Daniel's blog

>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.’

>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.

>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.

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!

>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

>

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

>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!

>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!

>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?

>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!