marginally subversive

thoughts to start the week - and my new adventure, NUMERATI

I picked this one up from Ben Parr (benparr.com) in one of his blog entries.  It is a good way to start the week - and personally, a good way to start my new adventure, Numerati, a company I have set up that will help clients make sense of the reams of numbers and data using statistics, analytics, and integrative-thinking techniques.

A profound, three-liner conversation

P1: Why are you so scared of complexity?

P2: Why are you so scared of simplicity?

P3: Why be scared at all?

untitled 26vi2010

A friend of mine told that life is beautiful - it ought to be because it is a gift.  And all gifts are beautiful.

But sometimes, it is quite hard to see the beauty in everything around us - with all the traffic jams, the chatter that surrounds us, the constantly blinking red light on the phone saying there's a new mail, the cursor that keeps on taunting one to "write some, think some more"...

A few things that I have learned... (though sometimes forgotten)...

1. Some things are not dying for; some are.  Knowing the difference is what's critical.

2. Some fights are not worth fighting for - and surrender is not cowardice.

3. Silence is not necessarily weakness - and talking and always being heard is not always a sign of wisdom nor of strength.

4. Boredom is not a bad thing.

5. Hypocrisy is the worst evil.

6. I cannot be someone else - I can only be me.

7. Regression to the mean still dominates our lives.

8. Technology has made us better equipped - but it has not made us better people.

9. Simplicity is best - sometimes.

10. People are always judging others.  How we react to the judgments they make of us is what really matters, not their judgments.

11. People will always regress to what is comfortable, to what is adjudged to be normal, to what is perceived to be easy.  But as much as possible, due diligence, rigor, and structure needs to be put in place.

12. We are innately irrational - it's in our wiring system.  But sometimes, there are instances when we need to be rational.

13. Leadership is difficult - even if you've done everything that you could, others will always be unsatisfied.

14. One always has a choice.

15. Never, ever give up - but see #2.

16. Giving one's everything is sometimes not enough - that's when one has to reconsider.

An inspiration has always been Rudyard Kipling's poem, IF...

One year ago...

One year ago, a great woman passed on. She saw through the hardships of the Second World War and lost her husband. Single-handedly, she raised her six children. She brought them up to become good parents to their own children. She saw to it that her grandchildren knew the value of being of service to others, of contributing, of simply being there for others. In silence, she said, there is strength - veiled, but still there.

She was my grandmother.

It has been a year since we said goodbye to her. She was in her 90s.

A lot of people said that she's lived a full life and that we shouldn't worry too much because she is now in a better place.

I concur.

But I still cannot help but miss her.

When she picked me up from school at 12 when I was in grade 1, how she would sit on her rocking chair listening to my travails on the piano, how she would encourage (read: force ;D) me to go to church at 8am on Sundays...

I never managed to say goodbye.

And until now, I still cannot say that word. Because she is still in my heart. And in my memories.

When things are rough, I think of what she would say.

"Just go on; God will find a way."

"There is a reason why you're in that situation - either you chose to be in there or God put you there for a reason. Regardless, it doesn't matter. Just do what you're supposed to do."

"Don't spend too much money on things that are not important. And besides, money isn't everything."

Last time I went home to see her, I bought her a necklace - a nice one and a far cry from the rosaries that I would buy her at the monastery of Sta. Clara. She declined; keep it, she said. Save the money, she said.

Before Alzheimers got her, she would badger me about getting married and having someone to take care of me. Because "when I am gone, who is going to wake you up on Sundays so you can go to church at 8am?"

I always replied, "there's always the alarm clock" - to which she would answer "pilosopo..."

Then we lost her to Alzheimers.

Conversations on the phone became rare. My visits, even rarer.

Then she was gone.

-----------------

Dear Mamang -

I still miss you. I am so sorry I wasn't there to see you go. I wasn't there to play you a song on the piano. Remember that Pamulinawen that you usually sang along with? Or that Manang Biday? or Vizcaya's Song?

I miss you so, so much.

I wish I were still in grade one. You'd always pick me up, buy me stuff, bring me to school, help sew my buttons on my white shirt...

I wish I were still that young boy playing beside your sewing machine whilst you see curtains, dresses and other stuff for the house.

I wish I were still that young boy who you'd scold when I'd spend all my allowance for the week in one day.

You will always be in my heart.

You rest now.

We'll see you again.

I love you.

Agyamanak, Mang. Haan ka nga malimutan. Haan ka nga pabayaan. Haan ka nga maawan itoy panunot ko. Uray pay awanak itta balay, itta Solano, adittoy ka - ittoy pusok.

Agyamanak, Mang.

Jun

regrets

there are some regrets that one has to let go of - and accept.  and some that one should keep at the back of one's head - and accept.

almost everybody i know has regrets of some form or another; so do i - that i am beginning to think that perhaps, everyone is bound to have some form of regret over some choice made.

should've-could've-would've.

had-i-known-that...

if-only-i-had-the-same-vantage-point-as-i-do-now...

well, hindsight is always 20/20 - and foresight is, well, at best a blur.

in spite of this - life goes on. 

and one moves on.

or not.

a team is...

I have been told many times that the success of a team lies in its people.  And that a team is only as good as its weakest member.  A chink in the armour.  A weakness that can potentially be compromised.  A small hole that can potentially be a gaping gap that enemies can exploit.

I think these are wrong.

[ A team is as good as the dynamics that there are inside the team. ]

It is not the weakness nor the strength of one or a few that make a team good.  Or bad.  It is the interplay of the personalities, the strengths and the weaknesses, the formal and the informal communication lines, the overt and covert competitiveness of each individual in the team - all these are what make a team good.  Or bad.

If the dynamics are in equilibrium (to borrow a word from game theory), then the team will function well.  It is a well-oiled machine - and perhaps, even engineered with double-redundancies that could make it function in spite of the "weakest links" and selected dynamic dysfunctions.

If the dynamics are suddenly forced into disequilibrium, then the team's functioning could start to wobble.  Either the team finds a new equilibrium on which to gather its strength - or it continues to fight the new "demand" for a new equilibrium.

Both of which puts the dynamics at risk.

And the entire team's functioning at risk.

The beauty of a team is that it acknowledges its imperfections - and yet continues to strive towards its goals and its vision.  It acknowledges that it has weak and strong members, strong and weak personalities, different weltanschaungs and viewpoints - and yet it manages to act as one.

So is a team only as good as its weakest link?

No.

It is as good as how it manages to cope with the disequilibrium its environment forces it to face - and revert to a new, perhaps significantly different, equilibrium. 

And how it then moves forward to get on with its goals with this new equilibrium.

a new chapter...: a personal post

In October 2007, I left Universal McCann - which has since rebranded itself as UMWW - to join Microsoft Southeast Asia. 

After 9 months, I returned to UM because I missed the frenetic, frantic pace of the advertising world - the late nights, the emails that need to be responded to within 24hours, the 'fire-fighting', the business pitches, the ideation and the interesting research projects which made a difference to clients.

I wrote about my departure in October 2007 in this entry.

My departure back then was somehow a bittersweet event: I was leaving a job that I loved, a team that I was impressed with, a network that was truly great and "genius and visionary".  I was leaving a job where I was entrusted a piece of an experimental business unit that proved to be ahead of its time - and was, in spite of its being experimental, delivered significant contributions to the company, financially and reputation-wise.

In my farewell letter to the company then (which a colleague of mine unearthed from his inbox):

Anyway, I would like to thank you for the support that you have given me in the past, for believing in the value that my team and I could create and bring to your teams and to your clients, and simply, for the opportunity of working with you in seeking only the best for our clients and the brands they have entrusted unto us.

Thanks to the in-market teams across APAC, across EMEA, across the Americas for helping me and my team in our most challenging times – I cannot ask for a better network of planners, researchers, and insights-seekers.  Thank you very much.  Your genius will continue to amaze me - and I can only be thankful for the greatness that you are and have.

After another 18 months, I am leaving UM/mediabrands.  Again.

People (including potential employers) will ask "You've been a 'job-hopper' - where is your commitment?"

I say, commitment is not measured in terms of the number of years or months or weeks or days - it is not measured by tenure. 

Commitment is measured by how much one has contributed - or has desired to contribute - to the company.  It is measured by how much one has gone beyond the call of duty to take on things that are new and scary - and emerge a better person for the organization.

Commitment is trudging on to deliver remarkable, great, and inspiring results to clients, to the company, to teams.  Commitment is about looking for ways and means to help the company survive in the short- and mid-term, and secure its place for the future, whether that future included me or not.

Commitment is about protecting my team - my people - as budgets and overheads are cut, whilst at the same time working overtime - pedal to the metal - to create new revenue streams to save as many as we could.

***

I end this chapter of my life a better person - both professionally and personally.

I end this entry with Seth Godin's words -

And yet when we ask you to look people in the eye, be creative, brainstorm, be generous, find a way to satisfy an angry customer, work with a bully, learn a new skill or bring joy to work, suddenly the excuses pile up. Is this a different sort of work? Is raising your hand in class too much to ask of you?

The jobs most of us would like to have are jobs like this. And yet we put up a fight when given the chance to do them well.

Just for the record:

I was never asked.

Anyway...

Photo from Darwin Bell @ Flickr.Com

getting through the door...

One of the things that I learned is that one - as a manager or a leader - can only create opportunities for her followers.  She can only go as far as pointing to the right opportunities - the right doors - the potential next steps - the possibilities.  She cannot take on the responsibility of opening the door and jumping right in.

I for one have been dubbed by my peers from my leadership training in 2005 as the "guy with the superhero complex - who believes that no one should ever be left behind, no matter what".  It took awhile for me to realize that.

Perhaps, in these challenging times, that's what we need: people who can point us the right way, "burn the boats", and get people to move.

And trust that the people will move.

I - for one - will have a hard time doing the last bit.  But I will have to.

I - too - have my own doors to open and potentials to realize.

Thanks to IrishFlyGuy on Flickr.Com for the photo.

"if you were not doing what you were doing now..."

If I were not doing what I am doing now, I probably would have been this guy who studies pandemics, epidemics, and viruses and how they affect people.

When I was in high school, I read Michael Crichton's Andromeda Strain.  I loved it.  I started reading more about viruses - Outbreak comes to mind, but there were more.  My university library card was very much filled with biochemistry books (alongside maths and the required readings in psychology, philosophy, economics, theology, and a few other stuff called "Core Curriculum" in the Ateneo).

Why I am doing what I am doing now?

In the same way that pandemics, epidemics and virology has this certain beautiful, mysterious aura about it, so does marketing research.

When you ask why... ... ...

of failures, creating something, and Rilke...

There are different kinds of failures.

There are failures which are defined by not achieving or realizing the results one has aimed at. 

Then there are failures that result from being too much of a perfectionist - with the bars set so high that success was an impossibility.

Then there are those failures which are from mismanagement and misuse of the processes - too much reliance on the process - or not enough adherence to the process.

Or worse, using the wrong process.

Then there are those that Seth Godin wrote about:  Failures who are failures because nothing was ever started.  He writes: "The only thing worse than starting something and failing... is not starting something."

So is the solution simply doing it?  Taking a leap - and simply start?

Perhaps.

But I think one has to go deeper.

One has to know why one is doing something.  Why one is creating something out of nothing.

It's not so much about overanalyzing and nitpicking and creating scenarios and all that...

It's about knowing why - from one's soul - this is so important.

...

Rainier Maria Rilke once received a letter from a young poet for advice.  I think what Rilke said to the poet is still apt to the act of creating something - and taking a leap - and jumping in.

You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to (others for critique and suggestions). You compare them with others', and you are upset when certain editors reject your work.

Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now.

No one can advise or help you - no one.

There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must," then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your while life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse.