The Office of the President

Read this and remember: You may be able to become even a good manager like this, but to be a great manager you need to be HOT (Honest, Open and Trusting). And most importantly, the great manager knows that everything is his/her fault.

A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realises he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts: “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised my friend I would meet him half an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”

The man below says: “Yes. You are in a hot air balloon, hovering approximately 30 feet above this field. You are between 40 and 42 degrees N. latitude, and between 58 and 60 degrees W. longitude.”

“You must be an engineer,” says the balloonist.

“I am,” replies the man. “How did you know?”

“Well,” says the balloonist, “everything you have told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is, I am still lost.”

The man below says “You must be a manager.”

“I am,” replies the balloonist, “but how did you know?”

“Well,” says the man, “you don’t know where you are, or where you are going. You have elevated yourself through a large quantity of hot air. You have made a promise which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. The fact is you are in the exact same position you were in before we met, but now it is somehow my fault.”

This article by Steve Pavlina got me to sit down and write out some goals. The first one I already had verbalised and written down, the rest sort of just flowed out as I tried to proejct further into the future and asked myself what I wanted to do (I had also articulated #7 before, but without a date set to it). The further out the goal is the less sure I am about it. I don’t think I will achieve all of these, but the majority, definitely.

What are your goals?

10 Goals to Change the World

1. By July 2010 AIESEC Auckland is a global top-gun LC (it ranks in the top 10 highest performing AIESEC chapters/branches globally)
2. Complete my undergraduate studies by the end of 2010
3. Work on an AIESEC MC team before the end of 2011 (MC = Member Committee and manages a country or region in AIESEC e.g. AIESEC New Zealand)
4. Go on two AIESEC internships before 2015
5. Work in or start a consulting business by 2015
6. Complete a Master’s degree before 2020
7. Work in or start a Non-Profit Organisation that delivers governance consulting to small developing nations before 2025
8. Complete a PhD by 2030
9. Write a best-seller by 2040
10. Change the World by 2050

I was taking a break from doing something more important today, so I picked up some oranges we had picked from the garden yesterday and started juggling with them. At first I was just having fun with it; it’s a great exercise of concentration, meditation and hand-eye co-ordination which I learnt while at circus school at the age of 6 (or thereabouts).

I started counting how long I was juggling for (I counted every time I released an orange). At first I was quite bad, totalling only about 20-30 each time. But then I started getting into the 40s and managed to get one set above 50. Suddenly I juggled a set into over 70 (probably just an inevitable outlier). But it got me thinking. I set myself a goal: I’m going to keep juggling until I get a set into 100.

I continued juggling for a while and started getting demotivated when I had trouble even getting a set over 50. I thought about giving up. Then I realised that this would be quite dangerous, what would that say about my ability to persevere and achieve goals (admittedly good goals should have a higher purpose - which this goal only attained by being an example for myself of how I could set and achieve goals, or not). So i started being creative. And AIESEC had taught me this: Never change your goals; change your strategy. I switched to a new set of oranges (I think the old set had become soft because I dropped them too often). This helped, I started getting 40s and 50s more consistently. But I again eventually became frustrated, after a time it seemed that I was going backwards. How could I achieve 100, when I had trouble braking 60 for a second time?

I switched oranges again. On this set I actually performed worse than on the previous, so I came up with a brilliant plan. I would test out different sets of oranges. I got some pen and paper and started recording 10 juggling sets for each set of oranges. I’m pretty sure that just tracking my performance increased it, but I have no data to back that up. What I do have is data to back up that I perform better with bigger oranges (the oranges were generally very small, so even the biggest were smaller than the size of my palm). I selected a set of the biggest oranges that were left and started juggling I got into 50s and 60s. Then one set broke 70 for only the second time in this entire event. I was now confident that I could break 100 soon. It would just take one more outlier. And indeed it came. My very next set became a freak outlier with 150 releases and catches!

Those who fail to achieve their goals are those that do not persevere. That give up in the face of defeat. To succeed you need to be innovative. Change your approach, be systematic. If you are confident that you can succeed, you will. As Barack Obama said: “If you’re walking down the right path, and you’re willing to keep on walking, eventually you’ll make progress.”