Better Starts with Who
i wonder often
curious as i am
this morning when i woke up
i wondered what your mindset would be
as you were going to listen to these ted
talks today
are you calm and relaxed
are you stressed and overwhelmed
are you with me or are you somewhere
else
i wondered what had happened to you over
the past few months
since that pandemic started
i wondered whether you were in a better
place now
than you were then
i wondered why or why not
and then it was time to take a shower
albert einstein has a quote
and that quotes says in the midst of
crisis
lies great opportunity
we live in times of disruption
of stress of uncertainty and of change
and i love it i see opportunity
all around me
wherever i look but
it’s fair to say that the past few
months
have also taught us how fragile we are
the past few months have shown us and
it’s still
mind-boggling to me that a virus
can put this world to a complete
standstill
remember those blue airplanes standing
on the runway
at schiphol airport parked side by side
idle waiting for this pandemic to be
over
and then we adjust it like we always do
resilient as we are as human beings we
started to find a new reality
we started to go online with our lives
our work and our schools
today the largest online meeting
business
is worth 70 billion us dollars
that is more than the six largest u.s
airlines combined
that’s how fast disruption can go
that is how fast disruption can make
or break your future
so i wondered how did you adjust how
would you
did you adjust do you have a new reality
or are you one of those people that
cannot wait to go back
to the old times or perhaps
everything happened so quick and you
were so busy
that it was all in a blur and in a few
months from now you will wake up
and you will think by yourself what just
happened
what just happened
we live in times of change
and it will go faster and faster and
faster if you are waiting for it to go
slow down
i can tell you that’s not going to
happen
now is the opportunity to take advantage
now is the opportunity to find
something better now is the opportunity
to find something
that you will look back at in a few
years from now and think by yourself
that corona period was a blessing in
disguise and i’m better for it
and that better starts with who
earlier this week i walked on the saudis
in amsterdam
the last time i had been there before
was early june
there was absolutely nobody it was
completely deserted
it was a bit busier this week but still
not like it was before
way before before that it was a pile of
ants
like a pile of ants bankers lawyers
consultants tax advisers recruiters
and drug dealers
every day in amsterdam forty thousand
lines of cocaine
are being distributed in the saudis area
alone
twenty thousand you don’t believe me
i didn’t believe in myself either when i
heard it for the first time
so i started asking around and basically
everybody confirms the same pattern
sometime during the weekday a big black
mercedes shows up
scooters arrive and people take their
merchandise to their clients
so who are these clients who buys that
stuff
not the barista not the gentleman at the
checkout in the supermarket
not the person who bakes your fries
these are the people in suits and in
business clothes
let that sink in for a little bit
every day people need substance abuse to
keep up with the pace
to keep up with the performance required
to let the rat race keep on going slaves
to the rhythm
part of the rat race these people work
in offices
and those officers are filled with
managers and managers of managers
and ultimately we get two bosses
now here’s the question that i have for
you do you think those bosses are aware
those ceos are managing partners do you
think they know
of course they know otherwise they
wouldn’t be a good boss
so why not they do why are they not
doing something
these bosses have silently accepted that
this culture exists
that this culture is okay why
yes why because of the same performance
because of the pressure on performance
because of the pressure from clients to
do things faster and faster and faster
and because of the fact that the rat
race needs to continue
their bonuses depend on it their
lifestyles depend on it
so these bosses cannot wait until
everything goes back to normal the old
normal
i mean these bosses
cannot wait until that black mercedes
returns
because that means that the red race
will continue
i wonder what you’re thinking right now
i wonder
whether you see crisis or opportunities
are you one of those people
do you know
i wonder how
this is going to continue
there was there is a book actually it is
it exists
written by ernest hemingway called the
sun also rises
and in his book he writes about
a person called mike and mike went
bankrupt
mike is asked by another character so
how did you go bankrupt
and mike says two ways gradually
and then suddenly we live
our lives gradually until suddenly
something happens
we live our lives until we are faced
with
something like a pandemic a filled
relationship
a reorganization sickness or death
suddenly we are human beings again
suddenly
we realize what matters most in life
suddenly
we know what we care about
the people we love the things we love to
do
are you willing to create suddenly
before nature technology or some human
being does it for you
are you willing to live your dream
or will you continue to live someone
else’s dream
those were some of the questions i
started asking myself towards the end of
my career
it is march 22nd
2016 at nine o’clock in the morning
when my next journey continues
and starts i’m in my office i took the
metro to work
and my phone rings it’s my wife lenka
calling
strange because i had just spoken to her
earlier that morning
so i pick up the phone and i say i say
hey what’s up and she says are you okay
and i said yeah sure why not and she
said well
i was just on my way to work in the car
and i heard on the news
that bombs had exploded at the airport
and in the train station
and in the metro station
i put down the phone in shock and i knew
immediately what i needed to do
i was part of an integration team we had
people all over the place
we had people flying in and out of
brussels we had people
traveling between amsterdam and brussels
we had people taking the metro to work
we needed to know first and foremost
whether everybody was safe
and okay it took us a while but then we
found out that everybody was okay
nobody got hurt but it got close really
close
one colleague had just gone through
security on his way to get a plane to
the united states
and heard the bombs go off behind him
other people
were in the metro approximately at the
same time
when the bombs went off
that evening we were supposed to go to
the netherlands by train
but we couldn’t get out of brussels
brussels was in complete lockdown
so we took the car in the car on the way
to the netherlands where we had our
first combined meeting
we reflected and we came to the
conclusion
that the world as we know it
had gotten worse again and not for the
last time
the next morning i woke up
with a picture of a jet airways flight
attendant
on the front page of the newspaper
lying on a bench in the departure hall
her
yellow bright yellow uniform completely
drenched in blood
she became the face of the attacks i
think you have seen the picture
shortly afterwards we started the
meeting we jumped right in
and i hesitated in silence
i was thinking by myself
this cannot be true this cannot be
happening right now
are we starting this meeting as if
nothing happened yesterday
i hesitated a little bit more and then i
decided to interrupt
and i said i really need every to hear
every voice
i need to hear how everybody is doing
we decided to have that conversation we
decided to do that check-in
it took us over two and a half hours
we had a wonderful conversation i dare
to say that it was maybe one of the more
impactful conversations i’ve ever had in
my career
we talked as human to human we talked
about the things that we
that matters most to us we didn’t talk
that much about business
not at all i think actually
we became closer as a team because of
that one conversation
knowing each other because it was two
teams coming together
that didn’t work together yet but we
became closer during those
uh two and a half hours than any any
exercise could have brought us
reflecting that evening on the events a
seat
got planted in my head
imagine imagine you’re
at the foot of a mountain a mountain
that you’re about to climb
you can see the path to the mountain the
mountain is the top is up there
now imagine you’re at the edge of a
desert
what do you see now sand
nothing but sand
there’s a book written by steve donahue
called shifting sans
it’s a brilliant book that talks about
how he crossed the sahara
about change in his book he describes
that mountain climbing is about the
destination
and crossing a desert is about the
journey
after that seed was planted i started to
realize
that i was no longer in the business of
mountain climbing i was no longer
climbing
the mountain of bonuses and budgets and
goals and performance
i was in fact on a journey
across the desert change meaning
and learning became more important for
me
why maybe because
the my contacts had changed i got tired
of flying every single week between all
kinds of cities
maybe it was because i was past halftime
some people call it a mid-life crisis
einstein calls it a mid-life opportunity
and i actually agree with him
maybe it was because i had still so many
seats
in my head that i needed to plant and do
something with that i
decided that it was time to start
dreaming again
the company and i parted ways roughly
two years later
a new beginning for me a new journey
started
i left the comfort zone of corporate
life
i have always been very focal about
comfort zone
and what you do with comfort zones a
comfort zone
needs to be left you need to cross the
edges
of your comfort zone that’s where
learning begins
that’s where you find meaning that’s
where you find your dreams
that’s where you find you better i get
it
what’s better for you might not be
better for me
we are different people we have
different opinions about what is better
but better
always starts with who
better always starts with who you
are you cannot find better truly better
if you don’t find out who you are first
so who are you
do you know do you truly know
do the people who know you know
i learned three things
in that whole process patience values
and energy the first one is patience
there’s a desert proverb another there’s
a proverb that says
the more you stop the further you go you
cannot cross the desert
you cannot cross the sahara if you don’t
stop
i had to learn how to stop i had to
learn how to pause
and think truly about what i wanted to
do
i had to be okay with the uncertainty
i had to stay in the messy middle
until clarity would arise
i also had to reconnect with my values i
can tell you when you work
so long in a corporate environment you
talk a lot about values i often
and always talked about values but the
moment that all falls away that whole
world you start reconnecting with your
own values
and because of my values of family
freedom curiosity
authenticity and learning i knew that i
was moving in the right direction
the last one was energy i started
writing
i wrote down every single thing i needed
to know
about what gave me energy and what
drained my energy
and over time i started to get grounded
i started to know what i really cared
about what really mattered
to me so
as i walk out of the shower i continue
to wonder
are you grounded have you found your
voice yet
thank you
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you