Playing the hand he was dealt

"I don't deal the decks, I just play the percentages." - Jack Nicholson, The Witches of Eastwick

Close your eyes. Picture Barcelona, city of light and dance, gaudy mosaics, flower markets, tapas and wine. Which of those can you see? All of them together - none of them?

I recently attended the 14th annual international meeting of the Dialogue Social Enterprise Foundation held in Barcelona. One of the key contributions that this organisation makes to corporate life are the Dialogue in the Dark workshops that I have written about previously in this blog. In these 'darkshops' leaders are guided through a series of experiences by highly skilled visually impaired facilitators who provide an opportunity for the sighted to 'see' and interact with the culture of the blind.

There is no doubt in my mind that as 21st century organisations get noisier and more overheated without necessarily generating more light or understanding, there is a vital role for those who can create reflective space and a welcome darkness where silence, gentle support and humility can go to work. The sort of space that is being created on the waterfront in Barcelona by ONCE and Dialogue Social Enterprise.

In our organisations where 24/7 virtuality provides new and often highly stressful ways of doing business, it makes sense to draw on the experience and tenacity of a community of people who have long since learned to live and communicate richly while carrying the load of full-time blindness. The sort of people who listened to the visionary Nadira Panjwani tell her inspirational stories of social upliftment in Pakistan.

And as traditional business organisations evolve to become more chaotic, more improvisational, more unpredictable, so the skills of 'making it up as you go along' and 'bumping your head in order to learn' will play a greater and greater part in producing flatter, more vulnerable and more emotionally honest leaders. The sort of leaders who will increasingly be called 'Lucky'.

Close your eyes again - the future is dark and full of light.

Horseland

May Star was born on the 1st of May 1998. An Icelandic foal taking her first few tottery steps below the great western glacier of Snæfellsjökull. Named in a burst of revolutionary zeal, twelve years later she finds herself taking me on a gentle tourist trek around her domain.

She uses just her first and second gears, a sedate walk across a summer wildflower meadow towards the seashore and then a brisk trot along the lava sands. Sensibly, she keeps her other three available gaits under wraps, realising that she has a rather tentative day tripper on board rather than a seasoned horseman in a horned hat. May Star is a five-gaiter mare, capable of the additional steps and paces that are the unique inheritance of the pure-bred Icelandic horse - the tolt and the flying pace both of which allow the horse to cover slippery, sharp-edged terrain with relative ease.

She is a beautiful horse. I got into trouble for describing her as a 'pony' before I first mounted her and from the saddle looking out over that straw mane she is definitely all horse. Although there is apparently no equivalent word for the mildly disparaging 'pony' in Icelandic, there are over a hundred different specialist terms for describing the colour of an Icelandic horse's coat. May Star is a blonde to my untutored, easily pleased eye but by the time I was bobbing up and down on her back, I had learned sufficient horse manners not to mention this to her. We crossed a small meltwater stream rushing over its bed of jagged volcanic debris without missing a beat.

Riding through an Icelandic landscape, it's easy to see why it has spawned a whole cast of spirit dwellers or the 'hidden people' as they are known. To the unseeing eye it is empty. To those watching we are a familiar couple plodding along. A hoary urban myth beloved of travel guide writers is that one in four Icelanders claim to have had intimate relations with elves or hobgoblins or sprites or trolls or whoever, depending on their base muggle taste presumably. I wonder who May Star sees in the Atlantic spray as we trot along the tide mark.

Iceland is a spectacular geology lesson laid out for all the hand-rubbing glee of generations of geography field trip organisers. The Snæfellsjökull's gleaming peak teases us like a shy bride behind her shifting veil of cloud. Ahead of us lies the petrified lava field of Budahraun - a fan-shaped arrested estuary of volcanic overspill - as if a giant's pot of treacle had boiled over and then been frozen solid in a twitch of the ice queen's wand.

My queen for the day is leading me on towards the midnight sun and home.

Surf and Turf

I’m always attracted to the ‘surf+turf’ option on any restaurant menu. It’s partly the idea of a 241 bargain but there’s also something audacious about trying to pull off a dish of rhyming opposites – a bit like the ice and fire of a baked Alaska. So when we decided to try a highly recommended, award-winning Reykjavik restaurant, I quickly opted to give it a go.

Like many restaurant menus this one offered few real clues as to the ingredients in its boldly named signature dish. In any case the explanation in italics was exclusively in Icelandic, a tongue that I have grappled with and entirely failed to master. The waiter was a model of politely correct helpfulness. Yes she would ask the chef what the day’s catch was and what he had decided to twin it with on this occasion. We mulled pleasantly over a choice of wines to accompany this forthcoming feat of culinary fusion.

The answer came back promptly from the spotless ice cavern of the kitchen. Braised minke whale and Icelandic horse carpaccio.

Ah, we’re in Sarah Palin country here with two endangered species on the same plate and however free range and humanely dispatched they may have been, it’s perhaps a little much for one meal - let’s see what else there is.

We all make our own rules, choices and taboos for what we do and don’t eat and that makes a lot of sense in a world of multiple, sometimes conflicted cultures. Iceland offers a superb table of hard won fresh seafood, family farmed dairy products, hand-reared lamb and all the herbal essences of an Alpine meadow. Viking sagas of survival through ice-bound winters on whale oil and seal blubber are part of the island’s cultural DNA. Menus are never culturally neutral.

The issue of commercial whaling continues to divide Icelandic opinion roughly 70/30 between the majority who see it as a national birthright and a sensible use of a properly managed natural resource in a harsh environment and the minority who have moral concerns, fear for further international opprobrium (after cash and ash issues) or who rely on tourist whale-watching dollars.

The other half of our chef’s proposed duet, the carpaccio, is equally problematic. The sturdy Icelandic horse is a national symbol of rugged independence and pure bred ancestry. A tourist visit is incomplete without a ride in its friendly, faithful saddle. It is also an intensely practical tool in a country where the first ring road around the island was completed in 1973, where the interior desert winterscapes are only accessible through skilful 4x4 driving and where there is no need or desire for a rail network. The horse is also farmed in places for its meat.

Hence my reservations. Luckily the chef was both adventurous and diplomatic. In the twinkling of a carving knife he came up with an alternative surf and turf offering – reindeer burger with a skewer of Atlantic prawns – delicious.

Snorri's pool - a mini-saga

I once conducted a leadership seminar in a swimming pool. It started as a fairly riotous affair with much hearty splashing providing relief from the 40 degree heat of a South African January. It was also remarkable for the degree of freedom people felt in providing feedback on how their management team was working. It was almost as if the cooling water offered a safe, egalitarian medium and a licence to speak out in an unusual setting.

So I was fascinated to visit Snorri’s Pool in the tiny hamlet of Reykholt, Iceland. First of all I had never heard of Snorri Sturluson as a result of my barren ignorance of medieval Icelandic history. Writing 100 years before Chaucer, Snorri more or less created the Icelandic saga canon single-handedly. As an historian, poet and legislator, he is revered in the annals of Scandinavian men of letters. His specialist subject on Mastermind would have been the deeds and lineage of Norwegian kings and his carefully crafted myth-making on behalf of the Norse gods must surely have reserved him a prime spot in the halls of Valhalla. Snorri is and was the stuff of legends.

Legend would have it that he spent many hours contemplating life in his specially constructed, geothermally heated outdoor pool. His very own hot tub. One of the many stories that he captured once he had had a quick rub down with his sealskin wrap and a shot or two of cod liver oil, tells of the building of Asgard, mythical home of the Norse gods.

Very roughly translated the story goes something like this: Odin, top god and CEO of Valhalla Inc, commissioned a new set of protective stone walls from behind which to survey his enterprises. To build this legacy structure, he contracted with the best known construction company of the saga age, run by one Bjarnsson, known to all and sundry as Blast the Builder.

After a tough round of honey and potato vodka fuelled negotiations, the contract was finally drawn up. It specified the height of the new walls of Asgard which had to be completed inside six months or else various penalty clauses kicked in involving the Chief Operating God, Thor, and one of his nasty thunderbolts. When it came to negotiating the memorandum of agreement on payments, Blast drove a hard bargain. In the event of on time completion he wanted the hand in marriage of Odin’s indescribably beautiful daughter and Goddess of Fertility, Freyja. Like all builders, Blast looked forward to the prospect of Friday. Not satisfied with the prize of simply dating the boss’s daughter, Blast threw in two more items of payment, the sun and the moon. As performance incentives go, those two celestial bodies take some beating.

Work on the great outer walls of Asgard began immediately and proceeded rapidly in the first couple of weeks. Blast’s secret weapon on site was his remarkable horse, Svad, who could carry pretty much any load effortlessly, dig tirelessly, plaster at high speed and do fixings in a trice. Sven was the sort of master artisan horse that every small builder craves – show him the plans and he’s away whistling while he works. The walls flew up.

In fact such was the speed and quality of construction that Odin convened a crisis meeting of the project steering committee. There was Aesir, God of the Sea and acting CFO, Thor glowering away, Loki God of Mischief and all other corporate functions and the lovely Freyja herself who was seriously upset for having been included in the contract in the first place and particularly now that it seemed she was destined to become a trophy wife to Blast the Builder. What to do?

It was Loki inevitably, who had been spying on building operations, who conceived the fiendish plan to lure away Svad the horse thus delaying progress just sufficiently beyond the six month deadline. Like many corporate solutions proposed in a crisis, this was greeted with acclaim providing that somebody from corporate got on and implemented it. No problem, Loki was out there performing his mischief in a twinkling and of course, without Svad, the whole building operation ground to a sticky halt leaving Blast scratching his head and sucking his teeth in between chewing his pencil.

And that’s pretty much where Snorri leaves that particular story, with the walls of Asgard incomplete and the only access to the mythical home of the gods and goddesses across a rainbow bridge. Snorri himself probably went back to his medieval jacuzzi to contemplate his next block-buster saga.

Now if he’d been South African and used to holding his seminars in a pool, he’d have invented the creepy-crawlie pool cleaner instead.

Volcano man

Villi Knudsen chases volcanoes. He can't remember a time when his life was not determined by where and when one of Iceland's permanently grumbling volcanoes was most likely to go off pop. Villi's father took him on countless missions across the pitiless interior of this land of fire and ice to capture footage of hot magma spewing through raw fissures. Today his old cine film equipment stands on stage in Villi's converted garage cinema, its leather casing lightly dusted in ash.

On screen the occasionally jumpy footage reveals a unique record of volcanic activity in Iceland since 1947. The schoolboy Villi manfully portering a tripod on horseback through glacial streams morphs into the young documentary journalist swooping over an exploding Mount Hekla in a helicopter. Unfortunately our intrepid film maker has developed the habit of switching off the helicopter engine to reduce the noise levels on his soundtrack. We never hear more than a muffled curse from the helicopter pilot.

A thickening, balding Villi continues to peer into craters plopping away like marmalade pans and take measurements in the sulphurous fumes of Grímsvötn Lake. He produces the footage that captured the world's imagination in November 1963 as the brand new island of Surtsey emerged hissing and steaming off the south coast of Iceland and ten years later he's off again to document the evacuation of neighbouring Heimaey Island, overwhelmed by a lava spill. If the earth rumbles and spits, he will find it and film it.

At the beginning and end of the show, the bespectacled Villi in carpet slippers and comfy knitted jumper shares a lifetime's work in a series of practised one liners delivered with the laconic timing of a stand-up comic. He warns us that today it's more dangerous to go into an Icelandic bank than to fly over the latest firework display at Eyja-fjalla-jökull or 'island-mountain-glacier' as it simply translates in Icelandic.

Emerging from the 1970's time capsule that is the Red Rock cinema, my head is full of hubbling, bubbling, molten images. Cone shaped mountains blow their crusts, muddy torrents of meltwater pick up and flick like marbles boulders the size of a house. The world is revealed as an angry, boiling porridge.

Villi thanks each of us personally for attending his show and as he ushers us out into the gentle summer night's light there's a deep sadness behind the rimless spectacles - a grizzled polar bear watching his world disappear.

Crazy paving?

From my home office desk I am watching a highly skilled team at work. Three builders are laying a flagstone patio. One manoeuvres the heavy slabs of reclaimed stone onto the site until he has sufficient inventory of possible pieces for this large outdoor jig-saw puzzle. Another team member mixes up grey mortar in a drum, sifting and churning his ingredients like cake mixture. The team leader contemplates the size of the problem, ties string levels and makes scratch marks with his toe on the sand 'blinded' base that the team has already levelled. Planning, resources, roles and a vision all begin to come together without unnecessary words being exchanged.

The first great flag goes down. It is carefully 'spotted' on five lumps of the mortar mixture and gently tapped into place with a rubber mallett wielded by the leader with the percussive precision of a conductor's baton. The second flag is selected and slots into place alongside the first in a perfectly balanced and yet asymetrical relationship. These two founding flags will now never be moved - like many projects this first relationship provides the base line and the axis from and around which all the subsequent patterns grow. From here on it is about fitting in and recognising the hierarchy.

The team works smoothly. New flagstones are identifed, cut and chiselled to fit the emerging pattern of regular irregularity. No two flags are identical in their mineral shades or rectangular proportions. Each appears to have a separate history of weathering, traffic wear and load bearing. Nature, nurture and the environment have treated them differently on their path to serve a common purpose. Today there is no one right way of assembling the pieces and many wrong ways of geting them misaligned. In the end the 'right' configuration is simply the final way - the one that looks good to the eye, satisfies the spirit level and feels right underfoot.

And on the team the roles begin to flex and flow. The team leader gives up his baton mallett and wields a chisel, the mortar mixer plans the next two slab sizes and their positioning and the hod carrier becomes the chief catering officer for the all important morning tea ceremony. Over tea the job is admired and critiqued in equal measure, 'Bit too much sand in the grouting, mind how close you get to the wall, remember the rule of three, I told you we'd ordered too much.' Feedback, continuous improvement, learning on the job, accountability.

Back in my office it's time to talk with my team.

The Democracy of the Dark

I enjoy fairly decent eyesight. On occasions a pair of reading glasses comes in handy as a more practical solution than a longer pair of arms. Sometimes my eyes grow tired and itchy after long hours staring at pixels on a screen such as this one. As a facilitator of corporate workshops I always insist on a strong natural light source in the rooms that I choose to work in - it seems to boost both my energy and the concentration span of my participants.

I have been fortunate enough to work under some wondrous natural light conditions during my travels with organisations around the world. I like to conclude my workshops by asking people to look out of and beyond the room where we have been working and turn their eyes and thoughts to what lies ahead. I can remember gazing over the hazy Valley of a Thousand Hills in Zululand, squinting up against the brilliant Alpine glare of the Matterhorn and most recently letting the mind dance in the dappled shadows of a 19th century bricked courtyard in the middle of Singapore.

Until this most recent workshop in Singapore however, I had never facilitated in complete darkness. For although we ended in courtyard light, we had started our journey in pitch darkness under the auspices of a remarkable organisation, 'Dialogue in the Dark'. Many extraordinary people - blind, visually impaired and sighted - have collaborated to create this organisation under the banner of 'Dialogue Social Enterprise' which today offers sightless experiences to the sighted as an integral element in any leadership development programme designed to stretch managers of people. Inside the specially constructed 'black box' environment of a perfectly blacked out seminar room, there is endless room for self-discovery.

My experience left me with some profound reflections on the nature of communication itself and far more possibilities and questions than certainties. As part of my own training to assist in the facilitation of a morning's workshop for twenty-five financial services executives, I had met the lead trainer for Dialogue in the Dark. Blind from the age of six, she has built a formidable portfolio of skills in the business of guiding, instructing, coaching and challenging sighted participants in any of the many exhibitions, workshops and customised experiences that her clients require. She took my arm and began breaking me in, gently in places, to the world and the culture of the dark.

Being led by an able, sympathetic guide is one of the great trust experiences we can give ourselves. Sometimes it's a single, simple act of necessity (like getting into a taxi), sometimes a complicated and fraught series of choices over time (like marriage). With Daniela, it was both simple and complicated at once. I seemed to be experiencing two conflicting responses simultaneously. One the one hand, I felt myself reduced to shuffling, fearful, almost foetal distress while on the other a whole world of open space exploded in my head and forced me to breathe deeply and luxuriously. It reminded me of my first drag of oxygen underwater - that heady mixture of adrenaline-fuelled panic.

Slowly the warm blanket of the darkness begins to take effect. My guide is striding around using her colourful voice to chivvy and tease me into position. The white cane that I have been issued with taps ineffectually in a sort of minesweeping circle around my feet and is soon abandoned as I become more comfortable and attuned. Silence in the dark is both essential and impossible. Switching off the soundtrack in my head for a minute or two, I try to tune into the frequency of my new surroundings. Slowly the static buzz clears and the slight hum of a distant compressor and the tinkling of a nearby air-conditioning unit take its place. Increasingly the trickling, clinking, ticking of my own body makes itself heard. Silence is never silent and never before had it been so full of rich texture for me.

After this period of adjustment, we launched ourselves into a series of problem-solving and team-building exercises. Now I have built rafts to cross rivers real and imaginary on five different continents, constructed any number of unlikely metaphors out of drinking straws and paper clips, jumped and splashed through hoops and under spiderwebs, even dashed across hot coals - all in the name of corporate bonding and the quest for leadership credibility - but always with my eyes wide open and my head swivelling wildly for every visual clue I could get. In the dark, the fingertips, the nose and the fine variations of voice and tone take over. 'Build a railway', 'form a circle' or 'find the missing pieces' become strange and bewildering instructions accompanied by blundering chaos and a rising crescendo of frustrated noise as twenty-five highly experienced project managers, pathfinders, process control engineers and the like all thrash around using the tools and the calls of the sighted in the land of the blind.

And then the noise abates - sometimes naturally hushed out of respect for a new reality, a changed playing field - sometimes quelled by the loudest voice in the room - an agent for change in a perceived time of crisis. Both voices, the 'shusher' and the 'shouter' have the same demand at their core, the same instinctive need to be heard, to be freed to listen, to hear the still quiet voices of reason, logic, humour and warmth that have been temporarily drowned out in the tumult and uncertainty. As a metaphor for what's happening in management teams around the globe today, constructing a true dialogue in the dark takes some beating.

Emerging blinking into the new light of reflection, there is time to think about what a huge part light and the refractive indices of colour play in our whole translation of stimulus into language and back again through experience. Words like 'vision' 'insight' 'blue sky' 'picture' (imagine a corporate workshop without those four staples) all take on a fresh resonance after being rinsed and wrung out in the dark. The very way in which language weaves its fine tapestry with the threads of our five primary senses is profoundly enhanced through even a brief encounter with friendly darkness. The dark takes away but it also gives richly.

And what of leaders returning from the 'black box' experience of encountering some of their own shortcomings and clumsily overplayed strengths in the dark? Speaking for myself, I found myself a few days later at the end of a demanding programme talking about vulnerability, humility, trust and seeing differences in a new light.

Somewhere through the hum of Singapore traffic, I could feel Daniela's light touch on my arm and hear her silvery laughter.

http://365ways.blogspot.com/2008/06/dialogue-in-dark.html
www.dialogue-in-the-dark.com

Miep Gies

I was saddened recently to read of the death of Miep Gies, aged 100. As a young woman during the Nazi occupation of Holland, she had helped protect Anne Frank's family for as long as she could and, following the final raid on the old Amsterdam jam factory, found and safeguarded Anne's diary manuscript. Wartime acts of courage, simple decency and far sightedness that made Miep a figure of humanitarian respect and affection for the rest of her long, kindly and thoughtful life.

RIP Miep.