Welcome to my journey!

The risk of being wrong is always there. The issue is how you handle it? Don’t just do things before you think about the consequences. The risk of being wrong as a child is so much less important than the risk of being wrong as a young adult and those are so much different compare to the risk of being wrong as a middle age person. The higher you move in a company, the more you must think about what is the price you might pay if your ideas turn out to be wrong!

It is great for the company to communicate. But what would happen if they were under-deliver? What would happen if the communication was wrong, if the approach was simply wrong?   Then many people would have wasted their time, and the strategy will fail. So instead, find the balance between the right amount of communication and the right amount of quality being delivered.

Leadership tends to be around motivation and showing the direction. Every leader tries to look authentic in their message. But, you must know who’s game you are playing. The big shot game is the ego game, it’s the self-serving game. There is only one winner there. Why I am writing this? Look at one interesting article. The big game here, the game of the commission. You have famous people who care about one thing and sadly their followers will suffer while they put big bucks in their pockets. If you end up in the big shot game and you are not a big shot, it might be wise enough to leave fast while you are still in the lead. Kim Kardashian, Floyd Mayweather Sued by Investors in EthereumMax Tokens The celebrities were paid to tout the tokens on social media Investor suit says EthereumMax has no relation with Ethereum Source : https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-11/kardashian-mayweather-sued-by-investors-in-ethereummax-tokens  

There is a magic to start something new. The excitement, the opportunities… seem endless. But if you do something for many years and you are still considered a startup, that might be not the sign or the idea you want to invest more of your time. You must be very selective and very critical of what you are doing with your time and is it really worth it!

So maybe you are stuck? Maybe you don’t know the next step? Maybe you are scared to do something new? Now what? The economy changes, the inflation raised. And yet, we tend to do the same. This year is a wake up call for new opportunities and old ways of doing things you must leave out in the past. What are the things that don’t serve you anymore?  

It is very interesting when you meet people and they sell to you ideas. Sometimes the ideas are too good to be true. The only way of going forward is fine more testimonials or test it yourself. There is a risk of wasting time or risk to like a fool. But, think about SpaceX, wasn’t it an insane idea or Tesla or even iPhone? Testing assumption and taking risks is part of life. If you hadn’t taken calculated risk lately, think if your life is rich enough, or you are still stuck in a never ending repetitive pattern.  

The meetings must be short and have one goal. If you have developed software, all the functions must have a single purpose, otherwise it is hard to investigate. The same is true for meetings. It is hard to convince people to change their mindset.

If everything works fine, it is hard to be noticed. When a project is getting bad, then people start to notice you and once you go to crisis mode and manage to achieve resolution, you receive congratulations. This is a story and narrative some companies try to promote to their colleagues. This also shows the leadership appreciation. The issue in life is the balance between give and take. Once such an approach becomes the norm, then the company for sure will lose its market edge.

Town hall format meeting is an amazing opportunity to convey a message. It is an equally amazing opportunity to waste time with a lot of people. I have been to many town halls. I have seen some of them providing value and senior management listening to the feedback, but also I have seen many that are a waste. Why is that? Usually, the town halls are created and assembled when the strategy is set. There is no time to maneuver. The only thing people with power can do is to smiley and promise to follow up If you want to change the culture, then start from this mindset. If you want to gather input and have agile organization, then make sure you didn’t create the full strategy and plan time to ask for a feedback.

There is the challenge of taking the easy path or to take the right path. Unfortunately, when you try to develop new solutions, the easy and the right path are not always aligned. And this is when a true artist defers from a person who just wants to do their job. The artist is ready to spend the time and do the effort to walk the right path. But the other person will do the same old thing. We always have a choice of what to do. If our job doesn’t give us the time to become the artists we truly desire, and we can’t find another job. We can become an artist in our free time and then use these new skills to shift the job and become the artists we deserve.

Today I watch a video of a guru who was promoting their services. This person might be really good at selling, but he is definitively not practicing what he preaches. The question is, would you hire someone cheap, but good at self promotion, or an expert? It is a time vs money decision. If you have less money but more time, this could be a solution, as long as you see potential in that person. Otherwise, in case of self-proclaimed gurus, it is better to pass them by and really focus on your own business activities.

Why is planning so difficult for us? Or why we seem to fail to honor our plans? I haven’t answered that question yet, but I think it is all about habits and the need for an instant gratification. We are used to fast things. Fast cars, fast food, fast access to on-demand entertainment. The planning is lost. There is no fun in planning if you can get something right now. But if we learn to delay the small achievement and replace it for a long term bigger one, wouldn’t that be a better strategy?

Summer is here already did you noticed it? A lot of things are given to us for granted. Aging, changes of the seasons(If you live in such place), or changes day and night. We need to use those factors, those cycles and get the most out of them.

Unfortunately, I need to track what is happening in the big political game this year. What you don’t want to do inside your company is to have internal political games. It might be hard in a big corporations, but the political games usually goes like win – lose. And this is the short term side effect. The long term side effect is always lose – lose. You have more people being disconnected from what they are doing. It is far more successful and better for you to eliminate political games, and introduce fair assessment inside the company as soon as possible.  

User testing is the key to learn why some customers might never come to use your service. I was curious about the  #starbucks  free refill policy. So I decided to test it out. I went to a  #starbuckscoffee  and asked for a free refill. I am not used to such a concept, so it made me feel uncomfortable, which could indicate that other people will probably not use it so much as well. (still an assumption) But guess what, there was no such thing in  #czechrepublic  , even though on the website and the app I used, it says it is possible. I wonder if this inconsistency hurts the brand? I visited the branch with a promise that was never fulfilled. On the positive note, the refill was less than 1 euro so it seems like a good deal. But it makes me wonder if some people would not return because of this misleading promise. The moral is when you establish a business and build franchises, try to establish a single vision for all the branches to reduce the chances a customer might not be satisfied.

We all have unproductive times during  our day month or year. It is up to us, what we do during those times. Do we actively rest or are we wasting our time even more.

There is nothing so special about this day. But then again, is there something special about the other days of the week and the month? Make every day special and make every day count. You have few goals in life. Make them count and achieve them!

Tabs on our browser are a way to easily switch between different priorities. But having too many tabs and you are lost. Suddenly you end up consuming the content only of few of them. So is with productivity, make each day limited focused on only few things.

When you have children, you need to teach them to have timeout.   Timeout is important for them to learn the difference between play and being. When they learn that, this will be an important life lesson.

 Do you feel like there is not enough time in your life? If yes, then look for repetitive things that waste your time and automate them!

 Imagination is a true power. People who have it are lucky. People who are able to use it to create something new are truly genius.

 Old ways of doing things have its charm. It is called tradition. But sometimes you need to make a way for the new things and the new beginnings.  

 Can you do something with low energy? Try to work on a laptop that is about to die. You can't! So you need to charge yourself! Sleep well and eat well.

 The wrong conclusion leads to the wrong actions. Wrong actions lead to missed opportunities. Better check once, twice, three times before you make a conclusion.

 The difference is one is a process and the other one is an end result. Competitions inside of the company are one way for managers to show some progress, but only when you build a culture of people wanting to be competitive towards the competition is when the magic happens. Many HRs think that by creating competitions inside the organizations, they achieve the result of people rally together and making the organization more competitive. To create a competitive environment, you need to focus on your people and their needs. Better working conditions, team buildings and salary that satisfy their needs, as well as recognitions towards achieving main milestones is a better way to foster a competitive culture. But rarely company will go that way. How about you and your company? Do you see more gimmick competitions being introduced, or the environment is naturally more competitive?  

 One thing is to want to do something, another one is to be willing to do everything possible to achieve that. Many people want stuffs, but will rarely cross the threshold and do the change. Change is hard, but the reward is definitely worth it.  

 Can you survive the life without being ironic? Maybe, but it will be a sad existence. When you can't change something, you can always use your ironic powers. This could help you deal better with things you are unable to change.

 What is better - stealing or borrowing an idea? To steal something means that you are unable to be the first and you jealously take it. Most of the time, you might not understand the restrictions and the philosophy behind it. To borrow it means to give credit to be an admirer to learn from the master and to ask for a permission. It is a form of a respect. It is a way to learn and improve. This is a way to be generous and reap the rewards.

 People love to travel for many reasons. To enrich their experience, to meet new people, to find themselves, to brag about it on the social media. Some of the above reasons are good and some are really horrible. When travel become a symbol of status and people just show off, then this is not the right reason. This is what is currently destroying the mountain Everest and many other archaeological wonders. Next time, when you want to travel, do it for the right reasons.

 When a company introduces A team or exclusive task force, there is only one thing on my mind. Something is terribly wrong with the structure of the organization. If the company doesn't empower the teams who work on projects and need to introduce an additional level just to make things work, then do you think this is motivating for the rest. Most probably they will even stop trying to solve things, since they are not part of the A team. This will open a vicious cycle of never ending management and never ending demotivated employees until the cost of running a project will far exceed the budget. The moral is simple, don't duct tape the problem, but change the organization to accommodate complexity, introduce additional training to the employee and empower them in the first place to do their job right.    

 The things children find fascinating, adults will find annoying. The things your manager finds important, you might find it irrelevant.   It is a matter of point of view. But there is an underlying issue with that and it is called power struggle. When you are an adult, you know where are the boundaries and you know if you do or don't something. There are consequences. But for children, this is not yet being established. Children are not naughty, they are just not wired for the consequences and to survive the real world, because their brains are not developed yet. This means that we need to introduce the level of consequences by the age level of the child. Don't punish them too hard for things they are not able to understand. It takes time to create a human, but also it takes time to grow your own team member to be excellent. The difference is you can choose who to hire, but you can't choose your children. This might mean you must try to adopt to their point of view and gro