Replies

My mountain nexus is the Coast mountain range in British Columbia, Canada, which absorbs my vision when I look out of my apartment windows. I feel grounded in them and my soul communes with them often.
I’ve been fortunate enough also to live in (“be alive in”) the Canadian Rockies, which may be my “home away from home” and to encounter their vistas and rocks first hand (and then the other).
I feel we are ne happy, big family.

It has been well said that “Those who do not learn from history are bound to repeat it”. Unless we make sense of the past (including past planning, uncertainties, and factors outside our control) we can’t make meaningful plans for the future. Planning in the Arab world is very difficult. Even talk about the future must be punctuated with “inshallah” (“If Allah wishes it”) for. to many, planning is a sin because it usurps the will of Allah. Better, I suggest, that we balance sense-making with planning.

As a management consultant on corporate culture who worked in Saudi Arabia for a while, I was intrigued by the Arab interpersonal introductory process. While in the West one of the first questions we ask of a newcomer is “What do you do for a living?”, the Arabs seek out “How are you and I related?” or “Who do you know that I know?” I think this is because nomadic Arabs really had to trust those they were with in the desert for their survival in a way that urbanized Westerners didn’t have to.

Another insight on planning comes from Karl Weick, one of my mentors, who claimed that sense-making after events was more important for executives that planning before events. Maybe Whitehead would agree.