With more freedom to take own decisions, the ground level will follow orders better (?)

It may sound countersense, but let’s talk about one of the most hierarchical organizations ever: the US military.

The military is (thankfully) not the kind of organization where you want individuals using a lot of their common sense to decide what to do next. Freedom + guns = dangerous. That’s why every order can eventually be traced back to the President of the US. But, on the other hand, a common military saying is “no plan survives the contact with the enemy”, which is quite obvious for anyone who planned anything: things go wrong, unexpected stuff happens, key resources become unavailable. Also you cannot stop an ongoing battle to call your general if the plan doesn’t work – “Eagle 1, here is Loser 6, you said to use the tanks to destroy point A, but, hey, the tanks are destroyed, what do we do? Over.” That wouldn’t work. The military needs to empower the people on the ground to take decisions - and it needs to be the right decisions. So how does the military mix empowerment of the ground level and rigid hierarchy of cascading orders?

The military uses something called Commander’s Intent. It is a crisp, no nonsense and plain talk statement that describes the desired outcome (goal!) of any order/plan. The commander’s intent appears on every page of any briefing. The idea behind the Commander’s Intent is that the plan is a way of accomplishing something, it is not a means in itself. So if the plans go wrong (and they go very often) the people executing the orders can take decisions based on what is the purpose of the operation and change it.

An example of a Commander’s Intent could be: “my intent is to have Third Battalion on Hill 4305, to have the hill cleared of enemy, with only ineffective remnants remaining, so we can protect the flank of Third Brigade as they pass through the lines.” With this, it is quite easy to take decisions: “I am the only one left standing in Third Battalion, should I retreat or try to disable the enemy artillery in Hill 4305? I should disable the artillery, because I need to protect the flank of the Third Brigade.”

The same thing could/should be done in business, NGO and government. If the people on the ground, closer to the factory machines and clients, are empowered to take the right strategic decisions by themselves, then a company’s top level will have much more success in implementing its strategy.

But, to enable people to take decisions on the ground level, they need first to understand very clearly the Commander’s (or CEO’s) Intent. That’s where most organizations fall short. You seen it all: bulky mission statements full of buzz words (“maximize profits while delivering sustainable solutions to stakeholders”), abstract strategies that lack “concreteness” to the people executing the intent (“reach world class customer service”) and all the blab la bla that leaves people guessing or, worse, taking the wrong decisions.

But how to deliver clear messages that empowers the ground level to act correctly? One I talked before, being concrete to avoid the Curse of Knowledge, the others, well, you can read Made to Stick or wait for my good will to keep blogging about this awesome book. 

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.

Crowd accelerated innovation

Brilliand TED talk by Chris Anderson (founder of TED), where he speaks about how web videos can power (and accelerate) innovation all around the world. Very inspiring, specially for me, when in the end he mentions (and shows) how crowds can actually improve everyone's life by learning and teaching.

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!

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?

My own AIESEC 2010

There was this session on International Congress to understand to ourselves what the global AIESEC 2010 vision means to each one of us. It was a very inspiring session with the virtual presence of the previous 5 AIESEC International Presidents: Brodie, Dey, Gabiza, Juan and, of course, Aman.

It was especially cool to see what Brodie had to say, since he is such a legendary icon for us AIESECers. In the last years, there was no one (and no team) in AIESEC so celebrated as he as President of AIESEC International and his team, the ones who were responsible for the process of the vision 2010 creation in the International Congress 2005, in India.

I am totally part of the 2010 generation. When I joined AIESEC, back in April 2005, my first regional conference (organized by my Committee, AIESEC Porto Alegre, Brazil) had a huge focus on the AIESEC 2010 vision. I feel really connected to it since them: when I was vice-president in my local committee, our team used the 2010 to create our own vision, when I was in the national board of Norway the same thing and, obviously, now that I am leading AIESEC Norway, the national vision is 100% based on the Global AIESEC 2010 vision.

To connect even more, on the session we were asked to create our own version of AIESEC 2010, a personal state, something that you will believe it's 2010 for you. And here is mine (rough words maybe, but the feeling is there):

I want to lead AIESEC Norway to accomplish 3 things:
- Achieve 99 exchanges realized
- Have star members living a 5 stars experience
- Be a financially sustainable organization

Personally, I want to be the CEO that AIESEC Norway needs to achieve the above and be admired for leading by example and supporting my team (my vice-presidents and my local committee presidents) to achieve together our goals and vision.

AIESEC Norway 2009-2010 vision (as presented in ScaLDS)

This is AIESEC Norway: (if you can't see the video, go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnNod7EWGRA)



I know I've been an extremely bad blogger. I am not prioritizing the blog at all - but I can say why: because I LOVE my job and I dedicate a lot of time to it.

What matters to me

By someone else, via Juan's blog:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF5g2i8_HM8

The joy of achieving what really matters

End of year, tomorrow is Christmas eve and I decided to review my life plan - or, how I like to call it: my Happy Life Map (yeah, it sound very cheesy, but it's just like that to me, a map to be happy and feel good about myself and others). The first time I started it, in 2005, it was dozens of pages with lots of stuff. In the end, I could never focus on what really mattered. Then I started simplifying it more and more (making it less and less extensive). Now it has 3 pages (but if you removed all the inspiring quotes that are in there, it would be 2 pages).

Now I just put there my mission (what I consider it to be at th moment at least) and some small phrases with vision for each key area in my life, like career, family, friends, own behaviour, love, leisure and so on. And in each of these areas of life I put 2-3 milestones. Some are more long term, others more short term, depending on what I think is appropriate.

I was reviewing it today and my eyes sometimes were shining of happiness, after looking how I achieved at least half of the milestones (around 80% of what I desired to achieve in 2008). These are the things that really mattered and it's very very good to feel I am walking in the right direction. Of course, the path to happiness never ends, so I will keep walking, while enjoying the view. Of course in some parts, I had some drawbacks, for example, love, but that's usually the way it is to me: when it relates to people I am not that good, but I am improving. Being concious of the need for change is the beginning of change.

Now that I refreshed a little each vision (to be more accurate to what I really want) and reviewed the milestones, now it’s time to make the plan. Be prepared, here I come, mr. 2009!

The Power Of Nightmares

From Wikipedia:

The Power of Nightmares, subtitled The Rise of the Politics of Fear, is a BBC documentary film series, written and produced by Adam Curtis. Its three one-hour parts consist mostly of a montage of archive footage with Curtis's narration. The series was first broadcast in the United Kingdom in late 2004 and has subsequently been broadcast in multiple countries and shown in several film festivals, including the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.

The films compare the rise of the Neo-Conservative movement in the United States and the radical Islamist movement, making comparisons on their origins and claiming similarities between the two. More controversially, it argues that the threat of radical Islamism as a massive, sinister organised force of destruction, specifically in the form of al-Qaeda, is a myth perpetrated by politicians in many countries—and particularly American Neo-Conservatives—in an attempt to unite and inspire their people following the failure of earlier, more utopian ideologies.

The Power of Nightmares has been praised by film critics in both Britain and the United States. Its message and content have also been the subject of various critiques and criticisms from conservatives and progressives.

Check out the 3 parts of it (English audio with Portuguese subtitles):

The Power Of Nightmares - Part I
The Power Of Nightmares - Part II
The Power Of Nightmares - Part III

Documentaries are, as any story telling, the view of someone about something. Usually you should not take it too seriously, probably you have to look to other information from people that disagrees. But, hey, anyway, it's one view and is valid as information. Then you judge whatever you want. Maybe you want just to take it as true, maybe you want to look for other truths.

In the end, nothing is true and everything is permitted.

Obama won, but his biggest challenge is not economy, war, foreign policy or anything like that

As reported all around, this week senator Barack Obama won the presidential elections in the USA. It was an astonishing victory, predicted all around as certain, but still celebrated as hell everywhere (electing Schwarzenegger and reelecting Bush might have taught the world that anything can happen when the subject is USA elections).

The hype from the campaign has not passed yet, Obama's face is still front page on several publications and, of course, topic of a lot of online stuff, both serious and non-serious, such as the game Super Obama World and the just released change.gov - this last one, a brilliant continuation of the amazing online campaign, where people can give sugestions to the elected president, keep track of what is happening through a blog and much much more. It's hard to deny the brilliance of Obama's campaign, engaging and interacting with people in the best spirit of what is marketing in the online community age. That campaign will for sure be awarded and remembered in the field as a groundbreaking one.

I don't intend to be the one who ruins the pro-Obama followers party (and I would not have enough influence to do that even if I wanted), but I am scheptical with the saviour of the US and the world role that is being given to Barack Obama.

I truly believe in change, in hope, in having great leaders impacting positively a whole society (if I didn't, why would I be in AIESEC, if that's exactly what AIESEC aim?) One good example of this possibility is the recently awarded nobel peace price Martti Ahtisaari, who was part of AIESEC. But, really, even if Obama is the one who will lead USA from the amazing bad influence to the world it has become, it won't be easy. Most especially, if he is the leader to bring change to this sick society, he will need followers, he will need other leaders, he will need all kinds of sacrifices and compromises, he will need loads of commitment from a wide array of people with very different agendas.

And what scares me most is if people are not ready/willing to give all this for the sake of the world.

I am scared of this because I saw the hype when Lula (president of Brazil) was elected as the saviour of Brazil from corruption, from poverty and all that is sick in my country. I don't intend to compare the semi-literate Lula with Obama, because the differences are obvious, but what we have to consider is that no one leads alone. And when we are talking about leading change, the main barriers are not the problems we want to change, but to change people's mindset, to change the day to day actions that lead us to the very current state we want to change.

To lead the change in the world is to change ourselves, not change the leaders we follow.

Are the republicans and democrats willing to change the way they do politics (in a manicheist way)? Are americans willing to change the way the live? Are the gun lobbists able to be pro the end of the war? Are the companies willing to sacrifice profit for common good? The list goes on, the possibilities for conflict of interest are endless.

So, my final and only question to Obama would be:

Are you able to change people's mindset?

Change.gov

Copyright laws - another program that will fail to change the vision

Canadian border guards to check iPods for infringment.

The federal government is secretly negotiating an agreement to revamp international copyright laws which could make the information on Canadian iPods, laptop computers or other personal electronic devices illegal and greatly increase the difficulty of travelling with such devices. The deal would create a international regulator that could turn border guards and other public security personnel into copyright police. The security officials would be charged with checking laptops, iPods and even cellular phones for content that "infringes" on copyright laws, such as ripped CDs and movies.

The guards would also be responsible for determining what is infringing content and what is not.

Canadians, time to write your MP! This was on the front page of the daily tabloid in Vancouver, so hopefully Jim Prentice will be forced to actually consult the public before he sells us all up the river.

Programs X Vision

Never read (to my shame) those Daniel Quinn books, but one thing that Henrique Vedana told me about it will be forever in my mind: the difference between program and vision.

Basically, the idea is that if you can put in a river branches, trash, grass, etc there and it will indeed create problems for the river to flow. But the river will keep flowing somehow, the water is strong. All the things you have put on the river, are “programs”, they create problems, but they don’t bring up a definitive solution. We are surrounded by programs (doomed to fail) against drugs, crime, global warming, you name it.

But the river is still flowing.The other type of solution, the one that really works, is vision. In the river analogy, the vision is the river flowing. Just by changing the river’s flow, the vision, you can really solve problems.

That doesn’t mean that programs are not necessary, for example for short-term counter measures, but they will eventually let the river flow if the vision is not changed.

Why do we focus on process that don’t achieve the end goal?

Why do we keep creating programs?

For me, changing the flow of this river is why the world needs leaders.

Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

Very interesting lecture (a bit long, but you don't even notice the 1h) from this guy who is dying from a cancer and wished to give his last lecture. The lecture is about how he achieved his childrood dreams, how he helped others to do that and what he learned in the way. The things he say is kind of self help, and you may or not like it, but what is really interesting is how he delivers the lecture, capturing people's attention with mastery. I definitelly want to learn how to do that - and as I can see, it's a lot about telling stories. People like stories.

It's personally very inspiring because I want to be like this guy myself - NOT dying like a middle-aged man with cancer, but to help people to learn, to improve education by having less books and more group work, to facilitate people in achieving their dreams (what I prefer to call, fulfilling their potential).

I hope I can break, walk around or bend all barriers to do that.