Good boss in bad times

This interview summarizes the experience that CEOs and Mangement Boards, including AIESEC Intl., went through during the toughest times of the financial crisis.

The learnings from this experience are unvaluable and I would like to share it with as many young people as possible.

Management expert Robert Sutton shares lessons on handling layoffs and teams in crisis.
Source: http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Organization/Talent/Good_boss_bad_times_2365

Prepare for an extraordinary future!

Last weekend I attended an AIESEC event in the city of Gent, Belgium.

The event aimed to support members of AIESEC to leave the organization and be ready to converge their learning and prepare for an extraordinary future.

Personally speaking, the event helped me to ground some questions I had to myself and identify some opportunities laying in front of me.

One exercise that made me feel excited about the future was to write down a list of achievements I would like to have in my life. In that moment I wrote:

• Be part of a team working on a global project for a well-known corporation within 5 years
  
• Finish a (half) marathon or a (half) triathlon within 5 years
  
• Start a company and then allocate it to a CEO within 5 years
  
• Provide consultancy to NGOs and SMEs to increase their impact using internet as the tool within 5-10 years
• Help my parents living an awesome retirement time within 10 years
  
• Live with my family (wife and kids) in a house sorrounded by green areas near the ocean in the North Pacific in Costa Rica within 10 years
• Have a column in a newspaper or write articles for especialized magazine on leadership, management and global markets within 10 years
  
• Be a teacher at the Engineering Faculty within 10 years
  
• Be part of the team creating a long term plan for the development of Costa Rica within 15-20 years
  

Nevertheless, the most impactful realization I had is the importance of planning BIG THINGS! and commit to make them happen even if at the end the path will take me in a differente direction.

Click here to check a similar post of 2006.

This exercise was facilitated by a person who is committed to support those choosing to live a passionate life, Houston Spencer.

I am an AIESECer!

Economic migration: brain drain or brain gain?

I have been invited to attend the European Business Summit (EBS) - http://www.ebsummit.eu - in Brussels this Thursday.

I will be in a workshop discussing the topic of "Economic Migration to Europe: brain drain or brain gain?"

And I would like to know your opinion to share it with the audience and policy makers of the European Union.

The question is:

How can the EU provide access to opportunities for international young people without negatively affecting developing countries and positively impacting the socio-economical development of the Union?

Drop me a comment and I will take your inputs to the right forum!

Re-discovering, re-defining

In less than 5 months my contract will finish and I have already started to put together some toughts on how and where to move forward.

I started with my CV, which I mentioned in the post Job Wanted, and now I feel that I am moving forward for a deeper research on my values, interests and passions.

I have done a lot of reflection this week, mostly fueled by the fact that my team got quite shaken with the pressure of IPM and we all needed to review our behaviours, their source and their impact in the whole.

As part of this exercise, I tried to bring together what I call my fundamental values. Those behaviours or that environment that I constantly try to build around me to make sure I can perform at my best:

1. Trust. I trust you and I suspend my judgments until I give you the chance to understand my context and explain me yours.
2. Loyalty. I stand for my organization (AIESEC) and my team (AI), therefore my behavior seeks to make these entities more meaningful.
3. Freedom. I take team goals as mine and I achieve them in the way that better fits me considering the connections with others and taking care of the team resources.
4. Reach out. I ask for what I need, I communicate my admiration, proposals and complaints to the right person (individually) at the right time because one day I want to be a agent of positive change.
5. Integrity. I do what I say. If I fail, I apologize and take responsibility first, then I do something so that next time it will happen as I promised.
6. Forgiveness. Crashes of expectations are opportunities to tune relations to a higher level and for me to understand where you are coming from.
7. Authenticity. I tried to be humble enough to show who I really am and to try to make myself better everyday.
   

And these are my main interests:

1. Growth and achievement. I believe that if something is great then my responsibility is to bring it to as many people and organizations as possible. That could change the world.
   
2. Supporting others. I can easily empathize with the passions of other people which encourages me to make myself available to support them achieving.
3. Networks of People. I see them like the key milestone for great achievements.
4. Sharing of resources. Enabling the flow of individuals, money and knowledge around the networks of people.
5. International environment. Committing and achieving with individuals from different countries/territories.
6. Hardcore management. Desigining and implementing strategies, culture, structures, JDs and training for people to perform at their best and make sure the organization achieves.

I find this process of discovery more emotional than I expected. I find myself getting easily excited about new opportunities and generating thousands of great ideas on a daily basis. At the same time, the fact that I can't start right away makes me slow down and then feel ungrounded.

At the end I like it, I feel that I have an blank page in front of me and than in my hand I have all of these colorful pencils very sharp and ready to be used.

Trust and Sense: Presidents' Meeting in Italy

I am back from the International Presidents’ Meeting in Italy.

More than 100 countries and territories where AIESEC is present sent their representative to (1) define the global priorities for the next year, (2) elect a new global leadership body, (3) agree on the global framework of operations (regulations) and (4) share their best practices.

It is by far the most challenging Congress I have attended.

Can you imagine how hard it is to run a global decision making process in the context of the global financial crisis?

If you read the Economist, you could summarize the Congress in the last two editions: “The return of economic nationalism” and “The bill that could break up Europe”, with the difference that we managed to arrive at a positive agreement.

The representatives arrived to Rome really focused on their country and their needs which made it hard for conversations to be productive. As the time past, the bonds built started to give results and we started to listen to each other and made decisions that supported our intentions.

Later on, the new Membership Fee Model –(this model determines the expenditure each country/territory generates to the global organization and considering the country/territory external and internal capacity, it defines their Membership Fee)- that encourages productivity and achievement of results stretched the organization since some of the European countries were not ready to take financial responsibility for their operations.

Fortunately, the Global Network understood that their markets have constrained and that the changes that we expected all of us to implement were bigger than planned. In the end, in order to move into a phase of efficiency and productivity, the Global Network stepped up to support each other and make sure that we end our meeting with the best engine to achieve the goals of 2009.

My reading of the Congress is we are aware that this is the moment to take a better competitive position by building strategic partnerships with organizations that we have considered competitors in the past.

I am very very excited about the future of AIESEC. We are moving into an era of innovation and creativity to make sure that our understanding of the market is translated through actions into a better competitive position, distribution of resources (talent and money) and leadership to make our organization more efficient and impactful.

None of this would have been achieved if two fundamental pillars of all conversations wouldn’t have been present: trust, which gives time to listen, and sense, which conquers bright minds.

Job Wanted!

We are at the middle of the Global Financial Crisis and the Job Market looks awful for anyone looking for stable full time position but…

Here I go! To the Job Market!

First of all, I have noticed that organizations are looking to keep low fix costs in two ways:

They are keeping the fix down by lowering the number of full-time employees (FTE) with flexible HR capacity (short-term contracted employees and consultancy) and keeping the costs down by providing opportunities for hard working candidates with relative little experience.

Furthermore, not all industries suffered the same with the crisis. For example banking and finance got deeply damaged while the energy sector has remained a bit more stable.

On the personal note, I realized that I need to do more than one thing next year and I would like it to be a combination of being an employee, an entrepreneur, a student and a traveler.

I also know that I have the chance to break the year in segments and find short and intense opportunities instead of only looking for a long term career plan, opening the doors to contract and negotiate out-of-the-box, in other words, it is not only about the salary.

In terms of location, anywhere but Europe and USA seems to be the answer which challenges my search because I am currently living and enjoying The Netherlands.

I got a CV and I got a coach. I haven’t met with my coach yet but we will very soon.

While writing my CV, I re-learn 4 things that I want to share:

1. Keep a standard CV but customize it every time you send it to an organization

2. Do that by making sure that the key words in your CV fit the job requirements

3. Make sure you explain what degree you have, you will be amazed to realize the differences between Bachelor, Licentiate, Master and MBAs in different parts of the world, even within Europe.

4. Network your way in, instead of letting yourself being fished out of the market

5. Your CV is your statement, so if it is not you then It won’t get you where you fit

I fool myself by facing the truth: my next step is only that, my next step, one dot in a long line that I will keep on shaping forever.

Finally, I maintain the motivation because life is full of opportunities and places to see and explore. I have met people and build networks that can take me far and in moments of uncertainty people focus on generating results globally, not giving excuses and connecting short term achievements with long term sustainability.

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Global job trends for 2009:

· BBC/ILO Video - http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=F-spZ5R_9eE

· ILO Report- http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/documents/publication/wcms_101461.pdf

About drugs and dangers for Central America

Today is the first Sunday since I left to Costa Rica that I have the chance to stay at home and enjoy the evening shows.

I was watching BBC and saw a documentary that mentioned the issues that have emerged in some Amazonian areas due to the industry of cocaine.

In the height lands of the Andean Region of South America, the Coca Plant has been grown for centuries. It is recognized as a medicinal plant and it is embedded in many traditional activities of the local communities.

When the global consume of cocaine grew in the early 70´s some Andean farmers started to have a new set of clients for their coca leaves.

The new clients paid more than the traditional market and this encouraged the farmers to commit more land to the coca production.

Nowadays, after decades of guerrilla, corruption and violence many families remain dependant of the income of the cocaine industry.

Governments set regional quotas on how much land can be dedicated to the production of coca for the local consumption but leaks to the drug industry remain systematic.

The drug industry is driven by a worldwide consuming market and its power has crashed against the different policies that governments have tried to enforce along the supply chain.

In my opinion, these policies haven't being successful since they are generating a ¨mirage" effect. To give you an example, the enforcement of law and well implementation of policies in Colombia cause the migration of the business to Mexico. Furthermore, as the Mexican government puts more pressure on the markets, the industry will keep moving south to Central America: first to Guatemala and then to El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua to finally hit Costa Rica and Panama.

The complexity of the problem doesn't encourage me to propose concrete actions except to extend you an invitation to avoid at all consequences the consumption of any type of illicit drug to stop the supply of money in the market and to reduce the power of the industry.

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Read more: "Trouble Ahead: The Cocaleros of Peru" ' http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/felbab-brown.pdf
Photo: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/latin_america/newsid_2708000/2708125.stm

Hello World!

I am back in the virtual World!

This time I will be sharing my experiences and learning of managing a team of 22 individuals from 16 countries and being held responsible for the growth and sustainability of a global organization present in more than 100 countries with more than 32 ooo members. Isn't this cool?

I will be posting on leadership and team management, the challenges of youth in a globalized society and other topics and issues I must face in the next months. The blog will remain young and fresh with a very simple language and some Spanish words here and there.

When I was back in Costa Rica in early 2000's, the TV was a great source of motivation for me. Watching channels like People & Arts, Discovery and NatGeo kept me interested in discoverying the beauty the world captures. Today I have being in more than 67 cities in 34 countries and the video below resembles how i feel about it.