These bright lights have always blinded me.

"Pouca sinceridade é uma coisa perigosa... muita sinceridade é absolutamente fatal."

Oscar Wilde

You'll begin to wonder why you came.

As time goes by, a certain feeling of inevitability sets in. All of a sudden, words might not be needed anymore, it all feels like a waste of time, effort. Either that or words I thought I'd never speak come to mind. Truth is, I never wanted any of this. But there are things you simply can't control, can't predict. Sometimes, we're reminded how badly we should never say "never".

I really don't know if anything will make it any better, be it words or anything else. Maybe time and distance... but they're the two things I really don't want. But they seem ever more inevitable as days go by.

Either way, it's really out of my hands, as sad and helpless as that makes me feel.

"And I would have stayed up with you all night
Had I known how to save a life..."

The problem with problems.

People can be extremely well educated with many years of experience, they may be successful managers who have accomplished great things, but frequently their ability to solve a problem is severely limited. That sounds like a paradox, but every time I talk to executives I’m struck by how true it is. People cannot define the problem they are trying to solve.

So that is what has been occupying my mind: how we structure and solve problems.

Every decision involves problem solving. In some cases we employ professionals who do that job -- they’re called project managers and administrators and so on. They are certainly a part of that process, but what happens when you have to anticipate an issue or when you don’t have an established process or routine to deal with it? You have to define the issue before you can pick a routine to address it.

In principle, it is a simple exercise: Define a problem, identify options, pick the best, and communicate the finding. Since the Renaissance, science has progressed using this formula. Management consultancies advocate a similar approach in their work. Yet, often managerial conversations resemble more expressions of dogma (“I believe…”) or contestants sparring on a TV general knowledge contest (“sales in the Northeast in July are double those of the entire West in December”) than informed argument.

If you look at engineering or architecture the ability of people to explain the problem they’re working on, and ask questions so they can get feedback is very high without their need to resort to either dogma or trivia. They are helped by reference to blueprints which are a highly codified way of communicating. Our equivalent in management is jargon. Like blueprints, jargon was invented to make our exchanges efficient (we all know what is meant by a “functional organisation”.) But the analogy to the blueprint ends when jargon becomes meaningless. It is also a sure way of eradicating any arguments left standing from the onslaught of dogma or trivia.

Law is often used to illustrate informed argument. Medicine is another good example. Every time doctors deal with a case, they have to define it. Before you do anything for a patient you have to define what you think the problem is and then coordinate a large array of resources to address that. You form hypotheses all the time, you take feedback, you reassess your hypotheses as you go along, you use different resources as a result and so on.

I suspect that the reason that our problem-solving ability in management is so limited is because our models of problem-solving are devoid of people while actual problem-solving isn’t. As useful as a decision tree might be as an analytical abstraction, the issue is how do you actually define a problem with the help of others around you? Who should these people be? What kind of input should you be asking from them? Which part of that input should you disregard? Which part of that input should you take into account?

People are prone to action. By the time someone can start even articulating a question they already have an answer for it. You need to ask: what is the problem you’re trying to solve and what are the possible ways that you can go about doing it?

This is an extract from Yiorgos Mylonadis’ article in the Summer 2010 issue of Business Strategy Review. Link

Nothing to lose, everything to get.

Sure, life may slip one on you from time to time, something you weren't expecting, that caught you offguard. How you lift yourself up and keep moving forward is what's really important, though. Deep down, you lost nothing and you still have a whole lot to look forward to, probably more than you'll ever expect.

Here's to a good week! Have fun! *

Lost your balance on a tight rope, lost your mind trying to get it back.

Great last few days. But, deep down, the things left unsaid don't really make it easy on me and eventually, come back to haunt me. I don't know what's going to happen and I wish I did...

Wasn't it beautiful when you believed in everything and everybody believed in you?

Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

"Speak less to the people you love the most, 'cause if they cannot understand your silence, they can never understand your words."

William Shakespeare

Nobody's fool.

It's amazing to see how things that took forever to build can crumble to the ground in an instant. It's not surprising, though. I'm kind of used to not being shown the same respect I've always tried to show everyone else. But there's always someone you don't expect would do that to you.

Truth is, this is a fucked up world. Common decency no longer applies. It's about how much fucked up you can be, the more, the better. People don't want to be with someone good, they want to be with someone dangerous, so to say. Feelings don't apply, as well. It's much simpler living for the now, for the immediate pleasure and fun, than worry about the future, or where it'll lead you. Nobody really cares if they trample everyone around them on the way. Friendship isn't what it used to be, either. Friends are convenient relationships people build. When it suits them, it's fine. When it doesn't, there's no real problem in throwing it away, like the disposable thing people perceive it to be nowadays.

As for me, I still fall to the illusion that things can be different, from time to time. They can't. I won't change the world around me on my own. They say that if you can't beat them, join them. I won't do that either. I'll do you one better, though:


I'll prove that I'm better than most.

That's just how the story unfolds...

"Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along."

Jalal-Uddin Rumi (1207-1273)

Can we go back to when everything used to matter?

I keep on struggling but slowly and surely, life moves on.
In the end, we are more important than anything else, our goals and objectives can't be held over any other things. I know I can't stop. I can't put other people as a priority over what I want to achieve.

That's the theory. It couldn't be farther from what I feel deep inside, though.

My mind is in the right place, my soul is not. I feel this fire burning inside me, telling me that a certain someone is the one I care about... the only one I care about. It's kind of funny how wildly out of control this has thrown me. On the one hand, I sure find it amazingly beautiful that I can love someone this much. It's a wonderful feeling, caring about someone. Ideally, that would be it. It isn't. As much as I'm in awe of her, of what she means to me, I can't let it stop my life, grind it to a halt. Gladly, as much pain and confusion all this has caused me, I still have reasons to smile. Not the ones I wanted, but having some is always better than having none.

With all that said, it's hard denying my heart a simple wish, that I want to be with her, simply because I do love her... :)

"Can we pretend that airplanes in the night sky are like shooting stars...?"