Illustrative image: Getty Images.

This article is not about an analysis of both texts, I only intend to rely on the thesis defended by their authors, to invite those who direct them to meditate on some ideas that, according to my experience, can be useful.

If you have eggs, oil, salt, a frying pan and a stove, you can prepare: a) fried egg, b) omelette, c) scramble.

What defines if you get one dish or another?, the METHOD of preparation.

With this example I seek to illustrate the importance of choosing the appropriate method to obtain the desired result.

It is necessary to establish a precise relationship between the “what” and the “how”.

I must first define the problem precisely and be clear about what I want to achieve, then choose the correct method.

We Cubans are experts in knowing (saying) what to do, but the problem lies in how to do it, that's where we get stuck. 

This issue is important for everything in life, in any sphere or activity that you carry out, the method used largely decides the success or not of any task that is undertaken.

I want to deepen the importance of the method for those who direct, those who have the mission of leading a group to achieve the objectives of an organization.

This is the main idea of ​​this work, to make an invitation to think about the importance of the method to direct an organization or a group.

What is the mission of the leader? "Do-do", that is, his task is that each member of the organization fulfills his duties, to achieve the results he plans to achieve.

I can't find a better example than the director of a baseball team, he doesn't play any position or hit, he directs.

And being a baseball player is not the same as being the director of a baseball team, that is one of the reasons why there are very good baseball players who have not been good team managers, because they have lacked the method.

It is not enough to know what to do, it is necessary to know how to do it.

I want to rely on the work of two great ones, so that they help us reflect on this issue, one is Descartes, and the other is our Carpentier.

Descartes in his work "Discourse on the method" emphasizes reason and intellect more than emotion or imagination, contrasts rationalism with empiricism (the main source of knowledge is experience).

Descartes writes:

"I have always had an extreme desire to learn to distinguish the true from the false, to be able to see clearly in everything I do, and to march confidently through life."

His first certainty is: "I think, therefore I am."

For his part, Carpentier expresses about his work "The method resource": "it is a simple pun on Descartes's Discourse on the method (....), the chapters appear linked by quotes from the great French philosopher that come to justify arbitrarily the acts of totally anti-Cartesian people, because there is nothing more anti-Cartesian than the Latin American continent, its mentality and its historical trajectory.

Therefore, it is a simple play on words.

The dictator, the central character of my novel, always resorts to a method that consists in having none”.

And you, the reader, do you direct with the discourse or with the resource of the method?

I have always tried to direct with the Method Discourse, although sometimes it has not been possible for me to achieve it (sometimes they won't let you), but I keep trying, that's why I want to summarize my experience in something that could be some of my basic ideas about the direction:

  • It is not the same to direct a political organization, than a state one, than a government one, than a business one.

    Each one has different goals, so it requires different methods.

  • A national organization (strategic level) is not the same as a local one (tactical level).

    You can't run a country like you run a municipality.

  • Fast and well, it is almost always impossible.

    Everything and everyone takes time.

  • The plan is a plan until it is fulfilled.

I don't expect us to agree, we are Cubans, but if we discuss these ideas, I achieved my goal.