Believe in the resolute urgency of now

I am in process of preparing one of the workshops I care most about for a company: Mission Vision Values. They have a very good team – only it is a team of “storming” individuals and not one of those teams that work in full unity to achieve one goal. While having performed the training several times in the past, I found myself wondering about the practical utility of it. The practice of leadership is only slowly finding its way in Romania. Simply discussing the issue of adult teaching and adult development in the sense of adherence to values and governance following a vision is a strain – one either gets laughed at or gets ignored altogether.

Yesterday I spoke to a well-respected trainer who told me leadership was all about common sense, about knowing and following oneself first – before trying to get others to follow you. Now, maybe I am idealistic and a bit overgrown in a culture of quantification, but you cannot measure common sense. That makes training a tricky business – not being able to demonstrate a graspable ROI to the client. What you can do is to repeat training at definite intervals as part of an integral package and try to measure a correlation between financial results, sales outcome, company market valuation and the SMART training objectives. That might work in showing just how much a Mission-oriented training approach has worked.

We'll crucify the insincere tonight

We'll make things right, we'll feel it all tonight

We'll find a way to offer up the night tonight

The indescribable moments of your life tonight

The impossible is possible tonight

Believe in me as I believe in you, tonight

(Smashing Pumpkins, Tonight)

Ziua vrajitoarelor

Last Friday we had a girls' night out. Look at the photo - aren't we a bunch of good-looking ladies? :-)

Common sense, movies and owning an iPod

Sometime in the past days I read an article which also involved a definition for common sense. It was "the ability to correctly perceive the reality around you". To most people in Romania today, this is a skill that needs no cultivation, given its little perceived value. Common sense is more to me than just to perceive the relationships around me correctly and acting accordingly. Or plainly politely responding to my counterparts' gestures or words. It is a state of mind that spells purity and understanding. I engage in conversations with people with openness, never setting a definite expectation. My nature is rather sponge-like, meaning that I often remember the most fine details about persons and situation. However, I try never to use negative aspects of my relationship with that person in conversing or dealing with them. It would be an extra burden to carry aroud and it would result in a flawed idea exchange, whereas this is not my intention. Instead, I prefer having them talk about subjects they like and pick on past conversations to make them feel comfortable. Similarly, I try to avoid unnatural gestures or attitudes.

The interpretation of common sense is of course subject to every personality flavour. However, it would be great if more people would start practicing it, making the surroundings - be it at the office or in a cafe, with friends, much more pleasurable.

Speaking of which, I might be the last on Earth to have seen Love Actually, a romantic Christmas comedy which can help enlighten one evening. I have enjoyed myself very much - the music was lovely and entertaining (Hugh Grant as a Prime Minister dancing to "Jump!" makes you laugh tons). Highly recommendable for a hot chocolate night with your sweetheart.

Tonight my friends and I are going to the last Mel Gibson film - Apocalypto. Given Mel Gibson's appetite for raw flesh, blood and cruelty, I think I'll be better off having a drink before.

Owning an iPod is my last subject for today. A colleague told be last week that my appetite for new technology is rather scary and that I am lost for the "normal world" (what is normal anyway?). The most fantastic feature I am experiencing are the podcasts, of which I would mention Stanford's literature lectures and most management podcasts you can find online (David Maister, The Invisible Hand etc).

Cheers!

New Year's Resolutions

I've always liked to make plans. Of course not all of them worked, but that did nothing to cut down on the thrill I felt when displaying them on the walls. It was reassuring to have them there, and my eyes were gleaming each time they rested on the particular plan. There was one named "Fram", when a friend and I decided to investigate alien life outside our block some 12 years ago. There were plans about carreer, family life and nature trips, about calling friends, helping your parents and achieving in study.

At some point, someone told me that he'd quit drafting plans, as they didn't work anyway, and had started simply acting out things instead. Things cannot always work out good for everyone - and understanding this fact and acting instead of endlessly pondering does wonders.

It's funny actually that we are constantly run into trouble steering our busy lives, given that instruments such as Outlook calendars, Blackberrys and the like were invented. The answer must lie in the ability to finally reach a decision and follow-up on it.

Have a Happy New Year and don't forget to act on all the promises you made to the sky or to yourself on New Year's day!

You might as well surrender now
You'll never hold that stance
With all my wordsI can't find one
To help you understand
It's not too late
Take up the cup
Put down your weapons and choose
But you say," life's so unfair"
All you say is "life's so unfair."
Oh you can ill afford to hold to these views
Oh you need something to blame
But it's you, yes it's you
It's your truth
(James, Alaskan Pipeline)

Applied Usage of Business Analysis

A discussion with a friend about consulting and what it means to be a consultant in Romania (promise I'll return to the subject in a later post) led us to the (delicate and oh so melting) subject of sentimental bonding. As another friend put it, most people who have been involved in business analysis of any sort tend to treat sentimental relations as if they were business issues that need to be addressed in a structured and logical manner. It is quite difficult to do that with emotions, because they tend to escape any strict regulations and lead a life of their own. They can't be thought of in paradigms and there is no standard methodology that can help you stop somebody's tears, for example. You really need to be there for your family and your friends and never allow yourself not to feel -- in relation to them and to yourself. Let go of the consultant, professor, lawyer or whatever it is that possesses you.

Remember "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"? At some point, McMurphy asks Chief "What are we doing in here, Chief? Huh? What's us two guys doing in this fucking place? Let's get out of here. Out. " Out of the two, Chief really does get out, although he speaks much less about it.

sunt la iesire din metrou,
si ma simt ca nou,
stiu ca e doar un vis,
dar...nimic sau totul e compromis !
(Omul cu Sobolani, 7000 de km in aer)

Chocolate in my boots and filthy cheese

Image courtesy of despair.com

Last week was something close to amazingly urban. The Therion concert on Saturday pulled it out of daily ideas starvation, by providing incentive to feel, but the whole rest of it was dull. Except for Wednesday, St Nikolaus Day. In the morning I found my boots filled up with sweets and felt childishly happy, although I hadn't polished my boots the nigh before. It hasn't happened for some years now, so it was really great to have chocolate and orange just for me. When I got to the company, early in the morning, I wrote a message to them all wishing them a happy day, but I suspect none got the point. Later that day I was speaking to a company freshman who insisted on filling me in on the vocabulary of the Romanian language -- in a manner so unpolite that I lost my grip and got him an emotional feedback (type : "I hate it when you... bla bla because I feel bla bla and I would like you to bla bla"). I suspect that one did not work either, it's money or nothing to young blood nowadays.

I also remember some project report meeting in which I listened to "colinde" (that's traditional Christmas songs / carols) and breathed in the Christmas that is to come. On Sunday I then met a fellow consultant girl-friend, who is now employed abroad in strategy consulting. We had fun and our discussion went on from living abroad to discussing Romanian economics. Highly cosmopolitan. My week ended with Shakespeare and Flying over a cuckoo's nest, couldn't be nicer.

Oh... Did you come to read "Who Moved My Cheese"? I'm feeling that the cheese I'm eating is more and more filthy. ;-)

From the tales of Solon
To the depth of astral memory
The legend of Atlantis
Will appear from the Great Old Sea.
Dive into the abyss
To find the lost luciferic crown
And put it on the head
Of the ruler of the sunken town.
(Therion, Crowning of Atlantis)

This one goes out to the ones I love

Yesterday I forgot to mention two most special people I know. The ones I love. The ones who have never swayed from telling me something nasty, the ones who have unconditionally loved me, helped me, been there for me. The ones whom I should be with more often, help in more than one ways, the ones I sometimes forget to show my gratitude for.

Oh... I was wrong :) the innocent do last, but they need to find their inner strength to remain innocent and not just a silly copy of innocence... a copy played for the sake of an image. Images are nothing without the underlying facts.

summer has come and passed
the innocent can never last
wake me up when september ends

ring out the bells again
like we did when spring began
wake me up when september ends
(Green Day, Wake Me Up When September Ends)