Things have really changed!!!

If you had told me 4 years ago that I would be working for a real estate company, I would first have laughed and then said: “No way!”. If you had told me that I would be doing technology R&D and innovation for them, I would have expressed open scientism. Et voilà! Here I am, 2011 and working for a real estate company as head of their European IT R&D group.

I think that non technology companies starting to invest in novel technology and aiming at creating their own is simply a sign of the major changes the economy and the market have had in the past years. The last economic boom and crisis, during the post .com era, came from an overinflated technology sector. This current crisis comes, from my perspective, from the mismanagement of resources and investments, from human greediness to get a lot from nothing.

Behaving and working as we have done in the past does not seem enough. Doing things differently seems the only option! Technology companies struggle to get the human and the business side of their clients and customers. Business and non-technology sectors struggle to get the most out of the investments they do not consider core to their business (like technology). Technology companies are moving into business services, closer to the human-need side of their clients. Looking at that evolution it does not seem such a foolish idea for a company whose core business is not technology to start exploring how technology can bring it one step closer to its clients.

I feel I am the guinea pig of my employer's experiment! 

We’ll see how it turns out.  So far, I am really liking it. J

Back to humanism? DaVinci in the workplace

These past days I have been reflecting a lot. Being hired by a non-technology company as a technologist has made me see a complete different world.

For many years, a good technologist or a good IT expert has been assimilated to being a geek, an expert in some technology that allowed him or her to be able to excel professionally. Specialization was the key word. “In what do you specialize?” “What is the programming language that you master?” “What kind of telecoms are you proficient in?” These are some of the questions that all IT professionals had to have a good answer for.

I believe,  however, that this specialization focus is starting to disappear. As technology evolves faster than people can actually specialize, being an expert in “something” technical is simply mission impossible. So what can a good IT professional do? I guess, it is time to go back to basics, to understand the nature of human beings, and to embrace the fact that only by also exploring other aspects of science and arts, an IT specialist can fully contribute in the work place.  Which for me it translates into becoming a humanist, or better said, a Leonardo DaVinci – kind of person, somebody interested and proficient in multiple facets of life. The first facet being: encourage curiosity and learning of science and arts to understand technology, and vice versa. Continuous learning is a must nowadays anyway, why not to encourage arts and humanities to be a fine complement to technology?

Disclaimer: I am not stating that IT people should stop specializing in technology, I am only stating here that this is not enough anymore. The reality is that the day only has 24h and that there has only been one Leonardo DaVinci  in history. How will humans cope with excelling in multiple facets of life?

How old are you?

Some weeks ago I turned 35, a nice round and sound number. In one of those typical exercises that some people like me do when reaching a milestone, I found that the reflection of my face on the mirror had suddenly made a dramatic change.

For many years, my inner I, myself, my soul, always felt older than my physical image. Some people would call behaving maturely, others simply being boring.  It has always had a very nice effect as people believed I looked very young :P. It had the disadvantage that when I applied for certain jobs, with important responsibilities, the recruiter would consider me too young and reject me. When I turned 30 though, I reached equilibrium, I felt everything was in sync: my physical age, my mental age and my looks.

Now, five years later, I realize my mind stepped off the race at 30. I notice my body getting older faster than my head (oh, gosh, I hate those grey pieces of hair!) I prefer to continue doing what I used to do, I appreciate being surrounded by younger people and I often find thirty-manies boring (and I am one of them!). Faces do not lie, and for the first time, my face's age has overtaken my soul's.

I have a friend who has been turning 49 since some years ago (I won't say how many ;) ). Now I understand her, very well.

So, when did you start feeling your body aging faster than your brain?

First reflections about England

Bags, bags and more plastic bags...

I have not yet finished my first week in London and I am surrounded by plastic bags at home.

Coming from an 'anti-plastic-bag' country like France, this has been a real choc culturel. 

Maybe I am simply stating the obvious. So far I have noticed that people reuse them until they finish in the trash. I, myself, cannot keep track with the speed of reuse that is required.

On top of that, my neighbourhood does not recycle :( 

I live in a complete nature unfriendly environment :P in one of the greenest cities in the world!

Skills help donations be effective, donate your skills!!

Most of those that were blessed with a very good education, that made the choice of study even more and get trained by companies on how to be efficient, productive and do our best at work, also decided that we wanted to get well paid for all the efforts. Very few are those that decide that prefer a job where helping others is the priority and pay comes second or third. Jobs where salary comes last are less backed by good training and continuous learning, thus leaving NGOs full of individuals with great potential being unexploited. Volunteering associations and NGOs also suffer from a very little data/scientific approach to run their :"businesses". They seem more driven by a political will that a thorough analysis of facts. That makes them inefficient by wasting money in activities that with ‘better management and accurately interpreted data’ could have been avoided.

Things are changing. Bill Gates, in one of his speeches at the TED talks, exposed his view on how to tackle challenging problems for developing countries by using a more scientific perspective to have better results.

I guess we do not have to become as rich as Bill Gates and as old as him to start applying what we have learnt to help people working in programs that help society development.

So, I encourage everyone to reflect on how they could volunteer their skills, many times more needed than their money, to help around. Often help is needed around the corner. Let’s not wait until we are old, we’ll enjoy it more while we are young :)

Today is IWD - linking nicely with previous entry

Working towards improving things.

http://www.internationalwomensday.com/

The fair share

About women and quotas

Women representation in corporate boards and the need for quotas to make sure that boards do 

have women onboard seem touchy topics.

My heart is divided on this topic and I thought that maybe writing down my thoughts would actually make things clear. First, it seems nobody doubts that having a diverse professional group (board, team or other) is a plus. It is even better when that group is made of the best people available. Regarding this point, I seem aligned with the majority.

The challenge comes when you must meet the best people and the diversity requirements at the same time.

What is not measured, rarely gets done. Thus, quotas seem a good way to make sure that the diversity requirement is met. However, imposing quotas might also impose the acceptance of people whose quality and capacity are not up to what is searched for the position. I am profoundly against that!

So, what is the real problem here? Mmmm… Boards and governments are just the tip of the iceberg of a power system which has a large foundation on which the male and the female population do not have a balanced distribution.

If big corporations do not encourage women at the early stages of their career to aim at taking positions of high responsibility, if they do not integrate work/life balance policies in their companies to make sure that both bright men and bright women have exactly the same chances to make it to the top, introducing quotas might simply decrease the quality of the boards (and as a consequence back the arguments of those, generally men, that completely oppose the idea of having women running businesses).

Maybe, to start with, we should implement a fair share schema, which would have to guarantee that quotas on a board encourage a representation proportionally equal to the male-female distribution in the company executive roles (or alike). If the obtained board was not balanced, it would actually show that the company is failing to put in place the right policies to make the business successful. Shareholders beware!!!!

Governments should economically encourage and, in some extreme cases, force companies to adopt policies and to introduce metrics in their annual performance analysis that will show that progress is being made towards an even male-female distribution at the starting levels. I am not sure that board quotas can guarantee that.