Inmates and Soul Searching

As I sit here in the friendly confines of my corridor room I'm reflecting on what was another interesting week in Lund. The election dominated the news and conversation of my day to day as everyone seemed to request a forecast of the next 4 years. When asked, I gave a bipartisan canned response of 'I think it's a positive change for Americans as well as our friends around the globe." Other key events of my week included a couple of highly insightful conversations around carbon markets and their place as an economic driver for development in emerging societies. I met a wonderful gentleman here at Lund who most recently worked for Eco-Securities on projects in South America. It's his vision, similar to mine, to look at the role micro projects can play in the larger (soon to be ratified) global carbon market. Some of you will remember my obsessive harping of fly ash bricks...well, this is round two in that fight. And last but not least, the big news out of Stockholm is sourced by one of my new favorite publications The Monocle, in which an article describes a newly formed arrangement between graduating fashion design students at Beckman's College of Design in Stockholm and the roughly 260 female inmates in Sweden that have a new fashion line to look forward to. Apparently the university students have been commisioned to design a more functional and flattering line of inmate apparel that will allow women in the system to secure their identity while being held in the system.


I've begun thinking about the future of my studies here at Lund. The semester has about a month left before we resign for our winter break. After we resume classes, post new year, it will be a fire storm of action leading up to our commencement in June. Not a lot of time in the grand scheme of things. There are days when I feel like I have a clear picture of the next steps in life...there are others where I'm utterly confused. I've identified a handful of things that I once thought I would be great at, that I now know would never be dynamic enough to stimulate my microscopic attention span. On the other hand, areas which I never once considered seem to be emerging as interesting and thought provoking.


I recently watched an online program about our subconscious. The research presented within the show illustrated that we as humans really are agents who act in a long series of patters. Thus the phrase, you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Whether it's what detergent we buy, or what job we take, our past actions in our lives can indicate our likelihood of either making that decision in the first place, or maintaining that decision in the long run. The lead researcher on the program posed an argument that if we could identify some of these patterns within our lives we could make better choices that have better long term results. So for me, I thought back in time to identify memorable items and events that may hold the secret code to what the hell I'm suppose to do after grad school....here is a short list of what I came up with and some analysis around each.

Creativity & Innovation - Legos were a favorite toy of mine. These little building blocks are a wonderful way to imagine and create a world that extends from your mind to the physical realm in which we live. They provide immediate feedback (and gratification) as you build. I had other toys as a child, but none that I really remember spending as much time with.

Projects - For some reason I was always very good at putting together puzzles. I would often put them together without turning all the pieces over, and I never followed the age old tradition of 'edges first'. Despite my usually non-existent attention span, I would labor for hours undistracted over the small pieces in front of me. I ruined endless holiday family gatherings by rushing to the puzzle table (after someone else took the time to turn all the pieces right side up) assembling large chunks of it as quickly as possible (infringing on others territories) and going so far as to hide a single piece in my pocket so that I could conclude the exercise by inserting the final piece and raising my hands in victory while sashaying to the kitchen in search of some more cheese log. Oh, and it was a cold day in hell when I actually stuck around long enough to participate in 'cleaning it up' by putting the pieces back in the box. Once it was done...I was done.

Negotiations - a good day for me in the summer time when we were out of school was when I could get my sister to enter into some sort of negotiation with me. This usually revolved around some chore list that our mother had left for us. I could typically persuade her to enter into legally binding arrangements that were both complex and highly advantageous to my desires....the one fatal flaw of these contracts was the executive veto that could be executed by our parents.

Arbitrage & Value Identification - there's not an MBA grad from any top ivy league school that can sit down with a copy of the Thrifty Nickel (local classified newspaper), read an ad for a dozen free chickens and immediately conclude the profit potential of such an item, distribution channels available to them, current selling price of live chickens in the broad market and inventory costs associated with holding said item; without doing any research ahead of time. Whether it be chickens, appliances, or other inanimate objects I've always had a certain knack for noticing things that are mis-priced.

Sales - the best job I've ever had in my life was selling Christmas trees in the winter. The unfortunate aspect of this higher calling is the seasonality. There was nothing more satisfying than concluding on a market equilibrium (price) that a buyer was willing to pay for an object that is both dead and soon to become a fire hazard that will jeopardize their families safety throughout the seasonal festival. My one fatal flaw in sales is my inner 'softie' which means I'm pretty much a push over when it comes to 'driving a hard bargain'. For example, if a family came in that looked a bit hard on their luck it really wasn't in my nature to extract top dollar for the balsam fir they selected. Instead I'd give them a steep discount moving the product at a price barely over cost. I'd encourage the family to invest the savings in a larger frozen turkey and an extra quart of egg nog. We sold more trees (at a lower cost), there was a rise in grocer sales of large-extra large turkeys, and I slept better at night.....republicans would call that socialism.

So, what's one to conclude from such exercise? Well, for me I think the above self check indicates that I should try to find a gig that is: project based and requires problem solving within an innovative field (or product) where value is not being appropriately calculated by the overall market. It should include negotiations that create an advantaged position on behalf of our interests, while requiring the use of sales skills to do so....at the same time keeping a conscious eye towards less fortunate actors in the space we operate to ensure that everyone wins. If I could somehow include a bow saw and smell like rich pine forests when I returned home each night...well, all the better.