Sylvia's Journal

The ideas I read about in the plane to South Africa worked themselves nicely into a series of just-in-time agendas that came together, as I had asked the universe to do. We talked, we simulated, we extracted lessons during a variety of exercises that one can never do at work. I got to know people better, and they me; there is more trust now, which helps. People are more willing to make a trust fall alongside me.

While I was at work Axel explored Jo’burg, the art scene, musea and places to eat and have coffee. He had to figure out the transportation system and was warned many times (don’t go there by bus, don’t walk here, to get too close to the train station in an Uber, etc.). We are grateful that, back home, we are living in a place that does not require gates, razor wire, double locks, and so many warnings about safety.  

With Christmas coming up (preceded by Black Friday, successfully copied here), people need lots of money. We got scammed at the ATM which allowed the scammer to buy something at Gadgets for 700 USD, probably a drone. Luckily my bank in the US is reimbursing me for the loss. Bad luck for me (at least at the moment, being scammed is a very unpleasant experience as I felt so stupid) and good luck for the guy who is now bringing back something amazing to his family. Although grateful that, in the end, the loss is not mine. When I came for my new bank card, the ATM folks at the bank told me that they were amazed this was only the first time for me, as they know about my travels (which I call in before each trip to alert them). 

Coming home to our apartment at the end of the day, Axel directed us to yet another great restaurant and selected our wine. I am used to come to my hotel room tired and hungry and either ordering room service or sit by myself in a nearby restaurant, and maybe ordering one glass of wine. This was so much better. I think I can get used to hin traveling with me, at least to places like South Africa.

This is probably the last trip of the year, unless I decide to accompany Sita and Axel to Paris early December for a meeting of the Valueweb that both are members of. Or I go to Holland to visit my Irish twin brother who has been fighting multiple staph infections in a hospital in Holland. Or I go to India to visit my team in Gujarat to play and work a little, and keep pushing the string that is our proposal for working with the department of urban development in UP.  All sorts of possibilities!

Yesterday (today? Last night?) we arrived in Jo’burg after the now familiar long flight from Atlanta. Aside from a few minor zigzags halfway through the trip, smack in the middle of the vast Atlantic ocean due to string headwinds, the flight was smooth. I had requested an upgrade to B-class but didn’t get it and so I folded myself in Delta Comfort seat 33D, next to a nice young man from Virginia who sets up call centers in South Africa (yes, he had seen ‘Outsource’). We chatted for a couple of hundred miles and then he fell asleep and I did not.

Axel sat 6 rows behind me on the other side of the plane and lucked out – an empty seat between him and a young man by the window who slept the whole way huddled over his tray table.

I read one book and then listened to another by the same author who I had just gotten to know trough a webinar on Thursday. Her approach (Cy Wakeman’s reality-based leadership), smashed a good part of my collection of taken-for-granted management and leadership beliefs. I loved her challenges to conventional wisdom, especially since they are backed up by research and resonated with my experiences, especially my recent facilitation experience in South Africa. It was a timely discovery as my proposed design got kind of thrown out the window and I found myself traveling to South Africa with empty hands/head as to what I was going to do. 

I am slated to facilitate 5 retreats this week, three half day retreats and two whole days. The first one is on Monday and will be more of a design conversation as there is no agenda – only a list of topics. Searching for some way to turn the list of topics into a coherent agenda, the universe came to my rescue and put Cy Wakeman on my path. I will propose her ideas and see where we go from there. It’s a journey. I may propose a road trip as the central metaphor for all of the retreats this week.

We landed in summer (85F), 7 hours ahead of the wintry cold day of departure. In the olden days this would have been a change of enormous proportions (imagine a 6 week voyage over stormy seas and no land in sight for weeks on end). But now it’s a cinch and we take it all in stride. It’s an important perspective to hold as we will be talking a lot about change this week (but not about change management, as that is one of the concepts that I have now jettisoned).

We are lodged in a low rise apartment complex that is around the corner of a number of restaurants, their terraces filled with people enjoying wine and good food. Axel is in heaven: good wine and a nice steak with Malagasy pepper sauce. I was also in heaven with a well prepared steak tartare and a nice glass of South African Sauvignon blanc, something we rarely get in the US where New Zealand dominates that Sauvignon. Although very tired (and alcohol not usually a good idea), we ordered the most expensive bottle of red wine (US$20), thinking we would each have a glass and then take the bottle home.  We ended up drinking the whole thing, managed to walk in a straight line to our apartment, just meters away.  And then I collapsed, to wake up in the middle of the night and write.