Solving a problem

Solving problems is lot of fun. It gives us chances to be creative, implement new strategies or engage in new activities. But as I have recently realized that is only the easy bit in problem solving and on its own it would not take us too far.

What is far more important (and sometimes less fun) is to understand what has caused the problem in the first place. Think and ask about all possible reasons why someyhing went wrong. And it is important not to get comfortable with first couple reasons that spring up but to dig deeper and deeper until we get a reasonable understanding of all domains that could be potentially be related to a problem.

Some time ago I heard an interesting story. One of the problems they had in Washington DC was very high costs for cleaning memorials from bird faeces. The problem we have is dirty memorials which are very expensive to clean. For possible solutions, you can start thinking about introducing new cheaper cleaning techniques or about turning to various bird scarers and that is what some were proposing. But when they looked at what had really been causing the problem, they saw that there was much simpler solution at hand. The memorials were dirty, because there were lot of birds around. There were lot birds, because there was lot of insect. There was lot of insect, because there were many lights pointing at the memorials in the evening and at night. So the solution was to simply turn the lights on two hours later every day.

The thought process was following:
1) What is causing the problem? - answer - A.
2) What is causing A? - answer - X.
3) What is causing X? - answer - M.
4) The final solution is than preventing M.

What I have realised lately is that preventing M is often much cheaper and easier that preventing A.

So next you will be facing a problem, do not get immediately excited about coming up with possible solutions, try to understand the real causes first. It might take more time in the short run, but it will definitely pay off in the long run!

Let the journey begin!

Me and my team have yesterday officially started our term as the Member Committee of AIESEC UK. It is a feeling of great enjoyment but also a great responsibility.

In my closing speech at LDS, I mentioned that this is 'our' year. There have been generations of AIESECers looking after this organization before us and I am sure that there are many more generations of AIESECers to come. But in 1011, it is our time to take care of AIESEC UK. And by us I mean the whole of AIESEC UK.

The organization can consider itself very lucky to have such a great group of LCPs, VPs, managers, NSTs and team leaders at the local level in the coming year. It will be a challenging experience for all of us, but I have no doubt in our ability to lead the LCs and the whole of AIESEC UK forward.

It will be a year of Unlocking Potential; both on our personal and on the organizational level. Our team motto is See it. Believe it. Achieve it. and I cannot wait until the STEPS conference to tell you together with my team more about our vision for AIESEC UK in 1011!

There is one amazing year ahead of us, so lets get cracking with it and enjoy it before it is over!

My MCP elections closing speech

My closing speech from LDS 2010 in Nottingham during the election for the national president (MCP) of AIESEC UK:

I would like to share some of my inner feelings with you at the beginning. When I was sitting in your place two years ago, I would not have imagined that I would be standing here one day, running for the President of AIESEC UK. I would not have imagined I would have the courage to apply for the position one day. I would not have imagined I would be confident enough to be standing here today, giving a speech to the plenary of AIESEC UK.

But I am here today. I am here today doing things I would not have imagined possible two years ago. And this is what I like about the organization. AIESEC has really changed me as a person. There were people who introduced me to the organization, there were people who in their free time delivered sessions to me and who toughed me all the necessary skills, there were people who supported me and there were people who were making sure that this organization keeps going ahead. And I am very grateful to all those people and to AIESEC UK as such.

And therefore, after being in the organization for more than two years and after gaining so much from it, I feel obliged to be giving back to it now. To allow more young people to have the same life changing experience I have had. This is the main reason why I am here today. This is the main reason I am running for the President of AIESEC UK.

You are here today, because you want to learn something new, you want to challenge yourself, you want to develop yourself, you want to discover the world and you want to have fun along the way.

AIESEC UK is here because the world still needs us. There is still a great need out there for promoting intercultural understanding and not only for promoting it but for making it a reality as well. There are still lot of young people in the world who never had a chance to work in a foreign country and who never had the chance to experience a culture different to the one they grew up in. Our society still needs young and ambitious people who are not afraid to stand up and to make the world a better place.

This is a huge commitment for us and we must make sure that in the future we will be able to fulfil it. But it is not only the future that should be driving us. It is also our past.

There were generations of AIESECers before us who were working hard to build the organization and who devoted lot of their time to making it the successful organization it is today. I met some time ago the founder of AIESEC UK. He was already an old man with great hair in his seventies but his face and his eyes were still full of energy and passion and he was telling me about all the difficulties they had to face when they were starting up in London 55 years ago. During my internship with Ernst & Young this summer my manager was proudly telling me that he was the LCP of AIESEC Manchester while he was at university and there are hundreds and thousands more people living this country who are still AIESECers in their hearts. And therefore we must never forget how much energy they put into building this organization and we must make sure they would be feeling proud of what we are doing today.

I have already talked about the future and I have already talked about the past, so what is left?

The present. Yes there were many generations of AIESECers before us and I am sure there are many more generations of AIESECers to come after we leave the organization. But we must realize that right now, we are the generation that is in charge of AIESEC UK. This is our time and we must make the most out of it so that ten, twenty years later when we will be thinking about our time spent in AIESEC we will be able to look back and say ‘Yes, we did a good job’.

This is our time to carry forward the ideas and the values which have been shaping us for the past fifty five years.

This is our time to let other young people discover what AIESEC has to offer them and let them have the same kind of life changing experiences we are living right now.

This is our time to lead through exchange. We are the generation 2010, we are the generation which will achieve the goals we have set for the organization 5 years ago and we are the generation which will come up with a new vision and a new set of goals for the future.

This is our time to keep coming up with new ideas and initiatives which will take AIESEC UK forward.

This is our time to take care of AIESEC UK and I would like to be there next year doing the job with you.

It's exam time!

Yes, it's that time of year again... That means that until June 8th when I finish there will probably not be any new posts on this blog.

Good luck if you are having exams now as well!

Things are not just white, they are at least black and white!

I am now studying for my International Financial Management exam. It is basically about trading domestic currencies for foreign currencies and about analyzing the implications of such trades. And here is the trick that I am having a bit of hard time with. The implications completely differ, depending on from which perspective we look at it. A trade can cause an appreciation of an exchange rate from domestic perspective but the same trade also causes depreciation of the rate from a foreign perspective and vice versa.

And than I realised that it is actually a very good analogy to a real life. Things are often very different depending from which perspective we are looking at them. While we alvays look at things from our perspectives we often do not try to understand things also from the perspectives of others. And it is a pity, because completely new feelings, ideas and opinions often emerge!

What kind of game are you playing?

I am shocked every day to see how many people are wasting their lives. How many people are just surviving from day to day, without any vision of what they want to achieve and not knowing where they want to go.

Time and life is a perishable good. Once you waste an hour, a day or a year of your life, it will not come back. And there are so many things one could have done in that time, so much progress one could have made and so much impact one could have had on the world around us.

I have been thinking about this for quite some time already but what I have seen today has really shocked me. I read a blog on a Czech news server ihned.cz about a new popular webpage www.chatroulette.com. It is apparently a new internet hit. It allows you to have a video chat with a random person and when either one of you get bored, you just click 'next' for another person and the machine connects you automatically to whoever is free. It's random, just like the russian roulette hence the name. People enjoy having the power of being able to dismiss somebody with a click of a button. There are about 20.000 people online on average at a time.

So I gave it a try. During the first two minutes I got next'ed on average every three seconds, mostly by single man staring at a screen or engaging in rather private activities. But than suddenly the screens stopped changing...

Life is a game. But lot of people are playing a russian roulette. They waste their time and they waste their lives... Think about what kind of game are you playing.


Article from The New York Times about chatroulette.com with a letter from it's 17yr old founder:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/chatroulettes-founder-17-introduces-himself/
This is the blog on ihned.cz (in Czech only): http://blog.ihned.cz/machacek/c1-43582700-nextni-ho-ruska-ruleta-na-webu

Our (in)ability to pay attention.

Information on almost any topic has never been as abundant as readily available to us as it is now. We live just couple clicks away from our emails, the latest news on BBC, our friends’ lives on Facebook, music videos on YouTube and lot of other more or less important stuff elsewhere on the internet. In this environment, lot of people are finding it increasingly difficult to focus only on one task and to pay attention to it.

Silicon Valley based technologist and blogger Mike Elgan argues that while during the industrial era it was hard work that lead to success in nowadays information age it is an ability to pay attention that takes us forward. And he is right! I can see it on myself and on my friends when studying for exams these days. The latest issue of the Economist very aptly notes that ‘trying to hold the attention of people with BlackBerrys at a meeting is like trying to teach Latin to delinquent teenagers.’ Such meetings can than go on for hours even though given full attention of all participants, the issue under discussion might have been solved in much shorter space of time.

However we should not get too depressed about our perceived inability to pay attention because of the current information ‘overkill’. As the Economist continues to point out, ‘Socrates’s bugbear was the spread of the biggest ever innovation in communications – writing. He feared that relying on written texts, rather than oral tradition would create forgetfulness in learners’ souls.’ And therefore as the generations before us learned to utilize writing to drive further progress, we should attempt to learn how to harness the unprecedented amount information available to us for our benefit rather than shut ourselves from it.

The ability to focus and to pay attention however remains our priority and that reminds me of the fact that I should probably get back to my revision...

Thanks to Lydia from AIESEC Ghana who pointed me to Mike Elgan and to his article on this toppic. You can read the full article at http://www.internetnews.com/commentary/article.php/3793561/Work-Ethic-20-Attention-Control.htm

The other article in question is Don't shoot the messenger, The Economist, May 15th - 21st 2010

And how about debriefing?

I'm the boss, I'm the king,
meeting, briefing, brainstorming..

That's how one recent Czech song describes the life of a busy nowadays manager. We live in a very fast-paced world and in our daily quests to do as many things as possible, we sometimes forget to slow down, to take a step back and to think about what we have recently been doing and what have we learned from it. To take some time off for debriefing!

We make lot of our decisions subconsciously using our intuition or we often rely on others to make decisions instead of us. By asking the right kind of questions debriefing allows us (and the other people around us) to understand what has just happened more in depth and to use it as a valuable experience for our future. It can also be a great bonding exercise.

I debrief often just on my own, with my team or, when running a seminar, with a large group of people.

Debriefing your own.
After an interesting experience I like to take time just for myself and to reflect of what I have just done and heard, to try to understand things beyond their face value and to try to put them down. My friend Sebastian likes to draw mind-maps of his leanings, somebody else writes a diary (or a blog!) and other people just sit down and think in their minds. The bottom line is that we draw simple and memorable conclusions of what we have just experienced so that we can use them in the future.

Debriefing with a team.
Regular debriefings are in my opinion one of the most important signs of well functioning teams. I like to take a time off with my team when we just sit down together somewhere quiet and we reflect our past experiences. We try to create a relaxed and supportive atmosphere in which we can openly share how we felt, we give each other feedback and at the same time we think how we come across as a team and how much impact are we having. It is very important to understand each others opinions on these issues and each others working styles as it such understanding can easily prevent future conflicts.

Debriefing with a large group.
Debriefing with lot of other people you do not know very well can be a powerful exercise if done properly. It is again important to create an open and supportive atmosphere in which people will feel comfortable to stand up and share with others what they have learned and how they felt/feel.

In AIESEC we often organize conferences where we run sessions for our members to inspire them and to develop their skills set. One of my favourite ways of structuring these sessions is to let the delegates play a game which puts them them in a certain situation - e.g. tests their team-working, leadership and time-management skills - and than let them debrief by giving them a set of questions to answer firstly in small groups and than with everyone.

This is very effective for three reasons. Firstly, as I mentioned earlier, people do not often realize what they have just learned - saying it out loud forces them to think about it and to therefore draw some specific conclusions about it. Secondly they might not be sure if their learning is the right one - they are self-doubtful about the experience they just had. Than it is very useful if they hear reflexions of others. Finally, debriefing in a large group can get very emotional and therefore it contributes a lot to bonding among the group.

And a final tip, it's best to ask open questions for the purpose of debriefing. That is questions starting with How, Why etc.

So next time you will be busy with meeting, briefing, brainstorming try to find some time for debriefing as well!

Give it your maximum!

It is now exam time at my university. Some people are studying more, some less and some people gave up on getting good grades all together. Here is what I think about it and here is the general lesson I have drawn so far from my experience:

If you decide to do something, give it your maximum - otherwise you are wasting your time and often also time of other people around you. If you succeed, it has paid off. If you fail, you will fail with pride and with a good feeling that you did the best you could have done. If you have never failed, it means that you have never stratched yourslef, it means that you have never taken up challenges that were bigger than you.

If you failed doing what others would not have even dreamed about and if you gave it your maximum, you still have the right to be proud of yourself. Than it is the right time to move on to another big thing! Good luck!

What's your tribe?

Or rather, what are your tribes? Because we are all members of several tribes, may be we just do not think about it in that way.

I came in touch on several occasion with the concept of ‘tribes’, got to like it a lot and therefore I would like to write a bit about it today. As far as I know the term was first coined by Seth Godin in his book Tribe (you can google him, he is a really famous blogger) or by David Logan - see the video bellow.

A tribe is a social group with certain attitudes, opinions and more or less well defines membership criteria. We are all members of at least couple tribes. A tribe can be our close friends, our colleagues, a sports team or an NGO we are part of. Our tribes and the people in them define us, shape us and in my opinion they to a large extend predict where we will be going in the future.

How do they influence us? Each tribe has certain attitudes and mindsets that shape thinking of its tribal members. And I think that the right mindset is the most powerful asset one can have. It defines our personality, our ambitions and the impact we want to have.

David Logan distinguished five main types (stages) of tribes according to the attitudes of their membership.

1. “Life Sucks”
2. “My Life Sucks”
3. “I’m Great (But You Aren’t)”
4. “We’re Great”
5. “Life is Great”

Have a look at this video:




I thought couple questions would help to debrief on the video. Here they are:

1. What tribes am I part of?

2. How are my tribes influencing me? What kind of attitudes am I getting, what am I learning, what is the impact they are allowing me to have?

3. What is my impact on my tribes? How am I contributing to them, how am I adding value to my tribes / would they be any different without me?

4. What tribes do I want to be part of? Where do I want to go and what tribes will help me get there?

Comix strip

I am now studying for my Financial Statements Analysis and Security Valuation exam. And I just found this good comix strip...

What can you do in one minute?

Have you ever thought what can you do in one minute?

Probably not much... but that is often enough to start something big! Every great idea and every great action had its first one minute...

...and once you have started something it just becomes a continuum of single minutes, one after another...

Have a look at this cool video that I found on YouTube's channel of AIESEC Brazil!

What do you see when you look at a map of the world?

What do you see when you look at countries on a map of the world? Do you focus on the black lines determining national borders or the blue lines showing rivers? Or are you trying to locate the small dots representing capital cities? And how about all the green/brown space in between those lines and dots? Have you ever thought about what is going on there?

I had yesterday a nice skype chat with my friend from AIESEC Kenya. We were remembering the great time we had at IPM in Tunisia, an international AIESEC conference, couple months ago. There were 250 young people from 107 countries across the world and one afternoon we did a really cool exercise which showed us the map of the world from a different perspective.

Imagine a big rectangular room representing a map of the world. And now imagine people from all those 107 countries sitting within that room according to where their countries are located. I was representing UK so I was sitting in the middle of the room, near to the top. Only the guys from the Nordic counties were sitting behind me, slightly towards the left. Oh, and than there was Teitur from Iceland, he was sitting alone behind me, more on the right. When I looked in front of me towards right, I could see my friends from Latin America sitting in their respective positions. Right in front of me, well behind the guys from Spain and Portugal, the black continent was sitting. When I looked more towards the left, I could see the Europeans and than little bit lower, my friends from the Gulf were sitting in the middle of the room. Further away there were all the delegates from Asia and Australia.

I did not see any black or blue lines, I did not see any dots. All I could see was just people, people just like me. When looking at the map of the world, we often focus only what we see on the paper. But behind that piece of paper, there are nearly 7bn of people living their daily experiences, just like me or you!

What should the map of Europe look like.

The Economist has designed a new map of Europe! It has changed location of countries taking into account national stereotypes, current realities and other interesting issues.

Have a look here for full commentary: http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=16003661">

Do you have a Jugaad?

In other words, how to turn lack of resources into an advantage?

The Economist has recently published a special report on innovation in emerging markets. I had a chance to discuss it with an alumnus of AIESEC India who is now doing his MBA in LBS and he told me more about the concept of Jugaad.

Jugaad basically means a solution in Hindi or as The Economist puts it - making a do with what you have and never giving up. Indians are often faced with lot of resources constraints but most of the times they manage to overcome them by radically reengineering the process or the final product.

This phenomena is starting to be called a frugal – constraint-based – innovation and jugaad is starting to be coined as a management term. The Economist compares this to a nowadays equivalent to the introduction of mass production by Ford at the beginning of the 20^th century or to the ‘lean’ revolution which took place in Japan in the 1970’s.

So next time you are faced with lack of resources to realize your idea, what is going to be your Jugaad?

Just for illustration:

A good example of frugal innovation is Tata Nano. A bunch of recently graduated engineers who have never build a car before was asked to design one. The result was the world's cheapest car.

There is quite a lot of leg space actually... :)