Daniel's blog

>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

>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.

>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!

>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!

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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.

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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!

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

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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