2012=Global Economic Collapse (?)

Posted on 02/09/2011 | 3 Comments

Lots and lots of opinions have been heard in the past few years about an imminent GEC (Global Economic Collapse). Specially in the past few months, after the US government’s poor handling of its financial crisis and near-default situation along with the continuing stress coming from the mishandling of EU’s own debt crisis. Alarmist or not, those opinions being raised have some ground of serious validity in them and maybe the world should start preparing for perhaps one of global history’s most important events: A GEC!

European countries are consumed in an ever ending struggle to fight the ghost of financial debt and the threat of bankruptcy that hangs above Euro’s currency. Greece has yet to recover, Spain and Italy seem ready to collapse too and Germany’s egocentric politics leave no space for common ground and feasible solutions. Meanwhile US economy is at its worst, ready to default and with no strong support from its institutions the financial stability of US seems long gone. Debt between countries increases, interest has skyrocketed, money loses its value (specially in the US) and unemployment with inflation are becoming worst every day around the world.

Some say that 2012 will be the year of GEC; but what will that mean for all of us? No one really knows because something like that has never happened before. The old ‘solution’ to resolve financial crises was war. Maybe that will happen again. Maybe at the final hour, a solution will show up from a probable common ground that my arise.  We are at the gates of terra incognita here and OK I am not an economist but I can see the huge changes and risks up front. What do economists do? What do governments and global institutions do to address those eminent threats? What are their response plans both to rising threats as well as obvious opportunities? So far, the world has yet to see a vital solution and pessimism slowly sets in. We can only hope from now on. As any mathematical problem with X variables has X solutions, so do these problems even if they are addressed with fancy economic terms.

PS: Check out this interesting, yet simplistic, video:

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Posted in Economy

Visibilia ex invisibilibus

Posted on 18/07/2011 | 1 Comment

Or visible from the invisible, from the famous motto of ESE (European School of Economics) and its founder, the visionary DREAMER Stefano D’Anna. “The dream is the ONLY real thing there is. Be a KING and the kingdom will come”. And that’s what I’m trying to be. Don’t get me wrong. I am no megalomaniac nor am I a dreamer per se. I DREAM and I let this motivate and guide me. As quoted by the dreamer in the “School for Gods”: “Don’t ever wish for the kingdom to appear before kingliness:it would crush you into dust”.

And that’s exactly where I’ve failed over the past weeks. I tried to conquer my inner kingdom, to acquire royal lands and conquest territories, without inner improvement, having not first enhanced my inner self and with no self-awareness of my Being. Of my true existence, potential, capabilities.  A man must look to the mirror from time to time and acknowledge his own failures and weaknesses, only to face them in the eyes and conquer them. To liberate oneself from his own prison is the biggest thing a man can achieve in his life; and the toughest one. “One stone at a time”.

Trying to achieve my next career path, to conquest the road to professional success in the UK is a road that lies ahead and the kingdom I have to conquest. But first I have to become king. James Kaan’s new book “Get the job you really want” was another source of valuable insight about how to improve myself in terms of job preparation. Apart from the sterile information and useless subjective data other career books provide, that handbook is trying to make you realise that you first must become KING in order to have your rightful kingdom. Preparation is king. Self-awareness is king. The dream job is out there for you, for me. IT IS MY FAULT IF I CANNOT ACHIEVE MY TRUE POTENTIAL.

I can achieve greatness only believing in my Being and by bringing this greatness to the world. There is no outer world; only the one projected by myself. My next career road lies ahead of me. It is already waiting for me in the UK. Already moving to Britain and being so determined and passionate about it, is just the first big step. Now I am getting more prepared. I am seeking my road which is already paved for me. I only need to find it, by searching not on the outside, but inside my own BEING.

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Posted in Career, Jobs, Motivation

“Overqualified”! To be or not to be?

Posted on 28/06/2011 | Leave a comment

It’s been a couple of days now since I’ve obtained my PMP®  certification and I am actively seeking for my new career endeavour. One thing I am confused though and I am sure that confuses many candidates, it’s the contradiction between having too many qualifications for the job and the job demanding for over to many qualifications.

My point is that there are mainly two major categories of job ads: First, the generic one, where the employer asks for some essential skills which most candidates for the job have and then asks for some generic skills (negotiation, communication, leadership, motivation, etc) which are up to be discovered at an interview if you are lucky enough to gain a chance for an interview that is! For these kind of jobs there is the danger of being characterised as “overqualified”.

The second large category is the jobs where to put it straight, the employer ask for the job candidate to possess all the qualities of the world! Apart from being expert in soft and hard skills, the candidate must have super experience, extensive knowledge of the -respective to the job- technology hardware and software, at least a couple of globally acclaimed certifications, enviable achievements, in short the job candidate must be a utopian expert who would normally work for NASA but was bored and is searching for a new challenge!

No wonder any job seeker is sometimes overwhelmed and faces anxiety and stress when trying to find a job suitable for him/her as well as for the company he/she wants to be a part of. Surely, the truth -as always- is somewhere in the middle; companies do not search for Superman nor for a generic candidate but someone who can at least fulfill most of their requirements and based on their resume and the following interview, will best suit their company’s and that specific job’s needs.

As for me? Having the necessary experience, education and certifications I am turning a new page to my career as well as my life and getting ready for new challenges and opportunities. Am I overqualified? Most certainly. But after all that is not a bad thing. It is rather essential nowadays.

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Posted in Career, Jobs

Opportunity lost

Posted on 22/06/2011 | 2 Comments

The past two weeks have been a true drama for Greek politics as well as Greek society, escalating the overall dramatic climate in the economy over the past year. With the EU pressure for quick implementations in economic reforms on the one hand, the public demonstrations on the other hand (every day people are packing the squares of Greek major towns), combined with the inability and lack of will from the Greek government to implement such harsh solutions have resulted to the Greek economy and Greece as a country to stand on the verge of the disaster!

Last week the peak of public demonstrations along with the constant pressure on the Greek government’s antisocial economic measures to satisfy the troika and to gain EU and IMF approval for the disbursement of the fifth installment of the so-called ‘rescue package’, have resulted to a confession of failure from the government’s part and personally from the PM George Papandreou; having apparently lost the support of many of his first-rate cabinet members and not being able to gain the necessary consent from the ever-arguing opposition party of the New Democracy, on the morning of 15th June 2011 he decided to meet with all opposition parties in the parliament and ask for consent as well as for the creation of an all-party government even without him as a PM. Under heavy demonstrations outside the Greek parliament in Syntagma Square, Athens, with the smell of tear gas evident all over Athens’ centre he decided to resign as a PM and give power to all Greek parties in order to gain the necessary from the EU-IMF consensus and move on with the regular payment of installments. Alas! What was building all through the day, what was meant to be one of the most important days in metapolitical history in Greece has resulted to be a failure of gigantic proportions due to communication tricks from both government and opposition parties and due to a lack of will from Papandreou being pressured by his cabinet members who were afraid to lose their positions in the government. Micropolitics have won the national need for consent, for true change, for true reform. And the worst part is that the hopes of millions of Greeks that day, that something could finally change after 30 years of poor politics and misuse of power and economics.

The result was for Papandreou to ask for a confidence vote which he won yesterday and the oxymoron is that until past Tuesday most of his MPs accused him, demonstrated openly their aversion to the new midterm austerity measures and their lack of confidence to the government’s efficiency but ‘miraculously’ all of them voted for Papandreou and moreover showed and excessive support for him just hours after their outcry!

A huge opportunity was lost for Greece these two weeks. An opportunity having been eventually victimized in the altar of easy solutions, of micropolitics and of communications tricks. Those responsible can be found in the faces of most of the Greek politics scene’s members and hangers. The Greek problem is not only economic. It is a problem of mentality, of temperament and is the result of at least 30 years of lack of morality and values in politics and not only. The ultimate victims and culprits at the same time, are us. The Greek people. The Greek people who now can only fatally wait for the new measures, for the new taxes until they go and vote for a new government in the future, only to face the hard truth that it is they who must change first of all and not wait for others to help them. For Greeks are the politics of Greece and not vice-versa.

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Posted in Economy, Greece

Lessons learned

Posted on 08/06/2011 | 1 Comment

For every project, succesful or not, one of the most important and often neglected part is the final one; The part where the project is concluded, documents are becoming archives, team is adjourned and of course where lessons learned should first of all be realized and the documented and become active part of an organization’s assets.

However small or big, completed with a positive or negative outcome or even completed at all, must have some lessons learned to be documented and reviewed. These may include from risks and how they were managed to procurement assessments and from conflict issues between team members and stakeholders’ issues and how they were respectively been addressed. Within all interconnected parts of a project life-cycle there are numerous issues to be documented for future reference and if done in time, in a consistent manner and effectively, then these lessons learned can become the greatest potential asset of an organization, when it comes to project management.

If no lessons are learned then questions may rise about the project itself and its efficiency and results achieved, for no project is perfect in its essence and procedure and risks, problems, conflicts and poor results are a major part of the game and something that a good project manager must not ignore but accept and try to overcome in a constant, effective and always better way. And lessons learned from previous endeavours can be a great asset and helping tool to better organize future projects and processes or even to enhance organizational functionality and incorporate constructive changes and improvements in the overall business strategy of the organization.

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Posted in Business, Project management

For Sale

Posted on 25/05/2011 | Leave a comment

It’s official. Spread the word out there. Greece, my country, is for sale. After one year under the constant and merciless pressure of the memorandum, the troika, the EU and the rising spreads of the global markets, after one year of measures and sacrifices from the Greek people, the Greek government has officially yesterday announced its failure (not in such words thought, since that would require some political guts) and told the Greek people who for the next years they and only they would have to find 360 bn Euros to pay our creditors (this is the current national debt of Greece. Attention! The current one!).

Everything is for sale now! The Greek people’s property is for sale. The Greek people’s dignity is for sale. Greece is for sale. And it’s a bargain really. Clearance! And the Greek people fatally accept this situation. Yes it is our fault too, that we carried on believing in such a corrupted and self-seeking political system, perhaps because it suited us perfectly. We lived with borrowed money and now we have to pay. But the price is too high, because for years our now creditors lended us money to buy military equipment, to buy their stuff, to help their economies buy investing extremely in their fitted capitalist system and now they want to do what? Pauperize us? Make us beg for money or worst, for food? Where could Greece possibly find 360 bn Euros? It’s unreal and they know it. What are their true intentions? And WHY, oh WHY doesn’t the Greek people wake up from their dormant to face the truth and REACT? Or is it that we like to be manipulated and tricked by political unethical bastards? Maybe it’s in our blood to be mislead like that. In our cursed DNA. I don’t know.

I know only that;Greece is for sale, is dying and no one out there wants to or was ever willing to really help us. We have to make it on our own. I respect economies, financial systems, market rules etc, but above all is the need for a country, for its citizens to live a decent life and provide for their children. Above all are the people. Not money.

Check out #greekrevolution tonight. 25 May 2011. All hope is not yet gone….

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Posted in Economy, Greece

Thoughts on motivation

Posted on 12/05/2011 | 2 Comments

“One of the biggest mistakes managers make is withholding praise or acknowledgement until after an employee has “been good” or done something to “deserve” it. You may have heard the old grass adage: You tell the grass, “When you grow, and only after you grow, will I then give you water.” This is just not how motivation works. This kind of reward system demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of human nature and basic human needs. It breeds insecurity amongst employees, who may never function at their best over the long-term because they can never feel confident about what they’re doing or where they stand.”  

The above adage by Kurt Mortensen encompasses (in my humble opinion) the correct and appropriate view about motivation, something which every person considers as something obvious and expected yet we hardly see it materializing in workplaces, in schools, in business organizations, in everyday life as a whole!

There are numerous motivational theories, trying to explain human motivation by interpreting human nature. They present ideas on why people act they way they do and how you can influence their behavior in order to act in certain and desired ways, to get of course the results you wish from them. From Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, to Herzberg’s Hygiene Theory and from McGregor’s X,Y Theory to Ouchi’s obsolete Z-Theory, many theories have been developed to explain human behavior and its motivators. Unfortunately in todays rapidly growing and constantly under extreme pressure business environment, it is no wonder why workers and employees are mostly motivated not by incentives but by fear,money and in some cases more power.

It is hardly seen from high management to provide ongoing motivation to its employees. They are expected to perform in high standards 24/7,  be eager to work overtime (usually without compensation), perform not as team members but rather as robotic assistants with no care about basic or safety needs and of course with no room for personal development, and all these only by the motivator of not wanting to lose their jobs or face an unhappy manager. With the pressure coming from the economic crisis, it has become evident that the major motivator nowadays is not losing one’s job! No room for ‘irrigation’ there, sorry!

People seldom expect for rewards (Expectancy theory) and working under constant pressure of fear for losing your job leads not only to reduced work performance but also creates a halo effect where managers consider that the only way to motivate employees is by punishment and by imposing rigid control over them (Z-theory). I have yet to witness or hear about anyone who has been rewarded in any other way apart from salary (considered a luxury nowadays in Greece), bonuses (!!) and maybe a pat in the back. Effective leadership is sacrificed to the altar of getting the job done, by enforcing strict management and firm monitoring and control over results and their bearers.Money is considered the ultimate motivator and any error or mistake in your job may lead to bad remarks and penalties but try to ask for some non-monetary reward. We have all witnessed quite the opposite in fact; the most common response to any direct or indirect seek for reward, for any kind of motivation relates to the grass adage: “Grow and you’ll be irrigated”.

Greece today, living its own national and economic tragedy, is the ultimate paradigm of how not to motivate people. 30 years now it has cultivated the notion of stability in the public sector and this was the only motivator for studying and getting a university degree. Employees now must work anytime they are asked, under any condition, without claiming anything, just to get payed (not always in time) since salary and fear of unemployment is the major motivator in Greece’s job arena.

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Posted in Business, Motivation