CuppaGemma

Aesop’s fables should be included in grown up reading lists, right alongside the management books. Part of being successful in a business is being able to understand exactly what your product is and why a consumer, reader, or user should care about it.

If you don’t know that to begin with, then really all you have a patchwork of other people’s ideas held together by something you hope is not a thread called “me too”.

You see that in retail and restaurants, copy cat syndrome- if you do what everyone else is doing you can be just as popular, respected or profitable as them.

Therein lies the problem. You want to be them, not yourself.

There is a lack of faith in your ability to know yourself and be yourself. Maybe it’s not enough, so you kinda sorta wanna be like Mike. Jordan, not Bloomberg. Though hey, maybe both.

And this can lead to a constant rejiggering of what you do, how you look and leave the folks who might have been engaged scratching their heads as they continue down that street.

The fable about the miller, his son and their donkey captures this idea well.

They are driving the donkey down to market. As the fable progresses different passers by note, “How silly you are” and gives a different method on how to get there. Let the boy sit, let the man sit, let the boy and the man sit, no just carry the damn ass on a pole and get there.

They are all hot and tired from trying so many ways, and the poor donkey is quite frightened. So he reacts.

Now the miller and his son never thought the donkey might have a mind of its own, or the strength to wiggle and struggle. The ropes break and the men never see the donkey again. Whether he swam or drowned is a matter of interpretation.

But the men, who cannot make or hold to their own decision now have nothing to hold onto.

It’s an idea we see in Emerson too, “It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

Being yourself is not silly. After all that is who you will wake up with every morning and who helps you put on and take off  masks and facades, if you choose- like blue eyeshadow- to apply them.

The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn.

If the shoe doesn’t fit, must we change the foot?

The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off.

So said Gloria Steinem

Then again there is Lewis Caroll and I have always remained endeared with Humpty Dumpty… Because language can be a slippery slope of misunderstanding and who really pulls the bit and kicks in the spurs…

`When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

`The question is,’ said Alice, `whether you can make words mean so many different things.’

`The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master — that’s all.’

Most of you know that line above, but the rest of the conversation is a different hinge entirely…

Alice was too much puzzled to say anything; so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. `They’ve a temper, some of them — particularly verbs: they’re the proudest — adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs — however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That’s what I say!’

`Would you tell me please,’ said Alice, `what that means?’

`Now you talk like a reasonable child,’ said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. `I meant by “impenetrability” that we’ve had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you’d mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don’t mean to stop here all the rest of your life.’

`That’s a great deal to make one word mean,’ Alice said in a thoughtful tone.

`When I make a word do a lot of work like that,’ said Humpty Dumpty, `I always pay it extra.’

Be wary of those verbers…

And of course, through translation, Italo Calvino,

“The ideal place for me is one in which it is most natural to live as a foreigner.”

Then Margaret Atwood,

“Put yourself in a different room, that’s what the mind is for.”

The boys and I have most of Dr Seuss in hardcover. I think it is useful to know that both the Grinch and the Cat in the Hat are available in Latin.

These lines from Hunches in Bunches have always made me smile when sitting with friends who stare at the wall of, “Well what exactly should I do?”

From the book-

“My trouble was I had a mind. But I couldn’t make it up.”

The narrator goes through quite a lot of coulds, shoulds, woulds as assorted Hunches who come in and try to persuade him. My favorite lines are these…

“”That mind of yours,” I heard him say, “is frightfully ga fluppted. Your mind is murky-mooshy! Will you make it up? Or won’t you? If you won’t you are a wonter! Do you understand? Or don’t you? If you don’t, you are a donter. You’re a canter if you can’t. I would like to help you. But you’re hopeless. So I shan’t.”

And how we laugh to reduce things to this.

A child’s rhyme reminds us, to stop thinking and start doing. So we raise our glasses and in the silence of the clinks, we each know exactly what we can do, what we do do, and what we will do.

Patrick Newell is a long time dear friend and colleague.

At the moment he is in Iceland, having already been to Boston, Massachusetts and soon to be on somewhere else. He is filming a documentary and is hot on the tails of finishing the first ever Tokyo TED meeting last month. (I was almost there, but logistics like an evil stepmother stopped me from purchasing the air ticket.) TED Tokyo happened in large part because Patrick saw an unmet need and was willing and eager to do something about it.

He is the founder and director of Tokyo International School, where I can proudly say my children attended for several years whilst we lived in Japan.

But most of all he is a man with ideas, and he knows how to make them happen. I’ve watched as the school has grown, and outgrown campuses, principals and parents. I’ve watched as he has been told, “Dame…” or “Shoganai” the Japanese equivalent of no way and it cannot be done. Then he politely nods, smiles, builds a team and finds a way to make it so. Timing and relationships is everything.

Part of it is gut, grit and dedication, but the other part is knowing how to let go and build a team who can help you.  His business card identifies himself as the vision navigator.

In this age of slapped on terms where we are all grasping for the latest “on message” “buzz” that could be tweeted, he actually has earned the term.

He has a clear and precise idea of what he wants to achieve and is willing to take risks to make it real. He knows when and how to shift, who to delegate to, and when he should step back and let the experts hold the reigns. That is why he is successful. He not only believes in his idea, but is willing (via skateboard) to find and build the teams to make it happen. He knows it needs more than his hand. He trusts and empowers the people around him to take an idea out of a conversation and actually have something meaningful take place.

That’s the difference between being at the helm and having the appropriate words on a business card (meishi). He actually has calluses on his brain from working the system and pushing through the waters of doubt and conflict.

I remember sitting in the Starbucks at Meguro station- because I must tell you that many good conversations can be had in coffee shops in various places. The company, not the coffee is remembered.

Patrick had his laptop in hand and shared with me, as I was about to ditch on twelve years of Tokyo an inspriational letter that had been sent to him. Effectively he had been told, no his idea would not work and he ought not to think it should. He decided he would remember it, but disagree with the outcome.

He was wise enough to understand this was not the one he ought to listen to. He knew I was soon to head out to the states to start over, again, and he was gracious enough to remind me that this is something we all have to walk through.

The fields of no, the crops of doubt, the clouds of failure that make you go all cold and wondering whether you actually could or should or if on the fly you can  make someone believe you will get the job done.  It is, to use his words, “the combination of passion and commitment.” That’s what separates out the folks who excell from those whom we forget as part of the common maw a few weeks or months later.

He is relentless in his dedication and energy and it’s never about him, it’s always the idea. In this case, it’s for the children he wants to reach. Ones he will never know.
Tokyo International School
21:21 Documentary Film
TEDxTokyo
Living Dreams