You`re the boss - a very effective management tool for all kinds of private & professional life situations

Good morning my dear readers of my daily posts and highly esteemed followers of my blog. Today I will share my experience with a self developped life and work management tool with You, which during the last at least 10 last years has definitely helped me, to conduct my life and my job  much more relaxed and self controlled than before. 

I use to call this tool my "You`re the boss" principle. Many of my friends and most of my companions, colleagues and employees already know this term very well from me. Actually I apply this tool during great part of my daily activities - as well during my private ones as also during all my professional ones. 

What the hell now does it mean? Well, it`s very simple. It is based on the assumption, that during most of the situations and activities in which You participate and act over a day, the leadership and responsability can be delegated - at least momentarily and partially - to somebody present, who has the highest experience, know how or whatelse ever capability amongst all those present for doing a certain job. And this person can be named "the boss" for that particular situation, activity and moment. It is not necessary, that all others - if the "superiority" of this person states clearly - brake their heads and try to invent the wheels. 

Let me give You an example. When my lovely wife is driving our car, I don`t spent any time and energy on asking myself, whether she is driving in the right direction or in the right way. I know that she is a very skilled and reliable driver and if she does not expressively ask for my support for finding the right way for getting to where we have planned to go, I just let her drive and enjoy my time for relaxing my brain, listening to music, thinking about things and looking at interesting situations outside, where we are passing by. 

Anyhow a car just needs one driver at one time. Actually a car only functions with one driver at one time. Therefore it has just one steering wheel and not two or three of these. Isn`t it this way? After such travels with my brain on "mute mode", I can normally not remember, which way we had driven and which were the places, where we passed by. You might call this ignorant, but for me such kind of information is not relevant. It`s much more important for me, to let my brain relax for such a while without filling my memory up with in the end useless and unnecessary information.  

For sure this is a very simple example, but You can easily translate it to much more complex situations. If in a professional situation a certain decision has been taken and the person chosen for doing certain things is a person of Your trust and with knowingly great experience and expertise, why should You spent Your own brain energy on following, questionning and controlling each decision, activity and moment of this person? Better let the person do its job and check out certain discrete intermediate points of progress and targets achievement. 

I am strictly of the opinion, that - if You deal in the right way with the right people - You can focus Your own energy and activities much smarter on subjects and activities, for which You can objectively be considered as "the boss", means where You knowingly and acceptedly are the expert and have the highest know how for taking certain decisions and doing certain activities for the team. 

If You apply this concept consequently to all Your daily private and professional situations where this makes sence, You can relieve Yourself from a lot of stress and secure great part of Your energy for what You consider as Your real, Your important activities and interactions with all others. And it means, that You very actively empower the others, to play their full roles fully responsible. But it also means, that You clearly and outspokenly demand them to assume their assigned responsabilities and to actively play the expected roles within their ofical functions and that You make them aware of their total accountability.

My own experiences with this style of life and job management so far have been highly positive and successful and I really practice this consequentially whenever and as far as possible I can. And this reminds me a little bit of the saying of one of my former bosses. He - to my great surprise at that time - told me "You can much better work together with lazy people than with hard-working people because lazy people want to get their jobs done as fast as possible. The hard-working people don´t come to an end because they like it too much to continue to work." 

On the pictures in the collage above You can see me together with my 3 actual "bosses" - together with my lovely wife Selma in the garden of our house in Vinhedo, Sao Paulo, together with my dream management team at the reception hall of our fantastic company Vulkan do Brasil in Itatiba, Sao Paulo, and together with my wonderful and highly respected boss Sven Oelert, CEO of the Vulkan Group, at the "Plaza de las Armas" in Lima, Peru. 

With the above shared experience, the big challenge for me is permanently, to keep all my three "bosses" happy with me, which unfortunately is not always possible. And all 3 possible variants of "2 against 1" are not really favorable. Just imagine each of these! Not thinking about the variant "3 against me", which almost implies to commit sucide and which definitely is not an allowed option for me.

Before I finish my todays post, I would like to share this wonderful music video from 1976 of Paco de Lucia`s famous "Entre dos aguas" guitar play with all of You:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oyhlad64-s

"Entre dos aguas" is an instrumental flamenco rumba created by the Spanish guitarist Paco de Lucia, included as the first single on the album "Fuente y caudal" 1973. It was recorded with two guitars (the second played by his brother Ramón de Algeciras), with a bass  and a bongo, instead of the traditional palmas played on the rumbas.

At first the album did not have much commercial success, being practically discontinued in a few months. But Jesus Quintero, his representative at that time, and several other journalists were determined that this piece of music be heard on the radio. They convinced the record company to edit it as a single, going on sale in 1974.

As a single, "Entre dos aguas" sold more than 300,000 copies, being a gold single in 1976, and was 22 weeks at the top of the sales charts in Spain, catapulting the guitarist's career.

I personally got to know with classical Spanish guitar music and also with Flamenco music during my two and a half years as Managing Director at Schwarzkopf & Henkel`s "La Toja" cosmetics plant in La Coruña, Galicia, in the north of Spain during 2000-2003. Actually I came into contact with this kind of music during my frequent weekends in Madrid, but I had the unique opportunity, to listen to Paco de Lucia playing his guitar live at a concert in Barcelona, shortly before I left Spain for Mexico mid 2003. But I took my passion for this wonderful music, which lasts until today, along with me to Mexico and from there 6 years later to Brazil.

I am terribly curious now, to hear Your opinion and comments about my above described personal philosophy and life and job management experience and practice. Looking forward to meeting again with You soon.