Nope...

...failed. Whatever.

Shutdown

Tomorrow is Shutdown Day. A ¨day without computers¨, social experiments started by two guys in Canada. While I´m not typically drawn to these ¨let´s all...¨ initiatives, I think it´s a good opportunity to prove myself I can live without miss G5 for a day. We´re face to screen a lot lately.

See you on Sunday.

Change or alignment?

What do you think?

We don´t need to change the world, we just need to align things. Change is too disruptive...the world is what it is, and we human beings are the way we are. Maybe it´s more like: in order to change the world, we need to align it. How?

There´s one I consider critical, and where I believe many companies have an opportunity to close the gap: alignment between the ¨what¨ and the ¨how¨ of things. Two simple questions that reveal many things. Example: Senior management is clear, visualizes the strategy, is fully committed...and it fails. Happens all too often. Somewhere down the line, the ¨how¨ wasn´t clear and it never got implemented correctly. Of course, there are many reasons to the failure in implementation, but the root cause is this gap between what needs to be done and how it needs to be done (which takes us to clarity in communication, etc).

Case in point: advertising. Advertisers have been failing to effectively make their ads reach their targets effectively. Until Google delivered Ad Sense. What did they do? Align the ad you are presenting with the preferences of the person that is viewing it. How? Effectively closing the gap between the what and the how: placing an ad relevant to the search the person just made.

Got alignment?

Back

Back from Spain. Reconnecting with friends you haven´t seen in years and feeling it´s been like a week is awesome (has to do with the alignment thing, for sure).

So...the weddding was on Saturday. The reception took place in Bell Recó (photo) an beautiful palace built in the 1950s. It´s in Argentona, 30 km from Barcelona.
It seems we´re still in good shape for the 5 a.m. ers, laif is gud. :-)

Weekend in Spain

Off to Spain tomorrow. Friday in Madrid, Saturday and Sunday in Barcelona for Javi´s wedding (that´s the official XPLANATION ;-). Good times.

It´s getting together with close friends with whom I lived six years (memorable moments like ¨gatito, gatiiiitooo...¨, Ildefonso, pears, ¨vaya mmmmiiieerrrda de díaaa!!!¨.....). I´ll post a photo or two next week. Null blogging for me until Tuesday.
Meanwhile, enjoy this...pure life. Awesome.


Laif is gud. Enjoy...

Entropía

Es mentira que todo tienda al desorden....solo a la reorganización. Lo que pasa es que nos ponemos incómodos cuando vemos que es una manifestación nueva de la realidad. Pura resistencia al cambio, vamos.
:-P

Eso es lo que me digo cuando veo mi escritorio...

Effort & ROI...in everything

Thought of the day:
Real love (like everything that´s done in life ¨for real¨) is not worrying about ROI. In fact, real love´s ROI is infinite, like everything that´s done authentically.
Ironically, the more authentic (ergo ¨the more you¨) the less effort it takes to do it.

I´m going to call the intersection of both curves ¨compromise point¨. What compromise? Happiness, due to fear. Love´s commoditization, hah.

What do you think?

Perfect Sunset II

I´ve been meaning to post this one for a while. Another perfect sunset: Miami, cousins, good wine from Smith & Wollensky and a great conversation.

Laif is gud. And it gets better.

Any perfect sunsets for you lately?

Weekend in Miami

Off to Miami tonight. Looong weekend with cousins.
Laif is gud. Enjoy!

:-)

Perfect Sunset

Have you ever experienced a perfect sunset?
Last January I took this picture. It seems as if the ship is carrying the Sun elsewhere...Sunsets are one of the things why I believe that the best things in life are free.
When was your last perfect sunset?

Try Again

If you believe in what you do...move to the right.
...I don´t mean to say that luck is a consequence of hard work. If you try hard and something good comes out, be grateful.

Common-nication

Corporate Piglitics

Puck Forporate politics. Sacrificing a larger good for a smaller (temporary one) is love incomplete. True love is not solicited.

be gud. live laif.

Love for money

Hugh Macleod is an inspiring individual. Not that I want to become a cartoonist or imitate him (he´s too good for that) but now I don´t just write my ideas and put them on t-shirts. I also draw them (the whole visual thinking concept is very ¨me¨ too).

So...here´s my statement about love for money...love incomplete.

Remember...enjoy life.

What is missing

Months ago I drew my vision of incompleteness. Listening to Jack Johnson this morning, decided to share it. Laif is gud.

PS.
Looking for a place to link the word ¨incompleteness¨ to, I came across this. Turns out a scientist by the name of Kurt Gödel said this in 1931:

If an axiomatic system can be proven to be consistent and complete from within itself, then it is inconsistent.

I´ll take it to everyday life, with the excuse of Mr. Gödel:
You do, say, feel etc. with your own set of beliefs. In order to prove it consistent and complete you need to use a more consistent set of beliefs than that of yours. In order for that set of beliefs to be convincing, its consistency must have been proven without using yours.
ERGO, since love is been proven consistent by itself, why not place it as our core value?

Time here to mention the great way in which Collective Soul expresses it in their song ¨Listen¨.

Oprah Winfrey nails it as well: "I believe that every single event in life happens in an opportunity to choose love over fear."

In your opinion, what is missing in the world to make ourselves complete (i.e. achieve our full potential)?

Rather ¨deep¨ morning. ;-)

Laif is gud. Cheers,

Thought of the Day - The life you love

I´m thinking today: loving the life you don´t have is a big source of unhappiness.

I guess this is another way of saying ¨Love the life you live, live the life you love.¨ But I wonder: why do we, humans, so many times end up confused and unhappy with our reality? I think we have been told too many lies. Lies about being a perfect human being (Hitler), lies about being someone you´re not or go to hell (oppressive ways of understanding Religion), lies about the sources of poverty (21st century Socialism in the form of utopian projects of politicians like Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales, José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero...to name a few).

Our full potential resides not in living a utopian life but in getting the most out of our current reality.

Yeah, pretty obvious. But time and again we get stuck.

What are the sources of unhappiness in your life?

Full Potential

Having written a bit about achieving full potential and being convinced as I am that getting there is paramount for living a gud laif, it was very refreshing this morning to see a post by Chris Nel on Tom Peters´blog.

Words of wisdom. Hell yeah, let´s get over 20th century management and start redefining business relationships. Base them not on control, but on TRUST. Distrust is one of those lame self-fulfilling prophecies (I thank my boss for teaching me how to identify one).

For all it´s worth, let´s base our lives on trust as a means to achieve our full potential and that of the people around us. Genuine trust. The kind that allows me to genuinely know you and by which I believe in who you are and what you say. When I have questions, doubts, I openly talk about them with you, because I believe in you and trust you...and because it´s the best thing for both of us, not just me.

Yes, it´s that simple...and it still gives you the butterflies, huh?

El Morro

A fortress teaches us to have a strong foundation.
This is ¨San Felipe del Morro¨, built in San Juan, Puerto Rico by the Spaniards half a millenium ago. I took the picture last Saturday on a boat ride with two of my cousins. Its a different angle than what you´ll normally see in postcards or tourist guides.

When you look at it, the fortress tells you about the many hurricanes, the gunshots, the fires it´s been through. And still, there it is, in the same place, still magnificent. Seems like everything it went through made it even stronger. Why? Because it has a strong foundation.

What do you hold on to when times are tough?

I agree

Michele is one of my mentors and she´s kindly lent me a book called ¨Leadership is an art¨ by Max De Pree, former CEO of Herman Miller.

I am eating up the book, and there is one word I can use to describe what I think about his view on leadership: agreement. I´ve tried to express it in the photo above (that´s the book with the shadow of my face projected on it...trying to give the blog an artistic touch ;-)

The book starts talking about achieving your full potential, to me the cornerstone of a good life. Then he goes on to statements like these, which should be ¨graffittied¨ in some managers´ office walls:
¨To make a commitment, any employee should be able to answer ¨yes¨ to the following question: Is this a place where they will let me do my best?¨
¨Would you rather work as a part of an outstanding group or be a part of a group of outstanding individuals?¨

He asks this, because trust is a result of understanding the different gifts people bring to the table. And trust, like full potential, is built and achieved by people, not structures.

So...what structure in your life is preventing you from achieving your full potential? Is it external...or internal?

Words...

If you were to define your day in words, what would you say?

Here´s my Today:

vision, values, alignment, future, dreams, paradigm shift, renaissance, innovation, screw the hierarchy, change, new, flexibility, Ali, sinchronicity, systems thinking.

What was your Today?