New blog address

Hi,

I have decided to switch to Word Press and move my blog to www.danielvaverka.com

Please save the new link if you want to keep following me as I will not be updating this blog from now onwards.

Best,

Daniel

Making people appreciate radically new ideas

Has it ever happened to you that you were sharing with your colleagues or friends an innovative approach to move things forward but instead of trying to fully understand you, they started asking loads of questions right from the beginning? It has certainly happened to me. Some time ago, I had a chat with one my good friend who was preparing for his upcoming elections and who seemed to have had the same problem. Here is the advice I gave him based on my experiences so far.

The number one question you should be constantly asking yourself is ‘Am I making people feel safe?’

People naturally tend to be wary of anything unfamiliar to them. This started with our mums telling us not to take sweets from strangers and continued with our fear of being confused (and therefore being or appearing to be vulnerable) or, worse still, a fear of being replaced by somebody, or in the case of organizations, something else. None of these situations make people feel safe in their minds.

When people do not feel safe, the number one priority for them is getting in their comfort zones again. In this case, they usually stop listening to what you are saying and start thinking about ways to regain control of the situation. This often means coming up with lots of arguments why what you are saying is wrong. Your chances of winning support for your idea suddenly get slimmer because your audience no longer pays attention to your suggestions and therefore they are not able to fully understand your (possibly sound) proposal.

When presenting innovative ideas, your main priority should therefore be making people feel safe about what you are saying. If you ever get a feeling that people are not feeling safe, stop rambling on and get people back on board before proceeding any further. This will make them feel comfortable and therefore be more receptive to your suggestions. And unless people are able to grasp what you are saying and create a positive mental image of the proposed situation, they are not going to agree to it.

Here are some tips on making people feel safe:

1. Take your audience through a process of building a mental image. Start with what they already know and then use verbs such as imagine or picture to help them build the new image step by step.

2. Think in advance about what might be the main causes of discomfort and make sure you address them yourself early on in your presentation. How would the status quo be changed? Would anybody be worse off? Would it require changes to any old habits? Does it go against the current prevalent thinking?

3. Pause every now and then and simply ask people if they understand what you are saying and if they have any concerns at this stage. Be silent until it gets uncomfortable (at least 6 seconds) to allow everybody to speak up. Make sure to acknowledge your understanding of all concerns voiced and either address them immediately or say that you will get back to this later on. Try remembering the person’s name and when you get to that topic say that XY asked you earlier and that this is how you are addressing her question.

Best of luck presenting your innovative ideas next time aroud for most new things seemed radical the first time somebody dared to propose them!

The only three interview questions

Just read an interesting article of Forbes.com saying that there are really only three questions you can get asked at a job interview. All other ones are just different ways of getting to the same point.

They are:

1. Can you do the job?

2. Will you love the job?

3. Can we tolerate working with you?

From my own experience from both sides of the table, it is very true!

You can read the full article here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgebradt/2011/04/27/top-executive-recruiters-agree-there-are-only-three-key-job-interview-questions/

The role of social enterprises in changing lives - lessons from Indian SWM organizations

I had the pleasure to spend two and half month as an intern in the Waste Venture’s Dehi office. One of my main tasks was conducting a series of interviews with organizations already operating in India’s solid waste management (SWM) sector and producing a report summarizing their experiences. While SWM related, most findings can be extrapolated into general principles applicable to social enterprises active in developing countries. I will share some of them with you in this blog post, adding my thoughts and observations.

Most organizations were happy to schedule a call or a meeting and to answer our long list of questions. We talked mainly with founders or directors (often the same person) and their passion for the cause was very clear. This was the first learning point. People running social enterprises truly believe in what they are doing and social mission, the other element of a double bottom line, is central to all their activities.

This is important for two reasons. Firstly, it is not an easy job. Most of them went through tough times when they were starting up and growing the businesses further is not a piece of cake as well. Their unflattering belief and dedication were often the key to survival of their organizations. Secondly, it helps in ensuring that improving lives does not get sidetracked to increasing profits as there are often ways of making a social business more profitable at expense of some of the beneficiaries. A SWM example would be hiring physically stronger male day labourers for waste collection as opposed to female rag pickers not used to regular working hours.

Demand wallah’s perspective

That is not to say however, that social enterprises should be run like charities with deep pocket donors behind them. On contrary, the major learning point for me was that in terms of interaction with customers, they are business entities as any other. They are offering a certain service and should be supplying the service only if there is demand for it and people are willing to pay for it. Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo in their book Poor Economics talk about supply and demand wallah (wallah is an Indian word for a man doing certain occupation – e.g. chai wallah is a tea vendor) approaches to helping people escape from poverty. While supply wallahs advocate donating goods and provision of services to poor people mostly for free, regardless on whether they want them or not, demand wallahs propose to treat poor people as consumers and let the market cater for their needs. Taking deman wallahs’ perspective, social enterprises are an integral part of this market and should therefore treat poor people as customers.

One of the most successful organizations we interviewed accepts the fact that not everybody is interested in its product – paid door to door household waste collection. If after a reasonable trial period a substantial majority of people in a street is not paying collection fees, it simply stops servicing the whole street, letting the community make a decision. Another organization applies this concept to its recruitment strategy. It does not actively approach informal waste pickers to join the enterprise (i.e. to stop working whenever and wherever they want to and to enter into a semi-formal contract with fixed working hours and determined collection route, a significant lifestyle change) but rather relies only on world of mouth within the waste pickers community. Those that joined the business tell others what it is like and people interested in pursuing this opportunity then approach the company while others are free to decide that this is not something for them.

Changing behaviours

But is leaving everything up to the invisible hand of the market really the best way to achieve social change? The answer is not entirely, and supply wallahs would be quick (and often correct) to point out that the poor can be in a poverty trap which does not allow them to make choices they want. Being poor also sometimes means that people do not have sufficient education and general overview to know what they can aspire for. Finally, they have been living their lives in a certain way and in an extremely unpredictable environment without any cushion to fall back on they might be reluctant to risk any changes to their income generating activities or well established consumptions patterns. It is then up to social enterprises to make use of various nudges, stimuli, to help poor people make decisions which would ultimately improve their lives.

Our interviews gave us two good examples. As mentioned earlier, one organization does not carry out the service unless significant majority of households sign up and pay collection fees. It is then enough if only some households recognize the benefits of hygienic way of waste disposal because these create a peer pressure on the unaware households to pay for the service as well. In this way, the whole neighbourhood benefits from clean streets and the SWM organization achieves 95% fees collection rates enabling it to further expand its services. Another organization has found out how to persuade people to separate organic and inorganic waste. It does not ask the households to ‘segregate’ waste because that creates a perception of being asked to do extra work. Instead, it simply encourages them not to mix man-made and natural waste. While both mean effectively the same, the latter has proved to be a much more successful approach.

On balance, my internship with Waste Ventures has certainly been a very enlightening experience. It has assured me of my belief that social businesses can indeed change lives of poor people in a way that is self-sustainable, scalable and most importantly, it treats people with dignity by making them empowered to be in charge of their own futures as opposed to putting them in a position of mere aid recipients, dependant on external donors.


This post will be featured on Waste Venture's blog Talking Trash on http://www.socialedge.org/blogs/talking-trash

Waste Venture's web page can be found here: http://www.wasteventures.org/

If you are interested in how poor people lead their lives and in the choices they have to be making every day, I can highly recommend the book Poor Economics. You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Poor-Economics-Radical-Rethinking-Poverty/dp/1586487981/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1326689812&sr=8-1

The concept of using nudges and elements of choice architecture to guide people’s behaviours is very well explained in a book called Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. You can buy it here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Happiness/dp/0141040017/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1326689899&sr=1-1

Trust the process

(written in 2011)

I would like to elaborate in this post on my previous entry about emerging markets and their ability to deal with ambiguity. On reflection, the tone of that article sounds to me little too carefree. It is not meant to be entirely so. While I still believe that it is very important to have some hubris it is also essential to possess a plan, a road map for where we are going.

Last year, during my presidency of AIESEC UK, myself and my team were often presented with lot of ambiguity regarding the future. We could not have answers to all the questions we had, all the information we wanted and we could not always anticipate what exactly is going to happen. Relying in such situations purely on hubris would equal to a suicide but we had to be moving on as well. Designing a process of putting together the missing pieces and trusting it subsequently is what we would do on such occasions.

It is OK not to know exactly what is going to happen in the future and to not know how we are going to react to it as long as three things are in place. Firstly we need to be crystal clear about what we are trying to achieve. What does a 'mission accomplished' look like. Secondly, we need to be all on the same page with what the next several immediate steps are. And finally, we need to have a process in place to establish what else we need to do to achieve our goal. This can be a call with an external consultant or a mentor, interviews with key stakeholders or appointing a steering team and consulting it regularly.

At any point all these three conditions have to be fulfilled and if they are, you, your team or your organisation should have the necessary confidence to trust the process and to move ahead. And that is all the hubris one should need.

Emerging markets 2: Ability to deal with ambiguity

(written in 2011)

Following up on my previous article about the emerging world, I am now going to comment on my second main observation, one that I am personally very passionate about. I call it ability to deal with ambiguity. In a nutshell, it is an exciting mixture of carelessness about the future combined with a healthy portion of hubris that things will end up well.

India can be a great example. People here often give the impression that they are unorganised. That they do not seem to give much attention to planning and preparation about what lies ahead. Yet most of the times, when under pressure to deliver, they somehow manage to do what they promised.

I admire this quality of theirs. It is something so many people in the West miss. I do not mean now that people should stop caring about the future, no. One should always have a plan about what to do next. But sometimes, you cannot do your research as extensively as you would like to and you cannot wait for all the information to come in. Sometimes you have to act now otherwise the opportunity is gone. In such moments we have so much to learn from the emerging world.

So next time, when faced with an ambiguous situation and no more time to spare, throw a bit of hubris into the decision making process and trust yourselves that things will end up well. If you believe so, they usually will.

PS: On retrospective, I find this article advocating the idea in a little too careless way. Please article called Trust the Process for more thoughts on the topic.

Emerging markets 1: Risk aversion

(written in 2011)

I am now working in Delhi and usually take local rickshaws, or autos as they call them here, to commute to work. I was once going in one of them back home and was quite afraid as the driver was navigating it on Delhi's congested roads really fast. But I am getting used to it slowly. Having spent some time Mexico and the Middle East earlier this year, September in East Africa and now two weeks in India I came to realise that people in the emerging economies have in general lower levels of risk aversion compared to the western world.

Driving habits in all these counties are horrific for a westerner. Lanes are generally not respected and nor are the speeding limits, drink driving is a norm and you overtake whenever there is at least a slight chance of making it back to your lane without crashing into a car going in the opposite direction.

The same goes for utilisation of space or usable lifetime of things. More people fit into a single bus and more goods are loaded onto a single truck. A van that would have been deemed unusable in the West is still carrying passengers and old wooden scaffoldings can be seen at most construction sites. This drives down capital expenditure and operational costs but in turn it increases the risk of running those processes.

Lower levels of risk aversion are reflected also in living habits. People in Mexico or East Africa live in neighbourhoods where it is not safe to carry your watch during a day and where walking after dawn is almost equal to being in trouble. Some townships in Israel have concrete shields built every 200 meters on a street so that when sirens signal rockets being launched from Gaza people can seek shelter instantaneously regardless on where they are.

But why do people behave in such way? My colleague and friend from Kenya gave me a very simple answer. Because they have to, they have no other choice. If my auto driver was taking too much time to take me from A to B, he would miss out on monies he could have earned by another passenger somewhere else in the meantime. Companies have to innovate in a disruptive way because people would not be able to afford products at their usual costs.

But while the external environment is forcing my driver to be taking risks, I am telling him as a customer to be more careful. Western firms are under pressure to start making bolder moves and companies from emerging markets are learning very well that safety cannot be compromised. It will be interesting to see who learns faster and whether higher aversion to risk is actually an advantage or an disadvantage.

Climbing a mountain

I am writing this post on an overnight bus from Rishikeshh to Delhi, getting back to the metropole after incredible four days in the Himalayas. We tracked up to the Indra Hara Pass, approximately 4,300 meters above the sea level, and back Mclau Dang in three days, spending two nights on the mountain. It was tough. But how tough was it? That depends on one's point of reference.

In September this year, I summited the Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. 5860 meters in altitude, Five days of trekking, sleeping in tents with tenperatures dropping to -15C at night and no shower during the whole time. From about 4500 meters I got some kind of mountain sickness combined with diarhorea which meant I could not eat anything. My muscles were really tired but my mind was still sharp and it dragged the body all the way to the top. Compared to this experience, getting to the Indra Hara Pass was a piece of cake.

We can extend this concept to anything we do. Working 60 hours a week? Feasible compared to 80 hours. Having to find your way around New Delhi? Easy compared to being alone in say, Nairobi.

It is good to have extreme experiences sometimes because they just make everything else seem manageable to us afterwards.

Helping you make good decisions

I have recently read a very interesting book called Nudge by Thaler and Sunstein. It explores our decision making processes and extends it to application in choice architecture. The authors argue that while people are able to think rationally (economically) they not always do so. Here is why, what it means for us and how we can at least partially overcome this problem.

It is either impossible or impractical to precisely calculate the trade offs between our options most of the times. Our previous experiences (intuition) and emotions then come in play and influence what decisions we make. Our rational and emotional selves are pulling us in opposite directions; the right, emotional, side of our brain often being the more dominant one (you know that you should choose A but end up choosing B because your feelings are telling you so). This is how we make sub-optimal choices.

Behavioural economics deals with this phenomena and, unlike rest of the field, it does not pretend that people always make rational choices. If applied, we can then speak of choice architecture. Since we always make our decisions in a certain context, it is possible to influence our choices by designing our decision making circumstances. It is important to say that choice architecture is not about tricking people into certain choices which might not be in their interest. It is about making decision processes easier for people by giving people so called nudges.

Nudges are small and deliberate changes to one's decision making context. They are designed to influence one's emotional decision making process in a direction that the rational system would take. They help people make better judgements while leaving them with the ultimate option to choose. Bellow are six examples of nudges that help ensure people's rational and intuitive/emotional sides are not in conflict.

Defaults
As mentioned earlier, people do not always think about choices they are making. If there are multiple options, we tend to choose the default one (e.i. we do not switch to a different one). When designing a choice context, select the default option carefully as it is likely to end up being the most popular one. If you want people to make an active choice, do not offer an default one but force people to make a decision (e.g. by not allowing them to proceed before they make a selection).

Example: Much higher percentage of people agree to donate organs after their death if the organ donor form has 'Yes I agree to be a donor' as a default option.

Expect error
People can make bad decisions. Moreover, we tend to make the same mistakes over and over again. Try to guess therefore or, if possible, test on a sample of people what decisions they usually make in a situation you are putting them into. When designing a choice context you can then guide people away from making those mistake.

Example: People were forgetting their cards in ATM's when taking cash. A nudge to counter this ensures that a machine does not give us money unless we take our card first. Another great example is a gmail functionality that gives you a warning message if you mentioned word attach(ment) in your email but did not attach anything.

Give feedback
Design a system that tells people if the decisions they are making are good or not. Receiving a feedback is one of the best ways to learn.

Example: Laptops warn us when the battery is low and we need to plug in the charger (e.i. if we make a decision to ignore the decreasing percentage count in the bottom corner of our display and we do not plug in the cord).

Understand mappings
This rather mysteriously called nudge suggests that you should make it as easy as possible for people to understand and evaluate potential outcomes of their decisions before they make them.

Example: Mobile operators having simple tables telling users how much it costs to use their services. This allows us to make a better choice when deciding if we should browse the internet from our mobile phone while abroad or not.

Structure complex choices
When the number of options is too big to evaluate each one individually, we need to apply certain filters. By allowing us to narrow down our domain of selection according to various criteria they make the selection simplier. Think therefore what are the most important criteria for the people you are presenting a decision with and offer them relevant filters.

Example
Amazon allows us to search for books by genre, price or date of publication.

Incentives
Let people know in as far as possible the real costs of their choices and hope it will improve their ability/willingness to think rationally. This nudge is the one closest to conventional economic theory.

Example
Thermostats showing us the cost of energy consumption in real time hence giving us a disincentive to keep the air condition on or treadmills telling how many calories we have burned as we run in a gym.

Happy nudging!

Unconscious intelligence

We just got back from the Masai Mara National Park. We were lucky enough to be there during the great migration when thousands of animals come from the Serengeti park in Tanzania to graze in Kenya. The name Masai Mara means a Masai river. And Masai is a name of the tribe living there. We had a chance to visit their village and to see their traditional pastoral way of life.

What is unique about the Masais is that they are one of the few tribes that have not changed their traditional way of life. They have the same traditions they have had for centuries and while some of them might seem illogical and even funny to us at first sight, they have allowed them to survive until now.

Here are some examples:

Jumping competitions and polygamy.
Masai men often engage in jumping competitions. They do so for two main reasons. Firstly, if there is a pretty girl, more men get together and the one who is able to jump the highest, gets to marry the lady. That is of course providing he has enough cows to give as a dowry (10 cows is a standard). Secondly, if you are a really good jumper and can jump more then approximately 80cm you can pay only 7 cows instead of 10. If you have lot of cows or you are a good jumper you can have more wifes, usually up to five.

Houses with no chimneys
When entering a Masai house, the first impression is that there is almost no light inside and the second one is the heavy smoke that hits you as you go further inside. This is because there is a fireplace in the middle of the hut and only one small window on the side wall, there is no chimney.

When we were discussing these observations with rest of our party over dinner, some people found them illogical and funny indeed. But myself and our friend Klaus from Germany actually appreciated that there must be a reason why they are behaving in this way. Klaus called it the unconscious intelligence.

If you able to jump high, it means you are healthy and physically fit; e.i. you have good genes. If you have lot of cows, you are able to feed your family. It therefore makes sense for such man to have more wifes and kids then man who is weak and will not be able to secure his family (I am not advocating polygamy here, just trying to find logics behind local customs. Also remember, that there is no welfare state in Africa). As for the house, it is able to withstand long periods of heavy rain without any leakage despite being made from wooden branches, grass and cow manure.

I would be the last person to speak against progress and innovation and this article is not meant to defend the traditional ways of doing things. It is to remind us that everything is happening in a certain way for a reason and before trying to change it, we should understand what that reason is. Having understood it, we will be in a better position to judge if there is a better way of doing things and in determining what that way is.

Listening long enough

One of my first blog posts was about the importance of listening with a genuine desire to understand what the other person is trying to tell you. I now had follow up conversation on this with my friend Freddie from Uganda.

The key take away is that when deciding for how long we should be listening to others before proceeding to giving our point of view there are two key questions to answer.

The first one is how much time should I take to listen to others in order to fully understand what they are saying. This is quite an obvious one. The second one is less obvious and I honestly have not thought about it before. It is how much time should I take to listen to the other person so that he/she gets an impression that I have listened long enough. Sometimes we think (correctly or not) that we got what the other person is saying but he/she might be thinking that we could not have understood it yet. Then we need to listen for a bit longer otherwise the person will think that we do not care about what he/she is saying and will disregard our comments. This is very cultural but especially in Africa it is from my experience a very useful concept to consider and apply.

On being a teacher

Freddie, my friend from Uganda told me a great thing when we were at the Kenyan coast together. We were a group of 10 people from various countries and were having some great discussions. Some of them got quite fast paced as we were very passionate about the topics. And then Freddie, who was listening to us for a while, came to me and told me about the benefits of being like a teacher.

A teacher has an audience of kids that all learn things at a different pace. She has to be patient and take the time to explain the topic to all kinds otherwise part of the class will not be able to participate and will not be able to do what the teacher is asking them to do. It is the same with travelling across different cultures. You have to understand that not all people get things as quickly as you and you have to adjust your pace.

Taking time often results in getting a better answer. Be it because of a language barrier, lack of knowledge of the particular topic or simply an inability to think critically (from my experience the type of education one received has a huge influence on this) people often get stressed and just say yes or are unable to respond. Take your time and you will get a better answer.

Respecting the rules

I am now in Nairobi, a great and vibrant city, but one of it's nicknames is Nairoberry (my backpack with a camera got stolen already). Yesterday, I had a great chat about the security situation here with one friend who has been here for 12 weeks already. She told me that it is a very safe place if you do not break the rules.

In the main header of my blog I wrote that life is game and that it has it's rules. My stay in Nairobi is a game as well and I broke one of it's rules. I put the backpack next to my chair instead of having it on my lap while eating out. It was not the Kenyan's who broke a rule by stealing my backpack it was me breaking a rule that you never keep your things out of sight here.

It is a very simple and powerful idea that can be applied to anything. Always get to know the local rules and be willing to follow them. The final takeaway is that the locals never break rules. It is their game and as a visitor, you have to play it. If you break any rule, you might get punished. In which case it is not the local people being bad or treating you unfairly, it is you breaking a local rule.

Here are some other rules I have Iearned here so far:
- look confident and that you know what you are doing
- walk fast on the streets, focused on where you are going and do not look people in the eyes (unless you want to speak to them in which case do so all the time)
- always bargain and offer either a bit less than what it usually costs or one third of what they quote you. Do not be afraid to walk away from an offer
- take time to ask questions, speak slowly. Do not ask yes/no questions because answer to those will always be Yes, ok, no problem...

Complicated things?

I saw these couple lines by Dey Dos recently. They are so true!

"We complicate things too much. You miss someone? Call. Want to meet? Invite. Want to be understood? Explain yourself. Have questions? Ask. Don't like it ? Say it. Like it? State it. Are you in a bad mood? Express it. Want something? Ask in the best possible way to get a 'yes'. If you already have a 'no', take the risk of getting the 'yes'."

Dey Dos is an AIESEC Alumnus and his website is http://deydos.com/

A lesson about supporting innovation from Israel

How come some countries/organizations are more innovative than others? Good question and I would like to offer one insight on the topic having read a book called Start Up Nation, The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle by Dan Senor and Saul Singer and having visited Israel last week.

The book analyses how come a country of just 7.1 million people, less the sixty years old and surrounded by enemies has so many start-ups and technological patents (there are more Israeli NASDAQ companies than from all of Europe combined for example). I was reading the book while travelling around Israel and honestly, with the exception of Jerusalem, it looks like any other Middle Eastern country. The buildings were not too well maintained, there were bits of rubbish at lot of places and the street markets were bursting with fresh food and with local people. I would not have thought that this is one of the most innovative countries in the world by the looks of it.

The book offers lot of good explanations why the Israelis are so successful, the main ones being determination/stubbornness (chutzpah in Hebrew) of local people, cluster-like environment with the government supporting venture capitalism and the fact that everybody has to serve in the army for three years where they gain real life leadership skills while creating a great network for life. That is all true but what fascinated me the most was something else. It was the coexistence of order and disorder.

Coexistence of order and disorder

I think this mix is what makes Israel so unique and cannot be found in almost any other country. Israel is a mature democracy with uncorrupted politicians, good set of laws enforced by effective courts and bureaucrats that do not demand bribes and do not act as obstacle businesses. At the same time, it seemed to me that Israel managed to retain the kind of infectious energy, organic innovation, buzz on the streets whatever you like call it that I have seen before only in emerging economies and that I miss so much in the Western Europe.

Western Europe became organized to a point that this disruptive energy got mostly killed. On the other hand India has plenty of this 'positive disorder' but its legal and bureaucratic systems are painfully slow and corrupt. Similar thing can be argued about China where intellectual property rights are virtually non-existent. It is therefore difficult to innovate, attract sufficient foreign venture capital and successfully monetize ideas in such environments for one reason or another.

The main take-away I got is that any country or organization that wants to grow through innovation has to put basic governance framework in place and make sure it is enforced well. But at the same time it has to leave its people with enough freedom to work organically and to provide them with a space to implement their ideas quickly, fail, start again and finally succeed. They have to let order and disorder coexist together.

You can find out more about the book here: http://www.startupnationbook.com/

Exchanging ideas

I am now reading a book called Start Up Nation about innovation and entrepreneurship in Israel and I found there a nice quote by George Bernard Shaw.

'If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples, then you and I will have an apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.'

What Great Leaders Do

I recently discovered the podcasts section in iTunes and started downloading all sorts of talks and lectures. One of the best ones I have heard so far is a talk called What Great Leaders do by Bob Sutton as part of the Stanford Technology Lectures - Entrepreneurial Though Leaders podcast.

Bob summarises there his book called Good Boss, Bad Boss and in just over half an hour talks us through qualities of both kind of bosses. It is great for anybody thinking about moving into leadership roles or as a call for reflection for those already being bosses. I could certainly relate to a lot of his points from my experience of leading AIESEC UK.

I will let you listen to it yourselves but the three points I liked the most were:

- Good boss acts on his/her intuition as if it was a fact but is open to listening and when new piece of information comes in that proves he is wrong he is willing to change his/her position.

- Good bosses allow and foster what he calls a loving conflict. That seems to be taken a bit from Good to Great by Jim Collins but what it is basically about is that it is all right to have conflicts as long as they are open, do not get personal and finish up constructively for benefit of the team/organization.

- The final one I want to mention is when he actually builds on Good to Great's concept of great organisations having a BHAG (a Big Hairy Audacious Goal - that is a statement which sets an ambition for the company for the next 20-30 years and which looks almost impossible to achieve without strong determination and a bit of hubris). Bob says that BHAGs freak people out and suggest that the best way to overcome this feeling is to break it into small and tangible steps which can be achieved quickly and create a sense of success to get the organisation moving towards achieving it's BHAG.

All in all, you would have probably heard most of the things Bob talks about before (and he himself acknowledges that this book is his take on the topics having read lots of various journal articles) but he summarises them very well and they are so important that you should hear them again anyways if you want to be/are managing others.

You can find it here: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=80867514

A Meaningful stretch

Last Friday was my last day in the office as the President of AIESEC UK. It's been a great year and it also marked an end to my involvement with AIESEC UK for the time being.

I was at a conference in the Mexico City in February and together with outgoing presidents of other AIESEC chapters around the world, we were discussing what leaving the organisation will mean to us. All of us and our teams at the national offices were living AIESEC 24/7 for the past year or more. We were responsible for leading the organisation, bringing up new generations of members and ensuring that we stay relevant. We were surrounded by like-minded people, we were having an impact and we were enjoying it.

So the question What's next? was crucial and in many ways also a scary one. Will we be able to find anything as good and fulfilling as AIESEC anytime in the future again?

I approached it by trying to look at it from a more holistic perspective. What is it that makes this experience so unique? I identified two key elements that can be summarised as a 'meaningful stretch'.

A stretch is something that challenges you, something you are not familiar with and you have to learn how to either execute it or delegate it.

Meaningful is something that is achieving a positive impact. It can be impact on the environment, the people around you or simply yourselve.

The questions then stops being what else can be as good as AIESEC and it becomes what is my next meaningful stretch. We should be asking ourselves this question whenever we are finishing one period of our life or whenever we are just feeling a bit rusty in whatever we are doing. Life should a be a series of meaningful stretches and we should not be afraid to start from a scratch when switching from one to another.

Note:
I discussed this concept with one of my former directors at AIESEC UK. He liked it a lot but told me that the problem with finding a stretch is that we often do not what all the possibilities are. We then choose a stretch only from a domain of all stretches known to us. In reality there are many more options that we are not aware of. When thinking about our next meaningful stretch, do a proper research and do not just get comfortable with options known to you at the time.

Getting to the pot of gold

Who of you would like a pot of gold? Or your dream job, a good degree, a trip around the world or just anything else that you really want to achieve? Well the story has it that a pot of gold is usually at the end of a rainbow. Me and my fried, JC from AIESEC LSE, once came up with a framework to set and achieve your goals that we called the Rainbow. I was speaking about this concept at one conference some time ago and I would like to share it with you today.

When we decide to do something, we usually think only about the end result. A good job, a party or any other idea we might have. But how many times do we really make it happen? Way too often, it is just something we talk about, but we do not act on it. Why? Because it is too intangible, too distant, our brain simply stops working at the thought of it and we give up. Sounds familiar? At least that is what I have seen with myself and with many other people that I have worked with.

From my experience, it is not possible to get to the pot of gold with just one giant step. Yet people are often searching for that one step, that one action that will make things happen and that will get them where they want to be. When they do not find that one step, they give up. They forget that in order to get to a pot of gold, one needs to walk on a rainbow.

How does one walk on a rainbow?

There are three key rules:
1. Take only very small steps.
2. At the beginning it is uphill and therefore very difficult.
3. By the end it is downhill and therefore slippery, one can easily fall.


1. Take only very small steps

Break the task into a series of very small actions. Make them as simple as possible. The most important thing it to get walking, to take the first step. Do something easy today, that will set you on the track. And then take one small step every day towards your pot of gold. It can be as simple as calling a friend for advice, reading an article on the topic or writing down your thoughts. It does not matter that much what it is as long as you take one small step every day.

2. At the beginning, it is uphill and therefore very difficult.

It will not be easy at the beginning. The goal will seem to be too far away, too unrealistic and it will also be difficult to actually figure out how to get there. But that should not put you off. Just keep walking, one little step at a time.

3. By the end it is downhill and therefore slippery, one can easily fall.

And then you finally figure out how to do it. You get to the middle of the rainbow, you get halfway there and the pot of gold seems to be closer than ever. But be careful at this point. Lot of people think they are almost there, they start running towards they end goal (read they get comfortable about achieving it) but because the rainbow is now downhill and slippery, they fall. They underestimate the situation, they stop focusing, they get off the track. It is therefore important to keep taking those little steps every day, one at a time, until you reach your pot of gold. Only when you are holding it safely in your hands, you can have rest. Unless you spot a new pot of gold in the meantime obviously.

Next time I will write a post about what I have recently read in a book called Getting Things Done by David Allen and what nicely ties with this concept.

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!