Whats In A Name?

There is nothing more frustrating than forgetting a name, especially one you just heard a moment ago. Or you are at a conference and this smiling face comes up to you and says "Shahriar! How are you? Its been a long time!" and you are thinking to yourself I know this guy, whats his name again? And the impression it leaves on the person is pretty bad, somewhere between disappointment and feeling insulted...

Remembering Apollo 13

Exactly 30 years ago on April 13, 1970 astronaut and mission commander James Lovell spoke those infamous words “Houston, we’ve had a problem” from the spacecraft Odyssey, better known as Apollo 13. What transpired over the next 72 hours is well known and documented in history books and in the Tom Hanks film Apollo 13. But in remembering the story of how 3 astronauts found themselves stranded on a malfunctioning spacecraft and were guided home by a team of engineers on the ground in Houston’s Kennedy Space Center, I stumbled on a remarkable story of leadership the likes of which we have not seen too many times since.

Spring Leadership

Its April and Spring has arrived, my favorite time of year. Its not just the change in weather that makes this a wonderful time of year, but also the change that happens in everything and everyone around us. It doesn’t matter what you do, the start of the second quarter of the calendar year means we shift gears up and push the gas pedal on whatever it is we are trying to achieve in our lives.

Fail Fast

The best piece of advice I ever received in my career was to fail fast. Like most young graduates coming out of school I was determined to be successful and never fail. In fact, from an early age it was engrained in me that failure is not an option.  None of this “everyone received a trophy for participating” stuff that seems to be more and more the norm in America’s schools and competitions. You worked hard to be the best you can be, and there was nothing else. But when you come out of school and are thrown into the fast world of business, profits and growth, you realize that trying to be perfect is likely the fastest path to failure.

Value Creation = What Drives The Market

Perhaps the most important thing I have learnt in my professional life that my education failed to teach is that markets do not reward merit, they reward value. These are two entirely different things yet politicians, the labor market and the Press still confuse the two. At Davos French President Nicolas Sarkozy proclaimed that the recent financial meltdown had demonstrated that letting markets decide executive compensation was "morally indefensible." Mr. Sarkozy said "There are remuneration packages that will no longer be tolerated because they bear no relationship to merit." Mr. Sarkozy, like his counter parts in the US and UK, fails to appreciate this key criteria of what makes a free market the best option for every individual in the world.  And many free market supporters equally confuse value with the cult of market meritocracy, a distinction that can prevent their hard work from being rewarded.

5 Travel Lessons You Can Use at Home

If there is one thing I hope the Nomad Influencer achieves its this: to encourage you, the reader, take the experiences a nomad lifestyle can give you and apply it in your everyday life. It doesn’t matter what kind of a life you lead today, whether you have a family and the responsibilities that go with that, how old you are or how limited (or not) you may be economically. Life is about what you do with your time and that means choices. And that is the message Rolf Potts, the author of Vagabonding, gives in his post on Tim Ferriss’ blog this week.  It’s a wonderful read based on the experiences of a true nomad who has 5 amazing lessons about the art of travel well worth adopting in your everyday life. I hope you enjoy it and share your thoughts.

Are You Cut Out For A Career In Sales?

Like most people in business I spend a lot of time with sales people and/or selling myself. Often you don't think twice about the person in front of you who is showing you their product or explaining the benefits of their solution. You assume they are an authority on their product and focus on the questions that matter to you - will this address my problem? will it help me? can I/my company benefit from this. Of course you also assess whether the organization selling is right to become a partner to you and your organization, and often that starts with the quality of the relationship with the sales person in front of you. But once in a while I am stone cold surprised by the individual representing a company and its solution because they are just not an effective sales person. And it reflects poorly on their company, its products and its people.