Wednesday, January 28, 2009
The vacation that wasn't...
A mental note to self: the next time I go on vacation, I'm going leave all laptops and mobile phones to the office and be entirely unreachable. I've been at work more than I've had true vacation days during this past month. Sheesh...
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Summer's around the corner...
It's nearing the end of January already and that means only one thing: only a few more months (and then a few) until it's time to ditch the tweeds and hide the leather gloves and get your hands on the all time favorite summer wear: linen suits, seersucker jackets, polo shirts, etc. Another sure sign of this is that everyone's already got their spring and summer catalogs prepared and available. So in short, time to start checking out what to get and then start pestering the tailor again to have things adjusted.
This time around I think that the first thing to get is a decent seersucker jacket, which is unfortunately missing from my wardrobe. And because it's a very preppy thing to do, obviously the right choice is to turn to Brooks Brothers for the quintessential American attitude and cut. Some people who follow this blog will obviously be completely at a loss as to why I'm all of a sudden interested in Americans once again. And to be honest, I have no idea. At first I was going to say that it must be because the only real way to spend a summer is to be at the Hamptons, but, well... That's not exactly true. In Europe we have the Italians who have the brilliant ability to dress well for summer.
To add to the confusion, I'm turning into a serious mess now that I've been turning to Italian clothing in the immediate past (a couple of coats by Zegna and a suit by Valentino Roma), which in itself is a mild change of direction from the British attitude. So I'm sorry, I don't have a coherent answer for this. It's just a thing that depends on the feeling, I guess. Some days you wake up and feel that New England is the way to go (yeah, yeah, I know that it's a horrible thing to say) and on other days there's nothing better than an aggressive Italian cut and slicking your hair back and waving your hands around uncontrollably while elaborating issues like this to your friends over a cup of espresso.
But maybe, just maybe this is not a weakness but a strength of sorts. I know that it somewhat conflicts with the notion of having a clear and focused personal style and is borderline fashion/faddish, but it need not be. While writing all this, it's starting to become more clear. Maybe the following rough outlines will help to clarify the stylistic positions that I hold at this moment:
This time around I think that the first thing to get is a decent seersucker jacket, which is unfortunately missing from my wardrobe. And because it's a very preppy thing to do, obviously the right choice is to turn to Brooks Brothers for the quintessential American attitude and cut. Some people who follow this blog will obviously be completely at a loss as to why I'm all of a sudden interested in Americans once again. And to be honest, I have no idea. At first I was going to say that it must be because the only real way to spend a summer is to be at the Hamptons, but, well... That's not exactly true. In Europe we have the Italians who have the brilliant ability to dress well for summer.
To add to the confusion, I'm turning into a serious mess now that I've been turning to Italian clothing in the immediate past (a couple of coats by Zegna and a suit by Valentino Roma), which in itself is a mild change of direction from the British attitude. So I'm sorry, I don't have a coherent answer for this. It's just a thing that depends on the feeling, I guess. Some days you wake up and feel that New England is the way to go (yeah, yeah, I know that it's a horrible thing to say) and on other days there's nothing better than an aggressive Italian cut and slicking your hair back and waving your hands around uncontrollably while elaborating issues like this to your friends over a cup of espresso.
But maybe, just maybe this is not a weakness but a strength of sorts. I know that it somewhat conflicts with the notion of having a clear and focused personal style and is borderline fashion/faddish, but it need not be. While writing all this, it's starting to become more clear. Maybe the following rough outlines will help to clarify the stylistic positions that I hold at this moment:
- The British attitude in general and the cut of their suits in specific are a sure choice for the office. Conservative, boring, and fitting into the masses and the classes around.
- Weekends are somewhat more difficult, but blazers and knitwear and a right balance between the Brits and the Italians may be a good idea here. And during the nights out on town, nothing can come close to the Italian flamboyance.
- The winter is the time for heavier cloths and as the weather gets tougher, the clothes need to be able to withstand more as well. The British climate, at least in some respects, is closer to the Finnish climate than what the Neapolitan crowd is accustomed to.
- In general the American sack mentality is entirely horrid, but may be acceptable in casual circumstances, making it an ideal competitor for the Italian summer look. Balancing between the two may require tons of effort, but can potentially be an interesting path. Let's face it: the New England crowd and the Italian crowd are both into sailing, so they can't be entirely incompatible...
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Thursday, January 08, 2009
You either die a hero, or...
In the recent follow-up Batman movie, The Dark Knight, Harvey Dent uttered a view that "You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain." Being a villian is often just dependent on the point of view, but I was personally intrigued about whether this thought could be applied to the corporate world with some modifications to capture a key part of career creation...
A very well known strategy to climb the ranks in the corporate world is to continuously keep moving. Often moving within a single part of the organization, or even the same organization, is not enough and if you want to turbo-boost your career, you should just jump from company to company and back again. A cynical person would say that if you look at the life cycle of a project, the organization climbers are most visible from the outset of the project. They hold the speeches and launch the projects, but soon afterwards they move onwards, leaving other people to deal with the shit.
If we consider Harvey's quote and remember that surprisingly many projects fail (i.e. are not fully succesful along the metrics that they are evaluated against), maybe the dynamics are that you should quit while being "victorious" (i.e. before you've been defeated, which is the same as moving on even before the first battles ensue) or if you stick around, you will ultimately fail. To elaborate: give a person, a job and enough time and eventually the person will fail in one way or another. And the more you fail, the more difficult it may become to justify promotions. Failures decrease momentum, and momentum is precisely the thing that gets you promoted.
On the other hand, if you actively switch jobs and pursue new challenges, you don't have the time to fail because you're already elsewhere. You seem very proactive, energetic, and dynamic (and a lot of other meaningless adjectives as well). It seems that you're continuously on the move and are able to make things move with you, and thus it is easy to get promotions. Additionally, once you've left, assuming that you didn't totally mess things up, time will take care of things and people will mostly remember the (small) accomplishments that you were able to achieve. Then when you come back, not only do you already, by default, have a larger paycheck and a niftier title, but because nothing is really ever taken away from you, it's all the easier to give you an even bigger paycheck and a corner office. If you had initially asked for both and suggested that you should jump a paygrade or few to your superiors, that would quite potentially have been met with a fair amount of skepticism.
So maybe in the corporate world Harvey's view is distorted into "You either continue to move as a hero, or stick around long enough to fail (and thus die)." Or something to that extent. People who are better with words can undoubtedly make that sound more sexy.
A very well known strategy to climb the ranks in the corporate world is to continuously keep moving. Often moving within a single part of the organization, or even the same organization, is not enough and if you want to turbo-boost your career, you should just jump from company to company and back again. A cynical person would say that if you look at the life cycle of a project, the organization climbers are most visible from the outset of the project. They hold the speeches and launch the projects, but soon afterwards they move onwards, leaving other people to deal with the shit.
If we consider Harvey's quote and remember that surprisingly many projects fail (i.e. are not fully succesful along the metrics that they are evaluated against), maybe the dynamics are that you should quit while being "victorious" (i.e. before you've been defeated, which is the same as moving on even before the first battles ensue) or if you stick around, you will ultimately fail. To elaborate: give a person, a job and enough time and eventually the person will fail in one way or another. And the more you fail, the more difficult it may become to justify promotions. Failures decrease momentum, and momentum is precisely the thing that gets you promoted.
On the other hand, if you actively switch jobs and pursue new challenges, you don't have the time to fail because you're already elsewhere. You seem very proactive, energetic, and dynamic (and a lot of other meaningless adjectives as well). It seems that you're continuously on the move and are able to make things move with you, and thus it is easy to get promotions. Additionally, once you've left, assuming that you didn't totally mess things up, time will take care of things and people will mostly remember the (small) accomplishments that you were able to achieve. Then when you come back, not only do you already, by default, have a larger paycheck and a niftier title, but because nothing is really ever taken away from you, it's all the easier to give you an even bigger paycheck and a corner office. If you had initially asked for both and suggested that you should jump a paygrade or few to your superiors, that would quite potentially have been met with a fair amount of skepticism.
So maybe in the corporate world Harvey's view is distorted into "You either continue to move as a hero, or stick around long enough to fail (and thus die)." Or something to that extent. People who are better with words can undoubtedly make that sound more sexy.
Sunday, January 04, 2009
The thing about fine dining...
Fine dining is typically considered a joke in very many circles in Finland. I guess it's also quite universal that people poke fun at the "small" size of the dishes and the large amount of forks and knives present on the table. But in fact, fine dining is a very nice way to spend time with friends and acquaintances. The servings may be small, but from experience the overall amount of food is pretty much perfect; when you leave the restaurant, I've seldom felt hunger. The very many different courses take care of that. Also, more emphasis is spent on the experience on a holistic level: the waiters and waitresses can help you coordinate the food and the wine to achieve a completely different taste than what one can achieve with casual dining. And overall the whole situation has that "old world" charm in it. Instead of the hectic pace that is so present elsewhere in this day and age, you can just enjoy those small luxuries in life.
Oh, and I'm sure that by exchanging McDonald's with Chez Dominique, a lot less people would be obese. :) And speaking of which, I'm going to to that piggy restaurant on Wednesday. Yay.
Oh, and I'm sure that by exchanging McDonald's with Chez Dominique, a lot less people would be obese. :) And speaking of which, I'm going to to that piggy restaurant on Wednesday. Yay.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
