Last Thursday evening I enjoyed a rare opportunity to talk with a group of about 120 students and faculty at Universidad Regiomontana in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico. The advertised title of my talk was “How to Build a Culture of Agility and Responsibility” but I choose to change my actual presentation to “Who Wants Better Results?”. This isn’t listed as a keynote topic on my site. Do you think it should be? (-:

I also shed the suit and tie (after three days of suit-and-tie workshops and presentations — the business culture in Mexico is often more formal than in the United States) and showed up jeans. Both choices turned out to be good moves.

My CutterLA colleague Cuitláhuac Osorio was in a blue suit and we kidded as we entered the auditorium that the audience probably thought Cuitláhuac was the speaker. By the way, if you are wondering how to pronounce “Cuitláhuac,” it is Kwit-lau’-ick.

A journalism major at the university named Victor Soto interviewed me earlier in the day and covered the talk. You can read his article online. If you don’t read Spanish you can try a web page translator like Babelfish.

I was very impressed with the connection I was able to establish with the students. They spoke English quite well and I worked without a translator (I’d had simultaneous translators earlier in the week at a 2-day workshop). They listened —not just politely, but intently. And they laughed at all the right places and asked a few astute questions. I told them I was very impressed with them. I confessed that when I was in college, I probably would not have invested my Thursday evening going to a talk about Responsibility. They laughed at that too.

I have another college presentation coming up in a few months. I’ll post about that later, but I wanted to mention here that I’d love to spend more time on the college lecture circuit teaching Responsibility Redefined™ to college students.