If I ask you to pick up a random tool and color, you will most probably answer red and hammer. This at least is the most commonly given answer. Whether this is the answer you gave or not doesn’t really matter. The fact is that our brain and memory create unique combinations and amalgams that sometimes can be quite unique.

Synaesthesia is a neurologically based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. With other words, 2 or more of the five senses get mixed up. Synaesthetes can for instance smell music or see sound.

Synaesthesia can occur in many forms and is often used by the Synaesthetes to aid in their creative process. But what’s the relationship with entrepreneurship or having a high managerial position?

First of all I am no Synaesthete and therefore cannot fully grasp their daily perception; though there are particular ways to reproduce similar experiences. These can be induced by the use of drugs, hypnosis or through lucid dreaming.

Synaesthetes experience the world in a very different way because they create combinations no one else perceives. The hypothesis I want to develop is that there might be another kind of synaesthesia that does not get directly influenced by the senses but on the opposite, by our thoughts.

We all use metaphors and analogies to simplify our explanations or make them more visual. Synaesthetes do not just tell metaphors they actually live and experience them. They create links they cannot disassociate from that influence the way they gain insight. On the other hand we all use our lived and shared experiences to explain or interpret someone else’s explanation. It’s part of our learning process.

Entrepreneurs are usually resourceful people who possess a strong desire to succeed. They consider risk, luck and opportunity through a different prism. Moreover, organisations can be perceived as organic entities with their own nervous system. With other words, a company responds to internal and external stimuli the same way a human body does. We’ll discover more about the subject during future autopoiesis posts.

This brings me to believe that the CEO, who’s supposedly to be the main controlling part of the brain, could develop a synaesthetic perception of the organisation he runs.

Or are we just talking about Business acumen?

More to come in the next posts.

Well, here I am. First post and already a blank page…Which is normal, every page starts blank.

If you haven’t read my about page yet, I suggest you start there. It will buy me some time and will help you better understand what you’re dealing with here.

Read it? Ok let’s then continue.

So, what’s a CEO of a small Belgian internet startup supposed to talk or write about?

Should I start with the shitty December weather here at the capital city of Europe? Or would I better begin with the nonexistence of any revenue? Right now, we’re like most American internet companies, we have a nice website, but that’s where it ends. This situation reminds me the beginning of a TV show. Well, that’s one big headache.

I made some research in order to give a direction to this blog. We both want it to be valuable time spending, right?

As a CEO, you first have to ask yourself why you want to start a blog. Though it is true for anyone, a CEO has a responsibility towards his company and fellow colleagues. You can’t take the jump without having a minimum of preparation. Brandon from CEOblogwatch wrote an interesting post about the subject.

According to Yves Doz and C.K. Prahalad (1993) good management must work hard to instill coordinated organizational components so that efficiency and creativity can be achieved simultaneously. It is not clear yet how to achieve this, but I hope this blog might lend a hand in bringing some insight.

It’s a whole program and I can’t say I have a blueprint ready; so I think I will start by studying a few other CEO blogs.

Here are already a few famous ones:

Just by looking at them you can immediately tell, these blogs are written by very different people. Reading these blogs will help me position mine. What about you? Do you know any good CEO blog you could share with us?

We have the subject of the blog, but what about the layout. I decided to go for the Urban Elements template from Press75.com. It is  beautiful yet simple, well structured, has many widgets and ad-space, and possess this dark touch with shades of grey and a modern city as background. It reminds me one of my favorite movies. This is exactly what I need for a “blog behind the veil”

Ok, we have the basics now. So let us start!