"The idea that there are "well-rounded" people, people who have only strengths and no weaknesses ... is a prescription for mediocrity if not incompetence. Strong people always have strong weaknesses. ... And no one is strong in many areas." Peter Drucker
It has been said that mankind has evolved more in the last 100 years than in the last 1000 years; and more in the last 20 years than in the last 100 years. So some people (like me) even think that the next 5 years will bring more evolution than the last 20 years. And I believe that this is especially true for Brazil, a raising economic superpower that has gone through significant, positive change.
Change that deserves more attention outside Brazil where all eyes seem to be fixed on China. I am saying this as a Swiss citizen who has chosen Brazil as his second home and who has started up his own business in the pharmaceutical sector here in the city of Campinas (near Sao Paulo). I find it very fascinating to live in this country during these times.
The last 20 years have brought enormous progress not only in the field of computer technology, but also in the research of how our brains work, how personality and intelligence “work”, and what separates great leaders and companies from bad ones. Yet, it seems to me that in most companies, only a fraction of this powerful knowledge is really known, appreciated and put to practice. Unfortunately, Brazil is no exception. I find this an incredible waste of knowledge and potential progress.
This is what has motivated me to set up this internet site and to offer coaching and consulting services, although I am doing so only with a very limited number of clients due to the fact that I am a full-time entrepreneur in another industry. Yet, I feel almost a missionary zeal to tell other managers what out of this new wealth of knowledge has worked for me as a manager and as an entrepreneur (and also what has not worked so well). As I am targeting Brazilians, this site is in Portuguese.
Before becoming an entrepreneur, I worked for nine years in large, multinational pharmaceutical company in different countries and different positions like finance, business development, sales and general management. I played leadership roles in two important projects: a turn-around in an underperforming business unit, and a transformational project in an area with large sales growth opportunities. In both situations, I learned that beyond strategies or business processes, there is something more important, more fundamental that we should think about first: the assumptions we make about human nature in the workplace. They are often implicit and contradicting each other.
During these projects, I learned a lot from working with other leaders, managers and consultants, and I also did quite some reading and external training out of my own initiative. Out of this practical experience, I have found great value in the follwing three research insights or management ideas:
- The invaluable lessons out of Gallup’s multi-year research about great leadership, as summarized in their book “First Break All The Rules” (see also a Wikipedia summary) and others. A key finding of this research is that great companies give their employees the possibility to do everyday what they do best. However, this apparently simple idea is quite tricky to implement in practice, as it has an impact on the way we set objectives, define responsbilities, measure and reward performance. Most importantly, we need to develop a vocabulary to define strengths and the skill to identify them in other people. This is as key element of the coaching and consulting services that I am offering in this site.
- After decades of struggling how to define personality, academic psychologists finally seem to have found a consenus around the Five-Factor-Model of personality. Its implications for the workplace are very well summarized in the book “The Owner’s Manual to Personality at Work”. Understanding our personality is key to understand our strengths as well as weaknesses. However, it also raises ethical questions when companies use personality profiling for recruiting or coaching (between employee and his superior).
- Peter Drucker’s books and ideas, most importantly his “Innovation and Entrepreneurship” and “The Effective Executive”. Drucker himself was also very much influenced my Abraham Maslow's and Douglas McGregor's work. All of them, one way or the other, have emphasized the importance of working with our strengths long before the Gallup research did so.
I could go on and on talking about these important concepts, but then visitors of this site would be scared away by the amount of text. So let me stop here and if would like to learn a little more about all of this and how I could be of help for your career or business, just send me an email anytime and we chat by email or telephone.