And I had six guns. The only problem is, I could only shoot one gun at a time. I realized that what I had to do was train my section chiefs to be better cannoneers than I was. Because shooting 18% of the battery isn't going to be effective. And my job really wasn't to shoot a cannon, it was to develop an entire artillery battery.

So I learned that you're very dependent on your people to be their best. You train and develop and motivate them. People think in the army that you tell somebody to do something and they do it, and that's far from the truth. They actually have more options and pressures that can be very intense. Think about it — if somebody in Afghanistan screws up, they get sent back home. If they don't, they stay in combat.

To be a successful leader, you have to understand what skills are required and be competent at them, and you also have to have confidence. Sometimes people mistake confidence for leadership, or competence for leadership, but it takes both of them together.

Do you see any connections between how the military and the retail industry operate?
In retail and the military, you're very dependent on the people at the front or the selling floor. You realize how important the sale associate is. It's the same thing in the army; you're very dependent on your privates and specialists, and so you talk with them and learn from them. Six or eight months after I'd left J.C. Penney's, I was in a Penney's store looking at some merchandise, and an associate recognized me and came running across the floor to say hello. She remembered me because I'd treated her with respect and listened to her. That's what you have to do to inspire people. The people on the selling floor, just like the cannoneers, the gunners, and the infantry, are the ones who make everything happen.

How do you stay connected to frontline employees, besides going out and talking to them?
Recognition. I send out a little note card every month to the employees who perform best, thanking them for doing a good job. If you think about the military, people are willing to give their life in defense of the country and their friends, and what do they get for it? They get a ribbon on their chest. Everybody thinks recognition needs to be a big bonus or a promotion. It really doesn't. What you learn in the military is people do their work because they trust and respect you and they want you to be able to recognize them for that. I send out these cards and the next thing you know, they frame them and put them on the wall in their stores or their cubicles because it's important to them.

What else has made you successful as a senior leader?
Learning and studying each situation. When I was in the Army I had the opportunity to have lunch a couple of times with Omar Bradley. Here's a guy from history who led troops across Europe and commanded the war in Korea, and people would always ask him, who is the greatest general you served with? And he would say the greatest field commander was Patton. That's because Patton did his homework, he studied the map, and he knew where the enemy was going to be and where they needed to go. It's the same in business. You have to study the numbers and constantly try to understand where the opportunities are and how you can go after them.

I've got on my wall in my conference room the principles of war. And each of the principles of war apply in business. For example, mass: don't spread your troops out, don't spread your resources too thin. Unity of command: know who's in charge, who has responsibility and who doesn't. Security: don't be surprised, study the competition, know what's happening. I worked with a retailer who said, "Retail is war without blood." You study and spend a lot of time understanding the competition's situation. You learn not to overreact.

How do you communicate a clear mission?
You have to constantly reinforce it, so people always know why you're doing what you're doing: we're going after this because of that. Then people know why they're there and what they need to focus on and what they should do. You can empower them. One of the differences between our army and the Soviet army was that our tanks all had radios; every tank could communicate with every other tank. You could see the difference that made in mock battles. In the Russian army, the tank commander had a radio, and the platoon leaders, and all the other tanks just followed the leader and did whatever the leader wanted. If something happened to the leader's tank or they were lost, they didn't know what to do.

I assign a lot of projects to people and say, here's what we want to accomplish. You're the lead; you have responsibility. You bring the resources to bear, and let's accomplish it.

You're in a pretty volatile industry. How have you adjusted the way that you go about planning to take into account the rapid nature of change?
Constant communication and watchfulness. When I was in the army I was in a cavalry regiment, and one of the cavalry's jobs is to go out and scout. I send people out to our competitors' stores all the time. We look at the competition, the press, any venue we can think of where we will see new ideas and new things.

by Katherine Bell - This post is part of an HBR Spotlight examining leadership lessons from the military.

Decision making paralysis - how it happens and how to avoid

In 1954 an economist called L. J. Savage described a principle of human decision making that he called the “sure-thing principle”. He illustrated the sure-thing principle as follows: a businessman is looking to buy a piece of land. There is an election coming soon and he believes that its outcome could be relevant to the attractiveness of the purchase. So to clarify what he is going to do, he thinks through both scenarios: if Republican wins, I will buy the land. If the Democrats win, he also decides to buy the land. Seeing that in both scenarios he would benefit from the purchase, he goes there and buy the land anyway before the elections. Sounds pretty much obvious and few would actually fuss around with that logic – but two psychologists did fuss with it, and what they discovered is that people can take rather irrational decisions when there is uncertainty or too much complexity.

Amos Tversky and Eldar Shafir published a paper proving that the “sure-thing principle” was not always so sure thing. They uncovered situations where the mere existence of uncertainty made people take decisions in a different way – even though the uncertainty was irrelevant to the outcome, like in the businessman land purchase.

Imagine the following situation: you have been studying hard as hell to pass a final exam, which you just completed (a few weeks before the Christmas holidays). You have been studying for weeks for this damn exam, and it is finally over! You have to wait for 2 days to get the exam results back. Meanwhile, you see the opportunity to buy a vacation package to Hawaii at a real bargain price. Here are your three options: a) you can buy it today, b) you can pass it today) or c) you can pay 5 dollars to lock the price for 2 days, which would allow you yo make your decision after you got the grade. What would you do?

You may want to check the result of the exam before (as most of the participants in the research did). Then the 2 psychologists removed the exam uncertainty for other 2 groups of participants: one group was told they passed the exam, the other group was told they failed the exam. The ones told they passed, 57% chose to buy the trip (it is a nice celebration) and the ones who failed, 54% chose to go to the trip (it’s good to recuperate from all the stress). The key take-away: both who passed and failed wanted to go to Hawaii.

Now the twist: the ones, like you, that didn’t know how they did in the exam, 67% of them chose to pay 5 dollars to lock the price and wait for 2 days. Wait a minute, if you pass you go to Hawaii, if you don’t pass you go to Hawaii, but if you don’t know… you wait and see (!?) That’s really not like the “sure-thing principle” should work, eh? It is exactly like if the businessman would have waited to see the results of the election, even though he wanted to buy the land if any of the candidates would win.

This shows that uncertainty, even when irrelevant, can paralyze us in a way to not make a decision.

Another proved decision making paralysis when you have too much choice. In another research, a group of students were faced with 2 choices: a) attend a lecture by an author you admire and who is visiting your university just this afternoon, or b) go to the library to study.

Studying looks like a bad idea, compared to the author, so only 21% of the people actually chose to go to the library. But, would the results differ if you would add a third choice: c) watch a foreign movie that you have been wanting to see? Guess what, with the 3 choices, than 40% of the students decide to… go the library (that’s double the first amount). So, giving the students 2 good alternatives to studying, bizarrely, makes it less likely that they would chose either. So much for rational human beings.

How to avoid decision making paralysis in business (besides, of course, to have less options and no uncertainty)?

Prioritization. I know that is abstract and in theory is easy: you get what is critical and prioritize it over what is nice. But quoting Yogi Berra: “in theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not”. And that is where the business strategy has to be an sticky message, striped to its CORE and that enables employees to act upon it. Read “With more freedom to take own decisions, the ground level will follow orders better (?)” on strategy messages that enable employees to act.

But one example about messages that enable people to act: Ryanair, I don’t know anything about their messages, but I imagine that they want simply to be the lowest cost airline ever or something. So imagine they made a survey with their customers that revealed that customers would like a free snack in each flight. Then the top executives look at the survey and they have a decision to make: should we listen to our customers and put the free snack or not? It is quite easy to get lost in the “customer is always right” and bla bla bla, but in the end, will giving a free snack make Ryanair be the lowest cost airline ever? No. So the decision is simple: ignore the customer, no free snack.

-- 

Decision making paralysis also appears on Made to Stick , an outstanding book about building messages that stick to people’s brains.

Bata Management System

Last week I was in Prague to be a panelist in the Forum 2000. It was a very interesting panel with 4 people like me (young, naive and hungry) and other 4 seasoned business men and women on the topic of “what the next generation of leaders want from the market”. We discussed topics like if it is desirable that business tackle global issues (like poverty) and what the next generation value in an employer. The forum deserves a post in itself, but I want to speak about something I learned outside the panel room, more specific in the pub that we went after the panel: the Bata Management System.

Bata (pronounced more or less like “bat’ya”) Management System was basically the way Tomáš Baťa (and his successor, Jan Antonín Baťa) managed the business. Bata is a Czech shoe factory (and retailer) named after the surname of the founder, but the similarities with a Fordian assembly line kind of stop there.

Bata’s first slogan, at the factory gate, was “thinking to the people, labor to the machines”. Bata’s system included whole-system orientation and integration of work (instead of splitting it into small specialized tasks), team and workshop self-management, profit-sharing and autonomy, workers’ participation and co-determination, clearly-defined responsibilities and organizational flexibility. Every employee was a partner, co-worker or associate and all workers were to become owners and capitalists. Salaries were much higher than the industry average (both in Czech and anywhere in the world) and production was always improving. Production and profits were not the ends, but the means towards improving the individual lives of all Bata employees.

An story that shows the craziness of the innovation in Bata is that his office was built inside an elevator (which also had a working bathroom). This way he was everywhere in the factory and at the same time everyone could reach him quite easily. Here there is a picture of the Bata’s elevator/office.

Bata managed to thrive while the world was in a big recession. But I am not talking about the 2008 recession. These guys did all this in the 30’s. Yes, all this “progressive” management almost a 100 years ago (and when Henry Ford was going for the man is a machine approach in the assembly line).

It seems that Bata didn’t need any Forum 2000 to understand what employees (humans!) want from their work. Bata understood that people are superior than machines, all he did was to help foster an environment that didn’t get in the way of their linchpiness. Does generation X and Y changed so much that they want different things? In my opinion, not at all, we are just much more bold to say it aloud and demand to be treated as humans.

The 12 elements of great leadership

To identify the elements of worker engagement. Gallup conducted many thousands of interviews in all kinds of organizations, at all levels, in most industries, and in many countries. These 12 statements -  the Gallup Q -  emerged from Gallups pioneering research as those that best predict employee and workgroup performance.

1. I know what is expected of me at work.

2. I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right. 

3. At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.

4. In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.

5. My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person. 

6. There is someone at work who encourages my development.

7. At work, my opinions seem to count.

8. The mission or purpose of my com company makes me feel my job is important.

9. My associates or fellow employees are committed to doing quality work.

10. I have a best friend at work.

11. In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress. 

12. This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.

Think of great team experiences you had and count how many of those were there (or bad team experiences that those 12 were not there). Which ones?

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 wouldn’t exchange my AIESEC experience for a full scholarship in London Business School

And that is 100% true. I wouldn’t exchange the experience I lived in AIESEC for anything, especially not a scholarship in any of the top ranked MBA schools in the world. This is no empty rhetoric - I had to leave attractive things to be in AIESEC. I left a career that was giving me a reasonable amount of money to get more involved in AIESEC and after I also left the business I created (and was starting to become profiting enough to put a smile on my face) to come to AIESEC Norway and get a more challenging experience.

How can this organization provide such a powerful learning experience?

It’s simple, it doesn’t use the principles practiced by most schools: instead of classrooms and teachers, AIESEC give you the opportunity to be an integral part of the business, from the very operational level to the highest leadership position. It is learn by doing. We have the opportunity to work towards ambitious goals, work alone and in teams, manage budgets, sell to students, companies, NGOs and government, solve problems, deal with crisis situations, create and execute and change process, well, basically ANYTHING that you can learn in practice in a business, we do in AIESEC. In real life. No simulation. We are out there creating value or going bankrupt.

The difference of AIESEC and a business? While in a business you would take at least 10-20 years to get to top leadership of an international organization present all around the globe, in AIESEC we do it in from the 1st year – after you learn the basics, you are pushed out of the warm nest to fly or die. How? In our 800 business units in 107 countries we change the whole leadership every year. Every single year, since 1948. Talk about learning fast, adapting and keep growing anyway. We have a saying in AIESEC that “you are never prepared to your current position. You are only prepared when you are leaving the position and going for something even more challenging”. It’s about swimming or sinking.

Example? I will summarize my own experience (ok, it’s a big summary, but it’s really only 1% of what happened):

April to November 2005 – member of AIESEC

I joined the local committee of AIESEC in Porto Alegre. I was terrible with people (I could only get things done by fighting people and threatening them). My first assignment was to explain what was AIESEC to a classroom with around 10 people. I barely knew what AIESEC was. I was so nervous I was shaking and my voice failed.

Part of the team that evaluated the students that applied to join AIESEC

At that time my local committee was in rags, there was a severe retention problem and lack of pipeline for leadership. Results were down. Randomness was everywhere. It was not pretty to see. I had 2 choices: quit as most of the people did or apply to local executive board to change that and make it happen. It was a hard decision, because if wanted to be executive board, I would have to quit my well paid job in advertising, because I couldn’t handle both. But I needed the money. What I did? I decided to apply (and I got selected to vice-president human resources of that local committee) and I also decided to open my own advertising agency with other 2 colleagues, so I could manage my own time.

Executive board selection - the people selected are pushed into the pool

December 2005 until December 2006 – first leadership role

Being executive board in AIESEC Porto Alegre (or, how we say it “@PA EB”) was my first intense team experience and probably the biggest leadership development leap I had. From a struggling local committee of 10 people, we raised AIESEC Porto Alegre to a performing LC of 60 members. In the end, we won the AIESEC-Phillips award of best local committee in Brazil. The best part is that AIESEC Porto Alegre became a sustainable local committee that today is much stronger than when we left and their results beat the crap out of our term. Well done, Porto Alegre!

The No Fluffiness executive board

AIESEC Porto Alegre, best local committee of Brazil in the year 2006

In this year my competencies had a jump: I learned a lot on results orientation, emotional intelligence, change management, building and managing a high performing team (I lead a 14 people team), focus, leading by example, coaching, training and facilitation (I was a trainer for around 100 people and I was not shaking anymore!), planning (we even used the balanced scorecard), expectation setting, well… I learned a lot. In this year I was not a common university student anymore, I knew how to get things done. During this period I also learned about finances and general management on my own advertising agency, but I can say that I much more learned in AIESEC and applied what I learned in my business than the other way around.

First time I was a trainer in a national conference

The very first team I lead

December 2006 until December 2007 – national leadership role

I got a glimpse of leadership in the previous year, I wanted more. So I applied to the amazingly fancy title of “National Strategy Leader – Brazilian People Development Framework” (or “NSL BPDF”, AIESEC has awesome titles, no?) which I translate to the non-AIESECers simply as National Learning Coordinator.

During this year as National Learning Coordinator I had basic 2 roles (each of them were 6 months):

1 – support all the AIESEC business units in Brazil to implement a development framework to increase the awesomeness of the experience lived in AIESEC

2 – lead a team responsible for creating talent management tatics and support the implementation of those in all Brazilian AIESEC business units.

And a 3rd role that was part of both roles above: design and deliver conferences/trainings. That’s where I spoke in trainings for around 600 people and I was completely fine with it. How much my comfort zone stretched.

The first national board team days

That's the amount of people I was training in national conferences

December 2007 – failing

In the end of my term as national learning coordinator, I had 2 obvious choices: 1) don’t take a new leadership role and leave the organization or go on exchange; 2) take a full-time leadership role as Vice-President in the AIESEC National Board.

I was convinced that I would take the 2nd option, but then the President of AIESEC in Brazil at the time (Mauricio, that also wrote an awesome post when he left AIESEC) asked me if I was interested for running for president of AIESEC in Brazil, not vice-president. The idea sincerely never stroke my mind until he talked to me. I gave it consideration and I decided to apply. I had faith in my skills that I could get the job done, even though it would be for sure a huge challenge. If I was elected as president of AIESEC in Brazil, I would have the role of delivering the biggest operational growth the organization ever had and also deliver the AIESEC International Congress, which is a more than 500.000 euros budget, at the same time.

3 people applied to be president of AIESEC in Brazil and none got elected. I don’t know why the others lost, but I know why I did: I was arrogant. I believed that my smarts and skills, allied to my logic would lead me to being elected. I forgot the most important lesson I learned in my first leadership experience: people don’t act/think like me, we are all different.

I learned a lot the value of emotional engagement in leadership, too bad it was late.

June 2008 until June 2009 – vice-president human resources in Norway, not exactly a fail, but feeling like a huge failure

After losing the election in Brazil, I decided I didn’t want to be a vice-president in Brazil – it wouldn’t be challenging enough for me, I had done so much in the talent management area nationally in my previous role that I wanted something different. So I decided to apply to vice-president human resources in another AIESEC country! Yes, because AIESEC is an open platform, if you are a member of AIESEC, you can apply to AIESEC anywhere in the world.

I made a list of all the countries that had open application for vice-president HR and the first earliest application deadlines were UK and Norway. I applied to both, got selected to Norway and then withdrew my application from UK. I was now a leader in the AIESEC Norway national board.

That was not an easy year and it made me learn as hell. Besides cultural shock of the country, I discovered that also the organization mentality was very different. AIESEC Norway was ill: severe cash flow problems, underperforming in every area, uncommitted members, huge retention rate problems, etc. It was not the strong AIESEC in Brazil that I had just left.

The 2008-2009 AIESEC Norway executive board

It was so hard (and our leadership was not exactly awesome) that by around January (half a year of our term) the team had a huge break down. With this I learned the importance of the right selection and also building the team early, because if you don’t build it, the team will build itself – without any control and the results might be bad, as they were.

Again in January I had another choice: leave AIESEC Norway, defeated, or rise up once again and apply to President of AIESEC Norway. I took the steeper route, applied to President. And I got selected – this time I didn’t forget the importance of emotional engagement in the vision. What I wanted for AIESEC Norway is to turn it to be AIESEC everyday. Generating the kind of experience that got me until here, every single day. At that point of time, it was only a bold statement. We were far away from it, poor AIESEC Norway.

On my president candidacy speech

Selected the 2009-2010 president of AIESEC Norway

June 2009 until June 2010 – The Big Bang Team, big success!

I am still a bit shy when people talk to me and mention that fact that I am a president. It somehow doesn’t feel right. But besides being uncomfortable with the title, I must say that I never had a better, more challenging and pleasant job than being the leader of AIESEC Norway (or, how we would say it here, AIESEC Norge daglig leder).

I was lucky to selected the most hardcore and resilient team I ever saw. We started also with cash flow problems (only 15.000 in the drift account and average monthly cost of around 100.000), people quitting, lack of performance, uninterested members, etc. In the first 6 months, I think it was the hardest time of my life so far. But my team was simply awesome, we were far far more than the sum of our individualities. We managed to use our strengths, be flexible, put ourselves together and change AIESEC Norway from down to up.

The first team days of the Big Bang team

The things that we did as a team:

•           Break the record of outgoing exchanges raises (previous year was 40+- and in our year was 70+-)
•           Break the 20 years performance record of 40-55 exchanges per term
•           Starting with 15.000 NOK in the drift account and finishing it with 350.000
•           Having operational profit! (thanks to a diversification of revenues and innovative products)
•           Had a major culture change in the organization (a problem that was there for 15-20 years). Today we only have performing members that are in AIESEC for the right reasons and working hard. (2 of the main things here were to fire the underperforming half of our membership and change the financial model.)
•           Had elected better executive boards elected than previous term
•      Exchange happening EVERYDAY (the dream came true!)

Our first national conference - in the DnB Nor Leadership Development Day

AIESEC Norway today is a different organization. Much better. Still with a long way to go to be strong, but we started it. The Big Bang Team name was prophetic - we were indeed the beginning for a new AIESEC Norway.

The first time I felt like leading a country - Fyru Fyru!

It was a pleasure to serve AIESEC Norway, but now it’s time to leave the stage to the new generation, because they also need to learn and take AIESEC to the next level. I know, looking to the new National Executive Board and the Local Committees Presidents that AIESEC Norway 2010-2011 will kick the ass of my Big Bang team in terms of results.

Most awesome team ever

Thanks you so much for my whole experience, I can only be grateful to AIESEC for all those years. They were the best in my life until now.

As musicians, we are very good leaders

Fyru! Fyru! The sound of achievement!