Tag: values

Futile

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You know a person that advocates for recycling, and while driving she uses her phone.

One of your friends works for a non-profit organization, and every time she goes grocery shopping she is happy to pay €0,20 for a plastic bag.

Your boss is a great coach and mentor, and never misses an occasion to express her support for military intervention in the latest geopolitical confrontation.

A colleague of your partner always cracks hilarious jokes when she is over for dinner, and without fail she ends up getting drunk and forgetting huge chunks of the evening.

The CEO of that company that is creating a lot of jobs and who’s paying its fair share of taxes is only motivated by being on the first page of the newspaper and buying the latest model of sportscar.

As we are more and more prone to separate the world into “good” and “bad”, we are forced to pick one slice of someone’s life and let it creep all over their behaviour, motives, reputation, and identity.

“Good” and “Bad” are convenient, but living is much more than that.

If we are not exposed to all the aspects of someone’s life, then putting people into boxes is just a futile activity. And we are never exposed to all the aspects of someone’s life.

Identity

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There will always be two ways to build an identity.

The first one is founded on differences and contrasts.

We are different (from them).
Our team is the best performing in the company.
They do not care as much as we do.
When I see them, it makes me want to give my best to beat them.

The second one is founded on unity and commonalities.

We all work to have long lasting impact.
Our teams share the values of transparency and hard work.
We are in this together.
Our organisation wants to be a place in which people of different background can express their best work.

Which one you pick is an active choice, one that needs to be reaffirmed over time, one that you need to be aware of in the first place. So often we slip onto the first option simply because it is the easiest to put into practice. Be intentional.

Valuating

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Buzz is a misleading distraction.

More than 9 out of 10 venture capitalists think that unicorns (startups worth more than $1bn in the private market) are overvalued, no matter if they have one in their portfolio or not. Lyft‘s and Uber‘s stocks have lost respectively 43% and 28% of their value since they went public last spring. WeWork (and its investors) thought the company was three or four times more valuable than the higher point public investors would consider for its stock.

Buzz is misleading, because it generally focuses on one single thing. You always get what you reward, and so if all investors care about is valuation, the company can get to a high valuation (at least in the private market). And it is distracting, because it takes focus away from things that are more important when building an organisation that impacts millions of lives. Things such as the company culture, the business fundamentals, the effect of the product or service on society at large.

Companies can be built without raising money, without a pitch deck, and without a title in the front page of the financial newspaper.

It all depends on what you want to achieve in the long term.

Intentional

FabrizioLeave a comment

It’s quite challenging to appreciate the impact of our actions on others. Mainly because it takes time to manifest, and we are often too focused on what is happening in the moment.

But on the other end, it is delusional to believe that our actions have no impact. We do not operate in a vacuum, and when we say something, behave in a certain way, choose one option over another, people around us will make a mental note and work on some type of reaction.

The more intentional you are about what you choose to do (and not to do), the more likely the influence on others will be the one you want to have. Unsurprisingly, it all start with awareness.

Giving time

Fabrizio1 Comment

Donating to charities or impactful causes might not be for everyone, but there’s a very accessible way to give that we can all practice regularly.

Giving time.

Giving time is personal, important, empathetic and transformational. No matter how busy we are, we can always find time to give. Either by mentoring, by coaching, by listening, by sharing our experience with those who have a different one, by merely being totally present.

There’s no training needed in giving time, you can start as soon as now. And the great thing is, the more you are in a bad place, the better giving time will make you feel.

[…] instead of moving away from your work when burnout strikes, you may actually need to move closer to it, albeit in a different manner. That different manner is “giving back” to your field. This can take many forms, including volunteering and mentoring, but the basic gist is that you should focus on helping others.

Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness, Peak Performance