Sylvia's Journal

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The décor of the apartment I am staying in is ‘wildlife.’ There are at least 5 animal skin area rugs, a few from small antelopes and two bigger ones. It feels very disrespespectful to the animals that I walk over them. The rest of the decorations are OK – lamps made from guinea fowl feathers and life size pictures of zebras and elephants at watering holes.

Everything was cleaned up when I returned back – so it is a bit like a hotel after all. I am told that even my clothes will be washed, on Wednesdays, and returned clean and ironed the next day.

I spent much time in the morning writing up a summary of my observations and finding patterns among the things people told me, the things that informed the design of the teambuilding later next week. In the afternoon I had more conversations that ended up validating the findings, without me even trying to. I will present these to the team and use them to trigger the kind of conversations they are not having on their own. That’s one two day event. The other, of an entirely different nature, starts on Monday.

The design for Monday’s event is predicated on being able to stick many flipcharts on the wall. But today I learned that the resort where we will be meeting won’t allow this. I had to scramble to get enough easels – even the 11 we got won’t make up for the unusable wall space. The hotel is a conference resort hotel, where conferencing happens around PowerPoint projectors – and it was chosen before there was a design. The teambuilding place is being chosen after the design – so we can select a space will match the task.

I followed Katie to yoga class after work – a restful and therapeutic one hour that got undone very quickly by watching Jabberwocky – even with the sound muted.