Archive for October, 2012

A very long drive

Published October 29, 2012 Uncategorized Leave a Comment

I took Friday off to celebrate part one of Sita’s birthday by introducing her to some amazing folks in her neck of the woods. These are connections through other connections that were random, or may be not, starting with a plane ride to Dhaka. I have a friend who met her husband on a plane ride to South Africa, these things happen and are wonderful. After a three hour ride we arrived in beautiful Ahsfield on a gorgeous fall day. We had a winter soup lunch and talked about complex adaptive systems, mathematical models, large group methods and working around the world.

Although we were not done talking, we had to leave, late in the afternoon to pick up Jim and the Bunwinkies’ instruments for a show in Worcester. The Bunwinkies were playing without their drummer and their male lead singer, making it an all women band except for Jim. It was the first time we saw them perform; we were in charge of the baby, a charge we shared with the other oma and opa who drove up from Beverly. We were the only people over 40 in an old firehouse that had been bought by 10 young men who’d made it into a very interesting living space with lots of space for band practice and performance on the ground flour.

The bunwinkies followed a guitarist whose poems we couldn’t quite understand but made wonderful music. Everytime people clapped Faro would startle throwing his arms wide open, then fall asleep again. By the time his mom and dad were on he had fallen asleep again, missing a wonderful performance, with Sita on lead guitar. This girl continues to amaze us. We left after the Bunwinkies had finished their act, knowing that Sita could look after Faro again. Besides, it was past our bedtime. After midnight when we tumbled into bed, I realized we had driven more than 200 miles.

The next day was Sita’s real birthday and continued with part two.  Seeing her now at 32 years, a mother herself, brought back many memories. She commented that birthdays should really be celebrations of motherhood and that it was the mother of the birthday person who should be acknowledged and feted.

We gave her a massage by Abi as a birthday present, knowing it would be exactly what she needed (it was). While she was relaxing I shopped for the ingredients of a rijsttafel, an Indonesian culinary extravaganza that required an entire day of cooking, another birthday present. We are now all of the age at which it is people’s time and effort rather than material gifts, that are the best birthday presents. I had assigned Axel and Jim a dish each (coconut chicken and beef rendang) while I took care of the remaining dishes (nasi goreng, telor bumbu, atjar, gado-gado and peanut sauce). All the spoons, bowls, cutting boards and knives in the house were used and re-used, making the kitchen look like a battlefield.

By the time the guests arrived (2 pairs of in-laws) I was exhausted. They ate, provided lots of compliments and then cleaned up the kitchen when not hanging out with our collective grandchild. We concluded Sita’s birthday watching Hercule Poirot after all the guests had left. Sita loves Poirot so much that for his first haloween Faro will be Hercule – the costume is already purchased, he has a pacifier with a Poirot mustache, only the white spats are missing.  His dad will be Captain Hastings (repeating ‘Good Lord’ over and over again) and Sita will be Miss Lemon. They will be quite a trio.

Pride and energy

Published October 26, 2012 Uncategorized Leave a Comment

We are treated to another visit of Sita and Faro. Early Thursday we got up what seemed to be in the middle of the night, fed and packed up the baby with all his gear, dropped him off in Beverly, where his (only) retired oma lives and then proceeded to Cambridge where Sita had a one day assignment, scribing for some company we had never heard of but which seems to be doing good work to help people stay or become healthy. All stops were conveniently on the way to work.

During the drive in Sita gave me some good ideas for a global conference I am asked to design and facilitate next spring in Southern Africa. It is the best thing a mother can wish for, to get advice from her daughter on matters related to work. I wished she could be there with me, like we were working as a pair in Afghanistan, 6 years ago.

In the morning we had our quarterly global meeting at MSH. It is a carefully orchestrated and painstakingly prepared event with voices coming in from all over the world – We have come a long way to inclusivity and it was nearly flawless: Islamabad was on the line, with Sania Nishtar, the founder of an organization called heartfile that helps the Pakistani government address the rise of chronic diseases, soon to outperform the infectious diseases. In the (US) Midwest a researcher told us about his Blue Zones work, trying to identify the secrets of longevity (no surprises there: diet, family, community, meditation and such), a colleague in Uganda showed how chronic diseases detection and treatment have been incorporated in the work MSH is usually engaged in.

I reflected on my year back at MSH which started so badly and realized I can once again be proud to belong to this organization I felt so abandoned by last fall. It was an inspiring meeting.

The rest of the day I was invited to learn about a new technology platform MSH has purchased that allows us to design courses online and track who has taken what course. It is truly a Big Brother arrangement because just about anything the learner does can be tracked, except maybe picking his or her nose.

While we were learning about how to build a course my hands were itching to design a real course. I notice a surge of energy each time I am engaged in something creative and a drip-drip loss of energy when I am not.

The new consortium we are part of with John Hopkins allows for lots of creativity, in fact it promised innovative approaches to our funder. I am busy reading up on how insights and innovations happen and am, once again, energized by that.  I am also given the opportunity to become an accredited coach. One of the companies we are considering for the training has an energy model as its basic philosophy. It looks like all energy streams are coming together.

Zooming in and zoning out

Published October 24, 2012 Uncategorized Leave a Comment

I am zooming in on the next two trips and the last two of this year (Bangladesh and Japan).  Once again I am mired in arranging flights, trying to get good seats and mentally preparing for another set of long flights. This last trip alone, to Dhaka, fills me with trepidation as it is very, very long, spread over 3 calendar days.

I am enjoying being home. A surprise visit of Faro and his parents this week helped shorten the time I had counted down to see him. It was a quick visit but enough to take measurements for a scarf and mittens, and marvel at how fast he is growing. He was no longer dressed like a baby, with herringbone trousers that include a small change pocket and a cellphone pocket, a striped T-shirt that made him look very French and the bear hat to cover his still bold head.

We worked in the garden and I tried to convert the harvest into a variety of meals: soups, kitchari, apple pie, apple sauce and tomato salads. I am making up for lost veggie meals.

We have had a rather active social life with meals in restaurants, at friends’ homes and standing by the counter.  My stomach has gotten rather confused by the change in diet, or maybe it is the new batch of anti-inflammatory pills that made me feel rather punky. As a result I missed the last debate between the presidential hopefuls.  At any rate, I have already voted, so it makes no difference (as if it would).

At work I am engaged in lots of small (near horizon) tasks and lots of reading.  The reading is to catch up with the world of health communications, understand their theories and latest research, so I can sit meaningfully at the table of the new project with Johns Hopkins, of which I am now part. I discovered a great website of the University of Twente, of all places, where someone went to great length to upload all the (health) communication theories, in English even.

Since the project is all about innovation I am also reading up on that topic and am learning about how to switch on my right hemisphere (daydreaming with a touch of awareness so as not to make it the same as zoning out).

Zoning out is actually what I would like to be doing right now.

Good and better

Published October 19, 2012 Uncategorized Leave a Comment

The best part of travel is coming home.  After a long flight to Amsterdam, a three hour wait at Schiphol that I filled with reviewing a report under a tight deadline, and another long flight I landed in my yellow-orange-red and green home state with Axel waiting at the gate. When I left it was still summer, now it is unmistakably fall.

We celebrated my homecoming with a dinner in one of my favorite restaurants in Gloucester (Alchemy). We were seated on a comfortable couch in a little alcove – with one glass of wine, nearly too comfortable, given that it was already past midnight in the places I had spent the last 5 weeks.

Back home I got to admire the new appliances that look very settled in – a new kitchen look I still need to get used to (I changed my mind about stainless steel but it is too late now). No more rattling death sounds from the old fridge and an over the stove exhaust fan (also stainless steel) to replace the greasy and rusty one that we bought nearly 20 years ago.

I texted Sita and Tessa about my safe return and got one text back from Indiana where Tessa and Steve are visiting Axel’s alma mater (IU) and taking nostalgia pictures when not visiting friends.

Sita is back from two trips to DC and told me our grandson is in the 100th percentile of height and the 90th percentile of weight. I am not sure what the universe of these percentiles is – I have a hard time imagining that 100 percent of the kids in that cohort are shorter. He is, according to his paternal grandmother, already at the weight his dad was at 1 year. Faro is not even 5 months.  I can’t wait to see him.

Axel has been busy, too busy, with estate management. Things got complicated when our electrical main, running through our new neighbor’s yard, was nearly clipped during excavation works for their new sun room’s foundation.  The engineer had neglected to put utility cables on the plan and, I am told, has now been fired. It could have been very messy.

As a result of the estate management complication he has neglected the garden a bit. It looks like a jungle, full of unpicked edibles. The beans were too shriveled up to eat so we will dry them and put them up. I harvested pints of tiny yellow tomatoes, a few sleek and bright purple Japanese eggplants, some cucumbers, some baseball-sized zucchini and Brussels sprouts. On the fruit front, our neighbor’s orchard is full of apples, many on the ground. He encouraged us to take as many as we want, which we did. I think today is going to be a cooking day.

At night we were among the first dinner customers of the new Foreign Market café/restaurant in town, finally opening for dinner. We were treated like long lost friends (I think Axel went there a few times while I was away) and enjoyed a lovely meal and great wine (South African), reconnecting with each other after this long absence. It is so good to be home!

Diversity with salmon

Published October 16, 2012 On the road Leave a Comment
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I spent the entire day yesterday with my ten colleagues from the project here in the funky guesthouse where we met last time. We had asked for the Chinese room but people were staying in the bedrooms around it and so we returned to the Louis XV room where we had started our retreat 7 months ago.

We sat around a large dining table that was set for royalty when we came in. We had the staff remove the silver goblets and decorations, the crystal candelabras and the huge silver center piece, a terrine filled with moss, so that we could see each other across the table. We sat on damask covered chairs, a little rickety and creaky, but very elegant.

A pheasant and loud quaking ducks darted in and out of our room. The ducks were probably the babies that wandered in and out last March, chased by the mothers. Now these same mothers are grandparents, just as I am.

Outside on the wide porch two oversized South Africans were enjoying a healthy snack in their white bath robes. We talked about Bion’s dependency assumptions while they considered their next move: more food or massage?

After an exquisit lunch of poached salmon we discovered that the 10 people in the room represented nearly all the stops on Geert Hofstede’s cultural dimensions (individuality vs collectivism; high vs low power distance; high vs low uncertainty avoidance; masculinity vs feminity and Michael Bond’s time orientation (long versus short).  It was extraordinary, given that these data points came from only 10 people as they considered their own places on these dimensions and the places they’d put ‘their people’ on.

We explored more diversity in learning styles and modes of handling conflict and a small committee is looking at gender. Some experiential exercises anchored the conversation in actual behavior – we may see we do this, but when in a competitive mode, most of all revert back to our defaults – a status we are not always aware of.

Given the extraordinary diversity, it is actually a miracle to see this group so productive and successful. But the success comes at some price, the mental energy it takes to navigate all these differences.

I am preparing for my departure late tonight. The expense report is done; the report is on the program for this morning – a time of endings and new beginnings, with two plane rides serving as the transition between these two states.

Votes and cookies

Published October 14, 2012 On the road Leave a Comment
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Every morning, like brushing my teeth, I dutifully vote 10 times for Razia jan on CNN’s heroes page. She is one of 10 people selected who are now vying for the top spot. I don’t know what the prize is but I am sure it will benefit Afghan girls and that is what matters. Please cast your votes here.

I am back in Pretoria for the home stretch. Today I finished the design, after having run it by the chief last night over dinner. For the retreat we are returning to the same fantasy place (Illyria house, Chinese room) where we were 7 months ago.

Since the business center (a chair with a computer and a printer) at the hotel was not functional (empty ink cartridge) a colleague was so nice to come and get me and installed me at her home office while she was preparing dinner. When I was done I joined a little Dutch boy in baking cookies – the same boy who I had met, with his parents and 5 siblings, two weeks ago. We are good friends now, especially since we got three times the expected number of cookies from the dough and we got to taste them to make sure they were alright.

I am trying to catch up on my two Coursera courses and dutifully do my quizzes at the end of the week. One of the courses has a feature called SSC (screen side chat) with a doctoral student or lecturer reviewing the four topics that got the most votes on the discussion forum. Imagine having to comb through posts from 100.000 students every day.  He acknowledges the authors of insightful questions and manages to make the course feel quite intimate. At the end of each week we are asked to answer questions about whether we believe the teachers care about us (yes!), whether it feels as if he is present (yes!) and such.

I am beginning to suspect what the business model might be and it is all about learning. Imagine getting all these real life stories from 100.000 people – there must be at least 1000 research papers hidden in the discussion forum.

Excelaration

Published October 12, 2012 On the road Leave a Comment
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Another workshop is over and I am turning to the next event, the last of what initially were four and became three. I have sorted out flight changes here and got tickets for flights in the future which might make an outsider believe I am a flight attendant, one that sits rather than attends. I am fussy about seats and it has taken some back and forth to avoid middle-back-of-the-plane seats.  I am mostly in the middle of the plane on aisle seats which feels like a major accomplishments with planes filled to capacity.

I have done three sessions in this workshop, all custom-designed and producing intended outcomes. One was about organizational culture. An inventory of practice led to the identification of four areas they wanted to be more intentional about: how to deal with gossip, with cliques, how to make rewards more equitable and the use of space. I wish them luck. If they fail it won’t be for lack of good intentions.

As a result of that session we now had a vocabulary to talk about the norms in the workshop, which, after having been identified in an age-old workshop ritual, were consistently violated without anyone paying attention. This produced the mother of all norms which was that norms don’t matter.  Everyone nodded, such is life.

Later in the workshop, after consistently seeing about 20% of the participants at the starting hour, I popped the question, what was going on? This revealed how our own team was contributing to the new norms, the competing pressures; all very understandable and all very manageable.

The second session was about story writing. Story telling is of course an art form in all of Africa but story writing is a different story indeed. When asked who loved to write only two hands when up. Writing is associated, as in so many other places with the red pen of the teacher, the critical boss or funder. I used many of the materials Axel used in Afghanistan with his SOLA writing group. I had heard about the effect but not seen it. I was happy to see how the group produced 4 very moving stories, three with a good ending and one with a bad ending (system failure).

We had inserted a session on resiliency – a topic much researched in the child-in-distress literature, and, since 9/11, also in the business literature. It was fascinating to see how this group of people, very much involved in saving children, produced the same overall conditions for resilience as a large international study did (community, identity, family and support systems). They then translated these findings to their own organizational settings, identifying what needed to be in place, established or strengthened in order to become more resilient. Some of these organizations are tiny and living hand-to-mouth; resilience will be what will ‘keep them whole under conditions of adversity.’

After lunch I returned to the office to process the evaluations – good and useable feedback. From it I learned that one participant was convinded that attending this workshop would contribute to the ‘excelaration’ of his (her? organization). What a concept!

Casting off

Published October 9, 2012 On the road Leave a Comment
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I had a lovely Skype conversation with the family back home, including one of the other Oma’s and Faro in the center of course. It’s funny seeing him now wear winter clothes – a first, like so many other things for him. He has learned a few tricks since I left, like rolling over, and, I am told, is now working on sitting up without falling over.

I missed Tessa and Steve who have by now cast off on their road trip with a car full of camping gear, clothing, a brand new iPhone and of course the two not so small dogs. We will be following them on their course and hope they learn much about goat farms, farm life, running a business on the go, dog camping, living on a dime, the rest of America and each other in small quarters.

We started a workshop for leaders of local civil service organizations who receive US government grants, through my organization, to provide a variety of services to orphans, vulnerable children and their caregivers.  Most of these organizations are small and have very basic business system needs in order to mobilize resources, maintain or build their reputation for accountability, efficiency, effectiveness and transparency.

One of the participants is a Peace Corps Volunteer, who has just arrived in Lesotho. She is one of the victims of the Enron collapse which forced her to rethink her life after all her retirement monies had evaporated. She and her husband, both retired, hope to be able to settle here, after her stint with the Peace Corps is over.  Her business consulting skills will come in very handy and I hope she will become a great resource to the local organizations.

On coursera

Published October 8, 2012 On the road Leave a Comment
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I used Saturday evening and Sunday morning to catch up on my two Coursera courses – took the midterm for Model Thinking and read up on course materials for Organizational Analysis.  The readings are interesting: the Cuban Missile crisis and case studies about school reform, all as backdrops for interpreting what happens in organizations.

After one last interview I drove to the Jo’burg airport, dropped off the rental car and boarded the small turbo prop that took me and 20 other people to Maseru.

A miscommunication left me stranded at the Maseru airport with an Anglican priest who had flown in from Cape Town. His standby phone, all that was left after his pad and computer had been stolen in Cape Town, was out of battery power and so he didn’t have the number of his ride which, may be also a miscommunication, had not shown up either.

After everyone was gone the airport was being locked up – ours was the last flight in. The airport staff told us the entrance gate to the airport would be closing.  They gave us a ride and dropped us off on the public side of the gate where we waited until my taxi arrived.  What would have been a pain in the neck, the long wait, gave rise to an interesting conversation with the gentleman who had worked for Desmond Tutu in the 80s and 90s and was there when Mandela was released.  I offered him a ride to the church’s guesthouse and got to listen to more stories.

At the hotel I was greeted by colleagues and a cold Maluti draft. It is now summer here too – a jump from two weeks ago; there appears to be no spring, from winter straight into summer.

And now I am back in the lesotho Sun’s standard room (all rooms are exactly the same), this time a few floors above the casino. It is Sunday and the place is filled with people hoping to get rich (and probably knowing they won’t).

The first email I read was about a South African colleague who had delivered her baby prematurely after an exhausting trip back from the US, and the sad postscript that the baby had died due to fluid in his lungs. A little boy named Adrian, like my dad. So intensely sad.

Loosening up

Published October 6, 2012 On the road Leave a Comment
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My neck is still tender from the Thai massage Katie took me to. The satin curtain-enclosed massage spaces reminded me of the Thai massage house in Kabul, which was eventually closed when the masseuses didn’t get their visa renewed (supposedly because they were taking away jobs from Afghans, ha!)

The massage was long overdue after two weeks of way too much time in front of a computer – and as a result rather intense. I kept wondering whether to ask her to reduce the pressure a bit but then she moved to another part of my body.

We completed the morning’s outing with a sushi meal at what is becoming one of my favored restaurants. I ordered a copy of the meal to take home for dinner.

I have nearly completed my week of inquiry into the senior team’s functioning, with only two more interviews to go.  The patterns are beginning to emerge from the heavily populated mindmap in which I am pouring the answers to my questions about progress, stand stills, informal norms and desired outcomes of the retreat. Getting the ingredients out of which to fashion the design of the senior team retreat was the reason for my one week trip to Pretoria. I consider it a success.

Friday night I participated in a ‘make-your-own-pizza’ night at Katie’s and Josh where a Dutch couple from Venlo with their six small children were busy fashioning the pizzas, even one with chocolate and marshmallows, which I let pass. It was an evening with much kid energy and great conversation about lives lived overseas and speaking Dutch (I passed the test).

Everything is changing again in Lesotho. The senior leadership retreat is indefinitely postponed as key participants were summoned by another ministry to do work that can’t wait. My counterpart has been transferred to another ministry and so we go back to square one. As a result my extended stay makes less sense and requires rescheduling on the Pretoria side as well.  In the meantime all the flights home from South Africa are filling up – it is amazing how, even on weekdays, all the flights (and there are many) are full.

October 2012
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