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Hi everyone, here is Ricardo Vargas, and this is the 5 Minutes Podcast. I have here in my hands, a set of small, tiny, and colorful bracelets and each of them with some names and this. And probably all of you have no idea about what that is. But I didn't have it up to one week ago, and this is when I went to the Taylor Swift concert last week. So let me try to explain to you why I'm recording this podcast, because of course you may think “oh Ricardo went because he is a dad, and because his daughter loves Taylor Swift, so he was to”, I would say, “in some ways babysit her, or to be a companion to her”. And that's true but honestly, the biggest gift for me was that. And everything started, of course, long time ago my daughter is a big, big fan of Taylor Swift and she really loves the music and the lyrics and this. And as a dad and probably as many of you, I was just watching that and saying, OK, this is something interesting, and you know, I have also my musical preference and it's fine that she has one too, but I would say 8 months ago, seven months ago, she said to me: “oh dad you will receive the most important e-mail of your life”, and I said, “what are you talking about?” “Yes, this e-mail you need to fill out a form that will give you the right to enter in the line for a Taylor Swift concert, that will happen nine months in the future”, and I said, “what are you talking about?” And she said: “dad you have no idea, to buy a ticket for this concert is, just impossible. It's, you know, its impossible dad, the tickets are sold out. You have a line to get into the line to buy the tickets”, and then I said: “this is interesting”. And then after that dramatic day of getting in the line, leaving the line and being, you know, I had to stop my work just to stay my wife with my other daughter, everybody trying to get the ticket and we got them. And last week she came here, she lives in London, she came here, and she came with a T-shirt for me to dress, she said: “dad, it's not the normal concert, you don't go like you are going to a concert, no, you need to dress up. You need to ok to put the lyrics off for, and honestly, there is only one music I know from her and its blank space. And then she puts, you know, in in my shirt the blank space lyric, and then she came up with me with all these bracelets, each of them is the name of an album of these areas too. And I said OK. And she said: “you need to pay attention because people will try to exchange the bracelets with you”. And I said: “what is that?” And then we started entering the line, we stayed 3 hours in the line plus more than three hours in the concert. So, I stood up for about 6 hours. And in the line, people said “oh, let's exchange bracelets let’s, and this”. So, I ended up with, I don't know, maybe 20, maybe 30 bracelets in the concert, and it was so fun to see the movement, and I said look for this young generation, this is more than a concert. And this is where I learned my first lesson it's how important for you to understand your stakeholders, when you were delivering a project, you have different stakeholders and if you don't go inside their word, their brain, you cannot understand how they feel. For me, I was going to a concert, like many others I went with my daughter but for her and for thousands and thousands other young generation teens and young boys, young girls for them, it was a big deal. It was a big, big deal. Everybody, dress it up, and they were talking, you know, and singing the music. And for them it was such a magic event for them. And look I. Love great concerts. It's amazing to have the opportunity to be present on that, but it's super important to understand because for example, if. You want to. It if we want to deliver a project, we need to understand what is in the mind of these people and for me, Taylor Swift did and me amazing and amazing, I'm not discussing her as a singer or as a composer. This I don't have the place to talk about that. But she was able to capture the filling of a massive and huge crowd. And this drove me to my second learn, I'm talking a lot on this podcast, and you are probably all my talks about how relevant is for us to leave our comfort zone if we want to do something different, we need to leave our comfort zone. It's impossible for you to learn by repeating things. And for me, this was the biggest gift because I had the opportunity to understand and to see with my own eyes the changes we are facing in society, what is the value, how people are thinking, how events are organized, how people are getting together everything. And this was a completely different experience for me. If I compare with the experience for me of going to a concert. And the third aspect is on the very deep project management aspect and concert for 70,000 people, the setup was impeccable. The concert started 8 minutes late, everything smooth from her, I don't know. 20-30 different dresses from the dancers in perfect synchrony, from the musicians perfect align, from the camera the screen, all the stage was a screen she was walking on the screen. There was a time that she jumped like someone jumping in the swimming pool and she disappeared on the screen like magic. It was really an impeccable concert and I imagine the crew behind this to make this concert happening from moving pieces, from testing everything, from testing the audio, testing the video, making sure that there is no single light bubble damage, and I was looking from the organization of the line to get inside from the cleanliness of the toilet. It was just an impeccable event and absolutely example of project management. And I remember I recorded a podcast episode in 2009 when I went to Madonna and Seal to 2 concerts in Paris, and they were amazing when I saw Madonna coming in the car inside the car. It was a super nice, but what I saw in terms of event and have been 200, it was just breathtaking. And these three things, stakeholder management, our ability to understand and to see things differently and the impeccable deliver, even what brought Taylor Swift to the place where she is, she was able to understand what a generation was looking for. She was able to deliver on that promise in such an impeccable way that she created basically a big and massive movement, and this is what is incredible look like, or not about her music, this is just pointless. She was able to deliver and to captured on the sentiment of a generation like very few people, and if us as a project manager, if we are able, when we are developing a new product or when we are developing a new service, if we are able to capture this sense of what my customer wants, I can build such a powerful movement that I can change things and this is what we see for example, on a high this is what we see for example, when people develop a new area of property and they create movement. It's like Dubai. It's an example. So, you create something that at the end you know you deliver such a transformational change that you change everything. And this is all about project managers. Of course, these bracelets will be kept in my memories and my memory box. But you know, the biggest thing that will stay in my mind is what I've learned on that day. So, I want to thank my daughter for giving me that opportunity to see things in a different way. And I hope you do the same until next week within another 5 Minutes Podcast.
