Thank you, Mr Gorbachev

One of the greatest legacies from Gorbachev? The end of the permanent terror of a global nuclear war. From the 60s to the 80s, this was a real and palpable threat, a fear you could feel, a permanent pessimism. The glasnost and perestroika eased that terror away.

Focus and patience

Focus and patience.

In my opinion, those are primary soft skills for the next 30 years. In a world that is dominated by multiple stimuli with immediate rewards associated (that compress our average attention span to less than 7 seconds), it will be the ability to concentrate on tasks and plan+wait for greater rewards over time that will drive differential success.

Years

In 1856, the average British worker (by far, the wealthiest labor class in Europe at the time) worked 124000 hours across its lifetime. In 1981, it worked only for 69000 hours - which means that despite the career length staying the same (around 40 years), the fraction of working hours / lifetime decreased from 50% to 20%. These are the conclusions of a paper published on "The Rockefeller University".

These are the long-term benefits of a society engineered towards innovation through liberalism and capitalism.

Extreme poverty

Every single time someone questions you about Capitalism, you can show them this graph. It was the adoption of liberal, democratic and capitalist societies that fostered innovation and wealth creation that enabled this graphic. (image from "Factfulness", by Hans Rosling).

The three biggest challenges for Portugal

 1) Climate change (drought and water scarcity, agriculture, energy,...); 2) steep aging of the Portuguese population; 3) Functionally bankrupt State.

For me, these are the three biggest challenges (priority between the three of them is up to debate, in my opinion) for Portugal for the next 20 years. 

"You do like meetings"

"You do like meetings" someone told me. And that's right. I do! I do love short 15-minutes meetings, with a well defined agenda, 5 persons tops (2 pizzas rule...) and clear decisions to be taken. I think they are an incredible and efficient way to reach decisions, align actions and bring commitment from everyone involved - and thus to move things forward.

(1hr, unfocused meetings? Rule me out, please)

Inflation

One of the biggest challenges for the next few years lies in that my generation of managers has no experience leading with inflation. We only know it from books and memories from when we were children and didn't lead economic decisions. We will learn the hard way.