#233: Listen to the signals
Good morning good people
As always, thank you for being here. You can read past editions of the newsletter here and find our favourite quotations here.
Time Out Magazine released their Best Cities of 2025 ranking two weeks ago. It was great to see my home, Cape Town, at number one.
Award-winning, inner-city, Afro-Japanese restaurant FYN, also recently became the first restaurant in Africa to achieve a three-star ‘Food Made Good’ rating from the Sustainable Restaurant Association.
In other good news for South Africa, Matthew A. Winkler, Bloomberg News editor-in-chief emeritus, wrote this piece noting that, amongst other key indicators showing South Africa’s economy has steadily strengthened since last year’s election, “South African bonds are the best performers since then among 18 emerging market countries, generating a total return of 14% in 2024, according to data compiled by Bloomberg” (I found this gem in The Daily Maverick’s Democracy 2025 newsletter).
/strategy
The Hyatt Regency in Kansas City collapse is one of the United States’ deadliest structural building failures.
On July 17, 1981, one hundred and fourteen people were killed when two suspended concrete and glass walkways collapsed on crowds beneath them.
Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson discusses the disaster in Right Kind of Wrong: How the Best Teams Use Failure to Succeed (it won the Financial Times Business Book of the Year in 2023).
Edmondson tells us changes were made to the original design, making the walkways ‘a basic failure waiting to happen’.
Amazingly, after the walkways had been built, but whilst the hotel’s construction was still continuing, construction workers pushing wheelbarrows reported that the walkways were unstable. They were simply rerouted.
As we enter the year, it is a powerful cautionary tale.
Our world is filled with the signals that can guide us, but we must hear them. If we do, we might literally save lives.
Listening and curiosity are undoubtedly strategy superpowers.
//self
Over the past few weeks, as my clients told me about their holidays, a theme emerged.
It goes something like this: ‘I had a great time, but I did nothing, I just relaxed’.
My response was, ‘Surely, that is what a holiday is for?’
The reply would be, ‘Yes, but I could have used that time more productively, maybe if I’d focused on a challenge…’
I’ve ended up sharing this framework. One client was so excited by it, she insisted I write about it (Sarah, I listened).
There are three kinds of breaks – restorative, contemplative and inspirational. My happiest and most effective clients do all three.
Restorative breaks do just that. They allow rest. That means lie on the beach, stare at the ocean, smile at the children running by. Eat great slow-cooked meals. Go for long walks, see the flowers. Hang out with friends. Enjoy. Allow yourself to be restored.
Contemplative breaks are more directed. A number of my clients do this. They take a week or weekend, typically on their own. They create a short list of topics to think about. Sometimes one, never more than four. They might pack a few books related to the topic. They do pack a notebook. They lie and think. And walk and think. And read and think. And they write and record. They give themselves expansive hours to listen to the knowledge they already have. The knowledge that is often deafened by the noise of the world. They listen for the insights that emerge and they always do.
Inspirational breaks fill you. We all have different versions of what inspires us. Music, art, cooking, history, new cultures, knowledge, to name just a few. Whatever it is, weave it into your year.
Of course, inspiration can restore, and contemplation can inspire, but you need the rest and the rest need not, must not, have other obligations attached to it.
Knowing that you’ve got contemplation and inspiration planned, you can chill and let yourself be.
It’s a way to approach taking breaks. It is also a way to approach every day. Create spaces for restoration, contemplation and inspiration. You will be a happier human.
///soul
I’ve been thinking about Anaïs Nin’s reflection, “I was always ashamed to take. So, I gave. It was not a virtue. It was a disguise.”
Some years ago, a mentor confronted me with a challenge: he said, “Self-sufficiency is the ultimate selfishness”.
I was perplexed. More honestly, my confusion was a shield. Beneath it lurked the discomfort that is often a clue that you’re about to learn something hard to hear but important to know.
He explained, “If you never ask for help, you deny people the opportunity to participate in your life and that is selfish”.
Which, perhaps strangely, took me to Barbara Streisand, who once sang,
“first be a person who needs people.
People who need people
Are the luckiest people in the world”.
All the very best
Karl
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