The leadership rookie

Shizo san quickly recognized the orange taste in his mouth, it was a strange orange salty taste though. He was exhausted and could not well remember where he was. His eyelids weighted like two stones but managed to open them enough to realize he was in a room. There were two blonde-haired gentlemen staring at him. He quickly closed his eyes to try to understand the where and the why. Shizo Kanakuri, born in Tamana (Japan) in 1891, was one of the two Japanese athletes in the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm. The first ever Japanese expedition to the sports festival. He was a marathon runner and an incredible 1911 mark in the Japan trials had catapulted him into the big Swedish event. The trip from Japan to the Nordic country had taken 17 days, first by boat to Russia and then by rail through the Tran Siberian route to the final destination. These had been two difficult weeks of training, first running laps around the boat and second running on the Russian rail stations every time the...

Emperor Constantine was still in bed in his Blachernae palace of that April 13rd 6961 AM (April 23rd 1452 in the Gregorian calendar). His mind was going in circles trying to find ways to survive  the Ottoman siege that was threatening the city for over two weeks. Constantinoble was the last bastion of the Roman Empire, just a tiny territory of what had been the biggest power humankind had seen to date. His hope to receive support from Rome and Venetia was vanishing. T he miraculous Theodosian walls - over a thousand years old - were holding well to Sultan Mehmed’s new weaponry. But the scarcity of resources, both in terms of army and food, would require a magic solution. He did not want to be known as the Emperor who lost Constantinoble. Suddenly, in the midst of these thoughts, the sound of somebody knocking on his bedroom door resonated throughout the big chamber as yet another Ottoman bomb. That was unusual. He was the emperor. Who was to bother an emperor with such insi...

Coffee was not as tasty and sophisticated as in Vienna. Abraham Wald was having these thoughts whilst sipping his first morning cup on a cold January morning of 1943. He was looking through the window of his Columbia University office as flocks of snow were falling on Manhattan’s streets. The cold winters had accompanied him throughout his life, from his hometown in Cluj (now Romania), to his college and doctorate years in Vienna to now New York City. This was the place that had warmly welcomed him and recognized his valued mathematician knowledge after having to flee Europe before the start of the war. He turned his head to his desk. There, the most important challenge of his life - in the shape of a pile of papers with drawings, letters and numbers – was lying just waiting for him to solve it. He was part of the Statistics Research Group (SRG), a team of renowned professors (including Milton Friedman and George Stigler – future Nobel Prizes) gathered by the US government to su...

She heard his key on the door, about to open it. It was 3:30pm approximately, the same time he had arrived home from work in the last 35 years. She had always been looking forward to his arrival, with the late lunch on the table and a list of anecdotes of the day to discuss about. But the last two months had been different and the door noise was no longer a source of joy but a source of agony. He was 61 and two months ago he had been told by his all-life employer that he was no longer needed in the company and that there was a good exit deal he’d better adhere to. On the façade he took it well, there would be much more time to read, to listen to music and to travel and he had work hard long enough. However, in his insight he was a bullet to his pride as he felt he was still doing an immensely valuable job for his company. And she knew his insight and she knew he was not fine. So, when, that afternoon, he gave him the welcome kiss she was surprised to see a new shine in his b...

It was 7 am and Rei was still in bed. Her eyes were looking at the ceiling of her bedroom. Her mind was following each step of the 3.8km he had to run later that day in the Princess Ekiden (relay) Corporate Marathon of Fukuoka. She took her phone as she had just received a text message. It was Marie, her best friend and a relay runner in her team later that day. “hi Rei, are you up? I am so nervous. Will we make it to the national competition?”. “Of course! 😊 ”. She replied. “See you in an hour downstairs”. Both lived in Fukuoka’s university dorm, were 19-year-old and had met last year as they both started working some hours a week for Iwatani Sangyo corporation in an internship. Marie was the one that had seen the internal announcement looking for runners for the famous marathon. It was six months ago and they had trained very hard. Their goal to qualify for the national competition did not seem too far away according to the most experimented runners in the team who had partic...

We are in Italy, early XIX century and we are observing a musician about to enter on stage. Niccolò is staring at the mirror. Only an old curtain hanging between him and the crowd. He looks at his long fingers, the ones that have brought him so much glory. He observes his long hair, something that distinguishes him from any other musician. He smiles whilst setting the flaps of his long jacket straight. He then closes his eyes and remembers all the suffering he went through as a kid when people called him Son of the Devil. All the tears, the nightmares, the time spent on his own with the violin and the guitar as his only trusted companions. He was not over it and he knew his mother struggled a lot on her supposed deal with the devil. But he had made the most of it and used his peculiar image and skills to be successful in doing what he liked the most. Playing music. He stands up as the bell rings. Curtains open. Audience receives him with an standing ovation. The violin on his hand...

We are back in France. We are in the XVI century, in 1519, and in this Chateau, we are privileged guests of the last hours of one of the biggest known genius in history. Leonardo knows the end is close. The French king Francis I, will come to visit him the next day to say goodbye. He has been his last patron, the one that has best understood him and treasured his freedom like nobody has. Leonardo gets out of his bed with difficulty. He wants to see, maybe for the last time, the paintings he has carried with him for so many years across his different homes in Firenze, Milano, Rome and now Amboise, in the Val de Loire. These paintings were never good enough, there was always something to improve, a new technique to apply, a stroke of a different colour, a new insight into human anatomy that would better reflect a human sentiment. They look fantastic. He exhales with relief. He then takes the portrait of Lisa di Gioconda and remembers how Francesco, her husband, asked for a painting ...