My career path has been marked by what I like to call pivotal points: turbulent times where, by turning adversity into advantage, I experienced significant growth.
My first –and most dramatic—pivotal point took place in 1962 when I was 10 years old and my parents decided to leave Cuba for the United States in search of a better future for my sister and me. They made the gut-wrenching decision to leave it all behind, but on the day of departure we learned that only my papers were in order; my parents were not allowed to leave.
They made the difficult decision to send me away to Miami alone thinking they would be able to follow in a few days. But days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years. I did not see them again until they were allowed to leave Cuba four years later.
Nothing I will ever encounter will be as difficult as surviving those four years without my parents –albeit living with friends of the family, also recent immigrants—and then starting from zero again when they finally arrived in Miami with nothing but what they had on.
Tough as those times were, I learned a very important lesson: adversity can lead to advantage if you learn to turn obstacles into opportunities. The adversity that resulted from my parents’ decision to leave Cuba turned into immense advantages for my sister and me once we learned to overcome the obstacles we faced in a new country where we did not speak the language, did not have any money, and had to begin our lives again starting at the very bottom.
That lesson has served me well throughout my life. Whenever I encounter an obstacle I immediately look for the opportunity that’s hidden inside it. In my book, Obstacles Welcome, I talk about the pivotal times in my life when I, and the organizations I was leading, were able to benefit greatly by using our creativity in finding solutions where others only saw chaos.
I faced chaos when Hurricane Andrew destroyed BellSouth’s South Florida telecommunications network for which I was responsible and, later, when Hurricane Katrina did so much damage to Cingular’s network in the Gulf region. I faced turbulent economic times when, only weeks after joining BellSouth Latin America as its president, the economies of our three major countries (Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela) collapsed.
I faced technological turmoil when the digital revolution threatened to make our analog systems outdated. In every instance, we were able to find opportunity. Just to mention one case—that same chaotic year when Latin America’s economies collapsed, we managed to make a profit for the first time in the company’s history.
We all face adversity in life. Ultimately, what distinguishes us –and our organizations—are not the obstacles we cross but, rather, how we manage to turn them into opportunities.
Ralph de la Vega is the President and CEO of AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets and the author of Obstacles Welcome: Turn Adversity to Advantage in Business and in Life.
