Sylvia's Journal

We know about certain principles in organizational consulting, such as talking first with the boss; but there is always this wish that there are exceptions and we could get our task accomplished without it. So yesterday Joe and I, in our consultation to one of MSH’s Centers, realized that there was no exception and that we should have insisted on having that conversation with the boss even though she was not available until we had reached iteration 9. We had proceeded last week in the hope that there was value in iterating an incomplete story. On our way home yesterday we talked about this, asking ourselves why we went ahead even though we knew the most important piece of input was missing. Two things came to mind: (a) there is this chasm between alignment in the abstract and in real life. We do (or do not do) things because something in the context tells us so, suggesting that in this situation, at this time, things are/will be different. And (b), when you work with someone else who you admire you would like to believe they know something you don’t know and all will be well.

And so, finally yesterday morning, we had our conversation with the boss which led us to jettison the clever image that we had iterated more than a few times as the conceptual framework for the Center for Health Services. It had emerged out of circles and rectangles and had taken on the shape of a key and a lock. We had had fun playing with all the associated imagery, words, slogans and possible products while it lasted. We are now on to other images. After our conversation with the director and her deputy I had an image of ‘upward swirl’ in my mind (maybe this was because my mind was swirling at the prospect of starting over again). We played with that on paper a bit and from that moment on Joe has been powerpointing like crazy to make it a serious image that reflects most of what we heard people say, including the boss, especially the boss. The latest version, presented to me just before bedtime last night looks like a snake in a martini glass. I like it because it has movement, has all sorts of possibilities for playing with the imagery, and it reminds me of my sitting by the cove on Saturday, reading a great book and sipping a martini. However, it am not sure that either snake or martini glass goes well with the other corporate frameworks and I have a suspicion that it does not quite fit with the mood and feel of the organization (the snake may be, but not the martini glass). We need something more straighforward, more basic in shape. I went to bed last night hoping that a new framework would reveal itself in my or Joe’s dreams; this turned out not to be the case for me; I have not asked Joe yet.

I had had some hope to go rowing yesterday but the severe weather finally arrived, hosing everything down and churning the waters of the Charles River so that rowing was no longer a good idea. The downpour was good for the plants but for us humans it was a rather dreary day; the kind of day that invites to get stuff done, clean drawers, inside windows, housecleaning kind of things. I might have done that if I had been home but I was in Cambridge, at work, whittling down my to-do list before I head out to Ghana on my way to Haiti, if the US government lets me. This permission has not yet been granted yet and thus the ticket cannot be bought. These are the rules of the game.

This morning I found the B section of yesterday’s Boston Globe open on the article about the rower who wants to row across the Atlantic and is practicing on the Charles River, next to the story about the 73 year old woman pilot who crashed off Owl’s Head in Maine on Saturday, supposedly doing what she loved doing, according to the headline. Those words irritated me; she probably died because she got disoriented in a fast moving fogbank and I can’t imagine she was loving this at all. I was quite shaken by the article when I read it at work during lunch. I have, after all, been trying to get up to Owl’s Head for some months now and have always been thwarted by these same fogbanks. I had decided not to mention the article to Axel. It seems now he found it on his own last night after I had gone to bed. He need not worry. I am only going to fly there if there is no mention of fog at all for hours before and after landing. This may mean I won’t be flying there at all.