Bucharest in perspective!

A place and country full of potential! Just be bolder, nurture the talent and capabilities, and stop playing down the opportunity.

February, 2019

After moving to Bucharest September last year I have spent just over 100 days working here and appreciating the vivid life in Bucharest.  I love the experience of a new city, new cultures and encounters and have experienced Romanian people to be open, friendly and welcoming to a foreigner like myself. Although I still have a strong professional connection with Amsterdam, Oslo and Stockholm, a lot of positive energy goes into launching the Deloitte Center for the Edge activities in Romania and Central Europe. part of that initial journey is of course to get to know and speak to as many different people I can. Colleagues, new friends, clients and like-minded entrepreneurs in the technology ecosystem that is flourishing in Bucharest. Out of these first encounters two things stand out:

1. liking Bucharest as a city is apparently an odd thing and
2. there is a tendency to look across the borders and downplaying its own capability and the opportunity for new growth and prosperity.

It reminded me of a typical Dutch term which is called the “Calimero complex “. It is used to denote people who are staunchly convinced that their position as an underdog is due to their smaller size, either literally or symbolically, which covers up for their own shortcomings. Often the character’s lines from the show are cited, “They are big and I is [sic] small and that is not fair, oh no!” (translated back from Dutch, with intentional error).^[5]. 

Although I somehow understand where this stems from, my experience in working across Europe tells me it is unnecessary and not true. When it comes to the real challenges driven by global digitization, emerging technologies and new business practices, organizations in Switzerland, Norway, Russia and Spain are as immature and uncertain about what to do, how to do it and how to nurture the opportunity as we here in Romania might be. Of course there is a difference in the context where we operate (politically, socially, resource wise etc.) but that does not diminish the opportunity. On the contrary, being less noticed and a bit under the radar might give Romania the launchpad to scale. And if done well it might on the back of it also solve a common challenge like talent attraction and retaliation. Not by working harder but by working smarter and through a common purpose.

I would like to use my next 3 years here in Bucharest to challenge that thinking, identify the upside and potential, nurture it and bring it to life through meaningful engagements. My perspective on this is that it requires 3 things for every organization, common challenge (mobility) or movement (education, circularity):

• develop the long term direction and aspiration and build awareness what it takes to be successful;
• focus efforts on 2-3 things that really matter and are worth solving or help to accelerate towards that aspiration and;
• Act for impact, start today, allocating sufficient resources and time to create relevant impact.

We have done this before and are continuously supporting organizations across EMEA to rethink their operating model and drivers for growth. Stealing with pride from one my great sources of inspiration, Otto Scharmer, who ones shared with me and some colleagues the story of when man aimed for the moon everything was set in motion to do so. When finally, we achieved that, all astronauts will tell you that the sight of the earth installed a different perspective on what is truly important: protecting earth! Let that be the inspiration for any challenge we define.