Crisis and potential

With the lockdown period as consequence of the covid19 pandemic, most of the economist says that we are headed for a severe economic recession, with an intensity that my generation and that of my parents did not know. All of this will have a domino effect on employment and on social well-being. A significant number of employee lost and will lose their jobs, freelancers and entrepreneurs notice a decrease of their turnover, seeing cash problems on the horizon.  In such circumstances, it is not easy at all to take control of your emotions, and yet, tap in your resources will be the thing you will have to do. On other words, you will have to be resilient.

Of course, each of us is different, and our capacity of resilience are not the same. Remember Louis Pasteur quotes saying that “Luck favors the prepared mind”. Now, most of people think that  luck depend only on chance. But as said Philippe Gabilliet, “Luck is a competence and you can work on it.” Finding a solution to get out of this bad situation or trying to survive it will depend on our potential. Now, how can we attract luck to us. Here are some ideas to make emerge our potential.

• Be bold. Often, we do not dare to express enough ideas or potentials that are in us, for lack of confidence, for fear of failure. What is important is to make grow the field of our experiences and acquired knowledge during these times. The French philosopher Charles Pépin, mentions that if our field of experience remains small, we will always refer to it to start something new, and our ambitions and our daring will be limited or nonexistent. If over time, you grow your field of experiences by facing new challenges and taking risks, you will feel more confident and will be used to face unknown territories more easily.
• Be eager to learn. Being bold and experiencing new things will make you learn a lot of things and acquire new skills and competences. It could be also an opportunity to discover a hide talent or a real passion. And passion is an essential drive to boost motivation to learn. What you learn will be new possibilities to open new doors to interesting opportunities. We could think that today, we need to be high level specialist in specific activities, but mastering a variety of skills at a good level prevents us to be too much dependent on a single market, a single channel.
• Maintain and develop your network. Your network is one of the key element to lead you to success. To take regular contacts with your network takes a lot of time, but it is the only way to inform people what is your and their current status. With platforms like LinkedIn where you can be connected to a huge amount of people, people will remember you more easily if you interact with them on a regular basis. Remember that a key of the network is the “Pay it forward”. You can help somebody from your network by putting him in contact with another person who can provide the service the person is looking for. The power of your network and your reputation will make that a day or another, you will reap what you have sown.
• Participate to communities and share. The period of unemployment are period where we have more time to do some activities we don’t normally do. To participate to a citizen project, to dedicate time for an association are opportunities to feel useful and contribute to a common goal, but it is also the opportunity to make new connections, to learn something new, to develop the different point we developed above. Sharing knowledge and experience is probably the most interesting thing we can do, sharing knowledge means that everyone has more afterwards.

These are few tips we have to try to apply, in order to face uncertainty. The question is of course whether we can get away with this, will it be enough? But like a boat facing a storm, we never know in advance what we can happen, but with experience learned from the past, we have the resources to better react to certain situations. Note the positive results collected, that will bring you the courage to move forward.

What I learned for containment and crisis times

With the covid19 pandemic, the course of our lives was turned upside down. And of course, our professional lives were impacted too, as the organization we are working for. Some of us were obliged to stop to work for security reasons, by the fact that no adaptations were possible to comply with the safety instructions given by the governmental authorities. For some activities, the option of homeworking was possible and companies who had this possibility were forced to use it.
Of course, these containment measures are experienced differently by each, depending on their social and family condition, also according to their own feelings. But after more than 2 months, I noticed on my side different interesting points, from my professional activity but also from my journey as volunteer and member of the board of an association counting more than 10 employees on payroll.

• Forced to deal with something new. If some companies are allowing partial home working since few time, other companies are reluctant to use it, having a culture more based on physical presence. This highlight maybe an old way of working, but also a lack of trust between employer and employees. But in such a situation never before experienced, companies that want to survive and to pursue an usual or reduced activity had no choice to adopt homeworking. Besides the fact that the company has to pivot to another organization process, it is also led to observe her ability to pivot to another organization model and to pursue her activity.
• Organization and information. In order to run an activity, companies and organization need to have clear organization processes and communication channels. The importance of these two components is higher in an organization working remotely, where informal communication is more difficult. It is only when the role of each collaborator is well define that an organization can implement the needed tools to work smoothly. Each member of the team needs to have clear goals and milestones and regular communication is needed from manager in order to have a clear overview of the tasks progress. I noticed in my case, that communication was improved and more efficient due to the fact that people are aware that this way to work imply to be rigorous in term of communication. Never forget it is the communication qualities of the leader that make the difference.
• Talents and initiatives. All the organization were not prepared equally to switch to digital mode. The challenge was to implement a remote network and to provide the needed tools to the collaborators. The success of such operation implies the vision of the management to use the tools of the future, but also the level of skills and knowledge of the users. In the association where I am member of the board, it takes a few day to allow employee to work remotely, and it was a good test to see the level of IT knowledge of each of them. It was also the opportunity to give them short trainings so that they have more comfort to use these technologies.
  What was interesting too, as most of our employees could no longer do their usual tasks, was the proposal they did in consultation with the management, to create new activities for the beneficiaries (mask making, online training for beneficiaries following the education programs, etc. ). I would say that these exceptional circumstances were revealing the potential of each collaborator. As far as you give objectives to people, and you allow them to follow trainings in order to expand their possibilities, you can only build winning teams.
• Homeworking as a complementary opportunity. Most of us, we experienced homeworking, and as many options, there are advantage and disadvantages. But one of the most common reaction I hear around me is people wanting to work part-time remotely. The advantages are that they can be focused on specific task without being disturbed, and so they increase their productivity. Another argument is the travel time spared, which can have a positive impact on productivity too but also a positive impact for the economy (less traffic jams), less pollution, etc. But what is still needed is time to time a physical presence with the colleagues for meetings, for specific tasks that cannot be performed remotely on an efficient way. The essential is to find the right balance between the two mode in order to operate on an efficient way.

If this unprecedented crisis leads us to unknown paths, if it calls into question a lot of certainties, as many of crisis, it raises awareness opportunities, about things, possibilities that already existing but not highlighted because some people are reluctant to change, because we use obsolete paradigms. Change of paradigm implies a perception of change, but when changes are taking place slowly, we don’t perceive them immediately. If you look every day at a tree you plant in your garden, you don’t see it growing. It is only when you see a picture of it you take six month ago that you notice his growth.
Facing an unpredictable world, the only way to be prepared is to perceive rather early changes in order to anticipate and to develop alternatives, by using wisely the available resources, the solutions that are under our feet.

Health is a universal right

Today, the world has to deal with the coronavirus (covid19) pandemic. This pandemic that started from Wuhan in China, spreads nearly around the world. Europe is significantly impacted, especially in Italy and France. Belgium, where I am living, is also impacted, and confinement measures were taken in order to reduce the amplitude of the pandemic. Countries are more or less impacted, function of reaction time to take appropriate protective measures. We can see impact differences between countries, as far as these figures are reliable and can be compared. The question is whether the methods of detecting the virus among the population are the same from one country to another.

What we can see today is the situation facing hospitals, which find themselves under capacity to provide the necessary care to people affected by the virus. This situation is probably the consequence of the time of reaction to take appropriate measures against the spread of the pandemic, but also the state of the hospital infrastructure and the healthcare system. In a country like Belgium, where the healthcare system is one of the most efficient over the world, hospitals were submitted to budget reductions, and following a study of the Mutualité Libre (Free Mutual), one in twenty people don’t go to the doctor, especially for financial reasons. In Italy and in France, the situation is not better. Hospital infrastructures, as well as the working conditions of hospital staff have deteriorated due to budget cuts and underfinancing policies. United States of America are not in good shape as well, as a important part of american cannot pay medical insurance and cannot afford medical healthcare. Of course, such pandemic we are facing now are not frequent. This is a “Black Swan”, an infrequent event but which has considerable repercussions. But if your medical system is not efficient, it is certainly unable to face such exceptional circumstances.

If healthcare system is facing budget problem, it is of course important to identify the problems and to take appropriate measures, but without losing the global picture and remembering what is the mission of the institution. A performant medical system should be able to face difficult situation and ensure that people will receive appropriate care in good conditions. Recently, I have visited a hospital several time, and I felt a noticeable tension among the secretaries. One explained me that directions of hospitals today are considering people like goods. They have to deal with as many patients per hour, as if you were working in a postal company and you should ship a certain number of packages per hour. When I visited the doctor, she told me that an appointment was scheduled every 15 minutes in her agenda; and that is was impossible to do a good consultation in 15 minutes. As financial consultant, I always say to some entrepreneur that they should not confuse the purpose and the constraints of they project, with which they must deal. Profit is a constraint, but the success of their project is the real goal. The goal of a medical system is to provide affordable and quality health care for everybody.

We see today the consequences at the health level because people cannot afford health care. They contract illnesses more easily, contaminating other people. And as we can see, a virus makes no distinctions between gender, nationality, race, or social class. Everyone is affected by this pandemic. It is not them and us. We are all in the same boat, impacted in one way or another. The economy is in slow mode, children are not going to school and all of them cannot follow e-courses, and people are in social isolation. We are all concerned by these negative impacts, damaging to society. This is why it is important to rebuild an efficient medical system for everybody and to determine how to finance it, as this system should be affordable for everyone, and it is only possible if a part of the medical expenses are covered by social security or insurances. A society in poor health condition has an impact in terms of well-being, on social and economic level. It creates a vicious circle, increasing health costs, and putting the medical system under pressure. This is why it should probably more interesting to work on the sources of health problems, including stress, pollution, nutritional quality, etc. As said Albert Einstein, “we cannot solve problems with the thinking that created them”.

Work ahead of the problem should be the best way to increase quality of live, to increase health security and reduce medical expenses without excluding people. Health is a universal right, not a privilege.

Solidarity and responsibility

What strange times we are living with the coronavirus pandemic. Since two days now, I am working from home, and starting today, the Belgian government decided to take containment measures in order to avoid a too high virus spread. Like in Spain or Italy, we are only allowed to make food shopping or to go to the pharmacy, and to go to work if there is no alternative of telecommuting. We will see how these measures will be followed by people.

The president of France, Emmanuel Macron, decided to take such measures too for the country, but a lot of people doesn’t feel concerned by these measures and by the danger of this pandemic, as many of them were still walking on the street, as usual. Of course, an event of such magnitude is so rare, that people think it’s overkill, as it never happened during their past life. Some of them believe also that their will escape to this virus, as there are never sick. And some of them, suddenly, are diagnosed as carrying the virus, and then, it is too late.

A first observation of this is that, too often, we draw the future by extrapolation from the past. In a fast moving environment, we can observe that evolutions are not linear, and what is true today will not be true anymore tomorrow. We try to predict things that are not really predictable, making that we are always thinking on the same way and we don’t anticipate potential issues. So, to believe that because it never happened before, it will never happen in the future, is totally senseless. This attitude is also exacerbated by this individualism that drives our society. As far as I am not impacted, I am not concerned by the problem of the others. Thinking this way, some people are feeling like supermen to whom nothing can happen. In the problematic of coronavirus pandemic, you can infect another person as you can also be infected by another. Perhaps a person will not be able to prove that it is you who contaminated it, and that therefore, it is easy to hide, but this is a total lack of civility and responsibility. It is a matter of conscience.

The problematic is a bit the same with the protection of the environment. I see a lot of people who agree that we must act quickly to preserve the environment and reduce the pollution, as long as it is the others who act. If the indignation is legitimate, it is useless if it is not followed by concrete acts. Indignation is legitimate if you lead by example. But often, we hear people say that we try to make them feel guilty because they don’t act, or don’t change certain things for the common good. It is the feeling you have if you choose the posture of the victim instead of that of the responsible person. Of course, as already written on this blog, change is something uncomfortable and not always easy to do. Maybe is it something we cannot always do alone, and that we need the others to implement it.

In this particular time with this coronavirus pandemic, it is obvious that in addition to a sense of responsibility, we need also solidarity. Each of us, we will be confined to our home, some of our neighbors will need some help. Each of us we need to support each other in order to face these difficult times, and to build a community living in harmony. By acting to contribute to a better world, by helping others, we are acting for ourselves too. We contribute to build a community where everybody can contribute and giving to the people the feeling to be stronger to face the adversity. We will only be able to meet the challenges of our time by being responsible and united.

How to build a dream team

It is nearly the end of the year, and the time is come to have a view on what happened during the past year. It is also the time to reward the team for the provided work and for their commitment contributing to significant success. As president of the board of a small association with around 15 employees, I am preparing myself to do this exercise, by remembering the different projects we closed successfully. We close them successfully thanks to a dream team who concentrate their talent and efforts on the assigned goals.

Thinking about that, I was thinking about the ingredients needed to get a dream team. Team is not only about people, but about relation between people, and how build strong relations between people.

First of all, the most difficult part of the job is to hire the right people. We often say we need the right people at the right place. We hire people in function of their skills and competences matching with the required skills of their function in the organization. We focus also on their personality, and we will favor people who can be easily integrated in the existing team. We also bet on the potential we can perceive in their attitude and in their professional journey, seeing people who want to offer the best of themselves. One of the key element to bring out talent is to offer a project, a project that will be a source of motivation for each member of the team, a project matching with the expectation of your employee, and being a source of motivation for them. A motivate people is someone who has the possibility to express his talent and to use his skills to contribute to an original project. An interesting project is, for the employee, an opportunity to express his talent and to face difficulties, to solve problems, to increase his own experience and his self-confidence. He can put a sense on what he is doing if he knows the why of doing it.

Another ingredient that empower the relation between people and that build strong teams is trust. Trust must be built in both directions. You give trust to someone who has to show that they deserve it. You trust people because you know that they are able to realize what they have been assigned for, and if applicable, they keep you posted when there are facing issues. They are showing integrity which is a pledge of trust and good reputation. And remember it can take a lot of time to build a reputation and only a few minutes to destroy it. It implies also that they know they can talk easily to you and that you will listen to them.

Listening is probably one of the most important things for collaborators relationship, and for a good leadership. It is important to build strong relationship based on listening. To take time to listen is an opportunity for each other to share information and to learn more about your organization, your colleagues, the problem they are facing, the solutions proposals they are doing. I often learned more during an informal conversation with a collaborator than during a board session. You collect a range of information, a range of pieces who will complete the puzzle and will bring you a clearer picture of the situation. Listening is a mark of trust, and to give appropriate answers and feedback to the shared questions is a mark of integrity and authenticity. Give always an answer to the asked question, and even if it is a negative answer, explain why. Be transparent and authentic.

By mentioning the transparency, you have to encourage people when they are doing their job correctly and providing efforts to obtain results. You have also to give them feedback when things go wrong. But it does not mean that you have to look for someone to blame. When people are doing mistakes, it is always better to ask them and to understand why they made this mistake, and it could be an opportunity for both parties to really understand the issue and to find a solution. It is an opportunity to start a process of collective reflection and to find an innovative solution. Of course, it does not mean that you have to encourage the people to do the same mistake several times. Mistake is useful if you learn from it.

To build a dream team, it is obvious that the first thing to do is to consider people working for your organization as a….team. Without them, you cannot succeed in your project. You focused to hire people who are subscribing to the project, but now, you have to make sure they have the feeling to be a stakeholder of the project. If you hire people for their talent, meaning that they can work autonomously, it is to use their talent and not to do the work for them. To build this dynamic, meet people on regular basis to give information and global lines, but also to allow them to make project proposals, contributing to feed the project, to make it evolve. Play the card of collective intelligence. The diversity of your team should be considered as an asset. The experience of the seniors and the ideas of the juniors can initiate innovative processes, the vision different profiles have on a problem can also initiate original processes of creation, exchange of ideas. Encourage the people to fully collaborate, to underline the role they have to play and the added value of their complementarities in the organization.

Finally, the major ingredient to build a dream team is the leadership of the management. As responsible of the project, you have to be part of the team. As already mentioned, clarity, trust and authenticity are the values that have to drive your action each day. Assuming your responsibilities, recognize your mistakes, a good dose of humility will build your credibility. Be humble when we are strong, be strong when we are weak. Never forget that personal success does not exist without collective success. Authentic leaders never say “I” but “we” because they know that success is the result of a collective work, and he is there to win a collective success and not for himself. The goal is the project and not himself. Make sure that you recognize the quality of work and the efforts done by our team and reward them for that. Not only with bonus but also during the day by saying “Thank you”.

The leader who is able to build a dream team is the one who will succeed to make his team dream, and to transform dream into reality.

The dragonfly’s strategy

I read recently a book written by Thierry Marx, a famous French starred cook, born in the poor neighborhoods of Paris, and who despite his social condition, has built his own life project. Thierry Marx is not only a cook, he is also a businessman, somebody investing time in education and professional training, to transmit and to share his experience to young people. He founded a bakery and cooking school, where people can acquire the basics of the job in 12 weeks with a certification.
The title of Thierry Marx book is “The dragonfly’s strategy’ (La stratégie de la libellule – in French). Why such title? By reading this book, you will discover that he made the behavior of the dragonfly a philosophy of life.

What is precisely the behavior of the dragonfly? When a dragonfly is facing a barrier, her first movement is to change of axis. Without ever going back, she tests a passage from the top, then the bottom, from right to left and from left to right, until finding the solution. In other words, the dragonfly shows the capability to take some distance. During our life, we are meeting some obstacles. In reality, they are not obstacles, but facts. And these facts are not negotiable. And the best way to look at them, is to look for the hidden potential in them.

Such philosophy is part of a mindset. Most of the time, we see associate obstacle and failure, maybe because we ignore or underestimate our capabilities to overcome these obstacles. As says Thierry Marx, these obstacles are facts and we have to face them. We have to see these obstacles as a learning condition. Let us take the example of children who learn to write. Our first dictations contained a number of spelling mistakes. By practicing dictations on a regular basis, by discovering and extending our vocabulary knowledge, we learned progressively to write without any mistakes. We had not to consider our first spelling mistakes as a definitive obstacle preventing us to be able to write correctly, but the sign of something we still have not mastered. What is important, in order to progress is to have a goal, and in this case, the goal to write correctly.

In our professional life, most of us are facing obstacles or difficulties. Once again, these are facts, and each time, we need to find solutions. Then we start a reflection process. What are the possible options, what are the advantages and the constraints for each option. By analyzing the results of each decision process, we build step by step our own experience. And if the result is a failure, do you have you consider that you have to restart from scratch? Certainly not. At this stage, you already experienced something, and you know that a range of options is not part of the solution. Failure has to be considered as part of an incremental learning process. We build step by step a knowledge base throughout our experience, increasing our competences to drive more ambitious and complex projects and processes.

The next question is to know what are the drivers pushing us to go beyond our limits. It is first a question of passion, but also a question of self-esteem. It is obvious that we will progress faster and we will be much more determinate by doing things we like to do. Regarding self-esteem, it is a feeling that sometimes, others can make emerge in us. Each of us has probably met somebody who underlined our talents and skills and who encourage us to develop them, contributing to develop a sphere of confidence and trust around us.

The main components to adopt the dragonfly’s strategy is to have a goal, but also to be aware that we are the only one who will contribute to succeed. It is part of our own decision. Each obstacle gives us a potential to learn, and to move to other horizons, to build an interesting and active life, conquering our freedom by flying forward like a dragonfly’s, never backward.

Another mobility can change your life.

One year ago, I decided to sale my old car and not to replace it. I was a car owner during 25 years, and taking such decision is not done overnight. One year later, I have no regrets about my decision, and I can notice that adopting another way of mobility is not only a change of mobile   ty itself but another way of life. The time to take such decision was the time I need to change my own inner software. To adopt a change is not only to change the way to do things, but also the way to perceive things.

On a purely practical level, I was tired to spend time in traffic jams. My average speed was around 17 km/h, and another issue was the price of parking I had to pay during working hours. I switch the car usage with the public transports, tramway and subway, to go work and for private trips. In certain cases, I was surprised by the time needed to go to a place with public transports, less long than with the car, contrary to what I thought. Step by step, I discovered what were the alternatives to move, many more that I was thinking. I noticed that I could have gone to work to my client sites with public transports during these last 6 years. In fact, I never took the time to look for possible transport alternatives, probably because my preconceived ideas.

After few months, moving with public transports, I noticed a change of perception of the way to move and the time to move. I always have a book in my bag, and I started to read in the subway, what was a way to educate me, to escape, to work my imagination. In this way, even in some cases I don’t win time, I don’t lose time too, as I have the opportunity to do something during the travel, reading a book or a report, make some phone calls or answer to few e-mails, or simply relaxing after a full day. Anyway, another way to look time that is the most precious thing we have. Lost time is never recovered.

What I noticed also by using public transports is the opportunity to reconnect with our environment. Sometimes, it is the opportunity to meet a friend, a neighbour, or a former colleague. The opportunity to share a smile with somebody else, like one day, a small 3 years old kid with his little round glasses, sitting near his mother and saying “Hello” to me with his little hand. A smile to him, a smile to his mother, a nice scene to start the day. It is totally different when sitting alone in your car.

Of course, as I mention, such decision to not longer own a car is function of the usage and the alternatives you have. I have the opportunity to share a car with a family member, when I have no other alternative plan or when it is late in the evening. You can measure in this way the ecological impact of such decision. Ecology is a value I feel concerned by. A car has an ecological liability by his production, and to own a car to use it time to time is totally senseless. Even if you use a car on a daily basis, some statistics measure that a car stays along the sidewalk during 95% of the time.  That is why pooling a property looks in my eyes an interesting concept, on an economic and ecological level. That is what the sharing economy wants to demonstrate with its concept. You don’t need to own a drill, you just need to make holes from time to time. The objects pooling is a non negligible solution to the issue of waste of natural resources. The capitalist system encourages the acquisition of goods that we do not use regularly, and that are quickly out of order precisely because of their low usage. And in the case of owning a car, it is seen as a social status sign, used by some to impress the others. On an economical and practical point of view, it is totally senseless, and you spend money or contract loans for things you don’t really need, preventing you from spending it for really enjoyable and interesting things.

Regarding the economical level, by choosing to no longer own a car, makes me save around 500 € per month. I have less financial pressure on my shoulders, and as freelance consultant, it gives me more possibility to chose the projects I will work on, privileging the interest of the project instead of working on a project only to make turnover in order to pay car expenses. I dedicate time to non-profit association and this time where I work on projects in line with my values and with interesting people has more value that the price of a car. There is indeed a real difference between the price and the value of things, the value on which we have to pay more attention.

What I write here seems to be amazing of normal for those who are using the public transports for many years. My intention was to underline that a change can bring other changes making your life different. Today, I have the feeling to live more in accordance with my values. As already written in other articles on this blog, change is not an easy thing. We have to break our habits, our mental barriers, to change our perceptions of things. But when you do the exercise, you notice that the experience is well worth it. You also see that such experience is inviting you to think differently, that the solution to a problem does not always come from where we think. To think differently means that you perceive differently. In my mobility journey, I just notice all the changes it has on my life by adopting another mobility way.

Change is never obvious. We have our habits and are a bit scared to move to unknown directions. But on the other side, life rarely happens as we imagine it. Or fear of the unknown is irrational. By changing our ways of doing things, we can bring out new things in our lives, and be happier.

Why your idea will remain authentic

When we get an idea, people are a bit scared to share it, fearing that their idea will be copied. However, if you want to evaluate your idea, you need to get the feedback of people around you, to know if your idea meets adhesion of people or not. So is it a real danger to share your idea? There are many reasons to say that the answer is no.

First of all, you will probably not be the only one to have an idea at a certain moment. Other people are thinking about the same thing than you, in order to start a project, but we ignore who they are. It could be a topic of a book, a solution to a problem, or many other things. When a subject is in the trends of the moment, there will be certainly many people who, for instance, will write a book about it. The originality of your book, which will make you stand out from the others, will be in the way you will treat the subject. Of course, the fact that people react positively or negatively is not necessary an indicator that should push you to make a decision as to the pursuit of your idea. Let us think about the eleven publishers who refused to publish Harry Potter. The one who accepted to publish it and the others had the same manuscript in their hands. What was the element making that this publisher decided to take the risk to publish the book? What is for sure, it is the perseverance of the author, Joanne K. Rowling, that was probably a key element that contributes to succeed.

Luc De Brabandere, a Belgian consultant who dedicate his career to creativity, says that, if we pay attention, we can notice that most of the time, the ideas already exist. But the way we will develop an idea will be related to the perception we will have from the topic the idea is related to. For instance, there are I-Pod project at Sony, companies like IBM, Toshiba, were building personal computers like Apple. Why Apple has been successful thanks to his founder, Steve Jobs? It was successful because Steve Jobs had another perception when launching a project related to an existing topic. When companies declared that they build powerful computers, Steve Jobs declared that Apple was building machines easy to use, and allowing people to be creative. Same thing with the other devices developed by Apple. In fact, the development process of the idea was much more based on the “why” instead of the “what”. What makes the originality of the idea you develop, is the change of paradigm you associate to the topic, making that you create an original solution. The change of paradigm is a foundation of the sharing economy. Some people don’t need to own a car, their only need to move from one place to another. The change of paradigm is the usage of a car instead of to own one, but the key element remains the car.

The main questions is or how and why an idea come into being in you. An idea will be related to an activity or a topic you are interested by. Your idea is the result of a process of observations, experiences and reflections about a topic, but first of all, it is based on the perception of the topic you have. And it is the perception you have that will be the starting point of the work, the solution you will develop. It is like a puzzle you want to assemble step by step, following some logic. At the end, you know what represent each piece of the puzzle, that are all the components making the originality of the work. This process is most of all based on the knowledge and the passion you develop about a topic, but also your intuition about possible solutions or developments.  Your intuition is the result of your experience and the knowledge you acquired during many years, and that contributes also to feed the original development of ideas. All these elements are the roots of your idea, and it will be difficult for somebody else to exploit your idea in the same way than yours.

It is difficult to know if an idea is a good one or not. There are several steps between the birth of an idea and his implementation, and each step is decisive to reach the success. Anyway, do not hesitate to spread your idea. As already said, some ideas already exists, but the way you will develop it will probably be unique, or you will attempt to create an original solution based on the mastery of the topic you have. To play with ideas is an ongoing exercise like another, allowing you to develop your creativity, and designing original solutions. Even if you fail, it will be an opportunity to learn and to make significant improvements steps for the future. That is what will make you different from the one who is just copying your idea and who have no real clear idea about an original implementation of it. That is why even if you share an idea, your idea will remain authentic.

Do less and better

Be focused on main objectives

Since last year, after facing health trouble, I decided to reduce globally my activity level. A bit the opposite of what I was doing at the beginning of my freelance career, 12 years ago. When I started as freelance, I had a bit the feeling to win a certain level of freedom, and very quickly, the desire to get involved in heaps of project has come.

When I got my first assignment as freelance financial consultant, I was glad and excited. You will never forget the time you signed your first contract, your first assignment, your first time sheet, the first invoice you raised and the first payment you received. At that time, I was involved I a small association, in charge of the treasury and the communication, more precisely the layout of a periodical newspaper. I also built a small database in order to manage our activities and the list of our members. It was a great opportunity to be creative, to discover some new interests, and to express a creative mind.

A few years later, I was involved in a second association as volunteer accountant, and member of the board of directors. This non-profit organization provides help and assistance to people in precarious situation. There are around ten people on the payroll, six other people who are part of a socio-professional integration program in collaboration with the municipality, and around fifty volunteers working on the different activities. The workload for the board of directors is indeed more significant. Often, people asked me how it was possible for me to manage all these different activities. I often answered that it is just a question of self-organization, but indeed, I worked on these projects during some hours in the evening or during the weekend.

I was pleased to be part of these project, because first I was motivated, and it was the opportunity to meet people, to discover new things around me. And of course, when people know that you have such experience, you receive solicitations to join new projects. At that time, I received some solicitations to be part of interesting projects I would be pleased to join, but I declined them as my agenda was already fully booked.

Recently, after the ordinary general assembly, we had a board meeting in order to designate the president, the treasurer and the secretary, following the Belgian law of the non-profit organization. As the president resigned, the other members of the board voted for me as president. I had already assumed this role ad interim for one year, but now, it was really a major responsibility on my shoulders. President of an association is not a profession or something you learned at school. It something you can only build as you go. It is a huge responsibility you decide to take, but it means also a real commitment and a strong interest in the association. To assume this role as best as possible, it takes time and you need to take the time for it.

One of the major tasks is to get a global and complete picture of the association and the different activities. It is like a large puzzle you have to build step by step, in order to understand and to discover all the processes, the constraints and the challenges of the different activities. But one of the major skills you need to have is listening. Listening to the staff is probably the way I learned the most. You learn about the processes, but also the challenges and the difficulties people are facing. Your role is to bring support to the employees, and to bring solutions to make sure that all the activities are running well. But to ensure that role correctly, you need time, time to do the best things possible.

I started to think about this, and it was obvious that to meet that goal implies that I have to be more focused on that goal, and so, obliged to sort through my activities and delete some of them. You probably noticed that some people are involved in many activities, and sometimes, you are wondering how they can manage them effectively. Today, successful people are seen as people who are constantly busy, juggling with their multiple activities. But what is their real implication and their real workload in their activities ? Next to that, I noticed that it is difficult to find people who commit in long term, with regularity and rigor. Some of them, are switching from an activity to another, like facing their television and switching from a program to another.

It was clear in my mind that I have to take the necessary time to manage the association with the other directors and the managing directors. My implication as volunteer and member of the board in such association had taught me that it is impossible to make a plan for few years, as the rules and constraints are changing constantly. By dedicating more time to these tasks, you take the possibility to do things better, and it brings you more satisfaction when you seen some improvements and that some significant steps are realized. It makes you and your collaborators more happy, and a more trustable person because you are more present and you show your real involvement in the project.
You need also to take time for yourself, of course, but also moments of reflections, making you more efficient in your future actions.

It is the reason why sometimes, it is not less rewarding to do less, but do better. It is the opportunity to better face the reality and not to lie to yourself by being satisfied with poor results, see nonexistent results.

Network and reputation

Recently I just started a new assignment as freelance financial consultant. After a period of transition to switch to another activity project that did not succeed, I decided to look again for opportunities as consultant and interim manager. I started to contact again my network of recruiting partners about my availability to start new projects. Few weeks ago, a former colleague sent me a message about a possible opportunity for me. One of her former colleague was looking for a temporary consultant. She informed me that she gave my details to the person and that I will be probably contacted soon.

Few days later, I was indeed contacted by the person and invited to send an updated curriculum vitae that will be submitted to the CFO. Few days later, I was invited to an interview. In the meantime, I Inquired about the company, and noticed that I had the opportunity to know the CFO in a company where I had worked twice, respectively four and fourteen months. I went to the interview, and based on what the company was looking for, I made a proposal of services I could render in accordance with the customer expectation. At the end of the interview, I was directly asked when we could start the collaboration. We agreed to start the next week.

I was of course very happy to have catch and obtained this opportunity. After several month of transition trial and a period of cash burning, my expectations were to restart a project as soon as possible. But when you are contacted by a recruiter for an opportunity, there are, most of the time, few candidates on the case and you are never sure that you will be the winner. The two reasons coming in my mind and making that I got the job, are network and reputation.

Let us talk about the first one, reputation. Reputation is a crucial point to ensure your professional life and future opportunities. It is the positive impression you will make to your collaborator. Positive reputation is built by your competences and your attitude. It is always difficult to evaluate yourself on a humble way, and that is why the feedback of other is very important. The only way to keep your reputation is to improve yourself on an ongoing way, by learning every day and increasing your skills, and offer more services to your customers. Don’t promise what you cannot do. To say that you are not competent for such a task is not a weakness but a sign of honesty and humility. It will make you a trustable person, and trust is the key component of a long term and successful collaboration.

Beside your competences and skills, there is also your attitude as part of your reputation. As interim manager, we are often hired for our strong experience and the capacity to take the lead quickly in a project. But we have to never forget that we are to work with people. We have strong experience but it does not mean that we have nothing to learn from others.  We are able to transpose our experience in a new environment, but we need the help of the other collaborators to discover and have control on this environment. Be a real team player and share knowledge and experience with other. Remember that knowledge is the only thing we have more each other when it is shared. Ask for permanent feedback from your partners in order to know where you are and how you can improve yourself.

The second important point to maximize your chances to catch opportunities is your network. To build your network is an ongoing process. You need to build your network on an ongoing way and not only when you need it. A part of your network is made of contact with people acting in the same area of activities than yours, but also the people you worked with.  The strength of your network is the result of your reputation.  Be aware that to build a network is not only to add contacts on networking tools like LinkedIn or other social media platform.  To add contacts on social media is like making a phone book. Remember that behind these profiles on social networks and media, there are real people with who you have to interact. Maintaining and developing your network is based on communication. Inform your network on regular basis about your activities and projects, about your availability to start new projects. As people often change of companies, it is important to update your own contact database and to take contact with new partners.  You probably noticed that on social network platforms, you see some messages on the information wire of people you do not remember they were part of your network, because they don’t interact regularly with you. Make sure that people knows you are still there.

In your career, you will find that the world is very small. You will meet people who know people who worked with you. Look on your contact on LinkedIn for instance, and see the common contact you have.  You probably know that it takes time to build reputation and network and only a few minutes to destroy it, by doing something negative, and it is even more true with the power of social networks.  Remember that your reputation and network are the most important things to build a successful professional life, to maximize your chances, there are the two things are your own responsibilities.  As mentioned Philippe Gabilliet, professor of a management school in Paris, in a famous video, chance is a competence and you have to work on it.