A ball of string

I spent yesterday afternoon clearing out an old man's garden shed. It was the normal treasure trove of heritage tools and artifacts, well worn and much loved. Sturdy wooden handled spades, forks, axes and rakes - built to last, blurred with time. Old jam jars and biscuit tins full of 'round-to-its' and 'may-come-in-handys'. Everything covered in a gentle patina of dust and soil, rust and toil.

Amongst the time coddled treasures was a muddled, muddied bundle garden twine. Slowly I began to untangle it. It reminded me of one of my grandmother's exercises designed to calm me down and teach me the virtues of purposeful patience. 'Here, help me untie this,' she would say and hand me a huge knotted ball of string.

An hour or so later I would hand her a neatly wound ball. 'There we are,' she'd say, 'that wasn't so bad was it?'

A couple of years ago I used a version of this exercise with a management team I was meant to be coaching. I spent part of an evening tangling mountain climbing rope into the most almighty Gordian Knot I could fit into my corporate workshop. We kicked off the next morning's session with the simple instruction, 'Sort it out as a team.'

The predictable scrum followed. Seven voices; six different process suggestions; five diagrams; four bystanders; three working groups; two minutes to go; one guy left holding the last knots - result!

Some problems are best tackled by one person at a time in a quiet old shed. Alternatively give them to my grandmother to sort out.

Answering Ireland's call

I flew into Dublin last week. The Ryanair flight was a few minutes early for its landing slot and chose to circle in a leisurely fashion over the gentle, mottled countryside below. It gave me a moment to pause and reflect on a country to which I feel inextricably linked.

My grandfather left Galway City in the 1890's as a nine year old boy who had just lost his father and eldest brother. His mother, a brave and enterprising soul, had gathered together her remaining brood and embarked on a journey of renewal to Cape Town - inevitably via Dublin itself and Liverpool. On the strength of that ancestral connection, I carry an Irish passport - proudly and conveniently.

The very first time I was able to use this invaluable travel document, I was nineteen and determined to visit the land of my forefather. On a bitterly cold, foggy morning disembarking from the ferry at Dun Laoghaire, I was part of a crowd of some two hundred day trippers who were confronted by a lone Irish immigration official sheltered alongside a brazier in a wooden quayside hut warming his hands on a mug. He poked a scarf-embalmed head out of his nest and peered at the advancing horde. It was definitely not a day for stepping outside and checking travel documents one by one. He waved one mittened hand.

'All you's with an Irish passport can carry on straight.'

The surge of freezing bodies hesitated but momentarily and then swept past him towards the promise of on-shore warmth. I was left holding my brand new, green, harp-adorned passport, uninspected and with a sense of betrayal - my moment of triumphal homecoming snatched from me by one man's pragmatic defiance of the elements.

I trod on Irish soil for the first time, unchallenged but also somehow unbaptised.

As I gazed down from my bargain seat on the ordered fields and hedgerows of the Pale, I remembered that first visit some forty years previously and my youthful awe at the power of lore and legend in Ireland. Apart from conferring on me the infinite gift of travel, my Irish passport had, over the years, given me a sense of identity, of connection with a tradition of literary giants - a largely unexplored causeway to world of Celtic faith and fealty.

The airline announcements crackled across my romantic, fanciful reflections. Within moments I was being processed through a modern airport portal, subject to a perfunctory passport check and bundled out into the milky light of a mild Dublin morning. Welcome home.

The world is round

I was on a flight from Manchester, UK to Atlanta on the day that the USA were playing Portugal in the 2014 FIFA World Cup. On the tiny screen jiggling around irritatingly on the seatback in front of me, I was following the game. USA scored and went ahead and all around me the whole plane erupted with cheers. Suddenly I realised that I was surrounded by American ‘soccer’ fans following the game as passionately as any in Manchester itself.

I began to compare notes with my neighbour who turned out to be an ex-US Army colonel who had then embarked on second career with a major oil and gas company. He was clearly a sports nut – it hardly takes one to recognise another.

‘C’mon,’ the colonel muttered to his players from 30 000 feet, ‘stay on offense.’

‘Attack,’ I correctly him mildly, ‘in football we say ‘attack’.’

‘Same difference, buddy, our wide receiver is playing for too deep.’ I peered at my bouncing screen. He had a point. Maybe he didn’t need my help understanding the beautiful game.

By the time Portugal had levelled the game 2-2 and we had both ripped off our headsets in disappointment, we could agree that the game provided us, if not with an exactly common language, then certainly a very useful set of shared metaphors. We quickly got into how the role of a sports coach differs subtly from code to code around the world and yet how fluidly the lessons of any successful coaching seem to apply in running a business.

I told him of a colleague of mine who had once opened a corporate training workshop in Saudi Arabia by asking who supported Manchester United. Half the room cheered wildly and the other half booed equally spontaneously. From there on a potentially tricky workshop simply hummed along. Football had provided us with a sure kick-off in the unlikeliest of arenas.

He told me all about his final football game for the Army and a never to be forgotten touchdown. I got it in a heartbeat. Sport can so easily be the container for our most precious memories.

Throughout the current World Cup I have heard American sports fans using the rich and expressive language of their own embedded sports vocabulary to help analyse their ‘roundball’ team’s strengths and weaknesses. They should be playing ‘man-to-man defense’ not ‘zone’. Their ‘playmaker’ is killing us ‘box-to-box’. Look at that great ‘pick-and-roll’ get right round the ‘perimeter D’. And so on right down to the agonising wire of those last minutes against Belgium – a state about the size of Maryland for crying in a bucket. In all sports there is the exquisite agony of heroic failure.

In the next two weeks this visceral pain will be felt in seven different countries from all around the globe. One winning population will bask gloriously in the fleeting euphoria of victory and then wake to a world that has rapidly moved on. However, what every sports glued to the World Cup will share is a renewed sense that great emotional well spring of globalisation, ‘we are all connected, we are all in this together.’  

The Prince

I met a prince yesterday. Not a royal one as it happens - more self-made. Geoff Prince is his name although it is his will to work rather than his surname that marks him out. 'Will to Work' is the charitable trust that Geoff has built which offers anybody in his town the opportunity to do an afternoon of carpentry, painting, sewing, fiddling with electrics or even just pottering about making tea in his community workshop - on one condition - you need to be 'feeling a bit poorly' as Geoff puts it.

His business model (not a term that Geoff bothers with much) is based on the fact that every day somebody clears out an old draw, cupboard or garage full of useful tools and materials that somebody else no longer needs. Will to Work accepts these items as donations and puts them back to work in Geoff's workshop housed in an old school building right alongside the town's health centre - with its handy rows of disabled parking spaces. Sensible doctors have begun to prescribe an afternoon's occupational therapy for many of their patients with a range of conditions which might be making them 'feel a bit poorly'. And from there good-hearted volunteers, donations, referrals, grants, goodwill and word of mouth does the rest. Oh, and endless shifts of time and love and tea put in by Geoff, his wife and their small core team.

Now I have designed and led and run hundreds of workshops myself. Most of them end up looking like an explosion in a Post-It factory with scribbled flip charts scattered everywhere and a tired facilitator gathering up evaluation forms - or 'happy sheets' as they are known in my trade. The Will to Work workshop doesn't do happy sheets - it just does happiness instead. And proves that every man can be a prince.

Dilbert

Dilbert announces to his boss that he has looked at every available book on leadership.

'What´s the secret?`

`Apparently leadership is the product of extreme sociopathy plus luck - all the other personality traits are inactive ingredients.` His boss looks both thoughtful and wary.

`Did you actually read all those books?` asks a colleague later.

`No,`says Dilbert, `I just needed to check that they were all different...`

Something in this exchange resonates. Have a good day.

The tough questions...?

I had a call from a client the other day - a senior executive in a global business. She wanted help in preparing a series of year end feedback interviews that she had scheduled with the team of six people reporting in to her. After some discussion about the purpose of the team and its work, we came up with this list:

• What's the one thing I do that adds real value for you?
• What's the one thing I do that really annoys you?
• Does anything I do waste your time?
• What else could I do differently to help you become more effective?
• What's the toughest question I could ask you?

Quite a useful tool-kit. To be used with caution.  Happy 2013.

Taking a bath

If there was one thing I had to do while in Turkey, it was to take a bath. I was raised under a 'cleanliness is next to godliness' regime and in the ablutionary world there is no higher state of absolution than the full Turkish experience.

Just alongside an entrance to the Grand Bazaar on my way towards the Blue Mosque, I spied a sign engraved in marble, 'Enter Istanbul's Oldest Hamam, 1584'. It sounded like an imperial proclamation that was impossible to ignore, let alone refuse.

The receptionist was dressed in a tightly fitting, shiny olive coloured suit complete with waistcoat and fob chain. His front of house manner was such that he could just as easily have been running a pre-war provincial cinema or a betting shop close to a major racecourse. He explained the tariff structure to me in careful, practised English. I opted for the DIY wash out of a slight cautiousness. With a snap of his fingers he summoned one of his underlings to escort me to a first floor locker room up a twisted flight of wooden steps. 'Undress,' was the curt, unambiguous command from the disappearing minion.

I looked around guardedly. On the bench in my private, caged locker room was small gingham tea towel presumably designed to afford me some modesty in my journey towards the steam, heat and thudding sounds that emanated from the floor above me. I stripped off, slipped on a pair of blue plastic bath thongs and tried with limited success to use the tea towel for its fit and proper purpose.

I stepped out of my locker cage and turned to head upstairs. A large hand clamped itself on my shoulder and propelled me slightly faster in the direction I was already going. My borrowed thongs slid unsteadily across the uneven dark grey marble slabs underfoot. I was ushered into the magnificent central arched vault of the hamam still driven firmly from behind by my attendant. 'DIY,' he spat out the term like a curse. Then all of a sudden I was alone in an echoing chamber of smoke.

Looking up I could see the sunlight streaming in through half the tiny windows circling the inner rim of the dome. The central section of the dome itself had been punctured like a pepper pot with more vents creating brilliant shafts angling through the steam. Rising a foot above the floor of the bath vault was the huge circular 'belly stone' platform in a lighter shade of grey marble. I went to sit on its nearest edge and immediately leapt up scalded. From one of the private alcove wash stations set around the outer circumference of the room, I heard a throaty chuckle. As I became accustomed to the steamy haze, I realised that I was in fact not alone at all and that several fellow bathers were attending to their rituals sluicing themselves down using the fawcets set above marble basins in each of the surrounding alcoves.

One of these fellows emerged carrying a shallow metal tin plate full of water and splashed it hissing over the belly stone before flipping his tin over and settling it as a pillow under his head as he stretched out on the gleaming slab like a cat rolling on its back in the sun. I made my way to an alcove to begin some private and tentative ablutionary experiments of my own. My small roughly chopped cake of soap smelt of freshly cut lemons. 

Step by step I began to get the hang of the DIY version of the splash, soap, lather and scrub routine that I saw being carried out by attendants on the more adventurous or accustomed bathers. My tea towel soon became a sodden scrap but still useful for insulating my buttocks from the sharp marble sting of the furniture. Slowly everything softened, relaxed, sweated and plumped up like a prune in hot water. It was easy to imagine the grittiness and stress of days of travelling washing away down the elaborate system of drains and gunnels criss-crossing the floor.

Super-saturated I dragged myself away from the quiet hiss and splash of the bath house and back in the direction from which I remembered entering. Not so fast. I was immediately apprehended by an attendant who looked as if he might well have done much of his earliest and best work in a high security penal establishment. Certainly his service philosophy seemed more shaped by Midnight Express than the Orient Express. This heavily moustachioed officer unceremoniously re-directed me towards the shower area, slapped open a tap and shoved me under the cold jet that emerged directly from a gouge in the tiles at head height. Gasping and clutching for my towel, I spluttered my thanks and stumbled towards the stair well.

As I approached the sanctuary of my locker, an unseen hand thrust a fresh white towel in front of me. It was soft, sweetly scented with lavender and with a deep, thickly luxurious pile that scoured my back and shoulders with the gentlest of rough caresses. I got dressed in a dream and headed out, cleansed, to face the purity of the Blue Mosque.

First, talk to the receptionist (most of them speak English) and decide on the level of treatment you want. DIY wash? Wash with attendant? Oil massage with that? You’ll pay the receptionist and they’ll take you to a change area, usually your own lockable room, where you’ll undress and leave your things.

Read more: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/turkey/travel-tips-and-articles/8585#ixzz2DiFoKN8C

First, talk to the receptionist (most of them speak English) and decide on the level of treatment you want. DIY wash? Wash with attendant? Oil massage with that? You’ll pay the receptionist and they’ll take you to a change area, usually your own lockable room, where you’ll undress and leave your things.

Read more: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/turkey/travel-tips-and-articles/8585#ixzz2DiFoKN8C

First, talk to the receptionist (most of them speak English) and decide on the level of treatment you want. DIY wash? Wash with attendant? Oil massage with that? You’ll pay the receptionist and they’ll take you to a change area, usually your own lockable room, where you’ll undress and leave your things.

‘Undress’ means pretty much what you want it to mean. Most hamams have separate steam rooms for men and women. In this situation, men are expected to maintain a certain loin-clothy level of coverage, but women can throw caution, as it were, to the winds. Most Turkish women subtly drape themselves with their cloth when they’re not actually bathing, but if you prefer to bask nude no-one will bat much of an eyelid. If you’re feeling shy, part or all of a swimsuit is acceptable; if you find yourself in the kind of hamam that has mixed-sex steam rooms and male attendants, it’s usual to keep on at least the bottom half of a swimsuit.

The attendants will give you a cloth (resembling, in most establishments, an over-sized red gingham tea towel). You’ll keep this on to travel from the change rooms to the hamam.

You’ll be given some shoes by your attendant – either traditional wooden clogs or fluorescent flip-flops. Stick with ‘em. As a surface for pratfalls, only banana skins beat out wet marble.

Once you’ve been shepherded into the hamam you’ll be left to lounge on the heated marble. In most cases, there’ll be a göbektaşı (belly stone), a round central platform where you can loll around like a sunning python. If not, take a seat and lean against the walls. The idea is to sweat, loosening dirt and toxins in preparation for your wash.

If you’re going self-service, follow this up with a loofah-and-soap rub-down and douse yourself with water from the marble basins. If you’ve forked out for an attendant, they’ll catch up with you after you’ve had a good, 15-minute sweat. You’ll be laid down on the edge of the göbektaşı and sluiced with tepid water, then your attendant will take you in hand.

First up is a dry massage with a kese (rough mitt). Depending on your attendant, this experience can be delicious (a little like being washed by a giant cat) or tumultuous (picture a tornado made of sandpaper). If you get to feeling like a flayed deer, use the international language of charade to bring it down a notch or two.

Next will be the soap. The attendant will work up an almighty lather with an enormous sponge and squeeze it all over you: it’s a bit like taking a bubble bath without the bath. The foam (attar of roses? Asses’ milk? Sorry, it’s most likely good ole Head ‘n’ Shoulders) will be worked into every inch of you. Next, more sluicing, followed by a shampoo, and voila, you’re clean as a whistle. The shiny kind.

If you’ve ordered an oil massage, you’ll be ushered into another room for it. Unless you’re particularly flush, it’s probably best to skip this bit: the massages are brief and often lack finesse, and the oils are hardly deluxe.

After the massage, either soap or oil, you’re on your own. Many tourists splash-and-dash their way through the hamam experience, leaving immediately after their treatment. Don’t be one of them. Hang around. Overheat, cool down with a dousing, and repeat to fade. Let your muscles turn to toffee and your mind go pleasantly elastic. This is what the hamam is really all about.

Read more: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/turkey/travel-tips-and-articles/8585#ixzz2DiFMlRQw

First, talk to the receptionist (most of them speak English) and decide on the level of treatment you want. DIY wash? Wash with attendant? Oil massage with that? You’ll pay the receptionist and they’ll take you to a change area, usually your own lockable room, where you’ll undress and leave your things.

‘Undress’ means pretty much what you want it to mean. Most hamams have separate steam rooms for men and women. In this situation, men are expected to maintain a certain loin-clothy level of coverage, but women can throw caution, as it were, to the winds. Most Turkish women subtly drape themselves with their cloth when they’re not actually bathing, but if you prefer to bask nude no-one will bat much of an eyelid. If you’re feeling shy, part or all of a swimsuit is acceptable; if you find yourself in the kind of hamam that has mixed-sex steam rooms and male attendants, it’s usual to keep on at least the bottom half of a swimsuit.

The attendants will give you a cloth (resembling, in most establishments, an over-sized red gingham tea towel). You’ll keep this on to travel from the change rooms to the hamam.

You’ll be given some shoes by your attendant – either traditional wooden clogs or fluorescent flip-flops. Stick with ‘em. As a surface for pratfalls, only banana skins beat out wet marble.

Once you’ve been shepherded into the hamam you’ll be left to lounge on the heated marble. In most cases, there’ll be a göbektaşı (belly stone), a round central platform where you can loll around like a sunning python. If not, take a seat and lean against the walls. The idea is to sweat, loosening dirt and toxins in preparation for your wash.

If you’re going self-service, follow this up with a loofah-and-soap rub-down and douse yourself with water from the marble basins. If you’ve forked out for an attendant, they’ll catch up with you after you’ve had a good, 15-minute sweat. You’ll be laid down on the edge of the göbektaşı and sluiced with tepid water, then your attendant will take you in hand.

First up is a dry massage with a kese (rough mitt). Depending on your attendant, this experience can be delicious (a little like being washed by a giant cat) or tumultuous (picture a tornado made of sandpaper). If you get to feeling like a flayed deer, use the international language of charade to bring it down a notch or two.

Next will be the soap. The attendant will work up an almighty lather with an enormous sponge and squeeze it all over you: it’s a bit like taking a bubble bath without the bath. The foam (attar of roses? Asses’ milk? Sorry, it’s most likely good ole Head ‘n’ Shoulders) will be worked into every inch of you. Next, more sluicing, followed by a shampoo, and voila, you’re clean as a whistle. The shiny kind.

If you’ve ordered an oil massage, you’ll be ushered into another room for it. Unless you’re particularly flush, it’s probably best to skip this bit: the massages are brief and often lack finesse, and the oils are hardly deluxe.

After the massage, either soap or oil, you’re on your own. Many tourists splash-and-dash their way through the hamam experience, leaving immediately after their treatment. Don’t be one of them. Hang around. Overheat, cool down with a dousing, and repeat to fade. Let your muscles turn to toffee and your mind go pleasantly elastic. This is what the hamam is really all about.

Read more: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/turkey/travel-tips-and-articles/8585#ixzz2DiFMlRQw

First, talk to the receptionist (most of them speak English) and decide on the level of treatment you want. DIY wash? Wash with attendant? Oil massage with that? You’ll pay the receptionist and they’ll take you to a change area, usually your own lockable room, where you’ll undress and leave your things.

‘Undress’ means pretty much what you want it to mean. Most hamams have separate steam rooms for men and women. In this situation, men are expected to maintain a certain loin-clothy level of coverage, but women can throw caution, as it were, to the winds. Most Turkish women subtly drape themselves with their cloth when they’re not actually bathing, but if you prefer to bask nude no-one will bat much of an eyelid. If you’re feeling shy, part or all of a swimsuit is acceptable; if you find yourself in the kind of hamam that has mixed-sex steam rooms and male attendants, it’s usual to keep on at least the bottom half of a swimsuit.

The attendants will give you a cloth (resembling, in most establishments, an over-sized red gingham tea towel). You’ll keep this on to travel from the change rooms to the hamam.

You’ll be given some shoes by your attendant – either traditional wooden clogs or fluorescent flip-flops. Stick with ‘em. As a surface for pratfalls, only banana skins beat out wet marble.

Once you’ve been shepherded into the hamam you’ll be left to lounge on the heated marble. In most cases, there’ll be a göbektaşı (belly stone), a round central platform where you can loll around like a sunning python. If not, take a seat and lean against the walls. The idea is to sweat, loosening dirt and toxins in preparation for your wash.

If you’re going self-service, follow this up with a loofah-and-soap rub-down and douse yourself with water from the marble basins. If you’ve forked out for an attendant, they’ll catch up with you after you’ve had a good, 15-minute sweat. You’ll be laid down on the edge of the göbektaşı and sluiced with tepid water, then your attendant will take you in hand.

First up is a dry massage with a kese (rough mitt). Depending on your attendant, this experience can be delicious (a little like being washed by a giant cat) or tumultuous (picture a tornado made of sandpaper). If you get to feeling like a flayed deer, use the international language of charade to bring it down a notch or two.

Next will be the soap. The attendant will work up an almighty lather with an enormous sponge and squeeze it all over you: it’s a bit like taking a bubble bath without the bath. The foam (attar of roses? Asses’ milk? Sorry, it’s most likely good ole Head ‘n’ Shoulders) will be worked into every inch of you. Next, more sluicing, followed by a shampoo, and voila, you’re clean as a whistle. The shiny kind.

If you’ve ordered an oil massage, you’ll be ushered into another room for it. Unless you’re particularly flush, it’s probably best to skip this bit: the massages are brief and often lack finesse, and the oils are hardly deluxe.

After the massage, either soap or oil, you’re on your own. Many tourists splash-and-dash their way through the hamam experience, leaving immediately after their treatment. Don’t be one of them. Hang around. Overheat, cool down with a dousing, and repeat to fade. Let your muscles turn to toffee and your mind go pleasantly elastic. This is what the hamam is really all about.

Read more: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/turkey/travel-tips-and-articles/8585#ixzz2DiFMlRQw

Read more: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/turkey/travel-tips-and-articles/8585#ixzz2DiFMlRQw

Read more: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/turkey/travel-tips-and-articles/8585#ixzz2DiFMlRQw

First, talk to the receptionist (most of them speak English) and decide on the level of treatment you want. DIY wash? Wash with attendant? Oil massage with that? You’ll pay the receptionist and they’ll take you to a change area, usually your own lockable room, where you’ll undress and leave your things.

‘Undress’ means pretty much what you want it to mean. Most hamams have separate steam rooms for men and women. In this situation, men are expected to maintain a certain loin-clothy level of coverage, but women can throw caution, as it were, to the winds. Most Turkish women subtly drape themselves with their cloth when they’re not actually bathing, but if you prefer to bask nude no-one will bat much of an eyelid. If you’re feeling shy, part or all of a swimsuit is acceptable; if you find yourself in the kind of hamam that has mixed-sex steam rooms and male attendants, it’s usual to keep on at least the bottom half of a swimsuit.

The attendants will give you a cloth (resembling, in most establishments, an over-sized red gingham tea towel). You’ll keep this on to travel from the change rooms to the hamam.

You’ll be given some shoes by your attendant – either traditional wooden clogs or fluorescent flip-flops. Stick with ‘em. As a surface for pratfalls, only banana skins beat out wet marble.

Once you’ve been shepherded into the hamam you’ll be left to lounge on the heated marble. In most cases, there’ll be a göbektaşı (belly stone), a round central platform where you can loll around like a sunning python. If not, take a seat and lean against the walls. The idea is to sweat, loosening dirt and toxins in preparation for your wash.

If you’re going self-service, follow this up with a loofah-and-soap rub-down and douse yourself with water from the marble basins. If you’ve forked out for an attendant, they’ll catch up with you after you’ve had a good, 15-minute sweat. You’ll be laid down on the edge of the göbektaşı and sluiced with tepid water, then your attendant will take you in hand.

First up is a dry massage with a kese (rough mitt). Depending on your attendant, this experience can be delicious (a little like being washed by a giant cat) or tumultuous (picture a tornado made of sandpaper). If you get to feeling like a flayed deer, use the international language of charade to bring it down a notch or two.

Next will be the soap. The attendant will work up an almighty lather with an enormous sponge and squeeze it all over you: it’s a bit like taking a bubble bath without the bath. The foam (attar of roses? Asses’ milk? Sorry, it’s most likely good ole Head ‘n’ Shoulders) will be worked into every inch of you. Next, more sluicing, followed by a shampoo, and voila, you’re clean as a whistle. The shiny kind.

If you’ve ordered an oil massage, you’ll be ushered into another room for it. Unless you’re particularly flush, it’s probably best to skip this bit: the massages are brief and often lack finesse, and the oils are hardly deluxe.

After the massage, either soap or oil, you’re on your own. Many tourists splash-and-dash their way through the hamam experience, leaving immediately after their treatment. Don’t be one of them. Hang around. Overheat, cool down with a dousing, and repeat to fade. Let your muscles turn to toffee and your mind go pleasantly elastic. This is what the hamam is really all about.

Read more: http://www.lonelyplanet.com/turkey/travel-tips-and-articles/8585#ixzz2DiFMlRQw

Let the kids look out the window

As a young trainee teacher I was fortunate enough to do parts of my apprenticeship with a number of quietly inspirational classroom teachers. I was reminded of one of these figures while on a ferry ride down the Bosphorus Straits recently.

Istanbul is that most singular of cities, impossible to imagine other than exactly where it stands in wedlock between Europe and Asia. Thrice capital of Middle Earth and like all great imperial cities, it sets off echoes of others in its world heritage league. Tunis, Tripoli, Cairo, Beirut, Athens all carry an Ottoman stamp first posted out through the Sea of Marmara. Gaze down old Stamboul's steep streets and across its waters to Maiden's Island and there is a glimpse of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay. Cross the Golden Horn by the Galata Bridge and the Rialto comes to mind. Let the eye wander along the prosperous wooded waterfront beneath the Bosphorus Bridge and Sydney Harbour becomes the comparison. Perched on the wharfside boulevard in the village of Istinye, the fishermen on Havana's Malecon would feel at home.

Taking in all these heady and fanciful comparisons from the ferry deck, we slipped past a string of Ottoman villas each with its wrought iron lace-fronted landing stage lapped by the swirling waters of the Straits. In the last of these grand reminders of a gilded age, the top storey shutters were thrown back and we were passing close enough to see the reflection of light off water dancing on the pressed ceiling of a large schoolroom. Framed in the picture window looking out over the water, was the back of a single figure I took to be the teacher. Just visible above their desk tops were rows of bobbing children's heads, craning to see beyond and behind their teacher's bulk.

I was transported back to my teacher trainee days in that loveliest of cities, Cape Town. I remembered arriving for a week's stint in a secondary school situated high on a hillside above one of the city's Atlantic-facing suburbs. The classroom to which I had been assigned commanded a particularly fine view out over Table Bay, beyond the Docks where the Dutch had landed in 1652 and away towards Robben Island, at that stage still Nelson Mandela's place of long incarceration.

The first thing I noticed as I began to prepare for my history lesson was that the teacher's desk was placed to one side away from the window with all the students' desks facing out over the Bay. Alarm bells began to ring in my eager young instructional mind. Under no circumstances did I want my students to be distracted from the vital content of my lesson. I began to swing the desks around to ensure that they all faced the blank wall on the mountain side of the classroom.

"What on earth are you doing?" The softly challenging voice belonged to the teacher who had been asked to oversee my fledgling efforts that morning. I muttered something about not wanting the kids to be looking out the window when they should be concentrating on their studies.

"But their history is all there - and their future - straight out of that window - your job is to help them make sense of what they can see right in front of them without standing in their way."

I learned more from that short exchange than most of the rest of my year's training put together and it all came flooding back as I waved at the inquisitive, cheerful faces in the school beside the Straits where Jason once sailed in search of the Golden Fleece.

Dolphins on the Bosphorus

 "Do you want to sit on the Asian or the European side?"

That was the question my host asked me as we boarded her daily commuter ferry heading towards the centre of old Istanbul. There can't be too many urban transport routes where this is a relevant question. Continent-spanning cities are at a premium. Atyaru, Kazakhstan, located at the point where the Ural River meets the Caspian Sea, has a fair claim with the traffic signposts on its major motorway offering 'Europe/Asia' as alternative off-ramps. Panama City could make an argument based on a notional cut-off point between the North and South American continental masses. Reykjavik has a tentative geological claim in that it all but straddles the Atlantic tectonic plates that bind and divide Europe and North America. Port Said and Suez act as twin stitches holding Africa together with Asia across the man-made incision of the Suez Canal. The Straits of Hercules are too wide and turbulent to have allowed a joint Afro-European settlement to have developed on either side - Atlantis maybe but no Heraclinople or Gibstanbul?

No, the question applies uniquely to Istanbul. The ferry pilot tacks across the swirling currents of the Bosphorus navigating the ancient waterway with deceptive ease. Under our bows at each station, the waters churn and drag fiercely - the tides of history tugging us deeper into the heart of the city. From the Anatolian shores come the sweet, balmy waters of Asia, above the skyline of Thrace rise the competing spires of Europe. Istanbul is both mother and father to a nation.

We pass the narrowest point in the straits where Sultan Mehmet II ordered a chain link blockade to be strung from his hastily constructed M-shaped fortress in order to strangle Constantinople before entering it in 1453. Today the Fatih Sultan Mehmet suspension bridge connects the continents high above us. Migratory seabirds meeuw and swoop down from its steel cradle.

 "If we are very lucky, we may see dolphins," my host peers over the European starboard side of the boat where we have chosen to sit this morning, promising ourselves an Asian side ride on the way home. I stare intently at the roiling waters willing these graceful, intelligent creatures into sight. They are easy shapes to conjure with in the mind's eye. But none appear as we approach the Ataturk Bridge.

I suppose that if you are a dolphin in the Bosphorus, you don't have to choose between continents, between good bank or bad bank, left wing or right wing, between rival religions or even between the secular and the divine. There's just fish for tea and the freedom of the sea that made the world. 

With this juice...

I stand long and watch a juice seller in the cobbled, market streets of Istanbul leading up to the Ayasofia. His waist-height, three wheeled, rectangular wooden cart serves as the perfectly constructed and balanced platform for his art and his trade. As a robust business model it cannot be faulted.

On either side of his central fruit crusher equipment are equal piles of washed oranges and pomegranates. Taking two fruits from each pile, he juggles them briefly in an effortless display of cocktail barman's circus brilliance. The fresh fruit globes fall with a satisfying plop into a hand and are lined up one-two, one-two on his scarred wooden chopping board. A lethal blade flashes four times and the eight halves tremble gently on their backs.

Then each half section is placed juice side down on a circular metal pyramid resembling a small, ringed bee-hive - and summarily executed. I notice that the executing lever is in the form of a metal cross whose inverted cup presses down firmly on its mosque dome shaped counterpart. Into a small tin cup beneath, a fragrant juice trickles.

'One lira Turkish,' he proffers a single cup of his freshly-squeezed, transformed essence of life's goodness. What price a few precious drops of life-taken, lifeblood juice?


 

Dry stone walling

Every organised society throughout history has piled stone on stone to make walls. Walls that are practical statements of protection, possession, wealth and control. Structures that take on a particular beauty in the eye of the builder.

Over time they weather, settle and collapse - open quarries in need of repair. In the UK alone there are reportedly 125 000 miles of dry stone field walls - sufficient to girdle the earth five times.

In one bleak corner of the island, a hardy band of dry stone wallers has gathered to repair one small section of wall forming part of a war memorial park. Grizzled veterans of many years lugging Pennine stone slabs across Cheshire bog and heath are joined by a group of volunteers all strangely drawn to this daftest of outdoor pursuits on the wettest, windiest weekend of a damp, gusting year. It was billed as a 'taster workshop' for amateur, aspiring wallers like myself.

'Welcome,' booms Barry, our works foreman for the day and chairman of the local Dry Stone Walling Association. 'Let's get on with it.' Barry is not one for unnecessary introductions and flowery words of workshop intent. He points to a plie of stone and tugs the largest piece over to where he wants a new lines of stone graded and arranged aslant for easy access.

His assistant, Dora, hands out carefully prepared name badges. The ink is already running in the drizzle. I begin to pin mine onto a lapel, veteran of many a workshop that I am. 'No, not there,' Dora corrects my fumblings, 'we pin our names to the back of our caps - that's the only part of you we will be seeing for most of the weekend.' Straight away I felt initiated into the wry, upside down, practical stonemasonry of the dry waller. It is indeed a different world.

The Land of the Blind

In 667BC Byzas, son of King Nisos of Megara, was contemplating a multi-billion drachma new investment designed to secure his strategic footprint in the Eastern Mediterranean. As part of his due diligence process, and at his anxious father’s insistence, he consulted with the Oracle at Delphi – an early investment market analyst with a track record of vague but somehow portentous economic forecasts. It seemed a reasonable first step for a young venture capitalist king determined to make his mark.

“Build your city opposite the ‘Land of the Blind’,” intoned the Oracle. So, a contrarian view seeking undefended exposure in emerging markets, thought the old man. Once young Byzas actually consulted his charts, he discovered that ‘The Land of the Blind’ was in fact an insider trading nickname for Chalcedon, an early Greek colony founded on the eastern approach out of the Sea of Marmara into the Bosphorus Straits. Inexplicably, the Chalcedonians had failed to spot the real prize directly opposite them.

The real prize lay on the western shore of the Straits where the rocky promontory of Stamboul and its natural harbour of the Golden Horn provided the perfect defensible position - a pinch point commanding the entire system of seaways linking the Mediterranean with the hospitable, sweet waters of Pontos or the ‘Black Sea'. Not so fast, Jason, my friend, never mind the Golden Fleece, we charge highway poll tax here – per Argonaut. Ching-ching.

And thus Byzantium – the rest is history. 

As a young man, King Byzas was able to close his eyes, shut out the noise and listen hard to the cryptic, inner wisdom of the Oracle. As a result he could ‘see’ the invisible strategic landscape beneath the geographical one that had ‘blinded’ his competitors. It is the same experience that thousands of leaders have today when they enter a ‘Dialogue in the Dark’ workshop and spend time with blind coaches in total darkness reflecting on the crowded noisiness of their markets and their lives. 

Some emerge to make clear and far-sighted next moves - others return to their ‘Land of the Blind’. 

You walk like a Turkish

"You walk like a Turkish." The voice that hailed me was that of a young man following me across Istanbul's Hippodrome. I turned to see who my tracker was, intrigued by the quaint nationality adjective-turned-noun switch of his greeting - if it was a greeting.

"Is that a good thing?" I asked my new companion - for he had quite naturally fallen into step alongside me as we crossed the broad boulevard heading towards the Blue Mosque. Over to our left lay the bulk of Ayasofya another in Istanbul's imperial garland of holy jewels. Emre, as he cheerfully introduced himself, was a friendly, engaging fellow, well suited to the profession of tour guide which he revealed was his career ambition. He laughed delightedly at my pointed question and avoided it like any good guide asked for an unnecessary judgement.

"You want to see Sultanahamet Mosque, you better walk quicker, they start to pray there soon." I tried to up my pace, finding it difficult with the after effects of recent bi-lateral meniscal repair surgery still painfully seizing up my knee joints. I began to understand how I might have been mistaken from behind for a Turkish pensioner out for a walk in the autumn sunshine. I was wearing a pair of borrowed trainers, my grey suit trousers more appropriate to the conference I had come to Istanbul to run, a knee length black dust jacket of the kind worn by storemen and kindly donated to me by a neighbour in a recent clear-out and in my hand I carried a plastic bag stuffed with notebooks and newspapers. He had a point.

Indeed as I entered the serene orbit of the Blue Mosque, it occured to me that I had more Turkish in me than perhaps I realised. Earlier that morning I had been in a Turkish bath house rubbing myself down with a coarse towel before sipping steamed tea and nibbling a piece of rosewater infused pistachio sweet from a stall in the Grand Bazaar. Here in the outer courtyard of the mosque I was admiring yards of blue ceramic tiles with their myriad tulip designs. Towels, tiles, tea and tulips were all Turkish inventions claimed my self-appointed tour guide - with different degrees of justification, I felt.

We approached the entrance to the mosque where stewards were on duty turning tourists away from entering the vast hall beneath its worshipful dome at the start of Friday prayers. "Only prayers, no tourists now." Their instructions were clear, firm and entirely reasonable. I bent down with some difficulty to remove my borrowed trainers and placed them on the shelving provided. I drew my dust jacket around my plastic bag, hitched up my baggy trousers and shuffled forwards. "I am told that I walk like a Turkish," I said.

 "You are welcome, amca, enter."

The newspaper vendor of Istanbul

People are kind to cats in Istanbul. I know this because a cat told me. She was sitting selling newspapers just off the Galata Bridge that spans the Golden Horn. It's a strategically located transport node where today ferry, metro, dolmus taxi and pedestrian flows converge much as ancient trade routes converged on Byzantium, Constantinople and Istanbul itself. It is a prized pitch by any cat's standards. I say selling newspapers - they are actually free editions of a city paper but any donations of crumbled cat food are happily accepted as payment in kind. When I reached down to stroke my newspaper vendor, she cocked one calico ear towards me and accepted her homage with long-suffering good grace. Thousands of commuters, shoppers, tourists, traders, fishermen, students, children pass her station every day and yet her trust in the open, extended human hand is undiminished. That must be one of the finest accolades that any city can earn. Now take your newspaper and bring me some simit on the way home.

Tractor Time

A couple of days ago I pulled out of our drive and set off towards Helsby straight down Primrose Lane. Immediately ahead of me my path was blocked by a lumbering tractor. Now many of you will know this stretch of road intimately, having navigated it successfully countless times. You will know just how inadvisable it is to attempt any sort of overtaking manoeuvre at this point. So I tucked in to chug along in the slipstream of the old workhorse and began my slow descent. I found that I had plenty of time to look around the autumn landscape. Really look around for a change. I hadn’t appreciated just how much of the Liverpool skyline is visible in the view across the Mersey; how much of the Rock you can actually see across the Walnut Tree Farm fields; how you can see details on the frontage of houses in Hapsford; the extent to which the splayed fingers of the dead tree just above the disused railway cutting are covered in ivy mittens; just how vivid a variety of leaf colours is represented in this year’s palette. A normal minute’s flash drive turned into a leisurely scenic tour of our soothing countryside. There are times for the motorist when a wide, slow-moving piece of agricultural kit or a procession of cows up ahead can be stressful – an extra impediment in our obstacle strewn day – the straw that makes the camel late for its appointment with a needle and all the other muddled thinking and decision-making that can take place behind the wheel of a powerful car in a narrow lane. On this particular occasion, I was very glad of the unexpected opportunity to take the slow road and to think clearly and calmly for a moment. Thanks Geoff.

Bringing home the honey harvest

This morning was dry, cool and overcast - a perfect autumn window for harvesting the summer's honeycombs. Understandably the bees were a little upset by the arrival of a large armed raider intent on ripping off the roof, blundering about smashing the furniture and making off with half the winter's precious supplies. His pathetic peace offering of a feeder tray of syrupy sugar solution was met with sullen, rumbling resentment. Luckily bees don't bear grudges. They live entirely in the moment, responding to environmental crises, unbalanced competition and the rhythm of the seasons all with the same constant pulsing industry. A female worker bee's lifespan in the months of high production is no more than six weeks and her entire life's output can be savoured in a single teaspoonful of honey. This current European honey production cycle has been marked by unhelpfully erratic weather patterns and a growing conviction that endemic agricultural pesticide use is the root cause of widespread colony collapse. If the bees go, we go soon after predicted Darwin. Catastrophic food crop failures are a systemic inevitability if the strain on our unpaid workforce of pollenators becomes unbearable. I bind up and treat the wounds to my hive as best I can, apologising ineffectually for my thieving intrusion and wishing my queen and her handmaidens well over the long winter ahead.

Change management workshop

‘So, what do we know about change then?’ I slumped forward at my desk. The facilitator’s opening question on a one day seminar on the subject of ‘Change management’ had completely crumpled my slender desire to live through the experience. Through my tightly laced fingers I could see that he had positioned himself meaningfully alongside a flip chart, marker pen quivering with excitement. About 30 minutes later, as a result of some Herculean efforts from my twelve co-participants, we seemed to have established three things about change - that it was Permanent, unPredictable and Personal – to which the facilitator added in his own words and without, as far as I could gather, a trace of irony, ‘Profitable’. I exhaled deeply – no real surprises there then. We then set off on a bewildering powerpoint-driven Cook’s tour of change management models, mantras, matrices and formulas. It was heady stuff. We visited psychometric profiles and highly personal anecdotes, guru proclamations and conjuror’s card tricks, tight S-curves and loose metaphysical metaphors, mind-bending word puzzles and gut-wrenching number sucking. And yet still the change beast clung obdurately to the initial three ‘P’s’ that we had collectively volunteered and which had been so helpfully highlighted on the chart. By lunch time the logic of the fourth ‘P’ had become apparent. ‘So, how can we manage change effectively?’ The afternoon session loomed long and still like a cloudless vista over an imperturbable mountain lake. Once again my heroic companions came to the rescue of our hapless guide. After much felt-tipped action, it transpired that change could be managed through the use of the three ‘C’s’, to wit – communication, communication and communication. Another breakthrough - different people react differently to the prospect of change – large or small, rapid or slow. Apparently it’s all about talking to one another – pleasantly where possible and listening really long and hard. I felt I had done my fair share for one day. Was I any the wiser? Plus Ҫa Change.

Being There

"In the spring there will be growth." - Chancey Gardener in Being There

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.