Since I experienced the Up with People program (www.upwithpeople.org) few years ago, I was able to learn enough about myself and my life goals to phrase my ‘life mottos’ or something like my personal slogans. 3 things I try to carry on with my attitude and actions:

• Leave a place better than you found it
• A problem I’m aware of, is my problem too
• Give the example

…. From small things to my job or to my relationships, those are the things I believe. They are all related to taking responsibility on making a difference, and that’s how I want to live my life!

Besides the last one, which I haven’t been that much of an example; with the other two I try hard to bring it up on my daily actions.

Today I got them confronted at some scale, and probably didn’t deal with it on the best way. Especially by being part of a generation who haven’t learned well to deal with losses, I wanted to put two related questions out:

• How far should you keep arguing when your personal beliefs are confronted in a right vs right type of situation?
• Where’s the point we have to admit we need to leave behind our proud and let it go for the greater good?

leo

Thinking about life in general during my ride back home, I thought it would be nice to share some finds from my recent experiences about attitude at work – no, I’m not gonna brag about my love life… : )

Working at a competitive consulting company now, I’m exposed to an environment that we are always expected to be pro-active, to have attitude. I’m often seen something I believe it is a mistake… people many times try to have attitude towards things, towards their products or results…

Why I think it is a mistake?

Just like in a love relationship, your attitude always impact someone else. When you are delivering a project or working on something, you are actually doing something that will benefit someone else. If you’re there to bring value, you must bring value to the people (from your team mates to your clients). The mistake is there, often you go over the relationships you might have in order to deliver results or materials without seeing the close connection those two things have.

Legacy is left behind just when you touch people for the better.

Why a broken heart made me bring all this up? In fact, I believe that being able to bring value to work, has a lot in common to have great relationship…

The single most important thing about outstanding professionals (and people too) are that they are passionate about what they do. You need to be honest about your passion and admit if you’re not passionate..it’s all about being honest and live up for it.

Second, and less obvious… Attitude can’t be towards stuff for the simple reason I mentioned before, the final objective is always personal to someone else. It needs to be an honest attitude towards other ones. Honest relationships depend a lot on your intuition and how much you pay attention to the maintainance of it. Some stuff will be good, other ones will be bad but it takes a lot of humbleness and honest care to see that…

Here is the message…

When you see your environment asks you to have tons of attitude, turn it to the people around you, make your relationships stronger and your work more relevant to them. In that way, you’ll bring value just by being honest about how you want to affect people for the better.

Question to finish. How do you measure your personal success?

Share your thoughts!

Greets,

Leo

I have a serious problem for someone trying to make a way on business: I’m a dreamer. Life for us is full of emotions, full of passion, full of things to change… but those ideas come with a great deal of demand together. They require tons of courage and a strong self confidence to face them.

I like to think  I am not taking greater actions because I’m on my learning process, hoping to not be lying to myself for now.

I have a very simple rule to decide if I’m  doing the right things and taking the right decisions:

What will I tell my grandkids?

People laugh about me when I say that, but it’s a great rule! If we can feel proud to tell our grandkids in the future about whatever we’re doing, that’s probably because it’s the right thing… at least what YOU, would like to do!

Should we take opportunities or not? From deciding on going to a week holiday trip or stay resting home, to the decision to take a new job or not… I like to ask: which story would I like to tell better.

There are two strong arguments for why does that question works:

1- The first elementary question to plan your future is: “What kind of person I would like to be?”, rather than deciding your position, or how many things you will have (even if your objective is very material, you still have to be first the person who can manage to buy it.) When you think of what you want to tell to your little ones, you are answering this basic question, because it’s about who you are, and who you want to be.

2 – There are only 3 things that motivates people, I learned from a former director and mentor that I really admire. One of them (I’ll let aside the other 2 for future posts) is “ legacy”. You are motivated to do things that leaves your legacy behind, when you are sure that you’ve made a contribution to the world. And again, answering your grandkids, your just answering what will be your legacy for them and for the others.

I’m saying those things, cause 2010 was full of those moments, that I had to decide what I want to tell my grandkids, those moments that will define who I am and who I will be!

… and I must tell… I didn’t take the decisions I had to make, I didn’t have the courage to follow all my dreams… and I didn’t even used my rule or all my values all the time… but well, we gotta face our mistakes, and make sure will do it better next time.

That 2011 makes us stronger, to put in action what brings us closer to reach our dreams, to reach who we ant to be for our grandkids.

Happy holidays!

leo

ps.: Two videos with grandpas! =)

While I seek for new job opportunities, yesterday I was part of an event held by a big telecom player in Brazil, VIVO.

They invited all trainee candidates to attend a very high level event, showing the company, its values, its mission and above all, giving everybody there an experience of being with them.

I was very surprised by the high level of the speakers and the added value we have all received from the late night event.

The company motto is “Em rede agente pode mais”, what would be some thing like:

“On a network we can do more”

or something like: Connected, yes, we can!

What they did was to give us a full experience of how they really live that principle, in every single aspect of their business. Their brand is indeed considered one of the strongest on the Brazilian marketing, and we could see why they are so proud of it.

They gave us the opportunity to see some of the thinkers behind all that process and we all had the chance to watch 4 presenters.

First the communication director of the company, introducing us to the mission, values and some numbers. She was a former trainee and answered some of our questions (that you could either ask, either send a sms showing on the screens). 2nd came the en vogue TV broadcaster, from the international franchise CQC, Marcelo Tas. He is a great communicator and his work has been very important to the Brazilian news market, starting form his former tv program Vitrine. It was a pleasure to meet a personality from our country giving such an entertaining and informative speech on Social Media in Brazil.

After that we watched Mr. Augusto de Franco talking about Network theory. Very thought provoking and right on the spot, showing first how we mistake social network by digital tools, and secondly how our hierarchical society do not allow us to explore our full intelligence potential. Here is a website he recommended for more: http://escoladeredes.ning.com

I’ll definitely follow Augusto’s work and hopefully will have a chance to speak to him more on the subject. Network theory might be the mathematical solution I was looking for on the theory I work on about increasing the amount of power structures to have a more fair society.

Last, spoke Ricardo Guimarães, the founder of Thymus, a branding consultancy company so far unknown to me. They helped Vivo to build what they call the business essence, shape their culture around that and strengthen their brand as a strategy to manage their values. I will definitely send my CV on their way as well, their client portfolio and results are very impressive and without a doubt, they support companies to get closer to well done and consistent sustainability strategies.

Another thing got my attention throughout the event: their sustainability strategy is intrinsic to their core business! That’s the way to go! I am always very happy to see a culture change like that in big player… I do believe that enterprises going culturally responsible are the only way to operate a change in the world’s problems. Back to Vivo, Their values and mission reflects on the company culture, they all have a sense of purpose delivering their services and products.

They showed one of their projects. I believe this is real relevant: the company is just doing what they know how to do, supporting the development of their market.

It was a great experience, and the company made sure they added value for all of us, independently if we are to be engaged as trainee or not. Great example of walk the talk and bringing value in all aspects of business. Thank you and congratulations!

Leo

I will start with my favorite subject, Corporate Social Responsibility!

One of the main reasons I am passionate for the associations world is for its capacity to gather industry leaders and influence the outcomes of a profession or industry group. This is in essence very beautiful, because the interests go beyond competition and market value and look into regulations, standards, education, ethics and so on…

CSR should just go along. Leaders on associations have the chance to be the thought leaders on the field, helping their industry in general to benefit of understanding how to bring CSR into the bottom line  and how it can bring business to a new level of satisfaction, engagement, efficiency and profitability.

To make it short (or not so long) I grouped my thoughts in two lists:

Why Associations fail to be CSR thought leaders:

• Associations tend to be slow and reactive to industry trends. Nowadays, CSR is already part of bottom line strategies of major corporations while associations are still trying to figure it out.
• If associations are too big, often they are run as business, focusing on their products and services revenues, leaving aside part of the leadership it should have on professional trends, innovation and mission fulfillment. If they are too small, they will have little influence.
• Lack of real decision making. Industry driving associations need to act in different areas to be able to make real influence: Standards, Professional development, lobbying and governance.

What could they do that enterprises can not to be the thought leaders:

• Gather experts that are already renowned on their field to develop their profession. Many of those professional might be competitors on the business side, or professor that might not have much interaction together… the association is a efficient way to put all this minds working together.
• Create and rotate power hierarchies (specially of volunteers): This allows many different player, with different professional backgrounds, to make significant contributions in smaller amount of time. On a structured, collaborative association, leaders have the ability to gather many ideas and drive them back to the members and society as benefits.
• Drive an industry ethically, set the moral and ethical boundaries of it.
• Set rules, create standards, education and trainings based on a larger group of stakeholders that holds different interests.

Sustainability is the core element of any association from the beginning – it’s stated on their mission statement to be sustainable and relevant to society.

Thinking of that, it is just logical that they should be the basis for the industry/profession players to turn to, and learn about CSR. But in reality, companies do not turn to associations to look into practices. Rather, they are in the driving sit, and associations run to follow it. Like Wal-mart, i.e., that basically is alone setting the standards for the retailers industry… of course they get many critics, as they defend their own company interest as well. We cannot deny their thought leadership and the value the company gained in the market.

If we would take the example of the meeting industry though, where most of the efforts are driven by the professional associations, like MPI, GMIC and others, changes are a lot more consistent because it represents a wide range of interests. We can see the speed (since they started to worry about sustainability) that they have developed standards and how those standards are quickly making their way into the market. The whole chain is involved, from suppliers, to meeting organizers to AV companies to the costumers.

Volunteer leaders on associations are the experts on their fields, no? We may ask then: what is the real relevance of associations if they are not on the driving sit of their industry?

I just found on an old note pad the following recipe for confusing times; for those down picks we wonder about our decisions, where we are standing at the moment and sometimes even questioning our values…

Be outside

      Be attentive for new opportunities

           Learn what you always wanted to learn

                  Move more than ever before

                        Be pro active, for real

                              Meet people

                                 Be curious

à la prochaine,

Leo

I have just posted some of the things I do to engage audiences I am presenting to. On this case, specifically to high school students, but they can definitely be generalized to other audiences:

http://europeuwp.wordpress.com

Check it out and leave your thoughts! How do you engage you your audience?

There are two people I follow online as reference in getting better at presentation skills:

Sylvie Verleye: http://www.sylvieverleye.be/

Garr Reynolds: http://www.garrreynolds.com/Presentation/index.html

Talk to you soon,

Leo

I think it is time to ask different questions about our Social Media tools.

Twitter and other Social Media tools have made not just marketing and PR different, but all our way to communicate. Internet in general is a very important phenomena, as it eliminated the gap of information, experts are not anymore the only resource… information has become closer to all of us, has become collaborative, easier to discuss and spread… Social Media is the consequence and evolution of that principle… for business in general, it implicates a transformation in the way publicity influences the credibility of companies and products. Nobody questions it, involving your costumers and stakeholders in all types of open discussions made a revolution on the credibility of companies. Word of mouth become as easy as sharing 140 characters to the world.

Those transformations have been changing traditional media as well… How magazines and newspapers adapt, get shorter, more practical with better experiences for the costumer. Everything becomes more human, closer to all of us… even on the commercials and pictures you can see that trend. David Meerman Scott has written about it at his white paper:

http://www.davidmeermanscott.com/documents/Gaijin_Male_Model.pdf

For the Brazilian’s out there, I have a another example, Globo’s many-years-old-high-school show Malhação (http://malhacao.globo.com/Novela/Malhacao/0,,4028,00.html) used to be the entrance scene for the next generation of good looking actors and actress of Brazil. When I was back to Brazil after 3 years away, I saw a big change in there… the actors in the show, they look just like my own high school class with all sorts of looks…not surprisingly, the quality of acting of this normal-looking young actors has improved tremendously.

All those are great news and widely spoken… we are just becoming more human. Despite of what is widely sad, on my opinion, there is still even more opportunities in there.

With all this open communication tools and human connections closer than ever to us, companies have the chance to be more transparent than ever.

In a world increasingly craving for transparency, integrity and collaboration… Social Media is just the perfect match to make everybody have a voice and an overview of a company business as a whole… staff closer to the board, suppliers closer to costumers, and so on…

To list a few benefits of engaging in open dialogue:

- You easily connect to a organization on which you understand its mission, That you feel you can make part of and can contribute to it.

- Innovation come from every layer in an organization not just from top managers close doors meetings… open conversation helps people to see farther on the chain and understand their piece of business and how it can contribute to a whole.

- Transparency is the key element to build trust and credibility. A step closer to sustainability.

While not ask some other questions?

• Isn’t it time to break our operations into human relations and collaboration as never before?
• Isn’t transparency and ability to listen to your stakeholders two of the highly appreciated values companies can have?
• Is it not a good challenge and a great opportunity to open up?
• Why not get your staff openly sharing info and discussions in Twitter, Facebook and so on… Can’t we better engage our teams to communicate openly in Twitter …to engage our costumers and our stakeholders in general on our daily tasks?

I can imagine a situation where open project’s and issues’ discussions help teams to achieve more creative, innovative and transparent results. Perhaps Google Wave will become a ultimate resource for collaboration and management (To not talk about the education potential it will have). I can also see Internal and External communications getting mixed in one single channel…

Two criticisms that can come here are: the confidential data flow and the preoccupation with competitors. Someone would say: obviously a research team will not share their innovations or new formulas… but thinking very straight forward, imagine the benefits for a company having a whole scientific research community world wide?… what about the patent rights? I ask, how long more will we stick to patents?… not very long I would argue. In a open conversation, the thought leaders are on the spot, everything coming after will play catch up just as we see today… we will not just know who created it, but follow the origin of the innovation, perhaps even participate on it. I do believe that a sustainable organization have services and products that are relevant, this is what will matter for the final costumer, and it is becoming one of the main matters for shareholders as well… your innovation will be innovation with or without patents and data protection… with a plus that they will be a lot deeper and necessary.

That way of thinking will make enterprises a lot more competitive, efficient and profitable… also markets will be clear on the terms of competing. On the ethical society we are entering, and with the fast flow of information (even when we try to block it, it is still flowing) this is just the next natural step.

I have hoped on our Social Media strategy to have our small team interacting online… but I got first challenges facing this theory… lack of interest, lack of familiarity with the tools, believing that it is not important and will no bring results to the team and the (most wanted) difficulty of measure the results… lot of work to do in there yet…but I definitely think it is worth the thought.

Leo

http://europeuwp.wordpress.com/2010/02/19/people-who-make-a-difference/

There I am trying to encourage people to share their stories, never bad to know about more inspiring people around the world.

Here, although, my goal is to share what I learn when I am trying to be one of those who do something relevant… so my question now would be…what are you doing to be one of those who make the difference?? Or what have you done already??

See ya’ll soon!

Leo