5 Minutes Podcast with Ricardo Vargas Ricardo Viana Vargas

In this week's episode, Ricardo addresses the risks of the Diderot Effect.

For many, this effect is directly related to consumption bias. However, it is perfectly applied also when we add something to our project, and that something triggers a series of new features causing control to be completely lost. This effect impacts budget, deadlines, and team, among many other factors.

It's like consumption; when we buy an outfit, it sometimes emphasizes that the shoe is not so new. With that, we bought an entire garment due to the trigger of the first purchase.

Ricardo gives three tips on not falling into this Diderot effect trap.

Listen to this week's #5minpodcast to learn more.

In this week's episode, Ricardo talks about Project Management in Agribusiness.

He explains how we can apply project management in this segment, which is so different for many of us.

Ricardo comments that agribusiness is transforming as powerful as the technology area, using digitalization, georeferencing e technology, and project to select crops that will be used in this area.

For example, the harvest of an agricultural product can be considered a project, as it is temporary and unique due to environmental, soil, and local conditions.

And project management will identify, for example, market, environmental, and price volatility risks that may occur depending on the type of harvest.

Agribusiness project management can also be used in logistics to distribute products and grains. Ricardo gives examples of global impact in this logistics, such as the distribution of grains in Ukraine contained in the Odesa port due to the war.

Another example is Brazil itself, a significant producer of agricultural products, with a continental dimension where the logistics of getting the products to the port is a great challenge.

Ricardo also talks about the agile approaches that are used by businesses that are born around agribusiness.

Finally, Ricardo comments on a project for grain flow using the river network, which is a doctoral thesis of a friend in Portugal and a project to support the sustainable planting of olive trees for olive oil in Morocco that was carried out during the period in which he led the project area at UNOPS (United Nations)

Listen to this week's #5minpodcast to learn more.

In this week's episode, Ricardo talks about the Law of Diminishing Returns applied to the effort we make to manage projects.

We often doubt how much management is worth, and we try to simplify management as much as possible to avoid bureaucracy when we spend a lot of time in meetings or filling out documents and templates without reaching any results.

Ricardo explains that according to the law of diminishing returns, the project's results will improve with the increase in a management capacity. But we must find an optimal management level that maximizes results, not paper production.

We often create a more bureaucratic control process with more effort due to a paranoia we have with risks and a perception that everything needs to be controlled. With this, we reach a point of diminishing returns, where we spend more to have less.

Listen to the #5minpodcast to find out more!

In this week's podcast, Ricardo talks about leadership and followership and the paranoia of today's society to exclusively focus on leadership.

This episode reflects on questions like:

Is being a leader the only essential profile for a company?

How is the followership in this equation?

Don't we all have to develop skills to lead and to be led too?

Can a job be done only with leaders?

Who will perform the work within a structure or project that will be led?

What are the characteristics of followers who are the foundation of your company?

Listen to the episode, and participate in the discussion of these issues, allowing space for reflection on what is fundamental to developing effective work teams.

In this week's podcast, Ricardo talks about negotiation and how it is inserted into our daily lives far beyond buying and selling relationships.

He talks about negotiation steps and how we often make mistakes when skipping important phases of this process.

The initial exchange of information, the offer, the counter-offer, and the bargaining techniques are all important phases that should not be disregarded and we must always make better use of each of them.

Ricardo mainly discusses the importance of the information exchange phase, which is often the decisive phase for the final success of the negotiation.

Listen to this week's #5minpodcast to learn more.

#negociation, #projectmanagement, #communication, #risk #governance

In this week's episode, Ricardo talks about the difference between compliance and conformity.

Compliance and conformity are rules that an organization must always follow. However, the purpose of each is quite different.

Often the company decides to follow a specific rule not because it has to but because it is good for the business, such as obtaining ISO certification. In this case, we are talking about conformity; that is, conformity is everything the company is committed to doing because it will be suitable for it.

Compliance, on the other hand, are rules that the company must follow to stay in business. For example, a publicly-traded company has audits and reports that need to be sent to regulatory bodies such as, in the case of Brazil, the CVM (Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission). These reports are not made because the company wants to, but because it is a legal requirement for them to be disclosed.

That is, compliance is the set of rules that exist to ensure that the organization acts in compliance with the laws and regulations in force.

Ricardo gives some examples of conformity and compliance in projects. He also cites the recent example of Elon Musk's Twitter purchase deal, where one party considers the information about fake accounts as compliance, and the other considers it as conformity already declared in the purchase memorandum.

Listen to this week's #5minpodcast to learn more.