My admiration for "creative destruction" and "tropical whisky"

 Good morning everybody. I am happy to see You all again back here in my blog. For my todays post I have once again chosen an intellectually challenging subject. I can`t just bore You with posts about soccer and beer. We all need some nutrition for our brains as well. 

The famous term "creative destruction" has been popularized in economy by Joseph Schumpeter through his books "Business Cycles" and "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy" first published during 1939 respectively 1942 in the USA.

But let`s at first ask wikipedia for giving us some background information about who the hell was Joseph Schumpeter:

"Joseph Alois Schumpeter (8 February 1883 - 8 January 1950) was an Austrian political economist. He emigrated to the US, became a professor at Harvard University, where he remained until the end of his career and, in 1939, he obtained the American citizenship. He was born in Moravia and has briefly served as Finance Minister of the Republic of German-Austria during 1919. Schumpeter was one of the most influential economists of the early 20th century."

Creative destruction - also known as "Schumpeter`s gale" - is a concept in economics, which Schumpeter had derived from the work of Karl Marx and presented as a theory of economic innovation and the business cycle.

According to Schumpeter, the "gale of creative destruction" describes the "process of industrial mutation that continuously revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one and incessantly creating a new one".

The term subsequently gained popularity within mainstream economics as a description of processes such as downsizing in order to increase the efficiency and dynamism of companies.

Since my final and definitive (?) return from Mexico to Brazil at the end of 2009 I have started all my subsequent jobs as General Manager for Fabrima (packaging machinery for the pharmaceutical and food industry), Managing Director for GEA do Brasil (heat exchangers for the oil & gas industry) and President of Vulkan do Brasil (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/holding/vulkan-companies/brazil) as Interim Manager, contracted by distinguished German interim management providers and lent to the companies, for which I did the complete restructurings of their brazilian subsidiaries. By the way - all these companies bought me out of my interim management contracts with the providers (which was financially very nice for them) very quickly and hired me as own fix employee.

I rember my return to Brazil very nicely, because during my first weekend - living in the beautiful beach city of Recife, about 2500 km in the northeast of Sao Paulo - my beloved carioca (means: from Rio de Janeiro) soccer team Flamengo won it`s 5th Brazilian soccer league title by 2:1 against its adversary Gremio (from Porto Alegre in the south of Brazil) in it`s home stadium Maracana at Rio de Janeiro in front of impressive 85.000 spectators. And for sure - together with my familly, relatives and friends - we watched and enjoyed this exciting play in one of the wonderful beach bars and drank plenty of ice cold Brazilian beers. "After action (in Mexico) - satisfaction (in Brazil)" (:-

In the foto collage above I show You: 

1) todays brutal destruction (for the posterior reconstruction and modernization) of my former home office and barbeque station in our garden

2) my new temporary home office in the freshly constructed - but not equipped yet - gym of our house

3) Luke, my faithful home office assistant and his main occupation

4) The first foto of  my wonderful management team at Vulkan do Brasil during October 2014, shortly after my arrival in Itatiba. Since then only one manager has left us and on the foto two new management team members, who followed me to Vulkan do Brasil from GEA do Brasil during January 2015, after my interim management contract was terminated and I had become a fix Vulkan employee, were still missing.

This is a good opportunity for me to share with You a very particular and delicious experience, which I made at Recife at that time. For historical and cultural reasons, Recife has since longer become the by far biggest local and regional consumer market for whisky within Brazil. People say, that this goes back to the 19th century, when lots of english, scottish and irish railway workers were laying the rails for the at that time quite extended and massively utilised railway network in this part of the country. 

But the people in Recife region have since then tropicalized the way of drinking whisky. They use ice cubes of coconut water for "whisky on the rocks". This is really a great mixture. But - to be honest - You must only use a cheap (but not too bad) blended whisky and not at all any precious single malts. Just try it once at Your home and give me Your feedback. It`s really wonderful. Believe me. Even more in the constant (all year long) heat in the Brazilian north-east.

And another particularity which until today I have only encountered in the greater Recife area are the "whisky clubs", which are very popular there. In many bars and restaurants people buy their own bottles of whisky and leave them - with their names written on them - in special "whisky club" cupboards which are full with up to hundreds of more or less full respectively empty whisky bottles. And whenever the owners of these bottles go there, the just ask the waiters to bring them their bottles and ice instead of ordering any other drinks. Quite funny. Isn`t it? 

But I made bad experience with the "whisky club" when I had left my bottle still half full (not half empty !) in the cupboard of my favorite beach bar in Recife, shortly before I moved to Sao Paulo for getting started on my interim management job at Fabrima. When I came back to Recife after nine months for helping my wife and our 2 sons to organize their moval to me to Sao Paulo, I learned painfully, that the whisky bottles are only beeing guarded there in the "whisky club" cupboards for their owners for exactly 6 months. On the first day after the completion of the sixth month the owners of the bar let the "expired" bottles be used for serving customers who just order single drinks and not bottles. Life can be hard sometimes, would You agree with this?

Let`s come back to "Schumpeter`s gale" and my interim management jobs as restructurer. The restructuring of a company has a lot in common with the term "creative destruction". Because You normally at first "destroy" the existing company organisation, question all existing procederes and processes, but You also immediately - the speed of this is absolutely decisive for Your success! - start to "construct" a new organisation, procedures and processes. I have done this several times and I must admit, that this is one of the most fancy experiences, which I have made during my professional career so far. 

But it is really important for me to state, that a well executed restructuring project has nothing to do with destruction, damage and suffering. In the contrary. I imagine, that helpers at traffic accidents and surgeons have the same success feeling and satisfaction, when they rescue people from death.

And let`s be sincere and true. Isn`t the actual, modern term "disruptive" something very similiar? In the end old things have to be substituted by new things, when their live, importance, ability for contribution and further development has come to its end. That`s at least how I understand Schumpeter`s gale" and give my sincere credits to good old Schumpeter and his phenomenal term and theory creation. 

Did You hold out and follow my above insights and thought sharings? Tell me truth. What was the most interesting information which I have shared today with You?  "Schumpeter`s gale" or the ingenious "tropical whisky" formula ???? I still hope that both fascinated You. 

Just before closing this post here one more music video recommendation, which I think fits somehow quite well to the subjects mentioned above. But this is a real "old timer" (first released by Marry Mc Guire during 1965), actually it was a very popular protest (against lots of things which You can easily recognize as still actual on Your TVs today) song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfZVu0alU0I

Let`s meet here in my post and blog again tomorrow. Have a great and successful day!