I have had the opportunity to work at several large, global companies, and aside from experiencing new cultures and locales the most interesting thing about this work is the relationship between a foreign office and the company's parent location. Foreign offices often seem to have the attitude of the underdog in a prize fight. They see the home office as soft: overly moneyed, undertrained and basking in the glory of past accomplishments. Like the underdog, many foreign offices "train" harder, striving to do more with fewer resources all in the name of showing up the home office.
 
While this competition defines the existence of many aspects of the foreign office, it often goes unnoticed by the home office, much to its detriment. Many of the foreign subsidiaries I have worked with are also underdogs in their markets, and have developed everything from new marketing programs to streamlined operational practices, all aimed at dethroning entrenched competitors and showing up the home office. Rather than ignoring the business units out in that mercurial entity known as "the field," see if you can exploit the strategies and tactics they have developed. These practices may be applicable in other foreign markets, or may turbo charge a stagnating home office.
 
If you work in one of those foreign offices, do not hesitate to ignite a competitive fire with your home office counterparts. A friendly bit of competition serves as a way to cross-pollinate superior ways of doing business as either side wonders how the other pulled of a particularly insightful maneuver.

My grandfather will be 96 years old this month, and despite his age he is still sharp as a tack. He continues to play golf, and frequently attends dinner dances, where he recently mentioned he sat at a table with "a bunch of younger guys" (those "younger guys" being in their late 80's and early 90's). During and during a recent conversation we talked about his secret to such longevity. Joking that the answer might lie in an occasional "belt of Scotch," he pondered a bit and mentioned that he no longer holds any grudges, or has any enemies. While it is a simple statement, as I reflected on my own life I saw several "black holes" where a perceived slight or long-forgotten remark caused me to expend a great deal of mental anguish. Not only are these situations stressful, but great time wasters as we ponder how to next maneuver around our enemies, or how to fire the next round in an extended grudge match. While the scotch might be easy, my grandfather's other insight promises an alleviation of stress and wasted time, and perhaps even a more peaceful soul, something that certainly cannot hurt on your way to 96 years old.

We have all heard the tired query bandied about in meetings and sales pitches everywhere: "So, what are you pain points?" or its partner in crime: "What keeps you awake at night?" Long touted as questions to tease out problems that might otherwise go unmentioned, these questions are not only hackneyed, they focus the discussion on the immediate past, rather than the future.
 
The pain relationship is also one-sided. Once your pain has been alleviated, whether in the medical field or in dealing with a business issue, you do not return to the solution provider until the next ache crops up. In short, pain is a commodity, and those that deal strictly in alleviating pain are relegated to that realm as well. In our professional lives, we need to stop spending the majority of our energy and focus on pain. While you are loved for the thirty seconds after the pain disappears, you become a fixer not a partner. All talk about strategic and tactical moves is forgotten once you are perceived as a fixer, relegated to waiting in the corner until invoked by those with a problem. In short, you are dancing to someone else's tune.
 
While it may sound like another consultant's game of semantics, framing discussions around what could delight customers, or what wild and innovative ideas you would implement if time and money were no object shifts the focus of a discussion to the future. Rather than a one-sided tirade about one party's pain, you are jointly exploring the future and attacking a collective problem together. With the latter, you're the plastic surgeon delighting in the world of possibilities rather than the family doctor who writes a prescription, then deals with complaints about how the bill is too high.

I recently spent two days riding on the Blue Ridge Parkway, a scenic road that winds through North Carolina and Virginia. The entire idea of the Parkway is diametrically opposed to modern motorways, most being designed to get the maximum number of people to a destination as quickly as possible. In the case of the Blue Ridge Parkway, the road winds through the Blue Ridge Mountains, clinging to the side of rolling hills and favoring circuitous routing to provide its users with stellar views rather than a straight shot designed for rapid arrival at one's destination
 
As a diehard free market, small government fan, the circumstances behind the construction of the road are a bit anathema to me. The road was one of the Civilian Conservation Corps programs launched in the 1930's in response to the Great Depression. The CCC was a massive government program designed to create jobs by engaging in labor-intensive construction projects with little pragmatic aim. The Blue Ridge Parkway does not connect any major cities, and has a painfully low speed limit, designed to prevent people from driving over a precipice as they gawk at the mountain views. Along its 355 miles are carefully crafted stone bridges and wood fences, a reminder of the time when the United States was a land of craftsmen and appearance and integration with the local flora and fauna more important than expediency or raw technical prowess.
 
Winding through the mountains I could not help think that perhaps the tenets of the modern economy: technology, rationality and expediency are not the ultimate expression of human accomplishment. Occasionally it takes a government boondoggle to remind me that there is more to the human experience than unsentimental pragmatism.