Graduation ceremony was 2 days ago, I got my degree, I have no papers to read, no business cases to stugggle with, no skype appointments with my team. I have even lost the gilty feeling that came from reading a book just for pleasure... Could it be true, could the MBA over?
Today I took an important step towards the edge. The big jump is near and I´m moving my wings as fast as I can. With friends by my side I feel I can do it. They give me support and yet when I finally take the step, I´ll be on my own. I´ll learn to fly.
Sorry, dear friend, I´ve missed you too, but I just never seem to get around to dedicate you the minutes or hours you deserve...Keeping you alive is an effort and a joy. Often during my daily routine (some brief thought comes to my mind, and I think how nice it would be to have you permanently open, and type that thought right at that moment, before it simply disappears as abruptly as it appeared....Maybe some short of "crackberry for blogging", a small (of course) portable device (as a notepad, but for typing, I detest my handwriting), in which to record those few feelings that make me feel I´m alive...
I´ve often been troubled by a lack of focus and specialization in my professional career, and how this might hurt my professional future if most corporations look for specialists to hire for each position in their organization. Obviously this is a reasonable practice, but perhaps not necessarily the best practice for all organizations and for all positions. Today I´ve found in the book "The Flat World" a paragraph on this topic:
"The Gartner Group,...coined a term to describe the term in the information technology world away form specialization and toward employees who are more adaptable and versatile. It calls them versatilists. Building employee versatility and finding employees who already are or are willing to become versatilists will be the new watchword for career planning...(...) specialists generally have deep skills and narrow scope, giving them expertise that is recognized by peers but seldom valued outside their immediate domain. Generalists have broad scope and shallow skills, enabling them to respond or act reasonably quickly but often without gaining or demonstrating the confidence of their partners or customers. Versatilists,, in contrast, apply depth of skill to a progressively widening scope of situations and experiences, gaining new competencies, building relationships, and assuming new roles. Versatilists are capable not only of constantly adapting but also of constantly learning and growing...(...)Managers need to make the most of the people they have....they can no longer see people as specialty tools,...their people need to become....more like Swiss Army knives.
And Friedman continues: "Let´s face it, my kids have very little chance of working for the same company for twenty years, as I have. They have got to be adaptable, Swiss Army knives. Gene Sperling (economic adviser to Clinton) remarked that today´s workers need to approach the workplace much like athletes preparing for the Olympics, with one difference: they have to prepare like someone who is training for the Olympics but doesn´t know what sport they are going to enter....they have to be ready to do anything.
Perhaps having a degree in economics was not required to run a small textile factory in Yepes, Toledo, and acting as accountant, HHRR manager, operations manager, garment quality control, all at once and all superficially, was not such a waste of time after all. Certainly the operations and quality aspects helped me when I visited much larger garment factories in Serbia, Lithuania, Morrocco, China or Portugal, as it certainly helped me speaking that English I learnt while getting that economics degree so utterly useless in all those positions.
Perhaps getting an MBA, which is a nonspecialist and generalist degree, fits nicely in my professional career and will help me make the transition from a generalist to a versatilist. We shall see.
Right after dinner Carlos brought some old photo albums and he insisted that we watched the pictures together. They were great: Alicia on her first day on this Earth, with her eyes so open, so beautiful and special to me. I was so scared,... In most photos I see Carlos and Alicia when they were 3 months, 6 months, 2 years old,....at their daily bath, at the beach, out in country with their first bike, with family at Alicia´s second birthday,....They´ve grown up so much that I forget when they were so small and I totally forget what I had in my mind at the time,...problems at work, agonizing about changing my career path, moving to another country, or just to a bigger apartment,...all those stupid distractions that I had in my mind at that time (or now) and kept me from fully enjoying the precious gift I´ve been given.
Last night a colleague from work had a stroke and he was taken to the hospital. He was and looked perfectly ok when we left work yesterday and this morning I was back at work and he was in intensive care at a nearby hospital. How his life has changed in just a few hours, how his priorities, his problems or anxieties, no matter what they were, have now been pushed aside. He´s got two kids, they are in their 20´s and they seem nice, educated young men. I wonder how they feel now. Surely they must be scared, as I was when my mother had a stroke while on vacation in Segovia a few years ago, and I remember driving to the hospital from Madrid and having all kinds of frightening scenarios in front of me. Happily my mother recovered, and she´s still in good health as I hope soon will my colleague.
Some important news from today: Alice when to school with her prescription glasses for the first time, and apparently it was not as horrible as she anticipated so that´s good- Now let´s hope kids at her school do not give her to much trouble about that. Carlos´s arm is much better today than yesterday, when it was really swollen from the vaccine shots he got the previous day, which seem to have had a strong reaction. Clemen as always is taking care of us, and as always, I´ve neglected to acknowledge and thank her for her efforts as she deserves. I´m quite sure something terrible happened in Iraq today, I´m sure Bernanke will be going to bed thinking about interest rates tonight, I´m sure some mother is putting her kid to sleep with a kiss tonight, and I´m sure someone died tonight, peacefully because they did what they were born to do in this Earth in which we´re all being taken for a ride among the stars.
Talk about a Flat World!
Today I talked to Frank, the German Director of a textile garment factory in Lithuania, specialized in high-quality men´s suits, with about 500 employees and with a daily production of 1000 pieces, for export mainly to German, British and Spanish market. His main problem for the last two years has been lack of employees, because young Lithuanian men and women are leaving the country to work in UK and Ireland (mainly). Lithuania is a small country, and something like 500.000 people have left the country in the last 2 years (rough estimates).
Frank can not find workers for his sewing lines, so he has had to reduce daily production to 650 pieces: a disaster, given the high fixed costs of this type of factory in which profits come only from very large volumes at low and declining manufacturing prices (forced down by competition from much cheaper Chinese garments).
Frank has found a solution: women from Sri Lanka. He has been allowed by the Lithuanian goverment to bring workers from abroad to fill up the vacancies. The first group, 9 women (ages 25-35), arrived 2 days ago. Frank was so exited on the phone today: "these women are really experienced in sewing machines!! We will treat them really well, they will have a good salary and living facilities, and hopefully they will bring their friends and families to Lithuania!"
Frank tells me they are the very first factory in Lithuania to receive permission for this program of foreign workers, but surely others will follow. From our contacts with other Eastern European countries (Bulgaria, Romania,...) the problem of fleeing young workers is widespread for these countries. It is a complex issue, but if properly organized, this could really be a good use of the Flat World we live in. Good luck to the girls from Sri Lanka (and prepare for the Lithuanian winter, because I can assure you, it is cold out there!!!)
Some more on the Flat World: Frank was born in Germany, worked as manager in Australia and Maldives (where they took workers from Madagascar because locals preferred working in turist resorts), and now he works in Lithuania for a German company but his home (and heart) is in Fuerteventura (Spain).
Although currently attending a business school, I´m quite certain I don´t have what it takes to get ahead in the world of business today. I simply lack the insatiable thirst for profit that I find the main driving motivation of the businessmen I find around me. The thirst to grab up to the last cent from the supplier who´s been serving you well for many years, the total lack of moral or ethical considerations, the capacity to justify anything short of murder in the pursuit of the last cent, ....it simply makes me sick to my stomach.
In small business is often the owner, struggling to survive in a "world of sharks",.....that justifies everything. In large business, is never the individual but the almighty impersonal "organization".... that imposes such behaviour in them: "I understand, you know,....but there´s nothing I can do man....this orders come from above, you know,....they up there don´t understand like we do, buy hey,.....orders are orders".
I understand and appreciate the people with the drive to succeed, with the thirst for better things, with the willingness to work hard and make sacrifices to get ahead in life, but I detest those who will kill for a promotion, who would sell their mother for a 7% increase in ...whatever measure of success is used in your job...
Sometimes enough is Really enough, and more will not make you better but much worse. The constant obsesive struggle to find whatever always cheaper, cheaper, faster, faster, better, better....it is just pathetic and it is driving us all mad and it is ruining our environment. But that´s another story, and an even sadder one.
Many years ago in the movie "Once upon a time in America" (Sergio Leone 1984) I heard the line " You can always tell the winners in the start line,....I would have bet everything on you" (To be honest I don´t know the exact words in English, in the Spanish version I watched the line was something like "Siempre se distingue a los ganadores en la línea de salida......Yo lo habría apostado todo por tí")
I have always wondered to what extent this is true. Are the winners in this crazy race of life really obvious from the start? Or are they only obvious under the light of hindsight, after the race is over?
Are some people really predisposed for great achievements while others are tied to mediocrity and bounded by a invisible wall of limitations (self-imposed or otherwise). How much is timing a factor: would Einstein have been a remarkable scientist today; would Queen Victoria have managed Lady Di better? Would Shackelton or Hillary have been explorers today? Would Churchill have been allowed to become Prime Minister in the politics of television?
Perhaps this questions are as old as they are rhetoric, but perhaps they apply not only to people but also to countries and companies. Often we find "gurus" who explain to us how great companies are so good at what they do, such great examples of efficiency and innovation, and they sound (to me), as if these success stories were obvious from the start, when the analysis, of course, is always done afterward, when they have succeed. One example we hear about all the time: Apple, and his great man "Steve Jobs". Were they obvious winners from the start, or where they simply "good" and had the wind on their backs, and great timing?.
I have struggled often about the question of whether I´m predisposed to achieve something great in my life (what "great" means is, of course, another question) or limited from the start to mediocrity. Would anyone have bet everything on me on the start line?
Who knows? As always, I have many questions and very few and uncertain answers.
I have a few minutes, so I thought I could try to learn a few more features in this nice Vox platform for blogging that I´m using. Lets see.....
Ok, here we have a nice video. I´m actually more of a fun of Real Madrid, but I have good feelings for the Atletico (which proves I´m not really too much of R.M. fun to begin with...)
Anyhow, I find this video clever and very focused to its audience.
My dear friend Felix Peinado was writing today in his blog about that "selected group" of people, intellectuals, "gurus", "experts" that shape the collective intelligence, or at least command a great deal of influence in what most of us believe and understand as the "truth". I am reading at the moment "How Mumbo Jumbo conquered the World", and the author goes into a lot of detail in explaining the idiocy, the stupidity of many so called truths of many self-proclaimed experts. Although I do not agree with all of his arguments, he is sharp and shows many examples of collective stupidity driven to extremes by people who, like he says "should know better" (Tom Peters, G.W.Bush, Blair, Gore, and he doesn´t mention him because he probably doesn´t know who he is, but certainly he could have included our beloved Rodriguez).
From the speudo-scientific articles and books written by experts on UFO´s, horoscopes, prophecies, crystal ball readers advising politicians (i.e.Reagan),...and so on. He also attacks what he calls the "cultural, moral and intellectual relativism" very common in our society. And if this is very common everywhere in the world, I believe here in Spain we suffer from that disease even more. I refuse to believe, as we are very often told, that all ideas are equally valid, that all arguments must be respected, that history is something "flexible", that it all depends on the eye of the beholder. It is not true: some ideas are plain wrong, and no matter how many people might believe the opposite, Creationism is false, and Evolution is correct. Some ideas are Evil because they go against fundamental human rights. Not everything is debatable: there are good values that there are wrong values, and I think the opposite is often argued just out of cowardice and the omnipresent and disgusting political correctness of many of our politicians and self proclaimed intellectuals. So there.
Beautiful day today. I missed the kids a lot. I´ll go see them tomorrow in Sangarcia. By the way, in 2 days it will be the 9th anniversary of our wedding: time really flies, it was hot and stormy day in Segovia that day. I hope time slows down from now on, although I´m repeatedly told that it will pass even faster, I refuse to believe it.
