Up with People Impact Communities

Just in the begning of this week we have released the Up with People Europe Blog.

Up with People (UWP) is a Global Education Program, that for a 6 months period brings about 80 participants from all over the world travelling together getting involved and impacting different communities around the globe.

I posted on UWP Europe blog this afternoon telling a little bit about the program and about some of my stories when I was a student in the program in 2007. Feel free to check it out and learn more about this great organization that Up with People is.

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http://europeuwp.wordpress.com

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Leo

Thought Leaders on Sustainability

As I am taking more responsibility to drive the CSR at work, I wanted to look into some great ideas and thought leaders on the Industry out there.

Guy Bigwood, Sustainability Director of MCI posted on the CSR blog of the company (http://lessconversationmoreaction.com) this great Interview from Harvard Business with Adam Werbach. Really worth watching this 10 minutes Interview:

Both of them are leaders on Sustainability, guess it’s just good to hear what they say… Can we bring those ideas on to our business?

It needs to come from the whole organization and it needs to involve the stakeholders! Be transparent, share your challenges! That is a way to go…

More to come… hoping to be on such level a day!

The Barking Dog is just a kick away!

I heard that one the other day… as I don’t fancy comparisons too much… I leave this lesson up to you.

(…)

I am sure everybody agrees that dogs like Poodles, Chihuahuas, mini Pinschers,…  can all be classified on the same group of dogs… the barking dogs!

We cannot deny they make their presence, they make their selves noticed right away… after a while, if they bark too much…we’re just annoyed.

I had a Beagle when I was a kid and now my family has a Golden Retriever… I don’t need to tell my opinion about good dogs! =)

Well… To put it into context, what if we talk about the function of a dog? Let’s say, the job of a dog… Some will say that they are good friends, some will say that they are for protection, they can help with the police, blind people, and list goes on…

In any of those cases barking dogs make sure that everybody remember they are there… after all, they can’t stop talking, I mean, barking. The other dogs just make their jobs without complaining, I mean, barking! =) A bit like, “walk your bark…”

Classical example: If a robber enters your house, a safe guard dog will just go and get him… your barking dog, it will sure make a lot of noise at first, but we can’t forget… The barking dog is just one kick away! =P

** If Someone knows a good video to ilustrate this situation, please let me know, I couldn’t find the one I had in mind, but this is a good one, click the link: http://www.guzer.com/videos/annoying_dog.php 

Stuff we should always remember for life

Yesterday I had a weird day, but it made me remember of few very important lessons we (I do at least) usually forget.

Day started with me letting the person I most want to talk in the world leave with a deal of not to speak to each other for a while, I know it sound very unreasonable… but reasons and discussions apart, you can imagine that the day didn’t start well, with many big questions on personal atmosphere hanging around.

During this discussion, 1st Thing to remember for life came to my mind, and kept coming back to me the whole day:

1. How much space small ideas take in your mind? Exactly the same space as big ideas! – I heard that from my Director few weeks ago and it’s much more in there that we like to think… where is the line between big and small ideas? Are Big ideas always better than small ideas? – For me, the point really is if you are focusing on the right ideas…

Obviously that point did not make a lot for our conversation earlier in the morning, as the decision was as I mentioned before.

Funny enough, first thing I saw when I got back to the office was this Hey Jude flow chart…

Why is Hey Jude one of the most famous songs in the world?

I don’t really know, but have you ever paid attention to the lyrics? It makes a lot of sense to life.

Was that for me or for her? For both, I’m sure.

Well, 2nd Thing to remember for life:

2. Don’t be afraid, take a sad song and make it better. Remember to let her into your heart (with different variations if you wish) – Take the risk is the first step to make a change. Living your passions is the only way to walk through life without regrets. Many times, it’s a matter of choice, take what it’s not so easy and turn it around, make it better. It’s hard to step into what scares us, what gets out of our comfort zone… specially because what carries much love, might carry a big disillusion – On the same line, I remembered another old saying again for the 3rd thing to remember for life:

3. The worse regret is the one of not having tried – Can’t remember who told me that first time, but I sure heard that many many times, and if we just stop to think, one of the most awful sensations is the one of “what if I’ve said/done/taken/had(…)”

This is a valuable entrepreneurial lesson I find as well; you gotta love it and you gotta go for it (You might want to put some structure on that though… =P ).

For my share of risk today, here goes a link to my trying to play the very beginning of Hey Jude (as wordpress.com don’t upload music for free I did a quick scan on my pictures and made a little pictures in motion, sorry Du and Rica for the picture… hehehe! And I know the Bon Jovi on the middle is really lost, but anyway):

I would go to YouTube and listen to the song… and listen what it tells you…

Hey Jude – Beatles

Well, before I left home, I saw a Gandhi’s famous quote in a report. It just came in time! It is a really good follow up for the things we must remember for life:

4. Be the Change you want to see in the World! – We need to start from somewhere no? Walk our talks. Are we being and doing the best we can everyday? I like this quote the best, it brings us back to what we really need to do…

Reflecting upon my day back home, and again on the first talk I had the day… her last words to me were actually, for me, the 5th thing we need to remember for life, just to reinforce number 4 in a daily basic check upon yourself:

5. Take care of yourself! -  If you don’t, at the end, who really will? We all hear and say it many times, do we realize the meaning it has? Many times I wish it was different for human kind… in the other hand, at the very end, it also leads to Social Responsibility no?

Well, I spent the rest of my night trying to learn how to play Hey Jude and wondering more about funny ways life takes… went late to bed, came late in for work today, but to find the final quote I was looking for at our HR office.

The 6th thing to remember for life is a lesson about relationships that brings all the other things to remember (as you notice, to remember if you want to live to make at least a bit of difference) into a legacy sort of result:

6. People will not remember you for what have you said or what have you done, but for how you have made them feel! – I know that are many points of discussion in there, but the way I see it is what you say and what you do also reflects in how people feel, here is how we relate to people at the end, about how we feel regarding each other.

Ok. Thoughts shared! And you might be asking, is this post for me, for you, or it is really just a sad song with a very specific address? And I guess you know well the answer! =)

leo

Social Media Chaos

This post is actually a test! I consider myself a big geek when it comes to Internet, but I must admit that the Social Media thingy can be really overwhelming … wish I had gotten deeper into programing sometimes, I could make my life much easier right now! =)

There are some good tools on the net like ping.fm to help organizing your profiles.

Too not miss the space, I let you with a great Video showing some numbers and the importance Social Networking Tools are playing in society…

Here is the test…can you see this badge bellow?
Up with People

Promote Your Page Too

Talking Greek – How to get your message accross?

“Tá falando Grego pra mim!”

In good Portuguese we say your talking Greek when nobody understands you… well, that’s how I feel many times. Talk, talk talk…talk… no understanding.

Like that:

Real life example: as member of the CSR team of my company, I’ve been wasting my words to try to explain the concept, that it needs to be good for Society, but it needs to be good for the business as well…we need to be sustainable! That’s the best way to be relevant! CHARITY alone doesn’t make any better for anybody! (Do you get it?… hope so…)! Results of few months discussion… we’re doing a charity project in the end of the year, completely not using any competencies and any services of the comapany… I clearly didn’t succeed.

…

Question is, is it because I cannot make ideas as clear as they are to me, or is it because my ideas are just crap? In anyway it’s definitely easier to try to improve communication skills than have to learn to be smarter! I know a lot of people that went very far only talking!

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Here goes some interesting things I found for business communication:

- There is a nice discussion on http://www.artofspeakingbusiness.com/?p=43

- Richard Lewis Institute does a lot on that field as well, specially in the Intercultural Communication, they just released a new tool http://www.crossculture.com/news/press-releases/389/

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My next speech at my Toastmasters club will be about the difference between speaking and communication. As the first thing that comes to my mind is communication needs to be interactive (Richard Lewis Institute states, 90% of learning comes from interacting with people) go off the common public speaking patterns and brainstorm during my talk with my colleagues what’s to be a good communicator… all the time!

What about when this frustration with communication goes further, and you feel that in your personal life as well… ideas just don’t get through neither? Is it a credibility issue?

…

Some more funny communication issues:

May I ask for advise?

Are we doing our best?

Before I keep posting about anything else, I want to make a check.

Are we doing our bests everyday? The sudden death of a friend really made me wonder about how do we spend our days… do we do our best everyday to not leave regrets behind?

I’ve asked a few questions to my self…

 

Do I do the best I can?

Do I find more solutions than I complain?

Am I where I should be?

Any regrets?

 

Don’t really know all the answers, but will certainly spend some time on it, making sure life is not wasted. People definitely complain a lot, but are you doing enough to improve things? You gotta do your share…

What are you doing? The best you can?

About Fish Sizes and Egos

About Fishes!

There are big fishes, medium fishes and small fishes. Not sure if the medium fishes are just to make the small fish not feel so bad though.

As a young professional, quite critic and why not say a lot arrogant as well, I learned something about egos, pride and about hierarch this week.

I am the small fish! …trying to believe I am a medium one (to not feel bad) and times to times trying to act like the big one. Small fishes are kids, like me.

When you work with a critical thinking mind set, like I do most of the times, quite often I found myself doubting on the leadership decisions. My question here is how to deal with that.

I’ve never been afraid to show my ideas, lately, I’ve been feeling like a kid when I do so, maybe with maturity you also see clearer your own deficiencies, I can see my lack of self confidence, experience and perhaps communication skills to make a point valid.

This week I commit the mistake, and the same time, had the privilege to try to be a big fish. As simple result, my motivation to keep working on the organization was destroyed, my moral falling apart same way. I am sure I had good ideas, but I was upset on many egos that would not let a kid interfere, I got lost then, lack of experience maybe to evaluate all different perspectives, lost my point easily, giving punctual arguments, pointing my finger in other people’s direction (same fish size as me perhaps). Summarizing, a big disaster!

Well… but important lessons I took out from that meeting. My finger was pointing to other people, because my ego (yep, doesn’t matter how big you are, we all have egos) didn’t allow me to approach this people and do what I had to do… teamwork, feedback, set expectations, adapt if necessary… There is a mission behind our company, we have some goals…I want to go farther than just what I have to do, I believe it is good, but on that way, I might have forgotten that there other things more important that what I wish I could do…or what I wish the organization could do. That was my pride and my ego that took precious time from the organization towards innovation and positive change, just trying to hold it to myself, maybe just to have the credits of it. I feel this is also a lot of hierarchal pressure here, when you also have ambitions to take more responsibilities within the organization. How much can you push it?

I definitely could question here the ability of the leadership big fish of empowering people to bring innovation, but that’s not my intention now… just dealing with what I need to deal now.

I learned my lesson of humbleness applied to a business environment. Not easy to find your spot, but there will be always room to do more then you need to do, you just need to work with the right people in the right way, doesn’t matter in which level of fish you’re talking about. You are a good one, and a relevant one, when you work for the mission, the value, not for your size or the ego or whatever self-centered things you may want to consider.

When you focus on yourself, you are more selfish, more and more you have less space to grow, because you are just locking yourself in your ego and pride vicious circle. When you focus on the exterior, on the mission, on the purpose and the relevance of the organization and of your tasks, then you are able to serve more, and to be open to grow, to be creative, productive and motivated.

It does feel good to break into a more philosophical approach and re-asses your values and behaviors. I have my motivation back, and can think of ways to make my work more relevant involving the right people to do so, instead of caring to impress the big fish… maybe he is just waiting me (or anybody else) to grow to his size before we can talk. What actually sounds more interesting that the little dog barking like crazy around the VP chair trying to be heard. The common sense always says a lot about acting and talking.

Just to mention, in case questions comes up, the size of the fish, has nothing to do with the size of the Ego, they are just coincidences sometimes.

Well…that’s it for now.

See you

Company DNA

My mom talks business. The other day we talked about our jobs. I was wondering if I’m working in the right place, I do not agree with some visions and actions (or lack of them) and so on. Then my mom advised me, that’s the company’s DNA… you can’t change it!

That got me… maybe that’s it. We can not just change whats is in the company, specially if this one has been around so many years.

But earlier today, something else crossed my mind… what about genetic treatment and doping… thats why I do not like metaphors! You always find something to bring it down, that case was good though. It used to be very determinist to say we cannot change our DNA… well, we do! Not that easy, I suppose, but it is going on… just as curiosity, there a few documentaries about gene doping on youtube, quite interesting and scary also. This one is made Michigan State University: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQQmK0g7v_0&feature=related

Besides the genetic crazy stuff, the point is: it must be possible to change a company’s culture or company’s values. It is like corporate entrepreuneurship, takes one person challenging the DNA. If it is coherent, probabily new responses will be created, new flow of information and a different level of communication will start to be spread. If other people start to keep up the challenge and moving towards a different direction, voilá… it might take little time, but your DNA is changed.

Back to my favorite words… relevance and social responsibility. Change DNA of many companies will be necessary to spin the missions and values they have now, to overcome tough times, create opportunities and sustainability.

I guess anybody can be the doping agent into a company’s DNA (even though I hate the comparison, will stick to it as it’s already done now)  but I would say that the change need to be managed and long term planed, or you might just get your backbones teared into pieces at some point.

 

Well… not that much of an added value. But good for the record.

See ya’ll.

 

leo

Crisis = Opportunity – Driving to an Ethical Society

I had the opportunity to participate on the Belgium MPI chapter meeting early February this year. The topic was Crisis = Opportunities.

3 Speakers talked about different aspects of the crisis. I’m not a economist or a sociologist, but I also do have my theories about financial and economical crisis.

As most of the business thrives to adapt and keep going in such turbulent times, it seems clear to me that the capitalism ruled by big corporations with Central Banks acting independent from states in many cases won’t change a lot. The crisis will simply sort the mess out…who are the good business and who are the bad ones, who can be sustainable, who can not. It is a great challenge, and the best will survive… corporations will keep having a lot of power and driving the economy, but at the end, the best ones will be doing it, what might represent a much stronger form of capitalism. (I hope so at least)

What I like to think is that it could be a good chance to walk towards some sort of Anarchy (I do am a sort o anarchist) where the government/estate has the only function of  fiscalazing.

My fellows at Associations Industry would certainly like it. The rules should be mainly made by the people participating on that sector… empower people to decide on their on limitations. Groups and Hierarchy will always be part, but the estate executive and legislative power is distributed back to the society, mainly to the stakeholders that are interested on that piece of the problem… more collectivism. Lets not get very philosophical on that, just let me believe on a responsible society. I’m very far to be able to say something like that would be able to exist… who would rule the economy? Completely free market? What about the countries supremacy… (in off I would say go to hell with that…take the army together, no necessity in legitimating supremacy, no need of an army.)

Well… maybe one day I will have enough to answer my own questions. So far… I will stick to one of the presenters from today. Mr. Mark Eyskens, a renowned Belgian politician. (Funny hum? I was just taking their power out on my lines above, now I’m mentioning one of them). He gives an very interesting speech coming all the way from the cold war, Communism ending, IT revolution to tell that we are not living just a simple economic crises. It is also a political revolution and a social revolution. Our democratic structures might be in the spot… like China, the world might be lead to an Autocracy type of government, that might be one solution to prevent a country to face Economical difficulties. But in the other hand, social evolutions is such, that instead, we are must likely to face the rise of an ethical society, where values as transparency and trust are key to governance, business and social development in general. You can see more about Mr. Eyskens and read his speech at http://www.eyskens.com/docs/english.html. It is long but it is worth the ready, his knowledge in politics, sociology, philosophy and about science in general are quite admirable… add that to a strong opinion and a very interesting point of view and you have a great text to read!

Well… the ethical society is the idea I like, that makes a lot of sense to me and where I wanted to get with this post. A deep value change in society could lead the world to a different place… that’s exciting! A society based on rightfulness rather then opportunism, mutual respect and community relevance on your actions instead of extremely high profit margins and the sort of  ’hey! look I ’m rich night to day (with the fair compliment of sharing a high amount of risk but…), I have 10 Ferraris on my garage…how cool I am!’ – actually I hope we get rid of those opportunist self-centered playboys in our new ethical society, waste money is not ethical anymore… I would even write a paper giving them enough arguments telling they have a high portion of world’s social scale issue, I bet loosing just to corruption. 

Lets get back to CSR now then. Again, CSR is not to make your annual report look more beautiful and have nice PR. CSR is a core business model, driving company ethics, labour rights, its relations with suppliers and consumers and in the end, the companies relevance to its community and why not to the world. Simple like that, a business who drives the community to responsible (and sustainable) development, is a necessary business, independent of what product or what service you sell. Voilá, you’re relevant, you’re necessary, your part of the society…  as much as you care for it, is as much the society care back to your business… (sounds something like sustainability for me…)

How to become a relevant company then, sitting on the drivers position leading our world to a nice Ethical Society? Guess every single business will need to figure it out that now, part of the sorting it out crises… good business, bad business…

I will try my best to find a way on the Associations Industry… I really believe associations can make a huge impact on society and drive it forwards… unfortunately, it is still a extremely slow pace industry. I keep you posted on what I find out.

 

Até!