Come on, give me the chills

Thoughts about changing, life, and whatever comes to mind.

Author: Andrea Grassi

  • how to make decisions in a company

    How does the decision making progress change in a company?

    Usually it’s because there are different opinions.
    If the vision is strong those opinions can lead to a more unified view on which decisions are good, but if you realize that you have different take on the subject, what are you left with?

    You have to confirm, ask, and act.

    2 steps more, because before you would have took action immediately.
    I feel a bit sad about this, because we, as human, have a lot of insight to offer.

    When things change and you’re left to confirm and ask for permission, then the whole process is way more complicated, the “agile” company isn’t more agile unless the people in charge of taking those decisions are agile themselves.

    My take is that this is how bureaucracy was born. To control and align different opinions.
    To allow no interpretation nor improvisation.

    It is sad if you have some personal involvement in the project, but if your views are so different then there’s no sadness in parting ways.

  • slavery still exists

    We all think slavery is bad, right? And I agree.

    Many violent kind of slavery are unacceptable.
    But are we considering all the cases?

    In the Etruscan civilization the so-called slaves were very precious and they were all treated well.
    Some of the slaves were also beautiful, and they were considered something important in society.

    So, what about the Etruscan civilization? How can we define those slaves?
    I can surely say they were working to serve their master and they got food and help from him/her.
    They served their master through helping him/her in the daily task.

    Now let’s talk about services and virtual assistant.
    What they do is to help people with some daily task they prefer not to handle.

    It’s not slavery, we pay for the service and we expect the service to be done in the constraints we agreed upon.

    But is that far from slavery? From the Etruscan slavery?
    I surely didn’t live at those times but I think we’re not that far.

  • sacred times

    Yesterday I was in a church were a children got baptized.
    What I loved about this was the deep faith and how the priest and the people had such a strong respect and faith.

    This is not common. Religions, god, faith, are often a commodity.
    We use them in the dark times and forget them in the good times, but this wasn’t the case.

    When you see people having so much faith without being blind, a faith that’s human and heavenly, then you realize the value of those sacred moments.

  • how do you know what’s normal?

    Before the printed paper, people wouldn’t know that they had vision problems, because they couldn’t/wouldn’t  read, thus it was impossible for them to diagnose such issue.

    When the first books and newspapers came out, the population instantly knew there was something wrong with their sight.
    Not every one, but some did.

    Up until then, it was normal.
    For everyone suffering from vision problems it was normal to see like that, because they couldn’t knew what was the baseline.

    Sometimes we face the same problem everyday. It’s not a matter of tech evolution, but it also depends on how we listen to our body.

    For example: Do you think you’re breathing correctly or not? What if there’s something missing and you’re not breathing 100%?

    It’s easy to diagnose a big problem, but the small ones? They are often unnoticed because we think it’s the baseline, the normal thing, the usual.

    In fact, aside from analyzing ourselves every day with tools, we can’t really know what’s normal and what’s not regarding our health status unless an evident problem arise.

  • what’s the point of keeping memories?

    Today I discovered that many people like Snapchat, and one of the distinctive feature it has is that nothing is stored. Everything is lost within 24hours.

    Just like in real life, you lose the memory unless you personally recall it.

    This got me thinking. What was the point of keeping memories?
    It was to not forget?

    I think so, but I’m somewhat concerned about that small part of us that wants some melancholia right away, by looking at old photos and remembering the old times.

    We are not meant to live in the past.