Author: Fabrizio

Take a step back

Fabrizio1 Comment

When you get stuck, your instinct tells you to find a way out.

And so you delve deeper into what you were doing and got you stuck in the first place, you wrestle with what you don’t get, tirelessly digging a path in the hope that the answer is at the end of it. You spend time, energy and focus looking at the problem, and the more you do it, the less it seems feasible. Not once I have managed to get untangled this way.

Instead, you could take a break. You could go for a walk, call a friend, have a cup of coffee. And then, when you go back, you could look at the problem’s contours, trying to refine them, make them more comfortable for you, even finish something around the problem you said you would have finished later. You are making it more presentable and ready to be tackled.

At this point, one of two things happen.

Perhaps you get your answer. It might come unexpected, as your mind was not really looking for it.

Or you realize that the problem was not really THE problem. That you had fears, expectations, doubts, concerns. All preventing you to look at things for what they really were. A mere block. And then you can continue with your work.

Until you get stuck again.

Repeat.

I am not here for that

FabrizioLeave a comment

When I moved to Finland seven years (and some months) ago, I did that primarily to find a better quality of life for my future family.

Throughout the years, particularly during the two long periods (about 10 months at the beginning and 12 months more recently) during which I have struggled to find a job, I had to remind myself of this quite many times.

The reason why I am here is NOT professional.

There is some debate these days about how difficult it is for foreigners to find a job in this country. Indeed, if you do not speak Finnish, or if you don’t have good connections, or if you do not know how the job industry works here (for example, in terms of being bold in your applications vs being honest), it is quite the challenge to be employed. Sometimes, accepting a job below your education level will help, sometimes it won’t.

The reason why I am bringing this up, even though it might seem like a local issue, is that we often define ourselves, our lives, our satisfaction in terms of the job we have. For good reasons, of course, but we should be more careful about that.

People do not come to Finland because of its amazing economy, the infinite professional possibilities the country has to offer, the openness of its society.

People come to Finland because schools are excellent and education is free, because the work culture permits to go home at 16.00 without feeling guilty, because there is a well-maintained playground in every courtyard, because public transportation can reliably take you basically everywhere you need to go, because of its stunning nature, some also because they enjoy spending winters under 60 centimetres of snow.

We should refocus the way we think about life and satisfaction. Having a job is important, but it does not end there. If, for any reason, it does instead, then unfortunately Finland is not the best option on your list. And I am sure it’s their loss.

Sunny and rainy days

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Almost everybody loves a sunny day. It is a given, something we do not spend much time thinking about. If it sunny outside, we know most people will be happy about it.

Not quite as many people, though, loves a rainy day. Actually, quite a few. And if you are one of those, it is quite special to meet somebody who does too. You will possibly start talking about how a rainy day makes you feel, sharing experiences of stuff you’ve done when it was raining, and complaining a little bit about the bad press rain usually gets.

The point is. You can choose to connect on something that most people like, that is widely accepted. It is easy, and probably you will be easily and quickly forgotten.

Or you can pick a character that is peculiar to you, one that identifies who you are and that some people, at some point, might even find annoying. It will take more work, it will be challenging, and you will find long-term connections.

The choice is yours.

Emotions and rationality

Fabrizio1 Comment

If you are using emotional tools to address a rational problem, chances are you are going to struggle in the medium/long-term.

Say you are at a meeting discussing how many new hires you need for the next project. Since you know that hiring people, onboarding and training them is a lot of work, and you’d rather focus on something different, you leverage the fear of taking risks of your boss, throw some numbers in the air to make your point, and end up scoring a point. In the medium term, your team will be understaffed.

This is the same mechanism we are seeing at work with Brexit and most of the populism around the World. A real, concrete, rational problem (i.e. an increasing part of the population is being left behind) is addressed leveraging emotions (fear, anger, hatred). Good results in the short-term (Brexit was voted, many populists are being elected), but when it comes to putting together concrete acts to move past the feelings, not much can be done.

Something similar happens with the opposite. If one of your team members is struggling to share ideas and participate in team meetings (an emotional problem), and you decide that from now on meetings will feature a “let’s go around the table” moment (a rational tool), you will force the team member to speak, yet not necessarily get the best ideas out of them.

Facebook is in the process of understanding this very thing. In trying to cope with the spread of hate speech and inappropriate content on their platform (emotional problem), they have decided to ramp up the number of moderators and feed them 14,000 pages of instructions on what is acceptable and what is not (rational tool). Clearly, it is not working.

Beyond malice and opportunism, make sure you know on which level your problem is, and come up with a solution that speaks the same language. Your chances to make an impact and be trusted (forever?) will increase dramatically.

Bias

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It takes mental effort to identify our own bias.

Few months ago, I was putting together a presentation about Coaching and Leadership. I wanted to have one slide to stimulate some discussion, and I wanted to ask people in the audience to describe leadership with one single word.

Along with the question, the slide was supposed to feature a collage of known leaders. To my dismay, I quickly realised I was victim to bias. The first few names that came to mind were (in order) Steve Job, Mark Zuckerberg, Barack Obama and Jack Welch. All male. All American.

I could have certainly stuck with those, and probably nobody would have complained. Yet, as I knew by then I was biased, I forced myself to do a better research (both in my memory and on the Internet), and eventually came up with the following collage.

Leadership-bias

It was great to do that. Not only because I had a far better depiction of what a leader is and might be, but also because I had the chance to identify bias at work. At least, a certain type of bias. Perhaps next time, this list will come more naturally. And perhaps, I will be able to identify similar bias in other situations more easily.

By the way, in case you are wondering who some of the leaders in the collage are, here is the full list (from top left).