Three Quotations To Consider
Hello Everyone
Today’s letter is lucky number 13, our thirteenth letter of the year.
We’re in April. Remember where you were this time last year? Yep, locked inside!
I went through two roadblocks on last year’s 1.2 km Easter grocery run. It might not feel like it, but we are moving forward.
That memory reminded me of this work by the late Danish artist Susanne Ussing. For Elephant Magazine it evokes claustrophobia. To my un-art-educated mind she looks ready to break free. What do you think?
A few weeks ago, I had told you about the success that Zizipo Poswa has been creating for herself. Her debut solo show, iLobola, has now opened and is described as “an exuberant celebration of female strength and sensuality”. It looks magnificent.
We haven’t yet been in person, because we were enjoying this view in Greyton snacking on yummy oysters from Lisa the Oyster Lady. Did you know that during the 1918 flu epidemic, oysters were a go-to palliative? Check out Lisa’s post for more detail on why and mammoth sized oysters. It all makes sense to me.
On our way home we couldn’t resist the temptation of popping into Charles Fox given that Charles and Zelda’s bubbles have won two 5-star accolades in the recent John Platter review. The view is spectacular and the bubbles better.
Given that it’s a long weekend, I thought we’d keep it a little shorter today and focus on three quotations to keep your strategy, soul, and self, inspired without requiring too much reading.
/ strategy
In his landmark book, Good to Great, Jim Collins says “The minute a leader allows himself to become the primary reality people worry about rather than reality being the primary reality, you have a recipe for mediocrity, or worse”.
Executive chairman of the Walt Disney Company Robert Iger’s Ten Principles for True Leadership are a useful guide to a more effective leadership style.
I got such good feedback about last week’s letter that I created this summary version of Collins’ Ten Lessons From Peter Drucker. I hope that you find it useful.
/ self
Zia Haider Rahman writes in In The Light of What We Know, one of my favourite novels of recent years, “My point is that you could think of the people you meet in your life as questions, there to help you figure out who you are, what you’re made of, and what you want.”
This is such a wonderful way to think about people, both those that frustrate or upset you, and those that delight you.
What question are they asking of you? What might you learn? What magic are you made of?
/ soul
In mathematician Dr Hannah Fry’s recent New Yorker article What Data Can’t Do she introduced me to a type of crayfish called a marmokreb. The marmorkreb reproduces asexually and therefore create genetically identical offspring.
Drawing on Michael Blastland’s book The Hidden Half, she explains that “when scientists first discovered this strange creature, they spied an opportunity to settle the age-old debate of nature versus nurture. Here was the ideal control group. All they had to do, to start, was amass a small army of genetically identical marmorkreb juveniles and raise them in identical surroundings—give each the same amount of water at the same temperature, the same amount of food, the same amount of light—and they should grow to be identical adults. Then the scientists could vary the environmental conditions and study the results.”
And then with the wonderful unpredictability of the universe, “as these genetically identical marmorkrebs grew in identical environments, striking variations emerged. There were substantial size differences, with one growing to be twenty times the weight of another. Their behavior differed as well: some became more aggressive than others, some preferred solitude, and so on. Some lived twice as long as their siblings. No two of these marmorkrebs had the same marbled patterning on their shell; there were even differences in the shape of their internal organs.”
Isn’t that wonderful?
The scientists had gone to great lengths to control every conceivable variable and yet nature delivered massive variation.
As Fry notes, “Even the tiniest fluctuations, invisible to science, can magnify over time to yield a world of difference.”
If you, like me, appreciate the insights that data can give, love the power of data-led patterns, principles and strategy, and accept that there is an element to life that is mysterious, transcendental, and perhaps always unknowable then Fry’s article is a must-read.
It reminds us that our world is energized by art and soul. It can be mysterious, and so paying attention to natural patterns, listening deeply to the stories of millennia, understanding the knowledge that exists in our parables is as important as contemporary knowledge. We must hold both to hold the complexity of life.
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Best wishes
Karl
PS: If you are interested in working with me, drop me an email and we can set up time in early May for a preliminary conversation to explore your objectives.
(This letter was first published on 4 April 2021)