Unleashing your professional vision, or how to get focused, energized, and get great results!
Being away from home on a business trip during the past 2 weeks, I've managed to spend some time with myself, thinking about the future... but this time, instead of trying to find an answer to "What's next?" I've tried to concentrate on "What's first?"
Yeah... I've spent 3 hours at Starbucks on a sunny Sunday afternoon, defining my vision and synthesizing the intrinsic core values that have drove me during times of growth, change, or opportunity...
The goal that day was for me to create an enduring vision that will guide me on a daily basis... so here we are:
Being one of the most valuable international business leader/executive located in Israel, by helping global organizations, teams, and individuals reaching their most important dreams and objectives.
My professional journey is driven by my core values (in this order):
1) Be in inner-peace & harmony with the people around me
2) Be driven by my passion
3) Work hard, play hard
This post describes the professional aspects of my retrospection, but I've run the same exercise with my personal life... believe me on this front.
Why am I sharing this with you, and why now? This is something you will agree is quite personal in a sense... Because, thanks to a truly inspiring book from Ken Blanchard and Jesse Lyn Stoner titled Full steam ahead!, I've realized having a clear vision is something important anyone needs to get focused, energized, and get great results!
Finding Opportunities in Greece: Wishful thinking?
I was watching Bloomberg this morning at the fitness, as I use to do every morning of the week lately... most of the air time was spent on the fact the Greek parliament tries to pass legislation mandating 28 billion euros of spending cuts and tax rises over the next five years. If it goes through, and it will, as the Greek government has no better alternatives, each of the 10 million Greeks will ultimately be about 2,800 euros (US$4,000) poorer per year. That's a huge hit for the population knowing that the average monthly salary in Greece is about 650 to 800 Euro. It obviously depends on your education or if you have kids or being married and also on the field that you work, for example people who work in Banks, Military, Public offices their salary can reach around 1500 euro, but this is still very low compared to other European countries...
Even the high-tech "hot" jobs don't pay much compared to other countries part of the OECD (source: PayScale):
So opportunities you said? show me the money...
At the beginning, I was thinking global firms doing outsourcing of knowledge intensive works to Greece could be cost effective due to the relative low wages and the fact 48% of the greeks speak english or some english (Source: Eurobarometer 2005 Europeans and their Languages), but I've discovered today reading a bit Wikipedia that only 15% of the population currently holds a university degree, and many of the talents immigrate to other countries (I can understand why these days...).
So being the new paradise for high-tech outsourcing is the big no...
After all, when I've searched tonight on Google "Greece + Opportunity"
I got 135 Million hits... so if Google said so...
In conclusion, the only good business that could hugely grow in Greece is sadly debt collection services... also known as collection agencies...
A collection agency is a business that pursues payments of debts owed by individuals or businesses. Most collection agencies operate as agents of creditors and collect debts for a fee or percentage of the total amount owed.
If you want to open such a firm, I'm ready to invest.
Usage of social networks to pass messages to the enemy during war time
Dear Followers,
I've realized something interesting this morning...
As we all know, the social networks, such as Twitter & Facebook, linked to powerful complementary content sharing services, have played an important role in the latest events in Egypt, Syria, and other parts of the arab world.
If in the past, the "leaders" managed to control the conventional media, including newspaper, radio, then later on the TV, some governments today are ready to kill to take control, or stop access to the new social media.
Not sure if the funders of Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube have identified the potential of this new weapon... a weapon of mass... CHANGE... for the good and for the bad... as anything in life.
I was aware the Israeli Army (IDF) had a channel on YouTube since 2008... but I have discovered a new facet of this strategic communication channel:
The IDF has uploaded videos in arabic addressing terrorist organizations, such as the Hamas or the Hezbola, sending a clear message to the enemies and to the civil population.
See below. Pay attention to the format, the wording, the atmosphere...
The Jewish Passover has different meanings and symbols for the people of Israel and for the humanity as a whole... one of them is the renewal of the nature, that should inspire and help the human beings realize the intrinsic ability for them to renew and re-invent themselves for the good.
This is the antithesis of the "path dependency" concept tought to MBA students.
Every year, this little point helps me try re-engineering myself, and rethinking things that we use to take for granted...
This is true for our personal life, and this is also true in business.
Google Android 3.0 or Google's first real move to tablet...
Hi Guys,
During CES 2011, Motorola have showcased their new tablet named Xoom... looks like a nice product that could become the first real iPad competitor...
This product will include the upcoming version of Android, code-named Honeycomb (or 3.0)...
Google's Andy Rubin has previewed to this table as a prototype a month ago at the D: Dive into Mobile conference, where he discussed the Android roadmap and specifically the 3.0 version, that should be optimized for Tablet devices... a great talk, you can find here.
We need to remember OEMs like Archos or lately Samsung have released Android-powered tablets in the past, but their L&F and performance were not comparable to the iPad...
Seems like this time Google got it right... for you to judge:
One of the most common dilemmas for negotiators has been to determine when the time has came to leave the negotiation table, and consider a given deal as lost and not profitable enough for the interest for their companies.
Furthermore, even when the decision to “walk away” has been made by the negotiator or by the decision makers involved, the negotiator sometimes feels like having failed to deliver upon his mission, his duty… The pressure coming from his colleagues not directly involved in the negotiation reinforces this feeling; but is this sentiment in fact justified?
From experience, we don’t need to wait for the face-to-face negotiation to define when will be the time to walk away from the negotiation, moreover, it is strongly not recommended to try asking this fundamental question in real-time during the actual negotiation… this question needs to be answered during the preparation phase.
The answer is driven by an concept named BATNA.
BATNA is an acronym described by Roger Fisher and William Ury which means “Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement”. It is the alternative action that will be taken should your proposed agreement with another party result in an unsatisfactory agreement or when an agreement fails to materialize.
If the potential results of your current negotiation only offer a value that is less than your BATNA, there is no point in proceeding with the negotiation, and one should use their best available alternative option instead. Prior to the start of negotiations, each party should have ascertained their own individual BATNA.
It took me long to understand this idea… During the early years of my career, I used to be depressed when negotiations went in the wrong path or were not as fluid as we would have liked… In some cases, I was finding myself trying by force to find creative ways to conclude deals at virtually any price… This is what I use to call the “investment” project syndrome, or in other words, justifying a deal you foresee will be with a negative NPV (or an NPV nearly equals to zero)… This can be explained by the level of effort you’ve invested in preparation, brainstorming, negotiation, etc… at some point, you start being emotionally involved…
With time, I’ve realized this perception was in fact erroneous… stopping negotiation when you reach a dead-end (the value of the deal is less than your BATNA) is more an opportunity than a failure… an opportunity to win even bigger with your alternative option…
