No More Whining (No Más Pálidas) Four Attitudes For Success

We live in a world of organizations. Our physical, relational and spiritual needs—from food to self-actualization—are made possible through organizations with different missions, whether lucrative or not. Organizations are important because their effectiveness propels our overall well being and development. That is why leaders and managers are such key factors. Their main role and social responsibility lies in successfully developing their employees’ potential, generating and directing their energy towards the creation of value.

Since the inception of Xn International, Inc., we have shared a common purpose that drives our work, and has become the main objective of this book: to help Latin American organizations grasp the best management and leadership know-how and use it as the key leverage to raise the organizational effectiveness and, in this way, improve the prosperity of our nations.

As we develop our consultancy practice, we have seen Enrique inspire masses of people with his motivational keynote speeches, which are the root of No Mas Pálidas – Cuatro Actitudes para el Exito.

We can attribute the origin of this book to the fundamental intentions of Xn International, Inc. and Enrique’s speeches. This book has become a reality thanks to Enrique’s formidable work, and the team at Xn Publishing.

Prologue

First of all, allow me to clarify the title of the Enrique Baliño’s book. The slang expression No más Pálidas is only understood by some Spanish speakers—primarily Argentinians and Uruguayans. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t even exist in the Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Doubts. No mas Pálidas loosely refers to "stop talking only about what’s not OK, quit complaining,, stop whining, etc. A "pálida" generally implies a pessimistic and negative attitude. To combat this attitude, my countryman Enrique Baliño has worked along with writer and journalist Carlos Pacheco to bring you this book.

The book’s subtitle, however, is fairly clear: Four Attitudes for Success. Baliño firmly believes that success requires a positive attitude—the famous positive thinking—which I myself have heard countless times in the United States, where I lived for almost 20 years, and where our beloved author has accomplished much of his career success at IBM. It was during this time that he learned one of the most revealing quotes from one of Disney World’s CEOs. When asked by a press reporter When does excellence start, and when does it end? he cleverly responded That’s easy. It starts every single day, and it never ends.

With this motivation (the search for excellence), Baliño brings us his written work, which aims to improve the organizational state of the art in Uruguay and Latin America. The book starts with the proposition that success is a journey, and not a destination, and immediately invites us to adopt four attitudes:

* Positive

* Team

* Continuous Improvement

* Responsibility

Baliño associates these four attitudes with the future, strength, evolution, and the feeling of ownership- being one’s boss, being committed to the job you are responsible for, respectively.

According to Baliño, the core of the teachings in No mas Pálidas stem from an intense work session he had in 1986, just a few months before returning to Uruguay after working in the United States. Seeing his workgroup’s inefficiency and subpar performance, he radically shifts the working environment to, among other things, double sales in just four years.

But our author’s determination doesn’t end in business ambition. After his success in IBM, he returns to his home country and decides to invest in a telecommunications company, becomes involved in the Information Society Program, and ultimately attempts to foster education and entrepreneurship in young minds. To accomplish this, he surrounds himself with young entrepreneurs and teaches them not just to be optimistic, but what he believes is much more important: a positive mentality. The future, he tells them lies in one’s own hands, not in someone else’s.

I must express how much I share this determination––I have always believed in the value of education, and overall, on the education of our children and young adults. I must also add that I am reading this book in 2010, which marks the 20th Iberoamerican Summit of Chiefs of State and Government in Mar del Plata, Argentina, precisely under the motto Education for Social Inclusion.

The Secretaría General Iberoamericana, which I am honored to lead, and which is, among other things, an institution to support these summits, celebrates all work that focuses on education. Because, in the end, it is the most significant effort to develop a better world; to make our young men and women become the Bicentennial generation; that is, the most educated and developed generation in our history as a community.

To achieve this, the attitudes proposed by Enrique Baliño and Carlos Pacheco are essential. They are valuable tools to face the ups and downs of our ever-changing world. Our author frequently quotes Charles Darwin who said, it is not the strongest nor the most intelligent species that survives, rather than the one that can more quickly adapt to change.

I believe Baliño’s work, which stems from personal experience, will serve as a stepping stone for younger generations on how to tackle our country’s challenging future with a positive spirit.

Enrique V. Iglesias

General Iberoamerican Secretary

About this Book

The content of "No mas Pálidas. Cuatro Actitudes para el Exito" was developed after many years of attempting to shape the organizational culture of the teams that I had the honor of managing. After investigating and studying management, leadership and organizational change, and observing many people that I had the chance to work with, I prepared a speech in which I wanted to summarize the necessary conditions to meet the increasingly challenging goals we faced.

The material of the speech grew to the point that it became a conference that I dictated rigorously once every trimester to new employees. It became part of our induction program; a way of creating and fostering our company culture. We called this meeting kickoff. This session would begin with my conference and would follow with presentations from our managers, who would describe all the areas of the company. I sharply remember telling new employees that we were in the business of helping customers achieve their goals through technology solutions, and that technology would change every single minute. The role of the managers that would present after my speech would tell them to get used to change—or even better, to provoke change. But that was not my mission at that session. Instead, I would tell them about those things that were not going to change: the values and attitudes we needed to demonstrate if we wanted to be successful.

I later was invited in many opportunities to give that speech to other companies and nonprofit organizations, young entrepreneurs, etc., both in Uruguay and abroad. In 2009 I was convinced by writer-journalist Carlos Pacheco, and the Xn team, to develop my ideas into a book.

The project was approved by Xn Publishing, the contents and publishing division of Xn Partners, and soon a dedicated team was appointed to complete it.

Carlos Pacheco, Julio Martinez, Magdalena Ruiz, Fabian Baliño, and Diego Blixen formed the team that made this publication a reality.

Special recognition goes to Carlos, who, years before the idea even existed, offered to write down the contents of my speeches, believing they needed more diffusion.

To Fabián, who helped us with a large part of the research, Magdalena in the beginning and Diego in the latter stages, who made the publication of this book a possibility.

This English version was possible thanks to several friends who took valuable personal time to review, comment and suggest improvements to the first version.

First of all, Diego Riet, who was the first to ask me to translate it into English. Diego, who works for Microsoft and lives in Seattle, Washington, had read the Spanish version, and told me that the book had had an important influence in his professional career. He offered himself to help me in any way to have the English version completed. Diego asked Jeannie Peha who, as a native English speaker, put her personal touch. Silvia Evia, who I had the pleasure to work with for many years and was one of the great examples of the attitudes described in this book is a passionate reader and knows me very well, so she was able to add a lot of value.

And finally, a very, very special thanks go to Fernando Baliño who took the job of making the full original translation which was a huge task. Since he knows me very well, he knew exactly the message I was trying to convey. He worked around Spanish expressions that are very difficult to translate to English. He even rewrote and improved certain parts. He also contributed re-designing the new cover. So, my most profound gratefulness to him.

Enrique Baliño

Part One

Success is a journey, not a destination

Of the 25 most important industrial companies in the United States at the beginning of the 1900s, only two remain today.

Thomas Watson, Jr. in his book A Business and Its Beliefs: The Ideas That Helped Build IBM. Thomas Watson, Jr. was president of IBM between 1952 and 1971.

No More Palids

It was many years ago, but I remember it as if it were today. We’ve all had nights with no sleep, and we know what that means. It was one of those nights.

In the 1980s, I was facing a very important moment in my career as an IBM executive. A little before that, I had been assigned a position in White Plains, New York (IBM Latin America Headquarters), where I had worked with intensity and learned a lot. Or at least that is what I thought.

I came back to Uruguay in 1986. I had been promoted to Marketing Manager––a position higher than the one I had before I left. I had started the year with a commitment to give my all. I had listened, supported, and helped the members of my team in all their problems. I was motivated and tried to motivate the members of my team––my office door was always open, and everyone was allowed to speak with me when they wished.

But after my first year I hadn’t accomplished any of my objectives. My performance had been a disaster. I didn’t need a year-end performance evaluation to know I had failed. I also didn’t need to speak with my boss to remind me.

I thought long and hard about my failure. I had worked hard, been responsible, listened to everybody, and knew every detail about the company, yet, everything had gone wrong. What had I done wrong? What had I missed?

I was determined to change the situation in a radical way. I called for a team meeting and said, I want to make a plan to double the sales of the company in the next four years. The answer from the audience was that’s impossible.

That meeting was one of the most fruitful, yet difficult ones of my life. I have spent many nights without sleeping. That was one of them, and in the late hours of the night, I confirmed something that I had been thinking about for quite a while. I had failed because I had spent the entire year listening to problems, which, in their majority, had no solution. I had been leading an organization that focused its energy on problems, as opposed to focusing on solutions and opportunities. I had led an organization whose only response towards new ideas and ambitious challenges was, that’s not possible.

I like to play the guitar. That night I composed a song in which I summarized briefly––very briefly––what would come to be my work motto in my upcoming years. It was called "No more palids, or No mas Pálidas. In Uruguay we say pálidas when we speak of something that is always wrong, to finding a problem with every idea or solution, to the sport" of