Santiago Bilinkis l Risk and Reward - Trying to live a life out of the comfort zone

In Officenet there is no air conditioning. In the summer we suffer for the extreme heat and in the winter we shiver with the cold. But soon we are going to solve this.

More than 10 years ago it asked a group of people in our Office of Corporate Acclimation to work on defining the purchase of an air conditioning equipment to resolve the issue. In this time they made trips to see companies from other countries to see if the temperature in their office was OK, we met with representatives of several companies that sell air conditioners, we surveyed our employees, suppliers and visitors on their favorite temperature
and did some other things.

In these recent days of heat, we had some people fainting because of the high temperatures. But, luckily, in the winter we only had one person with severe respiratory problems from the cold. I estimate that within a year and a half the Acclimation area is going be able to make the best decision on what equipment to buy to give our employees the working environment they deserve. They are very important to us.

Needless to say all this was a joke. But if you read again the previous paragraphs by replacing “Officenet” with “Argentina” and “air conditioning” with “digital TV standard” you are going to have a clear idea of how ridiculous the decision-making process on this has been and why we have to wait so long for that to be resolved.

I am a big fan of electronic devices and ‘gadgets’. A couple of years ago, for the Soccer World Cup 2006, I bought high-definition LCD TV which I love like a son. That is why I have been anxiously waiting for the arrival of HD and I was very happy when in recent days I finally saw billboards on the streets announcing DirecTV and Cablevision were launching it in Buenos Aires.

Defining a standard should not be something trivial. I guess that to do so the Government must take into account several issues. But the decision making process on the matter has taken more than 10 years. At this time, there have been countless meetings, presentations, tours to learn about the experiences of other countries, and so on.

If you are an entrepreneur, imagine an important and difficult decision for the future of your company. If you are not, just imagine a very costly decision, such as buying a house. Are there any decisions in this world that would require that number of years to make? I can not imagine ANYTHING in the field of business than a few prepared people can not resolved in, say, three months of hard work.

Meanwhile, reality does not wait and at least the cable and satellite operators Cablevision and DirecTV came to our rescue without waiting for the official bureaucracies.

In most everyday aspects, governing a country, should not be SOOO different to running a business. What may have the Government Officials dedicated to this been doing during all this time without coming to a decision?

Photo: William Hook