I only have one

"Would you be interested in acting in public office or politics?" they asked me at a lively dinner, while I gave my enthusiastic opinion on contemporary geopolitical and economic issues. 

To justify my negative answer, I shared a story I once heard from Marcos Lutz, the great executive former president of the Ultra and Cosan groups. Rubens Ometto, Cosan's main shareholder, asked Lutz why he had stepped down as CEO of the group, since the relationship between the two was very good and the group offered interesting challenges.

"Rubens, if I had three or four lives, one of them I would certainly dedicate entirely to the Cosan group. The problem is that I only have one."

Luciano Siani Pires

Linkedin post. May 2025

Original in Portuguese: “Você teria interesse em atuar em cargos públicos ou na política?”, me perguntaram num jantar animado, enquanto eu opinava entusiasmado sobre temas geopolíticos e econômicos contemporâneos. 

Para justificar minha resposta negativa, compartilhei uma história que ouvi certa vez de Marcos Lutz, o grande executivo ex-presidente dos grupos Ultra e Cosan. Rubens Ometto, principal acionista da Cosan, perguntou a Lutz por que havia deixado o cargo de CEO do grupo, uma vez que a relação entre os dois era muito boa e que o grupo oferecia desafios interessantes.

“Rubens, se eu tivesse três ou quatro vidas, uma delas eu certamente dedicaria inteiramente ao grupo Cosan. O problema é que eu só tenho uma”.

i do things that give me energy

How often do you come home exhausted from work, as if all the energy has been drained right out of you? How do you feel about performing the rest of your day? Do you have enough energy to give to your spouse, your kids, or your hobbies? 

Probably not. When you're feeling drained, it's hard to muster up the energy even to do the things that you love. I know because I talk to people like this every time I deliver a keynote. Afterward, a few people will always come up to me and say they wish they had my energy. Then they'll ask where it all comes from.

My answer is simple: I do things that give me energy.

Jesse Cole

Fans First: Change The Game, Break the Rules & Create an Unforgettable Experience by Jesse Cole. Lioncrest. 2022.

excessive and unproductive meetings

Excessive and unproductive meetings can lower job satisfaction for several reasons. First, they generally increase fatigue as well as our subjective sense of our workload. You have probably experienced a day of meetings after which you are exhausted and haven’t accomplished much—but where you have gotten a bunch of new assignments. Second, people tend to engage in “surface acting” (faking emotions that are deemed appropriate) during work meetings, which is emotionally draining and correlated with the intention to quit. Finally, researchers have found that the strongest predictor of meeting effectiveness is active involvement by the participants. If you are asking yourself, “Why am I here?” you are not likely to think that the meeting is a good use of your time—which is obviously bad for your work satisfaction.

Arthur C. Brooks

"Meetings are Miserable," The Atlantic. November 17, 2022

from "how high?" to "why?"

The evolution from the traditional values of control, predictability and consistency - values that made change relatively simple to implement - to the new values focused on accountability, ownership and empowerment has made the implementation of top-down business change more difficult. 

...These... employees now question and resist new change initiatives. The response of the employee has shifted from "yes, sir" to "why are we doing that?" If your employees have embraced some or all of these new values, change management is not an option for successful change, it is a requirement. 

Jeffrey M. Hiatt & Timothy J. Creasey

Change Management: The People Side of Change, by Jeffrey M. Hiatt & Timothy J. Creasey Prosci Inc. 2012. P.26,27

two preferred senders of change messages

Based on Prosci's change management research report with 650 participants, employees prefer two primary senders of change messages. Not surprisingly, they also prefer specific message content from each of these senders. Immediate supervisors are the preferred senders of messages related to personal impact including:

• How does this impact me? 
• How does this impact our group?
• How will this change my day-to-day responsibilities?

When it comes to personal issues, receivers want to hear from someone they know and work with regularly, namely their supervisor. 

CROs or executive leaders are the preferred senders of messages related to business issues and opportunities including: 

• What are the business reasons for this change?
• How does this change align with our vision and strategy? 
• What are the risks if we do not change?

When it comes to business issues and why the change is needed, receivers want to hear from the person in charge. 

Jeffrey M. Hiatt & Timothy J. Creasey

Change Management: The People Side of Change, by Jeffrey M. Hiatt & Timothy J. Creasey Prosci Inc. 2012. P.18, 19

what’s the ROI on that?

This hard truth is one most IT leaders miss, according to Uzi Dvir, global CIO at digital adoption platform WalkMe. In his experience, Dvir says, fewer than 5% of CIOs spend any time talking about business outcomes or measuring the business outcomes created by the technology they deploy.

“The CIOs I speak with often only look at cost,” Anderson says. “And then they’re challenged with, ‘What’s the ROI?’” That’s a question CIOs often can’t answer, he says. Back when he was in a different CIO role years ago, he was rolling out some automation systems. “The finance group would say, ‘What’s the ROI on that?’ We would say, ‘We’ve got this infrastructure, this application, the training, and the rollout. There is no ROI.’”

Today’s CIOs can’t afford to make that mistake. “It’s important to measure business outcomes, not just technology,” says Damon Venger, CIO at CompuCom, a managed services provider based in Boca Raton, Fla. “You implement a new piece of software. You completed the project, it’s live and has 10,000 users. You declare victory because it’s done. But if the business outcomes are not there, it’s not a success.” And that means business and IT are in disagreement, he says. “IT says success; business says failure.”

Uzi Dvir

"7 hard truths of business-IT alignment," by Minda Zetlin. CIO. October 31, 2022

four-question meeting process

Well-organized meetings create fresh thinking and enable better decisions. No bystanders allowed. To accomplish this, Columbia Business School professor Christopher Frank, co-author of Decisions Over Decimals: Striking the Balance Between Intuition and Information, shares a quick four-question process.

1. What is the purpose -- inform or compel?
2. What is the issue in seven words or fewer?
3. Who has already weighed in and what did they have to say?
4. What could surprise me in this meeting?

...The ideal meeting begins before anyone meets. The next time you receive an invite, asking these four questions will save time and enable you to manage the fire hose of requests.

Marcel Schwantes

"Tired of Too Many Meetings? This Brilliant 4-Question Meeting May Be Your Solution: The ideal meeting begins before anyone meets." Inc.com. October 10, 2022

set your priorities by design

“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.” -  Viktor Frankl

The great and unfortunate reality of life is there are vastly more things expected of us, asked of us, and hoped for by us than we can possibly do with our limited time and resources. 

It is tempting to prioritize everything. But when we do this, we end up having no priorities. Instead, we find ourselves prioritizing whatever is in front of us.

This undisciplined approach leads to our priorities being set by default. The antidote, of course, is to set your priorities by design. 

Here are three steps (and the questions to ask) that can help you when you are trying to prioritize. They work when applied to your business, your career, or your family:

1. Realize I can’t do everything. (What’s Important to me?)
2. Focus on areas where I can do the most good. (Where will my effort be best spent?) 
3. List possible actions I can take that will make a difference. (What can I do?)

When we focus on just a few important things, our effort makes a bigger difference and is more meaningful. 

Greg McKeown

1 Minute Wednesday. October 5, 2022

they had the credo

How Johnson & Johnson bounced back from the tragic cyanide murder scandal in 1982. 

At the time Johnson & Johnson owned 37 percent of the market and Tylenol was their most profitable product. Then reports surfaced that seven people had died after taking Tylenol. It was later discovered that these bottles had been tampered with. How should Johnson & Johnson respond?

The question was a complicated one. Was their primary responsibility to ensure the safety of their customers by immediately pulling all Tylenol products off drugstore shelves? Was their first priority to do PR damage control to keep shareholders from dumping their stock? Or was it their duty to console and compensate the families of the victims first and foremost? 

Fortunately for them they had the Credo: a statement written in 1943 by then chairman Robert Wood Johnson that is literally carved in stone at Johnson & Johnson headquarters. Unlike most corporate mission statements, the Credo actually lists the constituents of the company in priority order. Customers are first; shareholders are last. 

As a result, Johnson & Johnson swiftly decided to recall all Tylenol, even though it would have a massive impact (to the tune of $100 million, according to some reports) on their bottom line. The safety of customers or $100 million? Not an easy decision. But the Credo enabled a clearer sense of what was most essential. It enabled the tough trade-off to be made.

Greg McKeown

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. Crown/Archetype. 2020. p.53,54

deliberate about the trade-offs

I once attended an event where Herb [Kelleher, CEO of Southwest Airlines] was interviewed about his business strategy. It was a great talk in many ways, but when he began to talk about how deliberate he was about the trade-offs he had made at Southwest, my ears perked up. Rather than try to fly to every destination, they had deliberately chosen to offer only point-to-point flights. Instead of jacking up prices to cover the cost of meals, he decided they would serve none. Instead of assigning seats in advance, they would let people choose them as they got on the plane. Instead of upselling their passengers on glitzy first-class service, they offered only coach. These trade-offs weren't made by default but by design. Each and every one was made as part of a deliberate strategy to keep costs down. Did he run the risk of alienating customers who wanted the broader range of destinations, the choice to purchase overpriced meals, and so forth? Yes, but Kelleher was totally clear about what the company was - a low-cost airline - and what they were not. And his trade-offs reflected as much. 

It was an example of his Essentialist thinking at work when he said: "You have to look at every opportunity and say, 'Well, no... I'm sorry, We're not going to do a thousand different things that really won't contribute much to the end result we are trying to achieve."

Greg McKeown

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. Crown/Archetype. 2020. p.49,50

wild and precious life

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life? 

Mary Oliver

Poem: The Summer Day by Mary Oliver. As found in Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. Crown/Archetype. 2020. p.27

by design, not by default

The way of the Essentialist means living by design, not by default. Instead of making choices reactively, the Essentialist deliberately distinguishes the vital few from the trivial many, eliminates the nonessentials, and then removes obstacles so the essential things have clear, smooth passage. In other words, Essentialism is a disciplined, systematic approach for determining where our highest point of contribution lies, then making execution of those things almost effortless. 

Greg McKeown 

Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. Crown/Archetype. 2020. p.7

we've got that man to get to the moon

 

The U.S. was the first country to put a person on the moon when Neil Armstrong bounded from the Apollo 11 staircase onto the lunar surface on July 20, 1969. I was drawn to this case after reading a book in which several NASA employees attested to feeling strongly connected to the organization's goals an aspirations - a perception many said they had never experienced outside of this period at NASA... 

James McLane, chief of NASA Space Environment, said, "I can remember when no matter what came along, we used to say to each other, 'We've got to get that man on the Moon,' and mean it. We really meant it, you know..."

Flight director Gene Kranz exclaimed, "We are going to write the history books and we're going to be the team that takes an American to the moon..."

Lola Parker (a secretary) noted, "I don't know of anybody who was a clock puncher. No matter what role they played, that was in the back of their mind: we've got that man to get to the moon..."

Another telling example was that of Charlie Mars. As an electrical engineer, he was far removed from landing on the moon in an objective sense, yet he identified his actions as if he was going to the moon: "One of the things we had was a common goal; and we all realized that we were into something that was one of the few things in history that was going to stand out over the years. 'We're going to the Moon. We're putting a man on the moon!...'"

James Jaaz said that despite working in low-status roles long before the moon landing - including as a "data runner" and an "extra body" who ran errands - he felt a personal connection to NASA's core objective, and he spoke as if everyday actions represented the ongoing achievement of landing on the moon: "Being a 'data runner' was a great experience... I shared... the overwhelming sense of accomplishment felt by my co-workers. I believed that landing on the Moon was what NASA did and was proud to be a part of it..." 

When astronaut Scott Carpenter was asked in an interview to discuss orbital flight and control systems, he responded in a way suggesting that he did not construe his work in terms of these everyday actions. Instead, echoing his belief that the moon was a "high purpose"..., he described his work in terms of the aspiration that the moon stood for: "We... continue to expand our knowledge of the universe, hopefully for the benefit of all mankind..."

Notably, the construal of day-to-day work as "going to the moon" was not limited to astronauts and engineers but extended to employees at all levels - including secretaries and interns. This reality echoes a legend in which Kennedy, touring NASA headquarters, encountered a custodian mopping the floors. Kennedy asked the employee, "Why are you working so late?" The custodian responded, "Because I'm not mopping the floors, I'm putting a man on the moon."

"I'm Not Mopping the Floors, I'm Putting a Man on the Moon": How NASA Leaders Enhanced the Meaningfulness of Work by Changing the Meaning of Work. by Andrew M. Carton. Administrative Science Quarterly. 2018. Vol. 63(2)323-369

the quest for meaningful work

The quest for meaningful work is a central and defining feature of organizational life. For decades, employees have reported that the meaningfulness of work - the perception that daily responsibilities have broader significance - is more important than any other occupational feature, including income, job security, and the opportunity for career advancement. When day-to-day activities are marked by a deep sense of significance, individuals are poised not only to thrive but to weather the most daunting elements of employment, including challenging tasks, low wages, and stigmatized work. Likewise, the absence of meaningfulness has powerful ramifications, as one of the primary reasons employees disengage from their work is because it lacks significance.

"I'm Not Mopping the Floors, I'm Putting a Man on the Moon": How NASA Leaders Enhanced the Meaningfulness of Work by Changing the Meaning of Work. by Andrew M. Carton. Administrative Science Quarterly. 2018. Vol. 63(2)323-369

everything is a teacher

When we reexamine what we really want, we realize that everything that happens in our lives — every misfortune, every slight, every loss, and also every joy, every surprise, every happy accident — is a teacher, and life is a giant classroom. That’s the foundation of wisdom that spiritual teachers, poets, and philosophers throughout history have given expression to — from the Bible’s “Not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without God knowing it” to Rilke’s “Perhaps all the dragons of our life are princesses, who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.” My favorite expression of wisdom — one that I keep laminated in my wallet — is by Marcus Aurelius: “True understanding is to see the events of life in this way: “You are here for my benefit, though rumor paints you otherwise.” And everything is turned to one’s advantage when he greets a situation like this: You are the very thing I was looking for. Truly whatever arises in life is the right material to bring about your growth and the growth of those around you. This, in a word, is art — and this art called “life” is a practice suitable to both men and gods. Everything contains some special purpose and a hidden blessing; what then could be strange or arduous when all of life is here to greet you like an old and faithful friend?”

Arianna Huffington

"Why We Need Wisdom More Than Ever," by Arianna Huffington. Thrive Global. November 30, 2016. Excerpt from Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder pp. 116–130. As found in 2022 Great Quotes From Great Leaders Boxed Calendar: 365 Inspirational Quotes From Leaders Who Shaped the World.

who we truly are

What I learned through it is that we are not on this earth to accumulate victories, or trophies, or experiences, or even to avoid failures, but to be whittled and sandpapered down until what’s left is who we truly are. This is the only way we can find purpose in pain and loss, and the only way to keep returning to gratitude and grace.

Arianna Huffington

"Why We Need Wisdom More Than Ever," by Arianna Huffington. Thrive Global. November 30, 2016. Excerpt from Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder pp. 116–130. As found in 2022 Great Quotes From Great Leaders Boxed Calendar: 365 Inspirational Quotes From Leaders Who Shaped the World.

stages of culture

Stages of culture: Suffer -> Survive -> Thrive

Marcella Bremer

Suffer, survive or thrive in organizational culture? - Leadership & Change Magazine
 

like what you do

Do your best. But like it! Like what you do and then you will do your best. If you don’t like it, shame on you.

Katherine Johnson

"Katherine Johnson (1918-2020): Former NASA Research Mathematician," NASA. As found in 2022 Great Quotes From Great Leaders Boxed Calendar: 365 Inspirational Quotes From Leaders Who Shaped the World.

I found what I loved

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents’ garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down — that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world’s first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

Steve Jobs

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says: This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005. Stanford News. 

regularly scheduled meetings

Regularly scheduled meetings (staff meetings, progress report meetings, and sales meetings) sometimes seem to be called out of habit or sense of duty rather than need. They’re valuable not only for the information they allow people to share but also for the face time they offer. However, their importance doesn’t necessarily make them interesting. Meeting with the same people in the same room every week to discuss the same topics can get boring, resulting in many empty chairs – and a lack of enthusiasm among the remaining attendees. Here are some ways to keep your regular meetings fresh – and attendance high.

• Regularly review the meeting’s purpose
• Solicit agenda items from the group in advance
• Cancel when there is no reason to meet
• Rotate leadership of the meeting

Martha Craumer

“Give Your Standing Meetings a Makeover,” adapted from the “The Effective Meeting: A Checklist for Success,” Harvard Management Communication Letter. March 2001. As quoted in HBR Guide to Making Every Meeting Matter. Harvard Business Review Press. 2016.