I talk about Personal Growth, Management, Infrastructure and More | 👇JOIN +2k readers 👇
If you think that this is impossible today, you’re...
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You’ve probably heard about a space ship hitting badly Venus or Mars, I don’t remember, because of miscalculations, right? Well, that’s everywhere. When you do your taxes, when you calculate your retirement or when you receive an inheritance. All are miscalculation errors. In construction, there are everywhere. In 1970, during the construction of the Kadena Air Base Bridge in Okinawa, Japan, engineers made a slight miscalculation. As usual… Two teams started building from opposite sides of the river, expecting to meet perfectly in the middle. But when they finally got close... one side was 2 meters higher than the other! I mean… not 1 cm, not 2 cm, not 10 cm… just 2 meters. The error? One team had used metric measurements, while the other worked in imperial units. If you think that this is impossible today, you’re absolutely wrong. If you don’t believe me, check this list of lessons learnt from my last project.
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Vicente Valencia
I talk about Personal Growth, Management, Infrastructure and More | 👇JOIN +2k readers 👇
That’s how many countries approach infrastructure. Big pipeline. Big announcements. Zero learning. Norway did the opposite. Smart those guys. In the early 2000s, they tested PPPs with just three projects: E39 Klett–Bårdshaug (opened 2005) E39 Lyngdal–Flekkefjord (opened 2006) E18 Grimstad–Kristiansand (opened 2009) That’s it. Three shots. Not fifteen. Not a political fireworks show. A controlled experiment. Same model. Same timeframe. Comparable results. And guess what? They delivered. On...
A few days ago, I had a big argument with my team in Panama. They had spent almost 3 weeks trying to convince a client to change banks for her mortgage. It was a no-brainer.Lower interest rates.Lower fees. They showed her, over and over again, different scenarios… all in vain. You may wonder how, after 2 or 3 days of trying, they kept pushing. She is a public servant.And the team was trying to convince her to move from a government-owned bank to a fully private one. I repeat.Public servant....
The French writer and poet Antoine de Saint-Exupéry once said: “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add… but when there is nothing left to take away.” And yet… People still have 10-line disclaimers in their email signatures. Or worse… the “please don’t print this email” line. I’ve reviewed bids where they were one step away from including the name and breed of the bid manager’s dog. Horror vacui. Or just… “just in case”. Every extra word that doesn’t serve a purpose?...