Learnings and Mantras

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

AI will not replace people, as long as people leverage AI” 
AI helps people of all trades to be more effective and more efficient. It is the biggest productivity booster since the inception of machines. People using AI can do 10 times or more compared to do it manually. It is the augmentation to our brain what machines are to our muscles.

Mantras and Philosophy - reaching your maximum potential

MAXIMUM POTENTIAL

A nation can only reach its maximum potential once all others did too
This is true for all organizational forms. A company can only reach its maximum potential once all employees and all suppliers and vendors, infrastructure and business environment did too.  

Mantras and Philosophy - the most profound thought for success

SUCCESS

Do what you wholeheartedly love and look for people who love what you do
(It’s a modification of what Confucius said once: “Seek a job you love and you will never work a day in your life”). Success is when you fulfill your own dreams, not what others tell you you should aim for. When you do what you love and fulfill your dreams you will be successful because you will automatically give your best. That way you actually cannot fail.

Mantras and Philosophy - Responsibility

LEADERSHIP

Responsibility is something you won’t be given unless you take it
It’s what I told new team members joining any of my companies. I never liked people asking for more responsibility. They were simply asking for more authority that they apparently did not have on their own due to a lack of other skills.

 Mantras and Philosophy - Future

FUTURE

The future is the only time period we can influence
We can learn a lot from the past, but we cannot change the past. The only time period we can influence is our future. And the further out it is, the better we can influence it. The irony of time is that it doesn’t matter if we can or cannot predict the future – we still can create it. Without that skill, there would be no house, no car, no fridge, no TV, no Internet, no tools and most likely humans would extinct. 

WEALTH

The richest people in the world are entrepreneurs. They share their asset to grow it. Investors hold it to grow it. Everybody else spends it – and loses it
Unfortunately, this has never been taught at school. It’s given to the next generation within wealthy families. Today we need to aim for becoming a global family of Homo Sapiens.

MINDSET

Mindset is your ability to set and manage your mind“.
Our mind is the most powerful instruments in our “Arsenal of Life”. Everything we achieved in the last 300,000 years was based on some people’s imagination and the mindset to just make it happen. Today we know far more about setting and managing our minds. We control our thinking, decide who we let influence us and decide the values we want to consider when we process our thoughts.

COMPETITION

Speed is more important than perfection
The times are long gone when we were competing on product or service quality only. Today, those qualities are a given. Speed in responses, delivery, action and reaction is where we can truly differentiate our businesses. Speed became the most relevant quality to most of our customers. Perfection is the biggest enemy to speed.

CAREER

You’re most successful in your career when helping others to succeed“.
I always found it interesting when people try to grow their career by keeping knowledge close to their chest, or keep others down to better shine themselves. With 26 I learned that sharing knowledge and ideas broadly and helping others to succeed beyond their believe made me to the fastest growing manager at my company, a 75,000 employee US tech giant.

FULFILLMENT

You will never get a reward for taking – but easily for giving
It sounds like a philanthropic aspect. Not really – once we understand to implement that thinking in our businesses, we experience outstanding successes. And on top of all, we can experience a sense of fulfillment. The little free things here and there, free to try, free t use, an extra here and there, a personal note, a helping hand… are the things any business can ‘give’. It still sounds giving with an expectation to get – but if you do it for years it actually changes.

BECOMING RICH

Becoming rich can’t be a goal – but the result of achieving an important goal“.
People, who are focusing on getting rich are all very poor – without exception. Becoming rich is not happening for seeking this easy way of getting there, instead rich people are those who made an enormous effort to bring some improvement to the society. The result of achieving their goals is wealth. 

ABONDANCE

You can become or get what you want, after you decide what it is and don’t change your mind for two years or more“.
Those who know what they want, why they want it and keep the thought highly active over a long period of time – without even wondering how to achieve it – will eventually get there. The best way to handle the mindset, is to remove any logical thoughts, concerns, risks, impossibilities and reasons why it may not happen.

     

STAYING ON TOP

You know you are getting old when you spend more time protecting your assets than risking them
When I saw countries like the USA struggling and on the verge to collapse, I realized that nobody made a substantial mistake. But the system that was created alienated risk-taking and favored protection, alienated open minds and favored conformism, alienated experimentation, and favored strict rules. All set to protect what was achieved. That mantra/rule, equally applies to any organization may it be a country, a company, an association, a family, or an individual.

INFLUENCE

Influence is your ability, attracting people to what matters to you the most“.
Thinking further ahead and deeper like others with the same interest, gives you influence. Combining those deep and wide thinker  around the same topic grows the influence of all of them beyond their own influence. The most influential people are almost always a group of extraordinary people being part of a collective idea and staying in the background.

 

LANGUAGE

Uniting languages to one is the first step in uniting the world“.
My entire life would be radically different if I didn’t have learned English. Without language we can only learn by observation or doing, we cannot learn from the past and we cannot share how we see the future. With the English language, we can reach 1.6 Billion business, people, in roughly 150 countries, with Spanish less than half in about 10 countries, with French, Russian or Portuguese roughly half of Spanish and German, Japanese, Korean… can be considered local languages.

FAILING NATIONS

The wealth of a country is inversely proportional to its level of corruption“.
The wealthiest nations of the ~200 souverain states are those who care about their entire society the most. Their leaders learned that their own wealth depends on the wealth of their nation. Today a worker in Germany is wealthier than any of the German kings in the past – while the wealthiest people in Germany have more than all Kings on earth combined ever had. Corruption is not a way to fill somebody’s pocket but prevent them and all others to become really wealthy.

WAR

War is the surrender of the intellect“.
If someone’s intellectual capability runs out of capacity, they engage in war. And every single citizen is part of that responsibility. War is never initiated but instigated and supported by its nation through war propaganda.

SHARING & BLOGGING

Don’t think about what to write – write what you think”.
During my tenure at the Social Media Academy I noticed how hard people worked to come up with content to share or communicate, that makes sense to others. My own experience taught me that people are more interested in what you think than what you are actually communicating. I began to just write about what I think and no matter how trivial, it became interesting. It’s not the complex scientifically proven method you may talk about but why things matters to you – that people maybe interesting in.

How the learnings turned into mantras
When I learned something important, I did what I always do, reduce it to the max and call it mantras. My Mantras have been documented after I thought about it or applied the thinking over and over again. It helped me reduce my thoughts to one or two sentences to make them much more accessible.

Success, Leadership, and Competition are dedicated to my business life, and all our employees know them.

Fulfillment and Staying on top were created in 2008 and 2010 after I retired and helped others think about their future.

After writing my book “Art of Peace” I reduced a rather complex thought to one sentence, “war is the surrender of the intellect”.