Oh all the stories you’ll hear. Ah, what about all that I’ll miss?

A student's criticism opened my eyes time back. I was teaching public policy & economics in a graduate program I was running. I had just learned that nobody in the graduate seminar had read W Edwards Deming. I assigned it for a couple of weeks down the road, and placed a personal copy on library reserve. Each student could take the book out a day, and I asked them to self organize and assign chapters every one was responsible for, and each to skim the rest, plus to have a debriefing session before class. I was just suggesting techniques we'd used in graduate school to survive and cope with the six-ten readings a week workload. 

My students didn't do it. Everyone came to class as if nothing happened. One student was quite vociferous on how dared I assign an entire book on such short notice. People seem to have a sense of entitlement vis-a-vis knowledge. We may want to accomplish and achieve without work. I confess I felt and still feel responsible for not knowing in advance that Deming was not a requirement in all undergraduate curricula irrespective of a student's major. To me it was like Newton's comprehensive work or like Sun Tzu's Art of War, that we're all called to know. 

My student's critique showed me that we miss a lot. We ought to look again and take on some classics, even if late in life. 

Fuel curiosity and tomorrow you'll know a little more that humankind already knew.

Adrian S. Petrescu, Ph.D., J.D.

Chief Future Architect, InnovationTrek

We got here. What's next?

Accelerate Innovation. 

In companies and self.

Grow flow. Naturally.

ASPetrescu@InnovationTrek.org

Fwd: Your Application with Midland University

He he. I filed an application for a position as Dean of a College of Business with a small regional university. I got my doctorate from the number one public university graduate school in global affairs, with a focus on economics of science and technology for innovation. I led graduate programs all over the nation with creativity and innovation, promoting new innovative curriculum and advocating for and introducing new technology and new means of meeting the needs of unconventional graduate students in the classroom for over twenty years. My Juris Doctor degree focused in part in international business contracts and intellectual property law and I was there working for our federal court when the largest patent lawsuit in Nebraska's history happened right before my eyes—lowly law clerk impressed with seeking all these million dollars a year attorneys landing in our state from DC for over a month with a tens of millions of dollars patent infringement case against a once small now nationally reputed Nebraska grown manufacturing business. One that will hurt a lot because of the new tariffs in steel imports. The hurting will pass to Nebraska farmers and other small businesses. Wait... I advocated new business trans-Atlantic relations inside the framework of the NATO Parliament since the early 1990s, at a time when the US was barely waking up from the Cold War and the White House was still struggling for far too long to find solutions to South East Europe's crises. Today more than ever the nation and every one of us relies on businesses and communities supporting entrepreneurship and small business development from the ground up in response to the global and national crises that continue to face us. Yet, we all too often don't get it. Because we don't want to learn to get it. 

As you pass Fremont NE, where this little University is, to head to the lakes for a swim, the poverty and missed opportunities of the place strike you. The University got a President who left right after he got the Presidency because he won the race to become Nebraska's then junior Senator to Washington DC. Turnover at this little University has been just as strong as with its President. Student numbers must be dropping and hence finances are tight, and the curriculum has been frozen in time for over two decades if not more, at least that I know of. Just as the country's policies on business and in international trade now are inspired by and come from the era of before the Great Depression. 

I got a letter via email in response to my job application. It took the search committee no more than 14 minutes (from 8 to 8:14 am) on a Saturday morning to assess my credentials against the requirements of the position. Really? They found a better candidate during such time. 

I can only be impressed at how well HR works in this day and age. Congratulations. As for the business college... Best of success. It seems that new business graduates will invade America from China, India, Brazil and the like before we get a chance to even wake up from our decades long sleep. 

Adrian S. Petrescu, Ph.D., J.D.

InnovationTrek

ASPetrescu@alumni.pitt.edu

ASPetrescu@InnovationTrek.org

Adrian S. Petrescu, Ph.D., J.D.

Chief Future Architect, InnovationTrek

We got here. What's next?

Accelerate Innovation. 

In companies and self.

Grow flow. Naturally.

ASPetrescu@InnovationTrek.org

Begin forwarded message:

Resent-From: <aspetrescu@alumni.pitt.edu>
From: "Human Resources" <no-reply@applicantpro.com>
Date: March 24, 2018 at 8:14:32 AM CDT
To: aspetrescu@alumni.pitt.edu
Subject: RE: Your Application with Midland University

Dear Adrian Petrescu,

Thank you for your interest in employment at Midland University and for the time you have invested in the process. Your application was carefully reviewed for the role of  Midland University Dunklau School of Business. At this time, there were other candidates who more closely matched the qualifications we were seeking.

Please continue to stay abreast of our employment opportunities and consider applying for a future or alternate role within the University.  If you have already applied for other position(s), your resume will continue to be reviewed in the context of those roles unless you hear otherwise.

We wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.

Sincerely,

Midland University Human Resources

Do Not Reply to this email. This is an automatically generated email.

“I am one of you.” is the most powerful empathy device there ever was. We too disliked authority and decisions against us. Then we learned why they had to be.

In fifth grade I broke the chair in my class in public school because it was wooden and I was balancing myself on its hind legs out of boredom in classes that had too much lecture and too little engagement of us learners. I hated my Dad most for siding with my head teacher when she told him. This went on for ages. I got to often dislike my parents for not defending me in situations when I felt I was right. I learned one thing though. Just because you think you're right doesn't truly make you right. Time may teach you a perspective that in the moment you may simply miss by far. I learned the skill of questioning my own thinking and behavior without even being asked by external forces to do so. And of asking what would it look like in five years! In ten? How about in twenty? In one hundred and twenty? If folks would remember you then after you are long gone, and if they remember you well and for all the good reasons then your life, day in and day out, mattered. I learned all that from breaking the chair at school in fifth grade? No, from a caring father who had the patience and love it took to let me figure out things at my pace without judging but by being firm and what may have looked unfair & uncaring sometimes. Let's thank a patient mentor and let's mentor in our turn. 

Adrian S. Petrescu, Ph.D., J.D.

InnovationTrek

ASPetrescu@alumni.pitt.edu

ASPetrescu@InnovationTrek.org

Tap into humanity’s overarching wisdom from history. You may be amazed what new perspectives you’ll find.

The hardest to help are those of us who think we know everything and who don't open ourselves to the fear from accepting the unknown overwhelms us. That fear fuels all of our excuses why we can't do it. Yet, that same fear can be transformed into the most powerful self-motivator if we treat it with the one mantra that made humanity survive and thrive for thousands of years: I can do this. As if my life depended on it.

Let's see. We learned to plant purposefully, to domesticate animals, to produce, to overproduce & trade, to travel, to map, to build, to discover & make new forms of energy, to master internal combustion & the atom, to fly, to master millions of operations on a silicon nail-size circuit, to communicate in space, & with each other globally from our hand, & other things. We learned to overcome instinct to violence with empathy toward one another. At least sometimes—when we reckon peace & understanding are much more beneficial than a fight or war every time... we still have things to learn on this front, from a courthouse to international relations.

Often there was nobody there to teach us how to do these. We can improve. We have the greatest skill of them all—to learn by need. By ourselves. Let's never deny ourselves the goal of reaching our fullest performance!

Adrian S. Petrescu, Ph.D., J.D.

InnovationTrek

ASPetrescu@alumni.pitt.edu

ASPetrescu@InnovationTrek.org

It’s all in a name—make the best of a hard one to carry

Perspective is everything. To Emperor Traian this was a great win, worthy of celebration of his success on Traian's Column in Rome. To others 106 A.D. was the end of their civilization as free Dacian people and their enslavement by the Roman Empire. Dacians were by far not last in a line of many other Roman conquests, that later turned empires in their own right. Except one—Romania—which never learned that imperial trait.

How must it feel to be named Enslaved-by-us as a nation? "Where are you from?" "I'm from the country of 'Enslaved-by-them'." Wow. Amazing that we survived psychologically to such weight on our shoulders. And made a run at global fame in our own right... from rocket science to video compression and from the fountain pen to gerontology, just as from fuel cells to modern thermodynamics and from fighting the Ottoman Empire to pioneering successful world peace in the 1920s... Maybe daughters and sons of Dacians are bound to lead by peace.

Years back I had a few students from Liberia. The one US "colony." In Philadelphia, right on Benjamin Franklin Avenue. I was teaching US Constitutional Law. Ah, the irony! My students must be the closest to an understanding on this odd naming of a country game. Ours lasting for 1912+ years. We're not alone.

Carry your name with pride. Take it further. No matter how hard it gets. 

Adrian S. Petrescu, Ph.D., J.D.

InnovationTrek

ASPetrescu@alumni.pitt.edu

ASPetrescu@InnovationTrek.org

Question authority—all together now!

There are a few of us here in this life, on this planet, who like to challenge authority. We can see it almost all the time in the behavior some of us have. The more courageous of us will shout or swear out our opposition to authority in public for everyone to witness. On the national and global scenes it can get worse and it can involve guns or wars or even nuclear arsenals. The less courageous will simply oppose authority with our behavior. We won't do homework. Or we won't do it on time or all the time. As children we'll test boundaries which if extended outside family may end us up in jail or convicted of crimes. We'll find some excuse for not knowing about homework or the law, for not bringing a notebook or not taking notes in a class or for letting our phone ring in a meeting or even for robbing a bank or shooting someone. It's mental health, says the President. Maybe it's too busy parents who didn't have time to parent children. Generation after generation, for too many turns of the world around the sun now. We'll sit in our corner and check our phone without listening to the teacher while thinking "this is boring," or "why do they make me be here?" We'll pay attention to the ignorant celebrity drunkard at the expense of paying attention to mom or dad, or a smarter well educated cousin or uncle or grandma or grandpa who all make time to be in our lives. We'll chat with a colleague about something completely unrelated to class, or to work, or to anything, all while in a class, at work, or supposedly trying to work or study or do something of some importance on our own time. We'll leave our phone ringer on for everyone around to know what a cool ringer we have, in spite of the phone policy having been just spelled out on a screen at the movies or in a meeting just a few minutes ago, and in spite of the common sense convention between well behaving adults that in meetings (such as a class) or anywhere in a public place (such as at the movies, or in a store or on public transportation) phones are to be silenced if not shut off completely. We even openly say that "I don't like authority." I don't like authority either. We all don't like authority. Genius people of all times didn't like authority. As an old Apple commercial was saying "Here's to the crazy ones." In fact just as a matter of older age I've been disliking authority for almost double the time most of the rest of us on this planet had a chance to dislike or like anything. There are a few exceptions—people older than me who still want to learn to dislike authority in an organized way and who trust that lifelong learning is the only way to staying happy. To those I tip my hat and want to know everyone better so I learn something new about living life beautifully. I teach exactly because I don't like authority. I teach students how to dislike authority in a constructive way. I try to help people to think, and to think critically better, so that we dislike authoritative knowledge or ignorance in an organized and more productive way. 

 

Disliking authority does not mean being disrespectful towards another. We all owe respect to one another. Swearing in a classroom or on twitter or facebook doesn't say anything about your teacher or about your audience you may be replying to. It says something about you. We are all here in this world to learn, and to learn from each other. Including how to question the authority of scientists or governments or mathematicians or historians or attorneys and judges or teachers of times past, after we learned what they said, and then learning how to understand better why they may have been wrong in what they said or did. And to build ourselves as better human beings as a result of learning from our past and improving on it.

 

Today, challenging (business, government, and knowledge) authority is no longer possible as a one-person alone effort. We can only dislike and challenge authority sufficiently well together if we respect and help one another. Let's do that, please!

"Those who trust that they can change the world are usually those who do!"

Adrian S. Petrescu, Ph.D., J.D.

InnovationTrek

ASPetrescu@alumni.pitt.edu

ASPetrescu@InnovationTrek.org

Let pleasure of success lead your life

I speak some French. I never learned it. I had studied it at home as a child with the "Teach yourself French." manual. I wanted to be able to understand the cartoons in Pif Magasine. Later I ended up in Belgium. Again and again. Work was in English as NATO's been always American led. But I had to be able to survive eating at little restaurants and buying groceries. Later on I had to improve my spoken French much more due to fear of my father in law. No. Not really. He is a retired language teacher. He always had patience with my speaking French. I had to improve so I can understand and contribute to the family dialogue. Without everyone's conversation coming to a screeching halt in English. 

Everything we achieve in life is driven by a perception of need. We are wired to want to feel liked and to be appreciated. If we don't communicate well nobody can understand who we are and what excellent skills and know how we can bring to the table. The French Table in Omaha allowed us to meet wonderful friends and build lifelong relationships. 

Late in life I purchased Rosetta Stone and I'm struggling to improve my French. 

Pick a skill you marginally have. Improve on it. Let the feelings of pleasure as you progress slowly réel you in.

Adrian S. Petrescu, Ph.D., J.D.

InnovationTrek

ASPetrescu@alumni.pitt.edu

ASPetrescu@InnovationTrek.org