Disrupt with a "Skunk Works" team

SR 71 Blackbird, front view.

Very often we find ourselves in large companies motivated, satisfied and staying focused on a big objective, developing ideas and solving problems with other departments. More often than not we will believe ourselves as innovators, developers and executioners inside the company, giving ourselves a collective tap in the back. However, we haven't realized that most of the times, this type of innovation, if any occurs, is the least disruptive.

There are 3 types of innovation. Incremental which impacts the company by improving processes and methods. Breakthrough which impacts markets by launching new products or business units leveraged from your existing company. And finally the Transformational innovation, used to change the world.

In big corporations, project execution, revenue growth and business development is usually projected linearly, due to a tendency to protect the company from risk and uncertainty. This translates to anchors that will kill innovation and agility like budget control, reporting to hierarchy, judgment for failure and extended processes like policies, procurement and internal communications. This situation leads to incremental innovation where cost efficiency and execution times are optimized for your current activities, and in the end is performed by every single employee on the company.

Examples of this type of innovation is all around us where the learning curve is moving forward as we speak. For instance, when people implement automated processes, or contractors and providers develop tools and create new methods to control service levels lead to an improvement in performance that in my mind looks like this:

Another situation is when the marketing team creates a whole new idea for a product after a deep research analysis together with your engineering team worrying about the technical stuff. So you do a pricing exercise, plan the Go To Market strategy and hope to capitalize the market faster than your competitors with your commercial team. This breakthrough innovation is actually a nice balance for companies where product development and launch are treated like projects, with budgets, objectives, sponsors and resources allocated from many departments, increasing the performance in steps each time a project is completed.

To give you a few examples on this innovation, think of Microsoft and how they have expanded their products from operating systems, to office suites, video game consoles, tablets and most recently Teams, a utility software for managing internal communications. Another example is Amazon, which started with books, and now offers mobile phones, video streaming and cloud services. Nevertheless, these innovations are successful but also projected linearly in steps (each step is a product release). In my mind the performance looks something like this:

The last type of innovation is harder to develop, nevertheless it's when things start to be fun. To understand one way to accomplish this innovation, I recommend you to read the book by Ben Rich titled as the team he lead to achieve the unimaginable, the Skunk Works. In his book he explains many processes and obstacles they had to overcome, and most important the way they think and develop structures, process and even sales to accomplish lunar-like objectives.

Transformational innovation will lead a large enterprise to develop things that never existed before and outperform current products by hundreds or thousands factors while keeping costs and constraints in shape, outperforming the competition and leaving a mark in the world. The performance ratio would look like this:

Starting a Skunk Works operation comes from having a dream. Forget the SMART and forget the OKR theory. Kelly Johnson and Ben Rich built planes with characteristics written on single papers and even napkins. Simple yet challenging. For instance, when Skunk Works started the U2 project, all they wished for was for a plane to fly higher than the radar beam of the Surface to Air Missiles (SAM), which was 60,000 Feet, so they set the bar for 70,000 feet with enough autonomy to overfly russia (1,500 milles). Simple enough? yet effective.

I want to you to look at the following picture and see the evolution of the planes, and the reason of their conception. The U2 was built as a spy-plane to fly higher than the Russian surface Missiles. Then the SR71 Blackbird was built to improve the U2, giving it the speed to outperform fighter planes and autonomy to fly across the globe. However, these planes were always visible on enemy radar from the moment they took off, nevertheless unreachable, but generated political noise and risk to be shot down if the pilot made an error, so they developed the F117 which was invisible to radar altogether.

Planes built at Skunk Works. U2, SR71, F117 and F22.

After having your objective, it is time to build a Skunk Works team with great self-injected passion. Not employees... think something more like hobbyist... people that breath and bleeds what they are doing. The skunk works explained how they chose employees based on achievements and creativity, and how they were "transferred" to their special division where they met with other chosen ones. Steve Jobs had something similar to this concept at Apple, as he worked in his Mac team called "pirates", wearing a flag and shining eyes for the products they were developing, outcasted from the mothership.

This team is the one you can ask anything to do and they will do it no matter what it takes in time, sacrifice, hours put, developments to be made etc. Please note this is different than exploiting them, rather they will overcome any obstacle for themselves as end-users of their passionate hobby because they want to see the finished product and use it. They don't do it for the customer, they are doing it for themselves, for their own personal satisfaction.

Another key feature of this skunk works team is autonomy and independence. You must assign resources and budget,  but this must be controlled inside the team, not from the large organization. In his book, Lockheed's CEO indicates how he never knew what Skunk Works was doing, and only could hope that after a tough board meeting with decreasing revenues, Ben Rich would show up with a smile saying "I bet you don't guess what profits I got this quarter". To accomplish this, the organization must leave the team at the edge of the organization, so they disrupt but don't get attacked by with anxiety from the mothership to give results or ROI.

Leverage on providers, simple procurements and team building for execution. Forget complex documents, focus on the objective and not on the process, for example do an RFP, documents and purchases order worth a couple of pages instead instead of millions of papers, documents and archiving. You must focus on alliances to reach the objective, not contracts to screw or bulletproof yourself from the provider. Read this amazing story on how they forged the largest Titanium Frame in the world, with imported titanium from the Soviet Union, the country they wanted to spy with the plane!

To build teams, people should be involved in all the process, with open communications. Remember that everyone there is because they want to be. The Skunk Works kept the engineers close to the designers and the fabricators in the shop, providing the environment to work together and get instant feedback without bureaucracy. Everyone was involved and accountable for their actions and each action led to something either positive or negative on the design, which would receive instant feedback from the team affected. 

Another key point on execution is end-to-end ownership of the project. Many skunk works wannabe's do everything right until they have to integrate to other existing areas and things wreck havoc. In Skunk Works they had their own pilots, field engineers and maintenance crew trained and ready to be delivered with the plane. If the CIA or the USAF requested the use of their pilots instead, they were sent down to the skunk works team to live, breath and build together the plane, absorbing them into the culture of the team. This would last until full deployment of a Combat Operative Squadron for war, where knowledge had been completely passed over to the operators.

Finally, the Skunk Works needs a savvy, wise-as-a-fox leader with extreme situational awareness to know what is going around in the industry and the stakeholders, bravery to take on the big wheels of the company while empowering and protecting his team, and to sell and believe in his ideas to customers. In the original Skunk Works, Ben Rich had sold his planes even before they were built, because he knew what he had in his hands and managed to get the buy-ins from the Congress in very peculiar ways. For example, to shush the nay-sayers of the stealth plane he would drop ball bearings on the desk to show how small the radar cross section was, comparing other's planes radar signature to cars, buses and buildings out the window.

At the end of the day, most of us won't be delivering stealth planes or have the resources, team, people or company to develop disruptive products in our real life jobs. Nevertheless, these Skunk Works concepts can be implemented by anyone willing to do something different in their company, wether leading a new product development or improving processes, or leading a team of people to reach an objective. You as a leader have the responsibility to analyze internally and determine how many things are being within the philosophy of a Skunk Works team.

Fail to Rise

So here I was in the best shape of my life. It's sunday morning, I just ran 9 Km in 54 minutes, I've lost 1.5 Kg in the last 6 months, and there is an upcoming 10K race in 2 weeks. Everything is looking good to beat my previous 10K time of 1:03:10. I'm excited and ready to beat the next race in 1:00:00 .. or as I tell my friends : "I will do it in 59 minutes".

Fast forward two weeks, I get home defeated with a time of 1:04:26. Analyzing the situation, I realized several things that led to my failure. First of all, the last time I ran was that bloody sunday two weeks before. I got caught up in several things from work and family while feeling confident that I was already at the required level and stopped going out for runs.

During the race I made a lot of mistakes too. I overdid the food routine by having the normal breakfast 2 hours before and then a protein shake 30 minutes before the race, as recommended in the trial gift given with the subscription to the race. With 2 breakfasts on me I wasn't feeling that light. Then for warmup there was an instructor guiding what seemed more like a crossfit routine than a warmup. Finally, since I was feeling overconfident (remember my practice routine in the previous 2 weeks = none), I started at the same pace with a friend who runs 10K in 55minutes.

At the 4K I was suffering from side stitchs, had no legs, no air and no desire to continue. At 6K I decided to stop and walk for a couple of minutes to recover, while wiping my sweat, tears and pride. Then at 8K I stopped again for 2 more minutes to ease the pain on the side stitch and control my breathing. I continued to run at a slower pace for the 9K while realizing I had to revert back to basics... smiling... I was losing and being taught a lesson.

I finished the race just having fun and enjoying the scenery. Here is how I looked like in the last 100m of the race.

The next opportunity to beat my challenge was in 3 weeks with the most important race held annually in Medellin (Maratón de las Flores). This time I really focused to continue my training with humility, keeping my runs 3 times a week and executing the distance and speed targets during the weekends. I got together my routine before the race with my usual breakfast, my usual warmup, feeling confident and realistic about my time paces (which I have determined with the training).

I learned from my mistakes, adjusted accordingly and succeeded with a time of 1:00:45, my all time record. I started the race a little slow, fearing a similar scenario to the previous race. At the 6K I felt in very good shape, looked at the watch to realize I was 1 minute behind my goal, so I had to push hard for the last 4K, hit my limit, ran faster than 6min/km as I do for short runs, not 10K. I managed to pull the last 4K at 5:45 min /km, the short run speed. Here is the picture in the last Km, where you can see focus and determination to win. I was all-in, adidas.

The point I want to bring to the table is: Why is it good to fail? The answer is so you can rise stronger. If you are humble and smart you will analyze yourself and make corrections after screwing up. If you have situational awareness you will not bring your guard down in the case of distractions. If you have a goal and determination you will adjust your daily activity to reach it. If you have a dream you will train hard for it. If you train hard you will know your limits and will develop a routine. If you have a routine you don't have to improvise something that you think will help.

It is as important to fail as to fail early. Make sure you are training and practicing scenarios where you can realize if what you are doing is on-track. At work, what are your training scenarios? are you always learning and analyzing yourself and your surroundings? I look back now grateful that I screwed up that race, which wasn't the most important race of the year. This brought me down to reality and allowed my adjustments for the big show.

What do you think about failing? do you have similar situations that has made you stronger? let me know in the comments so we can share and learn together!

How Nintendo lost my $59.99

We all heard the exciting news! Nintendo is releasing a modernized version of our beloved NES system. This is a nice move that goes against the hype of newer consoles from Microsoft and Sony with their 4k resolution, online networks and high-tech games. For sure it caused a bigger stir in the press than the other companies getting ready for holiday sales.

When the announcement came out, I immediately scanned my alternatives to import it from the US in time for December, and started imagining how it will look in my living room and how I will enjoy classic games in a modern and stable equipment with HDMI, usb ports and digital games that last forever. Nevertheless, as time passed, I started to feel I wouldn't be completely satisfied and desisted on buying it. Here is why:

Game Catalog and Pricing

I think this is the biggest miss on the console. In total there were 713 games released when console was active, and in the re-release we are getting 30 awesome pre-installed games. Nevertheless, this is short of 5% of the catalog and a lot of classics are missing, like Ninja Turtles, Duck Tales, and even the original Contra, among many others.

This wouldn't be a problem if additional games could be bought using something similar to the Wii Virtual Console store which is already implemented and functioning, with games priced at $4.99. Keeping in mind these are 25+ year-old games, they can be priced at a very low cost or bundled together, leaving huge margins for the publishers.

Additionally, in 2016 the rule of thumb is content on-demand, like Netflix and Deezer, so I would have expected a monthly fee with different options and amount of games and time (for example, 50 games for a year, 100 games per month, etc), and I would have been ok with it.

Vintage user Experience

As simple as it sounds, the small details like the case door that doesn't open, no expandable memory (that you could insert like the old cartridges) and a reduced-size versus the original turn this amazing idea into a tasteless-appleTV-like box. Yes, it will be plug and play, easy to use, reliable and simple, but vintage gaming comes with experiences that were part of our enjoyment as much as the games.

To bring an example of this user experience, lets remember our beloved cartridges. It still amazes me how at the time, in 1985, without internet, youtube, tutorials and such, people across the globe stablished the convention to blow on the cartridges in order to make it work, and I feel this console will not bring anything similar to this, in the end it won't live in our hearts like the original.

Other Consoles

For the several years I have enjoyed the alternatives catalog of games from other consoles: SNES, n6, nDS and PS1. I enjoy exploring and reading the history behind the games and then trying them separately for a journey to the past. This is what retro-gamers do. The idea of having a single console seems very limiting and sounds like something I will get bored of as soon as the hype is over.

The ideal scenario, again, is the Wii Virtual Console store, where the offer for games for the NES is 243 games, for the SNES is 141 and 30 for the Nintendo 64, as well as 174 for the different GameBoys. An already implemented store, with access from an existing web or from an existing console, is probably very simple to incorporate on other platforms and it doesn't make sense they left it out in this new product.

There are Alternatives

Retrogaming is pretty common, more than you think, and there are million of tutorials online explaining how to make it work for people without programming and computing skills. After seeing Nintendo's proposal on a retro-console I realized I wanted one, but with the features I have mentioned above so I set on the task to build it in the lapse of 1 month.

With a raspberry Pi, an old-console for a case (you can pick NES, SNES, n64, you name it), simple physical modifications to convert plugs to modern USB and HDMI, you can manage to build what Nintendo should have. Check out these pictures from my build that redirected my expenditure of $59.99 from a cash-generating company like Nintendo to an independent developer and electronics parts

Torn down NES case. Here you can see the connections before plugging the raspberry berry. There is a power input from the back that has a switching circuit passing through the power and reset buttons, a switch for the cartridge (the raspberry pi doesn't turn on without a game cartridge) and the usb controllers. 

Completed build. All cables in place, the raspberry plugged in and the cartridge inserted to close the power circuit.

Full size nintendo Retro Console. With USB controllers on the front, HDMI connector on the back, and a working case door that needs a cartridge to operate.

If you want to check all the features of Nintendo's classic console, you can click here and visit the official page. For ideas on creating a console with the raspberry pi, you can search on youtube for "retropie NES" and check all the different implementations to inspire yourself.

In the end, I think Nintendo missed a great opportunity to launch a retro-console to withstand time. This will be successful in the short-term (Christmas sales), something like Pokemon Go or Iphone-Mario did for Summer, but soon it will be discarded from being a revenue generating product to a nostalgic trophy to show-off and not to use.

What are tour thoughts on this retro-console? do you think Nintendo should have built it differently? Leave your comments in the section below, I'd be glad to read them!

Build a strong mind... or play golf

Being a casual golfer for the past 7 years, I have come to realize several things that are linked together regarding your handicap in the game and your growth as a professional: as I grew professionally, I became more consistent with golf. Or viceversa.

In order to find internal stability, some people like to do meditation, others yoga or out for a run early morning. One of the things from which I have taken some lessons for mental toughness is golf, because it is ungrateful and frustrating sport to get results, yet extremely rewarding. There are times when you dominate your swing, stroke, have the best equipment, team, caddie and weather conditions, but if you mind is off, so will be your score and your game.

During the past year or so, I have considerably reduced my time for golf and I have even migrated to other sports, such as running, mostly due to time limitations. Nevertheless, the lessons are already learned and implemented on my everyday life, and it is highly probable that with other sports you come to develop some of these positive change.

Here a few ideas I want to share so you apply them to your activities.

1. Enjoy
Always remember why you started in the first place. Sometimes in golf you get so caught up in the non-sense like perfectionism, frustrations of that missed-by-a-centimeter-shot and scoring, or even equipment that you forget the simple things like enjoy your friends, the time outdoors or those nice shots when striking the ball well.

In the office it can be the same. Sometimes you get caught up in conflicts, the difficulty of processes, the audits or questioning that you forget the positive things. This is a good time to bring up your long-term objective and remember that these little actions will take you there, enable the positive filter in your mind and move forward, get back to basics and smile because at that point,  maybe you won't solve the world in the short term,  but you are improving on your character and personality.

2. Practice with a purpose.
As with many sports, golf requires practice, and lots of it. Nevertheless, it is easy to get lost and try to do everything but accomplish nothing. At this point is when you have to narrow it down to what you really need, maintaining front-sight focus on 1 task and not on the inefficient multitasking.

Identify your needs and set a plan according to those needs. For example, in golf you can easily improve your scores with short game (putts and approaches), so establish a higher share of your practice time to that, between 40% and 50% of the session. Then understand, besides the short game, where you are losing your score (maybe your driver is always out of bounds, or your are missing the greens because the irons are way off) and dedicate the rest of the session to that.

Relating to your business environment, just revert to the basics of time-management, for instance, at first identify the things you need to get done, then establish their order-of-urgency and finally start executing. It sounds extremely simple, but, as in golf, you are focusing on your result and these actions will take you there while you avoid diversion.

3. Let go of the past and be here now.
This applies for both bad and good shots. Sounds familiar? "omg, that ball was supposed to land there, not here", "the flag or the wind weren't as I wanted", "my partner gave me the wrong number". In the end these are excuses you tell yourself to avoid the responsibility of your game. For bad shots its not my fault, for good shots, its because I'm that good.

The beauty of  golf is that no matter what shot you play it will last for the time it takes to walk to the ball, which you should either enjoy and brag or swallow your pride and move on,  keeping in mind that as soon as you find the ball, what matters is the next shot.

How many times do you encounter these kind of excuses or success with your everyday life of business environment? Don't bite yourself from what should have, could have, would have, or what you deserve because you accomplish or you did something. The past is gone but guess what? you have a new and clean chance to push further.

4. Develop a routine and stick to it under pressure.
Before each shot, you have to develop a routine. Take the club, select the target, face the ball, breath, and swing. If any of these steps are interrupted, your routine is broken and you should exit your stance and start all over. This also happens with professional tennis, where players like Nadal do something like : untuck your underwear, comb your hair behind your ear, bounce the ball 3 times, then serve.

With your daily routine you have to shield the process from distractions, pressure, and gain confidence that no matter what happens externally, you remain focused and tight. Translating to your life, in general, you must develop your routine which will help you the most to focus when things break into havoc.

Some examples include reading your book no matter how tired you are, eating your breakfast every day, doing your sports no matter, calling your friends and spending time with your family. The same applies for your business environment, keep smiling, keep returning your calls, keep coaching your team and doing your meetings, always build your schedule and stick to it.

5. Go for it
Sometimes we give so much thought upon acting, that we don't feel confortable with decisions or actions we take. All it is needed is act on instincts, knowledge and preparation. Your mind has it, so why not use it?  In golf, the longer you hold the club before a shot, the longer you stand still trying to settle your feet, position, the more you "think" about the shot, the worst it will be.

I have proved this to myself many times when you have a "pressure shot", for example, a first-tee shot early in the morning, where several groups of people are together watching (among course staff, other golfers in line, your own partners etc), no warmup and even sometimes with a couple of months after not playing.  With all these conditions you have two choices: Scare yourself and panic by thinking all the odds against the shot, or just grab your club, stick to your routine with your objective in mind and swing it as you know it.

In the end, I leave you with this simple but powerful quote from Bobby Jones, so we can reflect on how many times when things need to get done in spite of .. our mind is what gets in the way.

Do you have other examples of lessons learned from activities that can be translated into different environments? Please share in the comments section below to discuss and have a good insight.

What is your sacrifice?

How about losing some weight? yes, but those french fries and beer are tempting. You want to get fit and accomplish the year resolution to run 21k, but the bed at 5:00am is extremely cozy. The idea of finishing that book is still around in your head, but Netflix and Youtube keeps popping out on your laptop. You want to become a manager and lead a team, but playing that video game at night is more fun than studying.

All along our lives we meet crossroads as simple and yet as difficult as the ones I've mentioned above, but there is single truth I've learned along the way and I always remind myself when I cross someone (or myself) complaining: only yourself are responsible, no one else. In this post I want to use my experiences when I started running as an example, because throughout I kept making small but important sacrifices that were essential, and this ability can be extrapolated to your professional or personal goals.

The first thing you have to do is remove excuses from your life and face the fact that no one but you is going to set your mood to do something. If you have a project, an idea, or a life objective you want to execute, visualize it and be honest about it. Write it down in a very simple form, drop the rules for SMART objectives, just answer the question "what do you want to do?", and with complete honesty go for it.

As soon as you know what you want, make it visible so that every single day you can see it and be reminded of your goal. I like using both technology and old-school paper to write down tasks and reminders but because we are talking about life-fulfilling goals, I'm going to suggest to keep your long term goals together in a physical medium (e.g. a board hanging on your wall) and your short term tasks to accomplish the goals in your digital agenda.

In order to advance on your tasks, start by scheduling to-dos and reminders. Break it down in small tasks. For example, to start jogging at 5:00 am, after several (i.e. many) failures of waking up I realized the problem was I didn't go to bed early, so I started setting alarms at 9:00pm reminding me to "shut down the computer", "go to bed and read". Thats it, that is my first sacrifice, go to bed like a hen and stop doing plenty of things at night, keeping my ultimate goal in mind.

There are times where you will not be satisfied with the progress. Nevertheless, don't forget to celebrate small victories.  Feel good about the small progress, because it is you making the change, leading your way. Still with my running example, many times I woke up to zero energy in my body, but still managed to get out of bed and change into my sport clothes, stretch, relax, contemplate dawn, get breakfast ready.  Yes, I failed running, but I consider this a small victory since I'm bringing routine and positive thinking to my mind. The next morning I will do it.

Other examples of sacrifices regarding running are the recreational drinks and food. As soon as you start with endurance, beating your records and overcoming your daily pain in the legs, you realize how bad the beer affects you, how a tough night will chop to pieces your pace the next day, and how fast food will slow down your recovery time. As difficult and unlikely as saying "I'm not going to drink watching the match, or during the party this weekend", it is a decision to face and choose in order to become an achiever.

Finally, make sure you understand time is required for success, and you have every day as a new opportunity to make progress and evolve into your better self. Nevertheless, you have to be conscious about it. Learn what you need, overview yourself to know what to improve, and work on it everyday.

Now I want to ask you: What is your sacrifice? what are you willing to give up for your goals, dreams and objectives? Let me know in the comments section below, maybe we celebrate together while looking back with joy at our previous selves.

Be an Inspiring Boss- Part 1

Usually when people are picking courses for the semester in College they ask around and seek for the

easiest teacher, the one that will make the course simpler, and if the opposite happens, anxiety and panicking may occur. The same analogy can happen also for bosses, except that you don't get the chance to pick. Rumors, reputations and "I-heard-about"s circle the hallways and most of the times, you will be lucky to have the legendary one as your next boss. 

I have been lucky to have memorable bosses throughout my career, and yes, by memorable I mean tough, demanding for high performance and endurance. As most things in life, half of it is attitude, so by keeping a positive take on the situation I have managed to improve both personally and professionally, and for each one of them, I ended up with a friend and a mentor for life.

Things are not eternal so these relationships with these great bosses will end of course, sometimes by moving to another area or sometimes because either of you two will part ways from the company. In this post I want to share you the e-mail I wrote to a former boss a few hours after he called to inform me that day had been his last day at work.

I want to take these words to thank you and let you know how much you have offered and taught me. When I first came to work with you (still university-minded), I expected my time in your area would be quick, temporary, just to get in the company and then switch to where I really wanted to be. However, I ended surpassing my expectations thanks to your vision and creation of possibilities that I didn't know they existed. I discovered a new professional world, a way to enjoy my job, working flat-out on a consistent basis and having a permanent hunger for knowledge and learning.

Skills such as the job intensity, how to defend yourself, execute tasks on a daily basis, think ahead and improve ideas constantly, perform follow-up on a team, how-to and when-to sell an idea to your higher ranks, raise flags before things go down in spiral and persistency on requests, are clearly learned in your area and have a seal of identity. Either I didn't have them and learned working with you, or I had them hidden in me and thanks to your leadership were brought afloat to form me who I am as a professional.

Apart from professional growth, I also owe you personal things such as being consistent with yourself: who you are, what you think, say and do; enjoy and laugh of simple things (which I had lost during my years overseas) with a take-it-easy-the-world-won't-explode attitude and the open environment you created with the team, to mess around with each other, make buddies and camaraderie, present ideas without fear of being rejected, make and discuss existential questions, be curious and ask why of everything, specially on subjects that you hear or read lightly about until you keep asking and asking details to know deeply into the subject, making us realize we actually know nothing about it. 

Nevertheless from all this that I have written, what I appreciate the most is: "everything is possible". Thanks to you I learned that whatever is in your mind you can turn it into reality in spite of difficulties, deadlines, delays, slow process and people, lack of tools etc, in the end, we can do anything we set our mind into. In two years I changed my mindset from "don't give me these user logins because I want to do as little as possible" to "give me as much as you can to learn and improve myself and the process". 

Keep this note as a gratitude, because where I am right now is thanks to you, and no matter where I get to, I will always have with me a piece of your area identity. Hopefully, we'll be able to get a beer once in a while, as buddies and friends that we became.

After reading this letter a couple of years later, and now having a team under my responsibility, I have realized a couple of things:

1) How much can a person influence and exploit the potential of your employees, if done right.

2) A leader always has to be inspirational, so that others follow you and are open to your feedback and teachings.

3) Most of the times, a tough boss will shape you for the rest of your life, so it's up to you to positively take this opportunity and turn him into your mentor and friend. It is possible, hey, I did it.

4) Finally, ask yourself this: How are you inspiring your team? If you leave today, will they have something to write to you?

I named this post as "Part 1" because I will post a more letters for other bosses I've enojoyed to work with, as I keep growing in this journey called life and professional career.

Dodge-Mail, the game

Have you heard of the game dodgeball? where you have to avoid balls being thrown at you, pick up others and hit somebody with one shot? Now imagine if instead of balls you have email messages. Game on!

Let's face it: E-mail is a pain, it's in your life and your workplace, buried neck-deep, and theres nothing you can do about it, at least to avoid receiving them. But since you can have control of your life and your actions, I want to share my rules and code that I have implemented in order to make it through a week while enjoying my nights and weekends without feeling guilty that I'm falling behind on information.

Thanks to many trips I did to stores and cities in order to grasp the reality and real life operation of retail in our telco company, I was forced to develop and work on these ideas because after a couple of days being away, I would return and see my inbox clogged up, while stressing out and working extra time late at night. Also while visiting a store I would divert my attention to my phone in order to reply and answer as much as I could, wasting the visit.

In order to put a stop to this, I started to change my behavior and actions in order to adapt towards efficiency, e-mail related. I realized several things, read about others, and took decisions that needed to be done. I finally ended up with these simple rules that have made my life at work easier and more enjoyable:


1. Wait for a Call
Understand the priorities between the different communications channels you handle. The biggest 3 are Call, Email and Chat (IM, Whatsapp). If you are stressed about answering ALL your email (which you should never aim for... I'll explain in the next point) then you are headed for disaster. Just remember this quote I made up: If it's too important, they will call you.

2. Schedule your e-mail reading time.
Like any communication systems, e-mail arrival cannot be predicted and is random, so you have two options: Sit in front of your computer and reply endlessly as email arrives, which will end your day before you realize you had other things to do. Or schedule yourself to read your bulk of email at 3 different times a day, something like: 1 hour first time in the morning, 30 minutes before lunch, 30 minutes after lunch and if needed, 30 minutes before leaving the office.

3. Define what to answer immediately (and what not to).
Everything needs priorities, and emails are no exception. Identify your senders like your Boss, VP or from your team asking for critical decision or approvals to keep the KPIs on-track, and reply asap. Then the rest that can wait a couple of days for an answer, remember the next rule.

4. Answer six hours later to avoid chat-mail.
Or even simpler: if it arrives in the morning, answer it in the afternoon. If it arrived in the afternoon, answer it the next morning. This way you will avoid chat-mail. Remember? When you answer and then right away you get back the response, and  again you answer right away and again you get a reply, meaning your colleague is right at this desk, looking at his Outlook, just like you.

5. Combine and set your tools properly
Your smartphone is the remote control of your life, hence you should have your email configured into the phone's client. This will allow you to know whats going on with your email, what has arrived, and most importantly, reduce your unread amount by tapping on the quickie emails such as the "thank you", or the auto-sent emails as reports (you only care about the latest one).

6. Use offline mode for weekends and nights.
This one is to benefit your team and colleagues. It is stressful to know while you are relaxing, doing your favorite activities, enjoying time with your family, that your email is clogging up. Start with yourself by asking: do I send emails late at night, during weekends and holidays? if the answer is yes, then you will probably receive them at those schedules too. You are also sending the message that the day is not enough for you and you are underproductive.

So if for some reason you want to clear your inbox during these off hours, make sure you are offline, answer your emails but keep them in the outbox folder, and send them the next morning. This will setup your day and your team in a very efficient way.

7. Group messages in conversation mode.
Important to accomplish a happy life with email is to have your email both in your smartphone and client grouped in conversation mode, so from several emails you can read the last one and discard the others. If you don't know what I'm talking about, take a look at this picture, and google the instructions for your email client.

8. Disable alarms and pop-ups.
If you apply all of the rules mentioned above, then you won't need any alarms and notifications bombarding your nerves. Disable all the pop-up, buzzers, vibration alarms, sound alarms and notifications from your computer and smartphone (apply for whatsapp too). All you need is the icon letting you know something new is there, so you remember to check when you access your phone or computer.

Hopefully, with these simple rules you will be able to improve your productivity by focusing on what really matters, and most importantly, teach your colleagues, employees or bosses a different a way, creating a culture geared towards simplicity and camaraderie. As always, I leave you a few questions so you can reflect and share:

• What other rules and actions did you implement to win at dodge-mail in your life? 
• How did you come up with them?

I'd be glad to read about your ideas and experiences, let us know, through comments (not email!)

What is "The Top Floor"?

Picture from Wiki Transformer MUX

My findings and what has worked for me and how I can show them you, is what inspired me to write this blog. So why 'The Top Floor'? Because it is:

What I have to improve to get to where I want and who I want to be;

my brain,
a great leader
and the top spot.

Having my passion for fighter planes, I developed the habit of reading in the simplest possible way: because I found out about a book for the F15E Strike Eagle, a plane I knew and liked but knew nothing about. So I picked up said book and ended up chewing it in 7 days, a double record for me: The quickest I have ever read a book, and the first book I have finished in whatever years.

Unconsciously, I started learning the ways of leadership by reading how commanders, generals and squadron leaders managed their people, resources and results. Even things that are not the main topic of the stories -the initial deployment for war- helps you understand how people feel, how leaders resolve and what their team judge when things don't go as they expect.

It is this way that after several books I started to understand my colleagues and my teams differently. I started asking different kind of questions, and started thinking about their hearts, looking at their eyes for a validation that they are engaged, all at the same time as I started to become a manager and needed new tools.

Learning from both the example of great bosses and these stories became and still is a fundamental part of my development, and the important part is to understand from where you can get your source so you can focus on it and exploit it.

All these thoughts and brain burning about how to do things better have come after self realization and it is what I want to share. Every day we have to leave behind the heavy weight, the negative, the destructive attitudes and reinvent ourselves for tomorrow. Change must be continuos and only with change you can move to the next step in your life.

That being said, the method I use is : after each book, I take notes on quotes and situations that inspire me, so I can analyze and write about them.  Here is my list of current books (at the time of this post because it will expand more :) and for a great picture of this first post, let's share the cover of the one that started it all.

The following is for strictly military books that I've read and inspired me to write this blog about leadership:

1. Strike Eagle . William Smallwood.
2. Warthog. William Smallwood.
3. Apache. Ed Macy.
4. Viper Pilot. Dan Hampton.
5. Vipers in the Storm. Keith Rozenkranz
6. Skunk Works. Ben Rich,
7. A Nightmare´s Prayer. Michael Franzak.
8. Apollo 13. Jim Lovell and Kugler.
9. Sea Harrier Over the Falklands. Sharkey Ward.
10. Stealth Fighter. William O'Connor.

Needless to say, others books have crossed my hands that are not military but still focused on leadership, such as The mythical Man month and The Art of War, and you can expect to see references to them as well.

Military books that I've read and inspired me to write this blog. Expect to see other not-military books make their way to this blog.

The book that started it wall, finishing it in 7 days. Note the signature, date and location.