Sylvia's Journal

In the mornings some of us meet in the computer room in the hope that we can catch a small window of low use and fast(er) connections. I managed to get my blog posted just in time and then the window closed. Under these circumstances ‘internetting’ is actually a social or meditative activity with so much waiting for pages to load that one can either strike up a conversation with one’s neighbor or stare at the flickering screen and meditate on the meaning of life (or the joy of this or that).

There is much mention of poor management and lack of leadership as determinants of scaling up success or failure and I wished I could make another presentation, about how we teach management and leadership, as opposed to the change presentation that I do on behalf of a consortium I feel little ownership of.

Although I sat through another 12 or so powerpoints yesterday, I am increasingly humbled and impressed by the depth of knowledge, the passion and the long experience of the people in the room. We are slowly beginning to become a community, find out who is who and does what just when the end of the conference comes into view. There are so many people I want to talk with, get to know but there is not much of a common area, no places to just sit and talk besides classrooms and dining hall. In addition, the schedule is quite full and follows a classic conference model; after dinner all the locals go home. As a result the networking opportunities are limited to breaks and mealtimes. There can only be four people at each dining room table; if you come late it’s the luck of the draw who will be your table mates. I end up sitting a lot with the few Africans – mostly from Tanzania; I do feel more of an affinity with them than I do with the many Asians and the couple of Latin Americans. With a few exceptions from the US, Canada, UK, the handful of participants from Latin America and Africa, none from the Arab world, this is mostly a subcontinent affair – a part of the world I don’t know all that well. There is an effervescence of this group that I usually don’t encounter in Africa, effervescence being the only word I can think of to describe the enthusiasm, openness, creativity, drive and bubblyness of the participants from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh I have encountered here.

It is impossible to sit down and talk with the people I want to talk with about the second objective of my visit here which is about how to insert/improve the teaching management and leadership in public health educaction; the faculty of BRAC’s school of public health have been key organizers of the conference and are, rightly so, entirely absorbed by the event and the opportunities it presents them for making new connections, strengthening others and survey the state of the art in scaling up health programs.

There is much to learn for our project which has a ‘scaling up’ mandate. I wished I had some of my colleagues here – taking so much in by oneself is a bit daunting and I am not entirely confident I can absorb all the things I hear, let alone transmit key points. And each time I hear someone present either about BRAC or from BRAC my admiration for this organization increases. It feels a bit odd to come all the way from the US to explore the teaching of management and leadership in a place that is a prime example of superb management and leadership. To what degree we are dealing here with leadership of the ‘born leader’ variety is not clear. Where we may be of some assistance is the challenge of ‘growing leaders’ when natural talent is either in short supply or undetected.