Old and New in beautiful harmony

"There's a symbiosis of high-tech and traditional artisanship in every component."
Fernando Villa, Sagrada Familia's director of operations

When organizations introduce something new, they often throw out the old a bit too quickly.

Like organizations going agile and losing a lot of their leaders in the process. Not missing them until they are gone.

Or organizations removing assistants, counting on automated systems to do the work better and faster.

Or conference rooms getting high-tech equipment with overcomplicated user interfaces, leaving people looking for the standard projectors only to find they have already been removed.

Progress is fantastic. Digitalization can increase efficiency multifold and AI can complement us so we can focus on the human side of things.

When we find ways of using what we do well with the new and different, we can really be productive and create greatness.

Like the building of the already magnificent Sagrada Familia

Who do you want to be?

“Forget it mum, I am just no good at maths.” He put his head in his hands, one elbow on each side of the book.

With lifted eyebrows she looked at her teenaged son, sitting next to her at the kitchen table.

“What do you mean, no good at maths?”

He leaned back, shrugged.

“I am a person who is good with words, with languages, but I am no good at maths.”

“Really?”

He looked at her, frowning. She behaved as if she hadn’t seen his grades.

“Yes!”

“Could it possibly be that you see yourself as someone who is good at languages, and then you do what people who are good at languages do, and then you get great results?”

“Mum, it’s not that sim...”

“And you define yourself as someone who is not good at maths, you stop liking it and start getting poor results.“

“Mum, it's not about how I define myself.”

She put her hand on top of his.

“Oh yes sweetheart. It's all about who you think you are.”

Photo by Kaboompic.com from Pexels

White house chief of staff John Kelly explained why he stayed for 17 months in what he called a “bone-crushing hard job” by saying: “Military people don’t walk away.”

Once you define yourself as someone or something, your actions will become evident.

This goes for both “good” and “bad” behaviours.


I have clients who call themselves lazy. Or who say they are unstructured. Others say they are procrastinators.

The first thing I tell them is to re-define who they are.

When you define yourself the way you want to be, rather than as a limited version of you, the actions will follow.

It’s not what you do.


It’s who you are.