David Nyeste

Meetings, Minefields and Mindfields Today I will elaborate on why it is necessary to have a strategy for focused work. In case you don't have a clear strategy for how you can finish complicated, demanding tasks on a regular basis, you should start to think up a solution for this problem immediately. How and why I do this is revealed in the next lines. This will hopefully stay an exception, but let's start with a rant: it often strikes me with what level of ease and with what level of total disregard for people's time and schedule some colleagues invite to meetings of questionable purpose on short notice. By 'questionable purpose' I mean those meetings, where you don't have any agenda, you don't get any info on your expected input or why you're being invited in the first place and of course -the classic- : no documentation of the outcome. My impression is that as I proceed through my work-week those spontaneously created 'alignment-meetings' keep ...

Meetings are the Mirror of the Soul of an Organization  The way meetings are held in a company tells a lot about the corporation's culture and its values. Most large or medium sized companies have some kind of formal values they are committed to and a mission statement, that clarifies the purpose of the organization. However it is in everyday work life only that one will truly experience how much an organization and its members live up to these values and how purposeful they act upon their vision and mission on a daily basis. When I set up and invite to meetings, I like to provide the participants with three basic elements in advance: 1. The purpose of the meeting (Why are we meeting? Why are you invited?) 2. The outcome and participants' expected input (What will be different after the meeting? What is expected/required that you bring to the table?) 3. Some basic agenda, if applicable. (Plan of time and topics) Though most do, not all my meetings have a formal agenda. That is...

The Image of Leadership Whenever I think of the vital aspects of leadership I think of a cartoon sheep with a red tie: the Leadersheep (google it!). Words like values, vision, mission, purpose and all those ingredients flare up in my mind. I think of principles, role models, charismatic people and of Barack Obama. In fact 'What would Obama do?' is a question I sometimes ask myself - first off he would start a sentence and then in the middle pause for a minute. Only when we have to put leadership into action do we realize the first hurdle: communication. For instance change management, admittedly one of the more challenging fields of leadership, is virtually all about the right communication strategy. Mindset of an Agile Leader To be an agile leader you have to be prepared to improve on a daily basis. Take every opportunity and everyone you encounter - every client, colleague, mentor, memo, every email, every pitch, every conversation, status meeting, project kick-off, and so on...

Prepare For Impact Prior to the actual negotiation, you ought to be clear on three things: 1. Your Maximum Plausible Demands (MPD) 2. Your Minimal Feasible Requirements (MFR) 3. Your concessions strategy All three aspects will determine the success of the negotiations. They can make all the difference between you coming out of the negotiations beaming while hovering above the ground or like a beaten dog carrying your head under your shoulder. It is key to be specific and as precise as possible on all three of them. The more you are aware of what you want and what you don't, as well as what you are willing to sacrifice, the more you'll be able to make an impact at the negotiation table and to achieve your goals. For now I will focus on the first: Maximum Plausible Demand - MPD In a job interview, whether with a headhunter or with some staff member of your potential employer it is likely they will ask you for your desired salary or to share information on your current salary. Be ...

Understand Your Customer's Desire A generally underrated part of successful negotiations is knowing your potential customer's desire. You've clarified your own desires in the previous step. Now it is equally important to find out what your customer longs for. There is a big difference between what your customer 'needs' and what your customer 'desires'. Desire is more powerful. Appealing to a need will satisfy your customer. Appealing to a desire will excite and delight your customer. Always keep in mind: Desire is the fabric of which dreams are made of. When Apple marketed its first iPods, how did they do it?  Did they use the standard 'Super-awesome MP3-player'-pitch of their competitors? Of course not.  They came up with something simple and brilliant: They invented the slogan '1000 songs in your pocket'. BAM! The rest is history. Understanding your customer's desire makes all the difference. Answering the question, what desire you inte...

Know Thyself (Sokrates) Breaking news: You're in a marathon, not a sprint. Therefore the first step towards successful salary negotiations is a clarification process: you need to be very clear on your desires. Which values are important to you? How do these translate into your expectations on your potential occupation? Where do you see yourself in 5, 10, 20 years from now? Ask yourself this first: What do you really really want from life and who do you want to be? And by 'want', I mean the thing you are burning for so much, that you are willing to make sacrifices for it. Do you want to learn and become an expert in a specific field? Do you prefer to work in a dynamic and rapidly changing or in a well predictable environment? Do you rather want to work with a certain type of people e.g.  with creative, analytical or highly energetic colleagues? Do you prefer to work  in a certain environment, e.g. in an international, globally distributed team? Bonus task:  Also be very cl...

The Default State of Society The other day I read a post on my company's intranet that stuck with me and made me think. I'll try to give it in my own words: A teacher entered the class room and started to write equations on the board. 1x9 = 9 2x9=18 3x9=27 The class watched and there was only the usual murmur while the teacher proceeded. 4x9=36 5x9=45 6x9=54 7x9=63 8x9=72 9x9=81 10x9=91 On finishing the teacher turned to the class and noticed some murmurs and giggles. He paused for a moment and the giggles increased. Some pupils started to laugh and after a while others joined in until a majority of pupils found amusement in the teacher's mistake and joined the laughter. After a while, when the laughter dampened down, the teacher said: "I made this mistake on purpose in order to demonstrate a point. I wrote ten equations on the board, of which nine were absolutely correct. Most of you however decided to focus on the one equation that was false. None of you gave me any ...

DISCLAIMER I am not making this public to brag or to make anyone feel bad or jealous. Negotiating my salary is just one of many habits I applied over the past decade regularly, so I acquired some experience in what worked and what didn't. Depending on the context, this experience may or may not benefit others. I regard the consequential increase of my salary rather a side effect of my actual overarching self improvement strategy, than the result of merely smart ninja-negotiation tactics. My foremost desire was -and still is- to become the best possible version of myself. But that itself is a topic for another post.  In this series of posts I will share some details of my salary, its development over time and some further specifics that I hold necessary to demonstrate my point. So in case you should feel offended, jealous or bad in any way about gaining insight on that kind of information, this is your opportunity to exit this post here and now and to skip to the next one right away...

The Vehicle This simple model may help you to lay out your strategy for the development of your skills, your personality and ultimately a large part of your identity, that will be influenced and defined by your work. Over many years I have developed a model for work that generally resembles a generic type of vehicle that will take you from A to B. Anybody is free to pick their own type of vehicle according to their personal preferences and thus embark on their individual journey. Basic Idea The basic idea behind the model: Different types of vehicles with different kinds of implications make up the unique work experience of the individual. Whether you would rather focus on the journey itself or rather on achieving certain goals, you can make your choice accordingly. For instance there is the hot air balloon,  which could represent the work within a large corporation. With minimal attendance it moves slowly and comfortably -pretty much on autopilot all the time- and is only mildly s...

 #HWBTWTDWH Action and execution are the only means that will move you towards your goals. They will always have a larger stake in the value rendered than any groundbreaking idea, any bulletproof plan, or talent and genius. Don't get me wrong: great ideas, plans and talent are all viable multipliers. However, without execution they will not make any difference. Thus t here's one law to career making and success in business or life in general: Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard . And for the work part, there’s good news: smooth and steady effort is more effective than sporadic strong effort. 'Hard work' thus should not be understood as excessive, over ambitious but sporadic work, but as a steady and sustainable flow of effort over a long period of time. The compound effect will make the difference. It is like throwing dice: It's not about trying to throw the maximum sum with one or a few handfuls. It's about accumulating the desired results over...

Imagine what if I think most of us can picture ourselves lying at a cloudless beach with a pina colada, interrupting our sunbath only for the occasional coolings in the blue ocean and sporadically checking in on the regular returns of our passive incomes (plural of course) provided by our ridiculously vast assets. But can you actually? True capability of imagining a dream or creating a vision also means to come up with a -more or less- specific plan or some kind of a roadmap towards that dream. A plan that you trust will -upon execution- pave the way to your vision. So make sure you have a vision and you have a -specific- plan. Which brings us to the hard part:  Relentless Faith  The catch of course is the ‘believe’ part. There’s a famous quip in the US Marines Corp: ’Everybody wants to go to heaven, nobody wants to die.’ To truly believe in something will imply that you are willing to make the necessary sacrifice in your pursuit of the goal...in fact, to make any sacrifice n...

 Why Long Term Motivation Matters Motivation is doing things when you're feeling good. Long term motivation is doing things regardless of how you feel. Jan Frodeno applied a specific motivation method during his preparation for his first Olympic Games 2008 in Beijing, where he won the gold medal in the olympic triathlon. Eventually he went on and won the Ironman World Championship in 2015, 2016 and 2019 in Hawaii applying the very same method to stay highly energized and motivated over a long period of time - over more than a decade to say the least. Here you will find the method he used analyzed. I will show you how I use it and how you can also apply it for your own purposes. Since I am always susceptible to advice on motivation and I have been interested in the topic of self improvement, inspiration and motivation for quite a while. The other day I stumbled upon this interesting method, how to get and stay motivated and instantly felt energized. So I decided to share this piece ...

To be able to lead others, first you need to lead yourself  When my 12 years contract as an officer in the German armed forces came to an end, I left the Bundeswehr as an Air Foce Captain with mixed feelings. On one hand I felt happy for the perspective to start something new. My learning curve had dampened during the final period of my 12 years time contract with the armed forces and I was left with the impression that my constant challenging of the status quo often times annoyed or plainly outraged some of my colleagues and superiors alike. During my final months in office I recruited my successor and convinced him to take my job. Few weeks later he started and we immediately started the transition process in which I shared my knowledge, introduced him to my contacts, familiarized him with everything of importance so he would gradually take more and more responsibility to fill the new role. As my work required me to collaborate (remotely) with multiple experts all across Germany...