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Why employees should be traded as football players, including salary cap!

// March 1st, 2010 // No Comments » // Business, Environment, Philosophy

We live in a corporate world but capitalism is just a word, somewhere down the line somebody gave a total new meaning to it, here is a brief history:

Corporates where born as a necessity of traders specializing in different crafts, providing services to each other basing the value of their service according to supply and demand. Monarchs at that time, afraid of loosing control over wealth production, put into place some laws that would shape the history of human kind: they passed a law enabling them to monopolize industries. They then became partners of the companies they exclusively gave right to operate…

I am not going to discuss here the many implications of these acts. You can read more in Life Inc. a great book, but what I want to focus on how this have shaped the employer and the employee in today’s world.

Companies granted favors from governments are generally led by unscrupulous owners who’s main focus is never to do the job as good as they can but their only goal is the accumulation of wealth and power, for the sake of wealth and power, on the other hand this is the only way monarchies knew how to operate and it is only natural that this would be what the corporate world inherited from them.

This wealthy employer needs employees in order to operate so he triggers another inherited vice: exploitation… He has the exclusive right to produce a paycheck, therefore the real craftsmen have to sell their services not to the value of demand but at the mercy of “the” supplyer!

With time craftsmen loose their craft, employers loose their wealth, employees learn the rules to become new employers, employees adapt their expectations and from craftsman they become mare operators… In the meanwhile the original employer finds a way to once and for all control the “source” of wealth: the central banks are created. He is unaware of having created a Monster!

Controlling the money output and loaning it to the markets in exchange of production makes what was a zero sum game a time bomb… The only way for this system to work was turning producers into everlasting consumers! You know how that story went…

So now what we have is not even the original “employer” anymore but the corporate “machine”, feeding off of consumption and needing more and more. This beast, as all creatures, has basic survival instincts and in order to survive it created for itself the perfect environment to keep at bay the human intellect: standardized education, centralized mass media, distractions of all sorts, the illusion of scarcity and many many more enchantments.

Today we live as zombies, employers and employees all together… Our time has a value set by arbitrary salaries or revenues that reflect the needs of production and not the value of our real human capital. There is no direct incentive for the employee in most places to do better and no incentives for the employer to want their employees to become better.  Biggest business deals are still done by networking, by pulling favors or in lamer terms by kissing ass…

Inheritance is the original sin!

I cannot reverse all this, none of us can. The machine is too big now, very few of us took the red pill, and yet even we still love the taste of a great steak. I have a suggestion though:

There are many things we can learn from sports: Team spirit, discipline, drive, commitment, love, fairness and many many more. It is like we really could save the sports from the faith of human mediocrity. With sports there are traits in player trading and league management that could easily be applied to the corporate world that could lead to human beings relinquishing control over the machines.

Having the best player during his time on the team and the value of creating an asset that later could be traded for money or an equal valued player is a good deal for both sides. This allows the team (the employer) to look at players (employees) as a long term investment and a direct asset of the team (company). Now the better the players the better the team, the better all the teams the better the league (world)…

The only thing that needs to be done in order to understand the value of employees as clearly as players is setting more transparent goals. We know a player’s value for the team because we watch him doing things, we keep statistics, we see him grow, win, loose… See his commitment, his performance under duress… We need to find ways to show and keep track of this things in the corporate world as well. But isn’t this what most best selling success books tell us ? Set your goals, follow trough, be accountable, get feedback, be a team player, review your goals, adjust, succeed… It definitely could be done.

But how to prevent a team of getting all the good players just because it inherited more money, had an early start or simply knows the right people ? Well, in most places including Europe they didn’t and therefore they have unbalanced leagues where the wealthy teams strive and the poor just crawl. Sounds familiar ? We do have a solution though called drafting and salary cap. This is what makes franchises like the NFL or the NBA successful for so many years. It is really hard to monopolize success with this set of rules and the good thing is that the competition is so fierce, the incentives to succeed so high that the only way the quality of the game can go is only up.

Watch the quality of these leagues, you can clearly see a huge improvement every year. It demands perfection and commitment from every player, just the way it should be.

So why don’t we run our industries like this ? We succeeded managing our leagues like that…

The real question is: could the one’s in power accept this new rules and take part in a fair game ? The great thing is that they don’t have to! Let me explain:

The NFL, the NBA or any other league monarchic or not survives only as long as we watch it. The more the viewers the better the league, that is a universal formula. One thing the machine has not calculated is that we ARE the key to turn it off, WE are the buyers, the consumers, the zombies remember ? So the day we really decide things HAVE to change they will… They must…

I think what I suggest is a win win situation in all senses… Don’t you ?

Sadok Kohen

Babylon did never fall…

// January 18th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Philosophy

How did we end up feeling so alone, so afraid, so poor, so disconnected… I sense sadness… Good man, great man are trapped into a cage that does not exist.

I hear screams, I hear crying, I feel tear drops in the rain. Good man are pushed around, good man are drawn into their corners trying to make sense out of the sensless…

How can we live in this world, in this world of madness. There is no logic, no knowledge, no feeling, no awareness not even the smallest hint of purpose.

Everything is right in front of our eyes, the information is out there, everything we need is out there ABUNDANTLY and yet we live in complete scarcity.

There is a black hole inside us, never satisfied… Why ? Why ?

Do we really need to be shaken up at the deepest level, do we need to feel so much pain to understand what is in front of our eyes ? Do we need earthquakes and floods and hurricanes to bring us closer together ? Is this really the only way ?

Nothing has changed since the great flood then, Babylon did never fall…

If you see your neighbor building an Arc in his backyard… you better join him…

Actually why don’t we all try and build Arc’s inside our soul and then flood all the rest, all the beliefs, all the prejudice, the hatred, the fear… Lets go trough that storm, day in and day out, and lets keep sending out that white dove into the horizon… Zen teaches that you cannot fill a cup that’s already full… Lets rock the cup so hard that is empty again…

Then the white dove will arrive with an olive branch in his beak… And we will have another chance, to choose… and choose again… until Babylon will fall once and for all…

Sadok Kohen
In truth, without deceit, certain, and most veritable…

Managing stress under a hard deadline

// January 15th, 2010 // No Comments » // Business, Technology

Having a deadline for a project is generally taken as a rough estimation and there is some implied flexibility that everybody in the organization secretly agrees to.

Having a hard deadline is different: if you “have to” end a project by a specific date or the whole work and investment you have done will be wasted, you are dealing with a different animal…

As the final date approaches, you start to question whether everyone is doing what they are supposed to be doing. The easy way out is to simply pretend that nobody is working hard enough and start yelling around. My experience tells me that is hardly the solution.

If on the other hand you already know that all the resources you have are pushing their limits to the very end, there is not much you can do, or is there ? The stress builds up as the date gets closer, little problems get bigger and bigger and what 6 months ago looked like a triviality now has the potential to kill the project…

Here are some essential tools that can save your life:

1) Spend some real quality time on planning, and then spend some more

We tend to underestimate the value of a good plan. You have to accept the fact that a plan can never be perfect, needs to have some flexibilities but not too many. If a plan becomes too flexible the project might never end, but if it is too tight, then the stress will eat you and your team up as a black hole.

A good plan also needs to have room for new information and be adjusted on the fly but that is not enough, a plan is a living organism and its only healthy if everyone involved updates its status constantly. Many people complain that they have no time to update their task statuses, I say its all BS, the value of the work done is lost if you have no chance to control the flow.

Today there are wonderful technologies that allow project planning and team collaboration to be done in an informative, useful and even entertaining way: Basecamp, Cubetree, Activecollab to say a few.

Technologies are only usefull if they are utilized in the correct manner, but once the right tools are integrated to the workflow you can’t even imagine how life saving they can be.

2) Be careful to 3rd party vendors

You can have a certain level of control over your team, how to push them, how to manage them, how to motivate them, but you often don’t have any control over 3rd parties involved. So be careful in scheduling your time with them. You’d be surprised at what 1 week of work for your team translates in an other company. I have seen a day job done in weeks… You often tend to plan according to your time expectations, don’t pretend the same performance from external sources, they might have different priorities then you.

3) Prioritize before, Prioritize during, Prioritize after…

There are things in life that cannot be planned. When they happen you might find yourself in a place where you have to chose what part of the planned features to let go. The thing is you cannot know when the unexpected will happen, so its a great practice to divide your project into the minimum acceptable, the essential extras, the cherry on the cake.

After the start, as the project starts to take shape you will have great ideas, ideas that you will want to include immediately.

Well, if they are not game changers, don’t… Wait for the project to end before improving it. It’s real hard to be disciplined enough. To tell you the truth I suck at this, as I see the project developing I immediately tend to try and perfect it, but those little additions, a little cut here, a brush stroke there, when you add it all up you notice that you are out of time struggling to finish any of it.

This is where the planning phase once again proves to be critical, if given enough time, most of the things you think of during the project might have be planned in advance.

Now lets say that you really have a breakthrough and you NEED to add something to the project during it: prioritize, reschedule, plan and update all the work flow. See how the new addition effects other things, look at it again and make the decision on weather its really worth it.

4) Reality check, Know where you are at any time

So now you have a good project plan, the time-line is set, priorities are in place, the team is collaborating and the hours are flowing like the wind.

Especially during big and long projects, when you start seeing that everyone is working and things start to get done, you get confortable too early and might lose sight of where you are. It might seem like you are in the middle of an amazon jungle with no compass and out of water with two options: hoping for the best (God, a helicopter, Jane…) or running around relentlessly with the hope that the physical effort gets you somewhere (generally this leads to getting more lost).

A routine check on the schedule, a regular face to face with key people, re-prioritization is key to prevent getting lost. This is again one of the areas where you face friction, the “no time” argument is always there. Funny thing is that you shouldn’t have any “time argument” if the planning is done right…

5) Learn to dance with the stress waves

Management does not have a one fit for all formula. You need to learn how to understand when to push, when to wait, when to intervene and when to have faith. Its a continuous dance, a tango if you will.

There will be times when only you can determine which direction needs to be taken, but somethimes you need to wait and go with the flow until its your time to make the move. If you try to control too much you will either be too stiff, too heavy or eventually break your team apart.

You also need some psychology skills, some empathy and awareness of the mood and morale of the people involved. The relationship between them, the little arguments that can grow to become catastrophic during the stretch.

If you care about what you do and so do the people around you, its very likely that there will be emotional moments, high and lows, the hardest part is to understand how to move, its a rhythm that is perfected by experience.

6) Work with the best

No matter what you do there will be always a time where things get out of hand, really dangerous moments where making it or breaking it depends on every one of the people surrounding you. You want to have the best around you under tough circumstances. You want to have people with responsibility, people that will own the project and be with you till the end no matter what. It is during this moments that you understand better the value of having chosen the right team.

You can only trust the best, but its a two way street, you need to be trusted too. Respect is something you earn in life, no money can buy it. And the real good people in life, when they trow themselves into the fire with you or better for you, they never do it for the money. They do it for a vision, for a dream, for a sense of purpose, they do it to make a difference, to grow…

Believe me i have worked many times with teams that let me down, completely alone.I learned a lot during those failing moments of my life. Its cheaper to hire them, but the cost of having them under fire is lethal.

I was also lucky enough to work with people that hold me over their shoulders. There have been times that I didn’t know how to thank, and times where I didn’t understand how they could be so faithful. I am so grateful for this, I will value this gifts all my life… I hope I will always be able to show how much I appreciate being on the same boat with them.

7 ) Love what you do

Love what you do. You can’t fake it, you can’t learn to love something you don’t. The Universe is designed in a way that everything has a certain gravity towards their perfect place, listen to your heart and you will find it.

Don’t give up until you do, learn, thank, and start all over again

Failures are the biggest teachers in life. If you are really willing to grow you can find a deep lesson within each one of them. All your failures are about you, even the ones where you thought you were really unlucky, were you thought the world was spinning against you. If you really grasp this, there is nothing in this world that can stop you. You are bound to grow.

Even the legend, Michael Jordan thinks its true (video):

I failed over, and over, and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed…

I have done every one of the mistakes I have described above. I have done many times exactly the opposite of what I just wrote. I cherish each one of my mistakes, they made me who I am today. So if you fail, dont be scared, don’t panic, it’s ok… Just try to understand where did it all go wrong. Think hard about that moment where you could have acted differently, what could you have done better to prevent it… If you think you did everything right, think again, if you still can’t find yourself at fault, think if this is really where you want to be in your life… As I told you, you cannot fool the universe, and if you are supposed to be someplace else, you will be pulled away… (BTW this is why you also need to work with people that are happy about what they do…)

——————

I just met a hard deadline on a very big difficult project. Its a big bet, I have great expectations… I am lucky to work with a team of highly motivated professionals, people that really know what they are doing. I have to thank each one of them for their dedication and persistence. I couldn’t do it without their support.We will do big big things together, this is only the beginning.

I have to thank their leader separately, he kept it all together… I am very lucky to work with him, it is so hard to find the best…

Sadok Kohen
In truth, without deceit, certain, and most veritable…

2010: A new decade, great expectations…

// January 14th, 2010 // No Comments » // Philosophy

It is really amazing how life turns out to be, how the universe tends to respond to our actions in a sometime tough, sometime gentle manner.

Year in, year out we come up with new resolutions, new promises, new targets. Almost never fulfill all of them but yet the vision alone of having it all figured out is a driver by itself.

I read a book (on my e-ink device obviously)  recently that shook my soul in a very fundamental way. It’s “Who’s got your back” by Keith Ferrazzi.

At the beginning of the book there is an event where somebody tells Keith: “You are not elegant”. Not in a dress code sense but in how he lives his life… That’s where I said “That’s it!”, that is exactly what is not working in my life. I live a very fulfilling life, I have a great family, an incredibly challenging and exciting job, I am growing every day, adding new tools to my arsenal, a lot of learning. I mean life is beautiful, I am blessed from many aspects but I don’t seem to be able to quit struggling somehow…

There is always an important call, a missed opportunity, an urgency, a stressful task, something missing, anxiety of what’s to come… I am so mad at myself because I have all the tools I need to take under control my feelings, my finances, my time, my schedule and my goals thanks to Tony Robbins and David Allen. So why am I still in a constant rush to “make it”, whatever “it” is…

I want to streamline trough life, have my sense of purpose at sight 24/7, be grateful and just have a blast.

There are many components that I need to fix to make it happen, there is a lot of discipline and knowledge that I still have to grasp and perfect, but here it is:

My resolution for 2010 is to start and live elegantly!

Again: My resolution for 2010 is to start and live elegantly! Period.

Sadok Kohen
In truth, without deceit, certain, and most veritable…

Was Copernicus wrong?

// June 4th, 2009 // 4 Comments » // Philosophy

Accordingly, since nothing prevents the earth from moving, I suggest that we should now consider also whether several motions suit it, so that it can be regarded as one of the planets. For, it is not the center of all the revolutions.

Copernicus words staggered the world, which was skeptical and even angry to the possibility that the God made Earth and His beloved creatures  were not at the center of the Universe.

It is a crucial point in human history and a chain of events that lead to Galileo’s “Scientific Method”. From that point onward people had to choose between faith and science as there wasn’t really middle grounds, either you were a man of science at heart or a man of faith.

Fortunately enough humankind intrinsically cannot be controlled for too long. This comes from the First Apple, the gift of Choice which is always and will be always there.

Copernicus was proclaimed genius and the Earth was removed from the center of the Universe.

Sadly enough humankind is also intrinsically stupid by having taken that bite in the first place… Very few understood what could be middle grounds:

Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind. – Einstein

Unconsciously people were relieved of a great burden, they were not at the center of the universe anymore, and what an unconscious responsibility that was…

But what did this imply ?

In our daily lives we tend to “decenter” ourselves, in other words we put our centers onto other things. The center of our love life might be our spouses or our children, the center of our financial expectations could become our job or a business deal, the center of our happiness may lay in abstract expectations as money or a future success…

So what happens if our centers get away from us, or they disappear. What happens if we continue to live our lives chasing, expecting, waiting or longing for our centers to come close?…

What we need to understand is that WE INFACT ARE THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE! Each one of us IS the center of their own universe. The Universe is our own personal Truman Show, everything in our universe is there for us and us only. What we fail to understand is that the moment we bring our center back to where it belongs, the awareness of being at the center of everything else that is happening around us will give you all the certainty, the love, the happiness and the focus that you never experienced before.

At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want. – Lao Tzu

Everything that happens in YOUR life happens for YOU to experience something. Acknowledge this fact, cherish it, own it…

But not only: Don’t let yourself be the center of somebody else’s universe! Those chains are as harmful to you as they are to whoever is decentered. Help them bring their center back and enjoy the radiating energy that you will be able to experience.

Try to visualize it, walk around and open up to the fact that everything around you, everything that is happening to your life exists because of you. All your feelings, all your emotions, all your worries, all your friends, all the books, the movies the people that you don’t yet know. They are all there for you to experience, by choice…

Maybe Copernicus was correct from a mathematical perspective. Mathematics by definition is a set of rules, a language to understand certain events and try to predict them. What the world failed to understand is that Life is ALIVE and cannot be bound by formulas.

So choose and choose without fear for mistakes are only there for you to grow, and all emotions happy or sad are there for you to know yourself, for there is only you and no one else…

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.  -E.E. Cummings

Sadok Kohen

Basic Needs…

// April 27th, 2009 // No Comments » // Philosophy, Technology

Its very hard to understand human psyche.

We live in an amazing world: We can reach all kinds of information at the press of a button, we can video call long distance and collaborate on a document with several people scattered all over the world. We can single handedly reach 1 Million people and communicate to them directly without the influence of any socio-political filter. We are capable of aggregating information to our liking and build our own personal newspaper. We can build our own community and share our life and know about our friends like never has been possible before, even broadcast ourselves. We can watch what we want when we want, and we can decide what others should watch or read and make our opinion matter…

Then we can travel all over the world in a matter of hours. We can remain in touch with all the above with a small device in our pockets, we can hold a library in our other pocket and a whole music collection in our jacket.

We do all this, and we do it naturally, elegantly… Almost unconsciously…

A friend told me, in regards to having Internet on a plane: “So you see, you are miles high in the sky, actually flying, sitting comfortably and flying, having your drink, your friends your music and reaching the other end of the world in the middle of the sky, you will be somewhere totally different, a new adventure is expecting you… and you go: ‘Fuck it, the net  is so slow on this plane!’ ”

I wonder how while continuing to pursue new horizons we could constantly remind ourselves of our real basic needs: Health, Nature and Love… always were, always will be enough for the pursuit of happiness.

Sadok Kohen