A. Jim BAGNOLA‘s training

What have I jotted down, as a good student?

- All the behavior your receive from kids, employees, peers is the behavior that we model, tolerate, reinforce;
- I liked this example:

(from the CEO to the employees, either criticism or empowerment flows; the CEO thus decides what the final customer will hear from the employees);
- The most important rule in Customer Service: the customer would not get treated any better than the employee has been treated (so you should treat your employee the same way you would want them to treat the customers);
- We are all managers of energy – we either

• energize OR
• de-energize others;

- Manager’s or leader’s job: turning talent into performance;
- You can’t coach talent, but you can coach both skills and knowledge;
- Some meetings should be held standing up (they would last less time);
- A lie detector detects both thoughts and emotions;
- Telling is not teaching; asking is teaching;
- Simplicity is really profound;
- You are responsible to pupils, not for pupils when you’re a teacher;
- You are able to control your own emotions;
- We treat employees equally by treating them differently;
- People fire themselves, you do not fire them;
- It’s great to practice meditation;
- The biggest causes of death:

1. heart disease;
2. cancer;

- Factors of stress:

1. Job dissatisfaction;
2. Lack of happiness;

- Factors for cancer:

1. Smoking;
2. Bad diet;

- Friday has the least number of deaths (“You think I’m gonna die before the week-end?”);
- Avoid using “But” or it’s equivalent – “However” -, instead use “and”; “but” negates all that it has been said before it;
- We all have different knowledge, each has its power;
- Some of the most powerful words out there – “I don’t know” (it’s so hard saying this);
- If you have 90 people in your company, you should use their intelligence and skills;
- If you listen to others, the others are listening to you;
- When you become perfect, you die (there’s nothing else to do anymore);
- While I’m perfect, my behavior can be improved;
- If you are a coach, you must be able to tell others how they can improve;
- Two principles on feed-back:

1. You should be honest on the improving side;
2. A person is a different thing from it’s behavior;

- YouTube fun: Jim BAGNOLA showed us this video during the training;
- You should treat the people in your company like they’re volunteers;
- A thing to think about: how to engage your employee’s minds?
- Soft skills are actually hard;
- Without consequences, coaching doesn’t work;
- Whenever holding a conversation, people are usually either firing or reloading (they say something or they prepare to say the next thing, rather than being active in the current conversation and paying attention to what the other party says); how to change this? It’s better to listen and reflect;
- For self-disclosure you should use personal examples (“I also tend to …”);
- Men would rather be right than happy;
- Regarding feed-back within a company – it’s better to give performance appraisals more often (let’s say, once a month) rather than rarely (yearly? No way!);

Some things Jim BAGNOLA says:

- “Does that make sense to everybody?” (if you don’t say a loud No to this, you’d have to agree);
- “Yes, it’s not true, it just looks like it’s true” (very cool way of disagreeing);
- “Let’s give him a hand” (encouraging);
- “It’s not about me, it’s about my behavior” (separating the person from the idea);

What I liked about Jim BAGNOLA?

- He adapts (at a certain situation, he almost started a question in which the persons present at the training should speak in small groups; well, a participant said loudly his personal example; at this point, he could either continue with working in small groups or ask other participants to give examples, adapting to the situation; he did the latter);
- He has an exercise which is his trademark (an exercise with hands, you can see it here);

And a question:

- “If I’d knew the answer, what would it be?” (coaching question to get an answer in an seemingly impossible situation);
- “How to become a professional human being” (now that’s a question!);

B. Florin TALPEȘ’s speech

What I’ve written at his speech?

- Book to read: “Employeescu” by Adina LUCA;
- Movie to see: “Glissando” (1985) by Mircea DANIELIUC;
- Reverse mentoring is a hot concept;
- When you ask a person what

• he wants – you get vague answers;
• he doesn’t want – you get precise answers;

- It’s a lot of “noise” in the background until you can find a model;
- Study to read: “Families Across Cultures. A 30-Nation Psychological Study”, Edited by James GEORGAS;
- In Romania the middle management is made predominantly by women;
- The new generation has this principles:

• Honesty;
• Need for a match between their personal values and the values of the organization;
• Listening to the other party;

- Generation X is not socially involved; when, after time passes, you have a good financial situation, you have the time for social involvement, togive back to the society;
- The harsh realities (mistakes, failures) can change a person;
- The modern learning is not made from the books anymore;
- The digital divide is mostly between rural and urban, rather than between different age groups;
- In Romania we are still learning about greed; it’s not a finished process; we don’t yet have a bad opinion about greed;

C. Multimedia

Photos from the event (see in full-screen):

Two videos I’ve made at the event:

Thanks goes to Jim BAGNOLA for a wonderful experience, Florin TALPEȘ for a good speech and to LEADERS Romania for a great event!

First of all, I’ll present my experience with these. I have first joined an Internet forum in the spring of 2002, just a few months after I got to have Internet access a few times a week on a regular basis.

I joined a rather large Romanian forum (it still is even today; Large number of persons in there, great flow of messages).

I stayed on that forum until, five years later, I got to 1,000 messages. I don’t know about you, but writing 1,000 messages on an Internet forum, in a time frame of 5 years, is quite a lot. A lot of effort to read what others have said, to comment upon, to be active. You get the picture, lots of activity, and lots of reading.

I also was active on a smaller Internet forum, with only 300 messages from my part, but the reading was quite big in there too.

And some smaller accounts on various forums, some even created by me, but due to lack of activity these matter less.

You can say that I’ve wrote more than 1,500 messages on Internet forums so far (perhaps even 2,000).

What have I learned that I didn’t like that much?
1. At the time when I joined the first large forum, in 2002, Internet was scarce in Romania; Few people had Internet access, mostly due to costs and downsizes (PC, Internet line, hard to get a good connection, you had to be a bit IT-savvy) compared to revenues and advantages (small salaries, few web sites on the Internet to benefit from); What this barrier meant was also a great filtering system: the people that frequented the forum I was on in 2002 were usually either very good with IT or earning lots of money (so good with other things); And most of the time it was a combination of the two; Great people, I can say, lots of things to learn on a personal and professional (mostly IT) level; Time passed, and Internet access became easily available; The old generation slowly left the forum (only a few remained), while the new generation came in a hurry; Well, I can say that the level of expertise on that particular forum greatly decreased and I decided to leave;
2. What I also didn’t like about forums was a spirit of sarcasm; This was right from the beginning; There was a very false and annoying feeling of “I know everything” from the persons on the forum with most messages; You asked a not-that-smart question? Bang! You got an acid reply; You said something that could be interpreted? Here comes a sarcastic reply; This is a bad habit I learned on the forums, and which I try to repair now.

What did I learned that I love?
1. A lust for the fight itself; In the forums there is always an intriguing thought, a dispute, an argument; I learned a lot of things on how to handle a debate by participating in forums; What a lovely thing this is;
2. A pleasure for the smart things; Writing things on forums helped me understand myself better and better structure the information on the world I live in; I am the person I am today partially due to the fact that I’ve participated in forums.

I hope I haven’t scared you with the bad thoughts on forums and I hope that if I get bad feelings on blogging, I’ll write time as they arrive, not wait for years, like I’ve done with the forum postings. Overall, my forum experience is great, but nowadays the generation difference makes it a rather unpleasant experience. But I did have a great time back in 2002+.

I’ve seen quite a few cartoons. Most of the classics, most of the top rated cartoons on IMDb, and even some TV series (while I was younger). I won’t get into too much details, I’ll just say that me and cartoons always got along quite fine.

My list of favorite movies only includes Le notti di Cabiria, and a few others, about which I’ve only written in Romanian. No cartoons in the list so far, besides WALL·E (2008), Ratatouille (2007), Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (2001). But why do I still watch cartoons in general, as a movie genre? They give me these following reasons to continue watching them:
1. They’re funny in a nice way; There are a lot of ways to be funny, but I mostly think of crude humor (not that bad, all-in-all, but still rude; mostly done with a surprise), intellectual humor (the a-ha! humor, in which you get an insight), and a kind rumor (this is not about a-ha, it’s about a surprise, like the rude humor, but in a gentle way); I mostly like intellectual humor and the kind humor;
2. I learn things; It may sound stupid, but it’s not the same if two persons say the same thing; It’s not the same if I get an idea from a cartoon, or if I generate it myself;
3. Things are said at an easy-to-comprehend level; I can watch a movie and still don’t get what the director meant; I can see a documentary with a thought that’s provoking, yet not that well easy to perceive; Yet I can go to bed every evening and say: Hey, I got what Walt DISNEY meant to say with that joke! I’m so good!
4. They are beautiful designed; From old cartoons (like Snow White and Pinocchio), to new ones (like Finding Nemo), I get a beautiful experience just by watching a cartoon; None of them is especially beautiful, and they are all in the same time lovely;
5. They bring me heart-breaking memories; It tears me into pieces to think about childhood, and watching a cartoon devastates my thinking.

To sum things up, I mostly watch cartoons because they are a learning experience (mostly of emotions and interactions) and that learning experience is done in a lovely fashion.

I decided to have a look today at some major job-searching web sites in Romania: BestJobs and eJobs. I looked for [MBA] keyword on all three. Here are the results:

and:

BestJobs had a total of 4,959 jobs, out of which 8 asked for an MBA; ratio MBA / total jobs: 0.16%
eJobs: 3,596 jobs in total – 5 of which asked for an MBA; ratio: 0.12%
__________
Total: 8,555 jobs in total – 13 jobs asking for MBA; Total ratio: 0.15% jobs requiring an MBA.

So, as of today, only about one or two jobs seen out of 1,000 on BestJobs and ejobs require MBAs.

Also, please note that “require” is a relative term: you have a plus by having an MBA, but I don’t remember seeing any job posting putting the “Mandatory” requirement. It would be nice to have it, not mandatory.

What should I learn from this?
a. Either jobs that require an MBA are not posted on BestJobs or eJobs;
b. Either Romanian jobs don’t really require MBAs.

But I still want to get one.

I’ll give in this blog post some tips on event organizing (mostly for conferences and such):
1. The very first tip I’d give is picking speakers the audience doesn’t know that well; Pick some strangers to speak for your conference; I know, that’s a tricky part (how can you trust them? why would the audience pay to see some strangers), but I personally would much rather see a surprising new face, rather than see the same circle of people, again and again, at all the conferences I go; You can only do something wrong if you don’t try;
2. The next tip is making sure the participants at the conference speak about a subject that’s a matter of interest to the audience; This is part of your task; Hard to do, but do make sure that the speaker’s presentation will focus little on what is kindly called “case study” and what it is in most cases self-advertising; You can approach the subject up front, you can set a rigid presentation theme, you can ask for the PowerPoint to be sent prior to the conference for a check-up; Rarely have I seen a self-advertising presentation that is even remotely interesting; Make sure that this doesn’t happen to your event, or you might have some unhappy clients;
3. A nice presentation tip would be involving the audience; A simple raise of hands would wake a lot of people; Go for some resource-giving questions (What would you say are the best ideas for doing X?) and you get some more people to be attentive; Finally, provoke them do a hard-talk dialogue and you might conquer the world of presentations; You can have the audience put a lot of questions to the speakers (have a rather long time of time allowed to questions); You can also have moderators of panel discussions put questions to the speakers; But all-in-all, you should make sure that the trainers at a conference really do involve the audience;
4. How to pick a speaker? I think a good speaker has some qualities like:
a. Good structure of information (he should know things for himself);
b. Provides you with insights (not only does he say stuff, this stuff make my mind go right);
c. Makes you feel good (even laugh; great way to learn things; beautiful state of mind);
d. Involves you (I’m not here to sleep, I’m here to dance!);
e. Provokes you (makes you blush);
f. Say new things (I want to hear something I don’t already know; give me new stuff, I can read old stuff in books);
g. Take you out of the comfort zone (by first going there himself; you shouldn’t feel all that comforting at a conference);
It’s not an easy-to-find kind of speaker, but these are some basic criteria; Find a trainer with as many qualities out of these as you can;
5. Prior to getting a speaker to a conference, I think it’s best to:
a. See him doing another presentation, live or via electronic means;
b. See him live, have a friendly chat with him (while you observe his personal skills);
c. Hearing him doing a presentation on the phone (on the Internet, via a web cam, would be better);
d. Get outside review (ask others, search the Internet, get peer review);
Some of the things above are harder to implement, some of these are easier; But I’d really avoid having a speaker at a conference and knowing little to nothing on him;
6. Be there for the participants; Rarely this thing doesn’t happen, but you have to make sure that at any moment at a conference there is a person from the organizers watching things over; Just a tip to make sure you remember this rule;
7. Regarding food: Solve frustrations with fast-consuming foods by replacing food as soon as it gets hard to find (so rather than having a long lists of foods, and some get eaten very fast, I think it’s better to have a smaller list of foods, that are easy to replace with new foods of the same type; this is not an universal law, but it might be frustrating to talk to someone only to find that there are only some not-that-great-looking sandwiches left);
8. Regarding promoting of the event:
a. Have a web site of the event; Do Search Engine Optimization to that web site;
b. Promote your event via press releases; Press loves this kind of thing!
c. Have a promotion in the social networks of your participants (these are highly dependable on the types of audience you have; but all-in-all, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Xing – Germany mostly, Cirip – Romania mostly, might be good ideas for your promotion; You can see a list of social networks on Wikipedia)
d. Promote your conference into relevant mailing lists; Visit Google Groups and Yahoo! Groups homepages and search for keywords related to your event target group; Promote your conference in there, with care with the general atmosphere in the group (if it’s discussion-only, you might be unwelcomed with a purely informative message; Adjust your speech to the specific audience of a group; Read 10-20 recent messages on the group to have a glimpse on what’s it about);
e. Ask for help; Bloggers, business partners, press – all can provide you with help on promoting the event; Ask for help! They can do anything from writing about you, placing a banner to your web site, send information to friends to participating themselves;
f. Have a fresh thinking! A lot of people would like to see a YouTube video with your event, see a virtual map of the address of the conference, see videos with the speakers, see a list with people that participate to the event, receive a participation diploma from the event, receive a gift at the event; Learn to attract people, to motivate them;
9. Do Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) – This might involve giving some invitations to the event or donating part of the money obtained on the event; You can offer scholarships to participate to your event; You can sponsor some persons to accommodate at a hotel; Think creative! And you can promote your ability to do CSR; It’s the right thing to do;
10. Thank the speakers for holding speeches at your event; You might even offer them gifts, flowers or at least offer transportation; Also thank the participants to the conference by sending them a postcard or two with a great picture at the event; This should be memorable;
11. If your conference is an all-day event, it might be a good idea to offer your participants information on other events that take part in the same day, prior to leaving your event; So, let’s say your conference ends at 18:30 and there’s another event at 19, an event on 20, another one at 21; Be a kind host and give alternatives to your guests for the evening; You can also give information on where to accommodate for the night prior and after the event;
12. Pick the right day for the conference: Monday is great, Friday is less-than-great; Think of a day and period of time in which it would be easy to get a day off (if there’s a day celebrating women in March, it might be a good idea to organize a conference in a period of time that is close to that event); Friday may be bad due to the closeness to week-end (and at the end of the week there’s always something to do); On the other hand, very few people plan for the next Monday to do something;
13. In order to keep a tight schedule, you can set a time for registration: so registration to begin at 9:30 AM, while the conference to start at 10 AM; And keep the schedule; Rarely does a conference announced to start at 10 AM really starts at 10 AM sharp;
14. How to get great speakers? Ask for recommendations; Ask the participants to give you hints on who should participate at the next event;
15. I think it would be alright if the speakers had a training themselves: how to operate the microphone, how to get to the next slide, how to use the pointer to show something on the screen; Even some soft skills training might be good (involve the audience); Talk to your speakers and give them a few hints;
16. The most important thing at a training are the trainers themselves: the hotel, location, food, materials, organizers – I personally can live with lesser quality of any of these; A great speaker, who should give me both emotions (make me laugh, annoy me, make me happy) and also provide me with insights (not just learn things, discover them myself) would be great; And at the end of the day, I should take some good memories with me (on emotional and practical part);
17. Try to pick a location that is accessible via more than one way (not only by car, but also by Metro or bus or tram; Think of multiple audience of your conference); Prior to the event, when sending an invitation, also send a map with the great locations near your event; It might impress people in a good way;
18. Make sure that there’s not another great event in that very day with yours; I would hate to have to pick between two great conferences;
19. Ask for volunteers to come and help organize the event in a great way; There are a lot of people who want to get involved and you only need a lot help in the days prior to the event itself and in that very day;
20. What happens when all things are set? I think an evaluation should exist on the following levels:
a. Training contents and structure;
b. Level of “I was touched” (laughed, annoyed, intrigued);
c. Level of “I got an insight” (I learned this and that, I discovered new things);
d. Level of “I applied what I learned” afterwards;
e. Level of “I could keep my attention focused on the things the trainer said and I understood his message right”;
f. How well did the trainer go as a body language?
g. How much did I trust the trainer came in the room to help me?
h. How much did the trainer involve me?
i. How was the event organized;
j. Was it worth coming to the event? (both on time, money and things applied)
Evaluation should be done, in my opinion, after a longer period of time: 6 months, 9 months; Do this and you’ll get some participants the next year.

What do you think about my message?

Some pictures at the event:

What insights did this event brought me?
1. God defines Himself: “I am who I am”; You can learn something out of this and say a similar thing: “I behave in the way in which I choose to behave”;
2. Life deserves to be lived;
3. A way in which to discover things about meanings of life:
a. Ask yourself “What would be the greatest choice right now?”
b. Ask “Do I follow my own path in life?”
c. Pose yourself this question: “Do I know what helps me?” (in this area there are multiple answers on three levels – to exist, to do, to have);
d. Ask “Do I recognize the signs of my path?”;
4. Out of any thing that goes into your life you can learn something, and that thing brings up new opportunities;
5. There are four levels in which you can perceive the world:
a. You; (blame others)
b. I; (it’s all me)
c. We; (it’s all us)
d. ”I am who I am” (spiritual level);
The farther away from “You”, the better;
6. Meditation on your workplace? Think about it!

What did you learn out of this?

1. I need quite a few money if I ever decide to go to Navodari
This may seem like a no-brainer, but for me it was not obvious that I needed quite a few money to go to Navodari (I now live in Bucharest, for almost 8 years). What will the money bring? Safety, a net which can catch me if I fall.

The alternative is simple: be so good as a professional, that I can’t possibly fail in anything I do in the online area from Navodari.

Both requirements are quite tricky. What’s important to know is that I need either a financial stability for a few years or be a great professional;

What are my actions for this?
a. Try to earn more money; This should be simple; All I have to do is continue doing what I do now that brings me money and, hopefully, to be able to save more money; No dead-line imposed, but a general objective;
b. Try to improve myself; This includes (and is not limited to) write better in English (the purpose of this blog), be a better professional at Search Engine Optimization (the purpose of GetSeoIdeas.com blog), be more productive (the goal at work); Having a portfolio of clients and improving my online networking skills should also help; I should be physically fit;

2. Focus on the positive things in life
I was talking to my friend (old mate, used to live in the same room, along with two other guys while a student in 2002-2003) about our common past. What I’ve noticed about the past:
a. Oh, those time were great; Lovely times, beautiful life, great friendships; (It’s also a sign that people tend to remember only good memories in the past – see this article: “We Don’t Remember the Bad Stuff So Well”);
b. During that time, I focused on a few bad things;
c. Focusing on those bad things didn’t bring any obvious advantage.

Come to think about it, I’ve had a great life, but I focused on some bad things (and this focus didn’t bring me value).

Now I looked at today’s life. There are two aspects:
a. Life;
b. Work.

I think I have a great life, and a wonderful work. Sure, there are things to improve, but the bottom line is that my life and job are very close to being perfect.

What will I win if I focus on the negative thing? Aside frustration, not too many things can be changed easily.

What will I win by focusing on the positive things? “Oh, what a beautiful life! Oh, what a beautiful job!”

There are some things to keep a close eye on (I seem a little brain-dead), but, all-in-all, it’s a pretty neat way of thinking.

What will my actions be on this?
a. Try to emphasis positive things in life;
b. Capture the moment; Smile, laugh if you have to, but, oh!, be so happy;
c. Only focus on negative things if you can make your life better.

PS: I’ll look at this blog post years from now and I’ll probably thank myself for good ideas. But why not start thanking myself right now?

Still, these are the things I noted as important:
1. (a very well arrived reminder) In getting business solutions, you should first know how to listen to the other party;
2. How to make someone change its actions (whatever that may mean):

a. Why doens’t that person change? (ask)
b. How can you involve that person to wish, for herself to change?

3. The best example leadership on Earth: building the pyramids;
4. In a time of crisis, HR should take care of:

a. Reducing costs (including salaries);
b. Reducing personnel;

in a responsible manner;
5. It’s still not too late to take proactive measures regarding the crisis;
6. Profit is King, cash is King-Kong;
7. You can have the qualities of a leader, but still not have leadership (no followers);
8. Rather than bluntly reducing one specific thing with X percent, you should optimize a process, you can get better results in such a way (analyze procedures, and work on them; the price cuts may have no relation with the current performance of a process; look carefully at the process and work on that);
9. If you have a bad working person in an organization, it’s better both for your company (for obvious reasons – reduce losses) and for him to leave the company earlier; Why is it better for him? Simple: if he will leave 6 months later, in a full-manifesting crisis, he will be unprepared, and it will be hugely difficult for him to get a job at that time; Until then, he can prepare; Help him get a better job in a not-so-bad time by firing him earlier;
10. HR people should be 25% of their time on the field, talking to people;
11. Think at any task in three areas: from a tactic => to a strategy => to a context; e.g.: I can do a training (that’s a tactic), which will make the team reach it’s objectives better (that’s a strategy), which in turn will help the company and industry perform better (context);
12. In five years’ time, 80% of what HR people do today will no longer be doing; Learn to adapt.

Some of the speakers saying these were the following:

• Dr. Lisbeth CLAUS, Ph.D., SPHR, GPHR, Professor of Global HR, Willamette University, USA;
• Anca Georgescu ALADGEM, Chief Human Resources Officer, Romtelecom;
• Brent W. MATTSON, Ph.D., Senior Vice President, Learning & Development Executive, Enterprise Learning & Talent Management, Bank of America;
• Dave ULRICH, Partner and co-founder The RBL Group and Professor of Business – Ross School of Business, University of Michigan;
• Radu PANAIT, HR Vice-President, Ursus Breweries Romania.

I was late at the very first session and I had trouble identifying who said what, and also I may have poorly understood things, so I won’t associate a thing being said with a speaker.

How was the message for you? Did it help you understand HR a bit better? You can leave a comment below.