Weekly insights on how to perform when it matters | High-stakes decisions. Real situations. No BS. | 👇JOIN +2k readers 👇
Believe it or not, you're alone
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Having conversation with people in their sixties and over gives you a different perspective to what’s the world today. Those people are my parents. Probably your parents too. Those people still shape our minds and thinking. And we perpetuate that mindset, at least, partially, in our children. Our parents lived a very different world. They could expect their companies to take care of them, or the states. Today companies can’t do that. The states are broke. The average life of a company in the 1950s was just over 60 years. Today it is less than 20 years. In 10-15 years time, this will be below 10… Don’t look at the debt of the states in the 50s and today, or you’ll feel sick. Our parents lived in a world where you could thrive in the corporate ladder. Today, no matter how high you are, that’s the path to fear and insecurity. Your brain is your only weapon. And trust me. You’re alone. No company, no state will save you. Just your brain. And for your brain to thrive, it needs to be filled with knowledge and the feeling of empowerment. Then, it needs do, do and do, to keep learning, and your freedom developing. You can read some of that path in the stories I tell below.
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Vicente Valencia
Weekly insights on how to perform when it matters | High-stakes decisions. Real situations. No BS. | 👇JOIN +2k readers 👇
Canada. Mid-2010s. Milton–Madison Bridge Not a PPP, but a serious piece of infrastructure. Old steel truss bridge. Built in 1929. As an engineer… I love it. Around 13,000 vehicles per day. But… like all old bridges… It was structurally done. Fatigue. Corrosion. Narrow lanes. No shoulders. A bad accident waiting to happen. So they decided to replace it. Nothing new. But… they chose a method most people would avoid. Slide-In Bridge Construction or SIBC The idea is brilliant. Build the entire...
I’m reviewing a project right now. A mess. Close to failure. Fixing situations like this… is my bread and butter. But the real question is not: “How do we get out of this sh*t?” It’s: “How did we end up here… again?” Because this is not random. Every country has it. Every sector repeats it. And no… it’s not because people are stupid. Governments hire smart people. Companies bring top talent. Advisors look impressive on paper. And still… Same problems. Same patterns. Same endings. So what’s...
October 1962. A room in Washington. A few men in suits. Coffee. Cigarettes. Maps of Cuba. What can go wrong? Welcome to the Cuban Missile Crisis. With the permission of any meeting between Trump with his advisors, the most dangerous meeting in modern history. The problem? The Soviets had possibly placed nuclear missiles in Cuba. 13 days to decide. Simple, right? Destroy the sites. Show strength. Win. That’s what half the room wanted. The other half? “Let’s not start World War III on a Tuesday...