David Nyeste

Regardless if you're a young professional or an experienced veteran of the workforce, there will always be areas where you will have plenty of opportunity to earn the respect and the trust of your colleagues and clients. Here are my favorite focus areas for professional excellence that require zero talent whatsoever: 1. Diligence The quality of the work you deliver to your customers on a daily basis is your signature. In the perception of your customers and colleagues the impression of how much you care about delivering value to them is visible in the quality of your output. Hence it is always quality first and quantity second. Always put quality on top of your priorities. That being said this does not mean that you have to get everything right one hundred percent of the time. Often you will have to abide by deadlines and circumstances you can not -fully- influence. Oftentimes 'highest quality' means that you take a caveat of a given deadline into account. As a result a rou...

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...

Success is like pregnancy  Everybody congratulates you but nobody knows how often you've been screwed. This joke was suggested to me on social media. It strikes me how thoroughly the algorithm must have analyzed my preferences in order to make such an accurate prediction, that I would enjoy it. However I would choose a slightly different analogy: Success is like impregnation: Everyone congratulates you but nobody knows how often you have screwed up. It is in screwing up that you'll learn the valuable lessons of life. You can think and analyze as much as you want. Analysis, planning and preparation are all fine. But only deliberate execution and the mistakes you make along your journey will guide you to success. That's beauty and pain in success at the same time. That is also the reason that success favors people who are passionate and enthusiastic about their journey and have a clear purpose. Enduring the frustration and the drawbacks along the way is much easier if you hav...

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...

Learn from the Best  Over the years I have been able to contribute to numerous projects in various roles. Some of them were large ones with international teams and dozens of consultants working around the globe. Some were small in scope, short in timeline, or regionally focused. Some I have overseen and delivered with client staff only. A few were gigantic, long running transformations of entire corporate structures and cultures. Regardless of the set up of any project there are a few crucial ingredients that need to be incorporated into the project set up and execution to enable success. Projects lacking these vital ingredients will lag behind deadlines, miss budget targets and in the worst of cases fail to achieve their desired results. I don't necessarily consider myself one of 'the best'. However I certainly had the opportunity to gather rich experience by witnessing leadership excellence at its best over many years in different environments and situations. Here's m...

"Continuous improvement is better than delayed perfection.", Mark Twain The Mindset Feedback is all about your Kaizen and not anyone or anything else. It starts with you asking for it and it perpetuates with you extracting value out of it and eventually adapting your behaviour accordingly. However it doesn't end there. Imagine the impression of junior staff when asked for their feedback on senior staff! You have to be a fan of 360-feedback. Think in value added instead of hierarchy and rank.  Don't expect feedback from others as a given and don't try to force feedback on anyone without having been asked for it. Not all people like to give feedback, let alone receive it. Any form of feedback requires a strong urge towards improvement as well as an open mind. Without either of those any feedback will be rendered futile. In order to progress in life and to improve professionally the assessments and perspectives of others can not be overvalued. Proactively asking for ...