[MUSIC] I would like you to reflect on what is the role of a manager. Please, take a piece of paper and think for 10, 15 seconds, what do you think managers do? Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, zero. Obviously, I'm not going to ask you what you've written, but this is a question that they usually make at the start of most programs at IESE. The kind of answers that I'm getting is the kind of answers that you now see on the slide. Managers set objectives. Managers motivate. Managers negotiate. They select the team. They control the business. They measure performance. They achieve the objectives. Most of the stuff that I'm getting is things that occupy the time of managers. But then I always ask the same question to the executives. Why do they'll do all this things? And there's only one answer to that, a manager solves problems. Solving problems is not something that is a negative thing to do. There are some problems that come to you. A machine has spoiled, there are no sales in a certain area. The human resource person wants to develop some kind of executive program. But it's a lot more interesting the problems that you create. You create a strategy and that's a problem to create a strategy because you need creativity, you need criteria, you develop new products, those are the problems that you create and the problems that you want to have. The real question that you have to answer is how much time do managers devote to solving problems? Actually, I used to teach a course on strategy back at IESE and the first thing I did on the first day of class is ask my students, how much time do you think general managers spend on strategy? The answers wereusually all around the place but young MBA's tend to think more on the upper 50s and so on. But if you push them a little bit, you can always get to the 70% even 90%. When I got the 90% from them, I told them be careful. If you ever go to a firm where the general manager spends 90% thinking about strategy, you better go and look for another job. You will go bankrupt quite soon. Of course, MBA students really got surprised because they always think that strategy runs the place but you don't realize that the real nature of the manager's job is to solve problems. Either the problems that the context creates for you, or the problems that you create for the firm in order to have a successful future. [MUSIC]