We are not strangers to each other. We have met before.  It was March 2000 the month marked as the collapse of the Dot.com firms dragging with them the whole ICT industry.  At the time I was a Director of Operations in a Dutch software firm with great products but wrong timing. 

For those of you that joined the rat race after 2000, I can tell it was an amazing time back then, whereas just anyone could get an investment for any technology idea or a concept for a Dot.Com firm.  The new firms were traded in much higher values they represented and a catastrophe was inevitable.

When the IT bubble exploded, the NASDAQ that have reached above 5132, collapsed, avalanching the industries of IT, investment and global economy into a deep recession. And if that wasn’t enough, September 11 came the next year and did the same to the Travel, airlines and insurance industries. It took years for the economy to recover.

The world economy took a steep dive and I found myself with no job, just like many others. It was right after, in 2002 that I established my company Endeavour Enterprises N.V. against the advice of my lawyers and accountants. They were right, it was not the time to start new enterprises nor it was the time for bold Endeavours, however I preferred that than just waiting.

It was back then when I looked into the economic crisis straight into its eyes. I was just hoping it would take more than just few years before we meet again.

Let’s admit it; we all are taking economic growth as a given fact. We plane life accordingly, assuming growth in sales and increase of our investments’ value. No wonder we are so helpless when being hit by a major recession. The damage is enormous and is visible in our daily life: people losing their jobs, not buying many of the things they planned to, losing their savings and even their houses.

It is my opinion that we should deal with the human factor, the one that is partially responsible for this misconduct. If irresponsible managers and brokers contributed to the creation of the fall, we should hold them responsible and more importantly, create a better, more balanced and secured brokerage system.

What do we do now? Here are some thoughts:

Last week I found myself looking at my favorite shoes, half priced at a local store. I was just about to buy the shoes when a thought bothered me: in the middle of the worst world slowdown, I am buying shoes which I really don’t need just because they are on sale…

I can’t blame our surplus society and culture cultivating purchasing as a hobby or even leisure. I am guilty as one can be. When supermarkets are selling none-food, cheap merchandize at the entrances, they have people like me in mind… I can’t take that corner without buying something. I call it Buy-me corner.

Nevertheless, I was standing in the middle of the shop with the fancy shoes in my hand, pondering what to do. I took an unprecedented decision not to buy it. I thought that it would be extremely immoral to buy half priced shoes I don’t need at this time. Funny, I resisted my shopping urge because of the time we live at. My secretary would be proud of me. She knows better than to send me for office shopping.

Walking back home empty handed, my beaten shopping urge tried its last attack and another bothering thought came up: ok, great. 12 points for morality but did I actually helped someone by not buying the shoes? What happen if the rest of the world will do that on the macro level? We all actually contribute to the recession, not eliminating it.

Looking around me, we are already doing it. Everybody is just waiting for the recession to pass. On the professional level we stopped hiring long ago, we fired the unnecessary employees and  we did not sign the suppliers contracts. In the personal consumer level, we buy only what we really need. Well, most of us… and by doing so, we are helping the crisis to hold tighter to our economy.

Increased governmental investments & spending is the answer economists and heads of countries are giving us. The idea is to inject enough investments & spending to move the wheels of the economy forward. You can imagine an old coal train needing a major push forward or a jet engine rotating on its electric power before it catches up. So is the economy which is built for speed but need the injections of investments to move these giant wheels forward. It is only a question of time before that happens. Never before in the documented history, amounts of such scale where invested and deployed by countries and organizations in order to change the tide.

What we feel now is the fear and hysteria that is a byproduct of that crisis. The fear that we did not even reach the bottom is the strongest one and I admit it is not easy to live, let alone manage, in such scenario.

Here is what I am going to do as a consumer: I am going to make sure I spend some money on things important for me in places I like. I am going to make more lunch meetings at my favorite restaurant and have more time spending outside the office. I have few restaurants and bars owners here that have been friendly to ma and hence have direct responsibility to the few extra kilos I gained. This time I am refusing any free meals and food, I am paying also for the last few good years. I can’t save all of them but I can help a few.

To other manager I call to think it over once again before dismissing people. I remind you that not all costs related to dismissal can be quantified. Demoralization, training of new people, stress and other associated actions are mostly not being assigned to the cost of dismissing people.

This is the time to find people other tasks within the organization even reduce positions  to part-time, encourage people for study part-time, anything but layoffs.

Some of the public firms that I am a member in their board of directors decided this year to avoid paying any bonuses to management and all directors voted for a cut of 10% in their own salary. This is a clear message sent to some Dutch and American financial firms but moreover, it is the right thing to do.

Whatever happens, do not lose hope. Economy is the strongest drive known to mankind. It brought us so far, it will take us further.

David Dekel, CEO

Endeavour Enterprises N.V.

She mentioned she never had a chance in her life to prove herself and chose to sing “I dreamed a dream” from “Les Mirserables” as if there was nothing easier.

It was interesting to view the judges’ and crowd first response to her. It seems as if none took her seriously and when she mentioned her dream to sing like Elaine Page it seems as if this cannot gone worse.

And then she sang.

Take a look at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxPZh4AnWyk (or if it was removed, just look for Susan Boyle on Youtube.com )

In less than two and half minutes of singing she amazed the crowd and changed her life forever. More than thirty five million people worldwide looked at her performance on various sites and even started a new comment style by leaving a text: Susan Boyle brought me here from…” you can find these comments everywhere on youtube.com and on all related songs and singers.

Three years earlier it was Paul Potts who first surprised us on Britain’s got talent. A mobile phone salesman from Wales whose dream was to sing opera. Back then, he caught us by a complete surprise. Dazzled by first impression, we assumed this was a very short audition. We saw the tense in the crowd expecting the judges to send him home, we saw the camera focusing on him and expected the inevitable. People in the crowd were feeling sorry for the embarrassment he was about to face. Few seconds later he started to sing.

Take a look at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k08yxu57NA

The Aria Nessun Dorma starts slowly and quietly and then climes up like a wave. The first one to understand this is not going as expected was Simon Cowell, the main judge. He lifted his look up at once, still chewing on his pencil and all his expression was as if he wanted to say: “what the he…” it took the shocked crowd few more seconds and when Paul left them far below while climbing to amazing sounds, they literally jumped from their chairs. Amanda Holden and people in the crowd were actually tearing.

None saw it coming.

What about us?

What about us executives believing we saw most of what there is to see and making judgments in minutes, sometimes seconds.

Taking in calculation the amount of decisions we managers make a day, it is only reasonable to assume we get better and faster in analyzing and judging events and people, however there is a downside for it and it has to do with the way our brain is built. Our brain remembers and uses patterns and past experiences that were coined and absorbed by it. Since the amount of data surrounding us is overwhelming and so is the amount of input generated by our senses, the brain actually makes shortcuts and stores information in a way it can use again once meeting resembling pattern. It is very useful way in allocating brain power to various fluctuating tasks almost simultaneously. This phenomenon enables us to do one thing while concentrating on another. We hardly pay attention to our routine daily tasks since our brain uses its autopilot mode to handle them while freeing capacity to deal with other urgent tasks. As a result, we tend to perform daily tasks at the same way; we take the same route daily and gain many habits as we call them.

This goes further while we tend to use stereotypes in order to help us classify and hence relate to events with common denominators. This is the reason why different people looking at the same event will see different things and respond differently while measuring equipments will measure the very same outcome.

Ok, enough about neurobiology. How does that relate to our issue? Well, the system depicted above usually works fine, but when it is overlooking or skipping something, we do not notice it. We tend to run into conclusions and judge wrongly or too early and we do not have any warning system that will prompt us we are offline.

Examples? Sure, but let’s limit the discussion to people only, that is what we should care about here. Ask yourself, how many times in job interview situations we fall so easily for:

Gender? Color? Accent? Age? Language proficiency? And many other irrelevant details. We see resumes for 30 seconds and already have an opinion about the candidate. We look at a candidate and listen to his/ hers speech for few minutes and come up with a verdict.

And I didn’t even start talking about speed dating…

I would like to take this post one step forward and ask: do we actually give people chance? Both in private and corporate life, I am really not convinced we are doing our best. When was the last time we placed aside our stereotypes and actually let someone prove his capabilities? Or simply gave someone a second chance?

I have a small request for you, whomever you might be, but if you are influencing people’s life and you are about to dismiss someone simply because they do not fit the image you had previously, give them a chance, a little one. It might be all they need. The young guy sitting in front of you may not be fluent, but he might be the best programmer, accountant, designer or employee you have ever recruited. The single mother who was forced to find a job, may not be as shiny and experienced as the other secretaries you interviewed and it may take her a little longer to reach full capacity on the job, but she might be your most loyal and motivated employee.

A little chance is all they need.

In a perfect world, neither Paul Potts nor Susan Boyle would have reached 40 before anyone gave them a chance.

Maybe Amanda Holden was right referring to Susan Boyle: “That’s the biggest wakeup call ever. “

The following lines extracted from her song, are dedicated to Susan Boyle who thought us all an important lesson.

I dreamed a dream in time gone by
When hope was high
And life worth living

I had a dream my life would be
So different from this hell I’m living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.

Luckily Susan, your life has changed for the good and we are all wishing you the best in your new life. You have earned it rightfully.

David Dekel, CEO

Endeavour Enterprises N.V. Amsterdam

We did not expect that. We expected something in line of the sea crush of the Hijacked Ethiopian Aircraft back in 1996. This was a remarkable landing that was a direct result of high professionalism and a little luck. The air traffic controller who was talking to the pilot, testified later on that when he heard of the captain’s decision to land on the Hudson, he was convinced he is the last person to talk to this flight.

When you saw the passengers standing on the aircraft wings waiting for rescue, you must have noticed few of them with their laptops on. There must be more than just one rule against that, but you need to be a corporate manager or a techi to understand that these guys will never leave without their laptops, crush landing in river, or not.

The Airline industry being a sub category of the travel industry is unique by itself; although very popular among most of us, the industry is characterized by being extremely dynamic, accurate in nature and catastrophic when things go wrong.

In terms of management, this industry revolves around precision of minutes mostly when dealing with landing and take offs while in contradiction to long range planning of months when it comes to purchase fuel or years when ordering new aircraft.

The successful landing of flight 1549 on the Hudson River is only the tip of the iceberg visible to us, but definitely a result of procedures and regulations traced back to operations manuals, productions and mainly: hard training.

The airline industry has more than one face. It has the common pleasant one that handles customers and smiles at you when boarding an aircraft or checking in, but can change in an instants if needed into efficient, military-like operation when things go wrong.

So, next time you are flying, don’t forget to be nice to the stewardess as she is the one to save you if anything does go wrong