Sunday 30 March 2008

Shaking Hands With Mr President!

For the past few months I was intensively following the primary presidential campaign in the US. It is a great source for learning about leadership, communication but also discipline and perhaps most of all commitment to hard work. I hoped for the presidential race to come to Williamsport. And guess what? Yesterday, the former president of the United States of America – Bill Clinton visited Lycoming College!

How was it? Well, of course - GREAT! What happened then?

Let’s start from the beginning. After coming to USA I was very sceptic about the country. A lot of things did not seem right. In general, it looked as if people were overwhelmingly focused on consumption, living without any consideration for the consequences of their actions. One recent example was in my marketing class. We were talking about product life cycles and the professor asked how many people in the class used energy efficient light bulbs in their houses. Only two out of almost forty people raised hands… It was very worrying. President’s Clinton speech made me realise there is still hope for a change, though.

Topics of the speech

During his 1,5 hour speech Mr Clinton addressed a number of issues. He talked about the war in Iraq, the housing bubble, international relations and global warming.

High performance leadership

Interestingly, global warming was the part of his speech that he put the most effort into. He said some pretty obvious stuff, but approached it from another angle. He basically said that countering global warming would create new jobs. First, infrastructure for increasing energy efficiency would have to be built, creating demand for electronic engineers. Second, somebody would have to lay this infrastructure down. This way new jobs would be created, but even more importantly, jobs that cannot be outsourced to another country (big deal in America right now). Anyway, what he said might not have been a revelation but it was definitely inspirational. It was good to hear directly from somebody in this position that these issues matter.

Rallying the crowd

In the end the crowd looked like hypnotised. I wondered how Mr. Clinton achieved that. A couple of things came to my mind. Most of all, he was a person like everybody else. He did not use a difficult language; he talked about people’s problems and not about superficial and unrelated matters. 

In person

Mr. Clinton used metaphors to explain complex issues to the crowd and also humour to brighten everybody up, constantly pointing at the future. He did say that America's bigges concerns were the economy and the country’s relations with the rest of the world. But rather than using complicated economic terms he said that the aim of this campaign was that when his wife leaves the office, people are better off, seeing a brighter future for their children and coming together rather than moving away from each other.

So in the end I learned two things. First, that there is still hope for America. Second, if you want your message to come across, keep it simple. It will save you time, energy, and it will work best!

UPDATE: video snapshot of the speech on YouTube — Bill Clinton at Lycoming College

Friday 14 March 2008

Spring Contemplations

The spring break is long over, but it is only now that the first signs of spring start to appear. Indeed, it seems that the world is returning to life. Interestingly, the best evidence of spring this week was my professors' performance, as they all delivered exceptionally good lectures. It is amazing what effect the arrival of spring can have on us!

Fed arrives

An important event took place this week, namely the guest lecture by William H. Stone Jr, the vice president and COO of Federal Reserve Bank in Philadelphia. It was probably the first time that I had an opportunity to meet such a prominent figure and will definitely not forget it. Mr Stone spoke mainly about the responsibilities of the Federal and Central Bank, the difficulty in balancing free market policies and regulations and of course the subprime mortgage crisis.


Bleak economy could use some spring colours

I will be honest, the lecture was very hard to follow. One of the things I learnt was the incredible complexity of financial systems in the market economy. I also realised how many years of practice it takes to develop the level of expertise that Mr Stone has. I can learn about the recession of 1991 and how it was handled from the books, but by no means I can learn what it really takes to handle it well in a real life situation. That is because only experience can utilise knowledge. Or is it the other way round? Or maybe both?

Well, towards the end of the talk I asked Mr. Stone what where his thoughts on the steps the US should take to maintain its economic leadership in the world. In response I heard that the US has gone through many periods in the last decades when similar concerns were raised. Nonetheless, the country always emerged from these battles, becoming stronger at each time. Mr. Stone had no doubt the story would repeat itself this time and after. And it makes sense, considering the cyclical nature of the economy.

The greater danger

But whatever is the true answer one issue here must not be missed. Namely, that, too much experience can cause people to “stick to the script”, neglecting the possibility of things going in way they never went before. That’s where the greater danger may lie. As with anything, having too much of experience seems to have downsides as well. Therefore, I would argue that knowledge is the key to experience, not otherwise, as it allows people to think perceptively, and in a truly innovative way. And it is the common truth that innovation is the only way forward. Additionally, as argued in the previous post, how much we learn from experience is determined to a large extent by how much we know prior to it.

It is a tough subject, hopefully this summer I will be able to put my hypothesis into test and learn more about it. Stay tuned!

Spring, we love you!


Sunday 2 March 2008

Lessons From Korea PT. 1

In this post I want to share some of my thoughts and reflect on the lessons I have learnt from my trip to South Korea.

Last summer I stayed in Seoul, where I followed a 3-months intensive Korean language course in Korea University. I lived with the family of my good friend Yongjin, who I met shortly after moving to London.

From the outset, my trip really was a crash course in survival rather than a calming holiday. It all started with the surprising announcement by the above-mentioned friend of mine. He would be going away to another city the very next morning after my arrival, for no less then two weeks. That being the case, I had to make my way through this massive city, where hardly anybody speaks English, with just the bunch of Korean phrases I had learnt so far, on my own. Not too mention fighting the effects of the gigantic jetlag and getting used to the very special Korean diet from day one. And this was just the beginning!

With Yongjin on the day of my arrival

These days, the media, and the Internet especially, give the impression that the world is as small place. But my trip made me aware that, in fact, the world may be small but is still so diverse that at times one may think that being in a new place feels like being on a different planet. Korea is one of these places. It really is. The list of these differences is almost never ending. Consider the examples below.

• In Korea, you don’t speak about “him” or “her” but about a brother or sister, an uncle or aunt, regardless whether you are related to them or even know them at all;
• In Korea, people avoid suntan as much as possible as it is associated with poverty and the working class;
• In Korea, newborn children are born with the age of 1, meaning that everybody is one year older than they actually are. Moreover, birthday is only a celebration of one’s birth. People get older on the New Year’s Eve, which happens twice a year. That is due to the fact that as other nations in South East Asia, Koreans also celebrate the Chinese New Year, which is set according to the Lunar calendar which differs from the Gregorian calendar that we use;
• In Korea, one of the most popular sports is playing StarCraft, an 11 years old, two-dimensional computer game!

The cultural differences I encountered had a tremendous effect on the way I started to think. This has been emphasised especially by the Korean language, which has absolutely nothing in common with European languages. Korean forced me to think differently, imposing new rules on the way I expressed myself. It was such an incredible feeling to realise that I could express the same thoughts in a completely different way. However, it was an overwhelmingly hurtful process, which put my nerves to an edge at multiple occasions.

The daily routine - catching a bus home after classess

Nevertheless, as I was adopting more and more to the Korean way of life I recognised that in fact, it was not that difficult to get used to. And after a while I recognised that it was not the case of Korea being so different, but it was my lack of my knowledge about these differences. What immediately stroke me was that change is so difficult for most of us, from the mere fact that it leads us into uncertainty, rather than brings something that is impossible to comprehend. Therefore, there is nothing to fear as long appropriate research is done prior to the planned changes, the data being clearly communicated to anyone affected by the change. In this way the change can be much easier to swallow. Still, I did not know any of that when I came to Korea and survived. Hence, I would say do change as much as possible – you will always learn something from it! Just make sure that the actual process of change does not produce more hurdles than benefits, or, as Barack Obama put it, remember, “It is not only what you change, but also how you bring that change about”.