Principles

Doing business is a complex thing, for all the variables and dynamics that could have an impact in your potential success. Accordingly, and arguably, having strong pillars is essential to build and grow up; or in other words, sustain your business upon principles. They act as the basecamp, the baseline where you can always refugee yourself to reflect, as well as use them as a guide through the challenges that you may encounter on your journey.

These eight principles below are the ones upon which Zenotalent has been founded, marking our path forward:

1) HONESTY ➡️ Long term success

You may know that saying from Abraham Lincoln:

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”

There is not really much to add to the above sentence, since rather self-explanatory.

2) EMPATHY ➡️ Common goals It does not matter what type of activity or type of person or entity you are dealing with in any professional (or personal) relationship; colleague, partner, supplier, customer, ..., one way or the other you have common goals, a point of convergence. For that reason, it is an absolute must to place yourself in other's shoes. Cannot imagine you will not succeed in the end if you approach things with empathy. It is even free to try. 3) READ IN BETWEEN THE LINES ➡️ Concepts and contexts

Theory, fundamentals, principles, pillars, philosophy... All those are equivalent to the definition of "concept". And that is the starting point for any kind of activity you want to execute, if you want to execute it well. However, it is not just enough with applying "a" concept. Economical, political, environmental, organizational, social, cultural... aspects can have a tremendous impact in the chances of success when implementing "a" concept.

In other words, the same concept can be totally meaningful in a time/space "A" and completely meaningless in time/space "B". That is why you need good eye to “read in between the lines", to understand concepts within contexts. 4) COM-MU-NI-CA-TION ➡️ Quantity and Quality

You may have heard already this typical adage: "Communication could solve 90% of the world's problems". Putting percentages there could be far from empirical approach or even inaccurate, but still, the point is quite clear.

Cannot imagine (good) communication would make things more difficult… So, let’s communicate better! And this is not only about quantity, but quality as well. Both!

5) PROACTIVE (instead of REACTIVE) ➡️ Anticipate to problems Do not wait and see, take action and do. It may not be tangible in most of the cases, but you expend far more effort (and most likely time and money) correcting things than preventing things. Celebrate and collect medals for solving problems you have created is just pointless, conceptually speaking. Heroes are just silent.

6) DO THE RIGHT THING (instead of DO THINGS RIGHT) ➡️ Sustainability

Fulfilling short-term needs, even if you excel executing those tasks, can be sometimes counterproductive and even mislead you on your way to achieve your targets. If those activities are not aligned with your main strategy, then efforts can be quite inefficient. Look for sustainable and long-term benefits, do the right thing!

7) STRUCTURE AND ORGANIZATION ➡️ Complexity demands efficiency

We live a in world where we are continuously overwhelmed with lots of information, everywhere. It is really difficult to be up to date about everything. For that reason, to manage complexity, it is absolutely essential to have your work well organized and with proper structure, so to not miss opportunities.

In the end, efficiency is paramount in any professional activity, otherwise others will make it better and/or faster.

8) FINISHER MINDSET ➡️ Drive to complete

Of course multiple times we have to stop or cancel activities due to superimposed reasons (e.g.: economical), but otherwise, it is very important to have the determination to finalize the tasks that at some point we decided to start, for any reason.

To abandon things without justification is a poor sign of rigor. Close your items formally and document reasons why you decide to stop something, and if not, just drive to complete; there is not better feeling than fulfilment and realization!

Ignacio Vilas Eguileta

zenotalent Owner & Founder