David Nyeste

Strategic Considerations To me it has always been of paramount importance to have a vision of my model identity. In order to develop towards that ideal my role models would help me strengthen that vision. One effective strategy to find fitting role models is to pick the right environment. Certain organizations will promote specific types of personalities over others. For example in the military there is a tendency to recruit engaging, clearly structured people who have a natural preference to take decisions and action in the face of danger, i.e. under pressure. Thus firm leadership is a skill that is highly valued in military organizations. Other organizations might promote creativity, diversity, individualism and so on. Ask yourself which values you regard as the most precious and then look out for organizations whose values might match best. How To Be A Role Model The good news: setting the bar for being a role model will entirely be up to you. It is your own mind first that you need...

The Day I Decided To Be Rich On January 1st 2001 I was sitting alone in my room at the University of the Bundeswehr in Hamburg. I had woken up early and studied most of the day when it realized something had changed. I felt slightly depressed - it dawned on me that I was a poor bastard. It was a few days prior to my 24th birthday and I had just spent the entire Christmas holidays and new year's eve alone at the university in order to prepare for the exams of my first trimester. The perspective to also spend my birthday in solitude did not brighten the perspective. Since I had not made any new friends in Hamburg yet I didn't have a lot of tempting distractions that kept me from studying. However none of those facts were the reason why I felt a rupture. The last three months I had spent either in lecture halls or at my desk and was entirely dedicated to passing my first exams. My preparations were running well and I was confident to pass all three tests. But the statistics told a...

Just A Feeling Despite all the drawbacks caused by the pandemic I have to admit that ever since the kids were born I have been feeling more happy in general. To set the stakes even higher, I have already been pretty damned happy ever since I met my wife several years earlier. Maybe it is because the kids fill me with hope that all is good and is steadily improving. Also they give a whole new purpose to everything in my life. I have only really had a few significant stretches where I felt so beaten down or lethargic, that I had issues to motivate myself. There were only three significant times I was struggling with my decisions and had serious doubts that I made the right choices.  Freaking Out In The Barracks The first time was in 1998, when I signed a contract as a contract soldier for 12 years. During my first couple of days with the military the magnitude of my decision sank with the utmost brutality. It totally freaked me out. I spent the first night in some spartan barracks in...

Be Brilliant Subject matter expertise has its perks. Being an expert on any field requires deep learning as well as deliberate practice over years and years. The more professional experience you gain the more you'll swap a minimum principle mindset ('What do I need to do to achieve XY?') for a maximum principle ('How much can I possibly achieve with my available resources?'). When I started as a consultant I had a very basic and fragmented knowledge in most of the technical aspects in my subject matter. At the time I was already a certified and experienced supply chain management expert with some merits. However, as the branch I had worked in (military and defence) neither used the latest technology nor had a business model that promoted short development or change cycles in leadership or management, I did not feel 100% competitive. Therefore I faced some serious challenges when I started my career in the private sector.  At the time when I joined a consulting compa...

Why Recovery Is Existential The most valuable lesson I learned in my years as a competitive swimmer was that the human body has one major advantage over machines: the power to super-compensate. Supercompensation is the capability of the human organism to restore above the initial performance level after exercise. Basically how this works is this: Training/ physical exercise does damage to your body - muscles, mitochondria, neurons, tendons are strained, energy reserves are depleted. After your workout your organism immediately starts to rebuild your body. The exceptionally cool thing that distinguishes living organisms from machines is that your body is smart: it will recover a notch above the initial level - this magical behaviour is called ‘supercompensation’. If you manage to hit the right volume, intensity and most importantly: the appropriate recovery repeatedly, you will improve over time. If one could apply this principle to machines you could for instance buy a Fiat Panda and w...

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...