Crisis, opportunities, and change

The economic downturn is finally hitting more tangible and personal levels. Our unit at work began negotiations to "streamline" its operations (as can be read from Finnish newspapers). According to the Finnish labor legislation, there is a six week long consultation period during which representatives from the employers and the employees attempt to negotiate the specifics of the arrangements.

Interestingly enough I was talking with a few people about this situation and the general attitude people have is negative. That's not very surprising per se, but if you do the math and carefully plan different scenarios, at least I noticed that getting laid off might not even be the worst possible scenario. Amidst the crisis and the events that have begun to unfold, there are plenty of opportunities. The driver of all this is change: change in the market place, change in the organization and competences, change in the financial setup, and so on. Change isn't inherently good or bad. It can have good resulting effects or bad resulting effects. Most often both, depending on the perspective you take.

A major reason why people think negatively of layoffs is that they fear change, because there is always a deal of uncertainty involved. And more often than not people equate uncertainty with lack of visibility to the future. But in many cases the situation can be helped merely by looking objectively and mapping out the future according to different assumptions. And eventually you'll notice that there are some scenarios with suboptimal results and others with much better results. But during the process you also make the fog a bit less thick and enhance your visibility about different situations. And more importantly, you can also identify the different crossroads and decision points that you can actually influence yourself.

I won't go into my thinking on the current subject per se, as that I fear does not really fit the scope of this blog. As with poker, often in times of tight situations its better to keep your cards to yourself rather than spilling all the beans. Sufficient to say, I'm not very worried about the current situation. There are one or two scenarios that may have clearly negative impacts, but the probabilities of those materializing are very slim (not least because they're the ones the I can actually influence very well myself). But besides those, there are a few paths which are more probable in regards to how the events might unfold, and none of these paths is especially poor.

And as a closing thought, one of the key things here is flexibility, both in strategy as well as operations. If you lose your flexibility, then you're a sitting duck. As long as you have degrees of freedom left, you are still able to execute maneuvers and attempt to flank the situation and sieze the moment.

Drastic times call of drastic measures

It's been a long break from blogging again. Part of it is due to a certain increased level of self-consciousness stemming from the fact that it turns out that apparently more people are aware of this blog than I had anticipated. And that in turn has unconsciously caused me to become slightly more critical about what I write (= I've started writing on multiple occasions but then abandoned the pursuit in a streak of self-censorship). But another, perhaps bigger part of the lack of activity has been the refocusing of energy to other pursuits, namely work and exercise. But because work is work, we'll just discuss a bit about exercising instead.

I recently signed up for the Helsinki City Run, a half-marathon, for the second year in a row. I'm hoping to make it a habit of sorts in an effort to keep myself at least somewhat fit. This was caused by the sudden realization that I had weighed 79 kg after the surgery last summer, but more recently my weight had popped up to 91 kg. This in turn created an imminent issue with my wardrobe, namely that my slim-fit shirts and aggressively cut suits would soon have to either make another appointment with the tailor or just make room for better fitting clothing. And with the economic downturn, going to the Zegna-shop just seemed like too suicidal, the logical conclusion was that we'd of course take aggressive measures driven by vanity to curb the trend of increasing waist size.

Actually the situation isn't as hopeless as this might sound. The only real measurement of size that you want to use these days is in fact the aforementioned waist size, and a perfect measurement for that are your jeans. And I still fit into the same jeans as well as I did five years ago. The other measurement, in light of the HCR, is how long and fast I can run. I have occasionally been doing some running on the treadmill at the office, but last Wednesday I went out for the second actual jog outdoors this year. The target was to run around Lauttasaari, but then halfway through I was feeling so good that I decided to extend the jog to cover also Keilalahti. In the end I managed to do about 16 km in pretty much exactly an hour and thirty minutes. So on that dimension the HCR should not be that big a problem as long as I continue doing some running before it.

But more importantly I've again found the drive to actually do some training. Running outside has turned out to be more fun than I remembered and I've also been averaging a couple of times to the gym per week. And best of all I am actually seeing some improvements in strength and stamina, which further motivate me. So hopefully this pre-emptive strike will have more positive effects and ensure that the basic backbone of my wardrobe will be safe for years to come.

On a completely unrelated note, I watched Geraint Anderson's documentary on investment banking and bankers in London last week and got interested in the subject again. I also ordered his book along with some others that I had been meaning to get. Check out his somewhat provocative and very much hilarious music video below...