And we’ll all go together
to pull wild mountain thyme
All around the blooming heather
will ye go Lassie go
We said goodbye to a close friend’s Dad last week, He was 86 years old and had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. By all accounts the family were pleased he was no longer in pain and he passed with his wife and two daughters by his side.
John – Craig’s Dad – is also 86, and we are conscious that this Christmas period maybe the last time that Roscoe shares with his Grandad. It’s a poignant time – not least because John is frail and lonely, relying on daily visits from carers to wash, dress and feed him and take him to the bathroom. He is done with this life.
But 86 is a good innings. A lifetime’s worth of memories. Loved ones mourn but are comforted by shared recollections of good times.
I also have friends who have tragically lost children, wives and husbands, before their time. But, when is your time?
Back in 1996, I am training for a planned trip to Ammassalik in Greenland. 
This necessitates several visits to the Alps so as to improve my fitness and ski-touring and ice axe techniques. I am also keen to understand and train for the threats and signs of avalanche. So we are on the Haute route ski tour, a high Alpine 120km traverse with 6,000m of ascent and descent linking two historic Alpine centres, Chamonix and Zermatt. It’s a structured route travelling Alpine hut to hut with little time for ‘ dilly-dallying’. It’s a hot day and so I take off my fleece before putting my outer gortex layer back on. I’m carrying my rucksack with a week’s worth of provisions, largely a few pairs of clean knickers, a couple of T Shirts, my sleeping bag and mat and a bare minimum of toiletries. I also have another pair of lightweight skis and my crampons and ice axe strapped to my pack.
Tired, I am slowly zig-zagging my way across a mountain face, when I feel a cold wind. The storm comes out of nowhere and very quickly I am confused and disoriented. My companion is a fair distance ahead and as the storm rages, I get angry and common sense flies away. I take my skis off, to walk my way out of the mess, and find myself up to my waist in snow. Defeated, I howl in despair and somehow the wind carries my call. He stops, looks back and retraces his steps. 30 minutes later, exhausted, I have my skis and skins back on. But my legs are no longer playing, they are shaking and struggling with the weight of my pack and with the biting wind and whipping snow. Slowly, laboriously, we make our way to an outcrop of rocks to hide from the wind and regroup.
By now, I am somewhat delirious and I’m repeating nursery rhymes to try to gain some degree of control. I know I’m becoming hypothermic, although I have little concept of the real trouble I’m in. He does not leave me but is not talking either. I don’t care, my own dialogue is also in my head and the unspoken is between us. We both know this is untenable. At some point, I don’t remember how long, we hear a cry. A man’s voice. My companion shouts back and then he is with us. He’s a member of the Swiss mountain rescue team that we had seen earlier in the day. 
Thankfully when the storm came down and we did not appear, they came out to search. After some discussion, he lifts my pack and heads off into the storm. This time I find my voice and demand to know where he’s gone but there is no answer. I am being pushed to my feet and ordered to get moving. It’s a tone of voice that does not allow argument and I shuffle a few steps forward and using all my strength turn once more into the wind to zigzag upwards. Then the mountain man is back. There is more discussion and we move on, heads bent.
I am lost in a world of Humpty Dumpty and Georgie Porgie but somehow I hear an almighty yell. I stop and look around. My companion is gesticulating wildly “Reverse! Reverse!!” I look down and a swirl of snow mist lifts enough for me to see my ski tips are over the edge and into nothing. I stand still, trying to work out how to go backwards. I’m not scared. I’m not anything – in that moment I too am nothing, a tiny speck in an infinite universe. There is no fear. Then the death scythe gets distracted and the mountain man is somehow behind me, pulling me back before setting my ski tips upwards once more. 
He guides my every step up to the door of the hut and has obviously warned the team of what to expect. They are on me like locusts, pulling off my wet gear, drying my hair before putting a tinfoil type hat on me. I stand for a moment, like a compliant rag doll, before falling to the floor in an undignified heap. They carry me upstairs to a huge log fire where I am put in a wooden chair almost on the hearth itself. I have a man either side of me rubbing my fingers, another two men have a foot each and they are vigorously working my toes. Someone is behind me making my ear lobes sing. They swap around taking turns as, rhythmically, they bring the blood back to my veins. It happens slowly and then, with a whoosh of almighty pain, it is there, throbbing with every heart beat. I am given hot, sweet tea and they feed me sausages before cleaning my teeth and helping me to bed. I don’t sleep – my fingers are swollen larger than the sausages I have eaten and they hurt so much that I put them in my mouth to stifle my cries. My companion snores in the bunk bed next to mine. The next day there is the roar of the helicopter blades and we find ourselves and our gear being airlifted down the mountain.
Sedated and on a drip in Chamonix hospital, I finally sleep, for three days. I am discharged on day four and that afternoon, my fingers still huge, are jammed into men’s ski gloves. There is nothing of me exposed to the wind as I look down the mountain. I know if I don’t push off, my mind may not let me ski again. So I take a deep breath and feel the familiar burn in the thighs. I only do one run but it’s enough to know that I can. Even so, we never make Ammassalik as my injuries are too severe.
Yet for months afterwards I feel invincible. Way into the summer months, the skin peels from my fingers, hands and ear lobes in great sheets. In winter, I am shedding skin once more. But it’s life affirming and, although disgusting, I derive great pleasure from the scaly macabreness of it all.
Aside from the scaly skin which now reappears whenever my hands get really cold, time thankfully steals the sharpness of memory. It’s only when I struggle into ski boots or stand on top of particularly fierce mountains the fear grips me once more.
It was not my time then. And – minus some tongue – it is still not my time now. And I don’t know, like most of us, when my time will come. Our choice is surely not to put ourselves deliberately in harm’s way but to still spank the mountain when the winter breeze calls.
Up to this point, I have been fairly quiet about my cancer. I haven’t been deliberately hiding it, I know I need to take the time to get physically better, learn from and work through the changes that it brings and to embrace my new sense of self and identity. I also know that I need to find a new job in the New Year and that finding a new role is likely to be more problematic with a recent cancer diagnosis and recovery story tagging along behind me.
In one morning, I blow the control and management of my personal experiences right out the water. I run starkers, out of the closet with a primal Tah Dah!!
But as I have also agreed to do a l
Surely after the mouth cancer and the removal of half my thyroid, I am done for the year. Surely it is my turn to be well after all the healthy living, breathing techniques, positive mind work, the alternative therapies, vitamins and new knowledge. I convince myself it is nothing, they are being extra careful with me because of my recent cancer adventure.
On its wild, windswept and deserted golden sandy beaches often the only sound is the sea thundering in and the seagulls crying overhead.
high sea waves hitting the harbour wall was a regular occurrence as was losing fishermen to the wild seas. The favoured way of committing suicide was driving down the hill straight into the harbour or jumping off one of the many cliffs along the coastline. Living and surviving in Caithness requires a resilience of soul and spirit and a propensity to live in semi grey darkness for at least half the year.
We took a drive up to ‘Groats for the obligatory photograph under the white mileage sign, on a day where the watery sun was teasing us with promise. We fell in love with the wild peace of the place and made the decision to debunk from the tiny, functional rooms of the Norseman hotel to a two bed apartment owned by 
The siege of Aleppo means these Mothers don’t know from day to day, hours to hour, if their children will survive. Will they die from a shell strike from somewhere and someone unknown, or from a sniper’s bullet from a fighter hiding out in this atrocity of a city? Perhaps they will go more slowly, in a hospital which has no drugs or supplies to stop their piercing pain, their blood from flowing, their screams of agony. Or maybe death will come from malnutrition as no food has been allowed to get into the city for months and months. These Mothers, like all Mothers the world over, fret about the basics. “Is my child safe and secure?” “Does my child have food and water to survive?” “Can I provide for my child?” As any psychologist will tell you, without these basics, what we know, or think we know, counts for nothing. We are reduced to our elemental selves. Humanity and human are two different concepts when our backs are so far to the wall we are leaving our shadows imprinted in the brickwork.
The course organiser had forgotten it was scheduled for the first days of Ramadan. We were in +35 degree heat, attendees had caffeine withdrawal symptoms, no one could sip water never mind eat, many asked for permission to lie on the floor and I was supposed to educate on a Western concept. To better understand my attendee’s experiences and culture, beliefs and rituals, I decided to fast with them and its one of my everlasting memories, seeing the vibrant aliveness of these kind and generous people as we all celebrated and enjoyed Iftar together in the evening coolness. During those few days time took on a new meaning – it became the essence of substance, of endurance, of belief. There was no clock involved, just the rising and setting of the sun. During this week, there were many life lessons; learning to adapt myself, my thinking and the course content while still achieving a good outcome. And this was achieved by us working together, tailoring and adapting time management concepts for the Sudanese. The outcome became, practical and realistic rather than a great theory in a Western management handbook.
Conversely, polychronic or cyclical cultures like to do multiple things at the same time. They tend to view people and relationships as more important than tasks and time. If you are from this kind of culture, you will aim to build trust and lifelong relationships. Being on time will depend on the relationship, or status, rather than any stated task and objectives. My African friends and colleagues, Latin Americans, Southern Europeans all tend to be from polychronic cultures.
To be fair, he was senior in 
Pretending that I am fine to stay dry but, inside, dealing with the mix of jealousy, self-loathing and anger.
Perched on the side of an old volcanic crater ridge, Ndali also has a private lake at the base of the crater. So when Craig suggests that we hire the (only) rowing boat, I agree. Perhaps this is the point, when it’s just we two in the middle of a crater lake, that friendship may turn to romance? Reality dawns when we are standing by the side of the murky water, the Colobus monkeys shaking the trees with laughter. We are going out on a sliver of a canoe, small enough for only two people and rackety enough to have been there since God was a boy. But I am in full show-off bravado mode and clutch my overly large camera bag for comfort as I gingerly sit down. 
We push-off, Craig seems to expertly wield the paddles and in no time at all we are away from shore heading like some Victorian steam boat towards the middle of the lake. Just as my anxiety is subsiding, I become aware that my feet are damp; err, they are definitely getting wet and I look down to see, to my horror, the swirling green of the lake comfortably filling the bottom of the canoe. Surely not?!! No. Its got to be my crazy imagination. It is coming in, it’s not the splash of canoe paddles. “Craig”, I practically shout, “water is coming into the boat” He glances down, and laughs, “Yes, we might have to swim for shore”. Even at this point, where I can feel the terror rise, I still don’t want to admit I cannot swim. “What about my camera, it will be ruined”. ” Haven’t you got insurance”? he responds calmly. Only now do I have to confront my reality. Only now do I confess. And I feel so ashamed. He responds by telling me to bail as fast as I can and, somehow, miraculously manages to get us back to the safety of shore. I am astounded that we did not see the hole at the bottom of the boat before we set off. And although I’m a bit shaken, I’m laughing as we trudge back up to the lodge while he regales “Learn to Swim” once again.
Roscoe is shrieking with delight and as the boat bobs up and down, I realise that I am going to miss out if I don’t sort out what is a completely irrational fear. But the years pass and I am relegated to the side once more as they jump into pools, career down water-slides, run into the sea. Roscoe barely hiding his irritation that I am unable to join in.
Then comes the side effects of my cancer. To take out my lymph nodes, the consultant surgeons have to cut into the nerves and muscle surrounding my neck and shoulder. Some damage is done and as it turns out I am having problems with raising my left arm as my rotator cuff has stopped working and my Levator scapulae is so knotted that it’s making my Trapezious do its job. I find myself in the warm waters of the hydrotherapy pool doing exercises to get the ball of nerves to loosen and these muscles back to work.
I talk about Scottish Morton rolls, close in texture and taste to French baguettes but in a high round crisp roll dusted with a light touch of flour, stuffed with butter and honey or spicy square sausage or bacon and runny egg. This recollection makes my taste buds tingle and my salivary glands work overtime. In this one discussion, my eyes are opened to how bread is a metaphor for home. And that home is very different for everyone in the room. 27 differing points of view, each one valid, each one connected and rooted to that taste-memory of comfort, safety, family.
We are all foreign to each other. Cast in our own small island, keen to be listened to, liked, loved, counted for and understood.
and decide that it is only our point of view which has validity and truth.
Despite the people outcome – a loss of about 200 roles as the activity moved to our partner in India, the business case and benefits could not be argued. These included improved service, greater opportunity to learn from and streamline the work and data and eventually create a more integrated way of using information. And save a lost of cost. But our country managers fought tooth and nail to stop this from happening. Our Operating Model (the way we are organised to do our work and make decisions) was structured so that these country managers were kings of their own domains with little or no interference from the centre. They controlled their operation from end to end including their people and their activities. The role of the Centre was to provide guidance, expertise and solutions which the country manager could choose to implement or ignore. This made any global change very tricky! There was little room for tell and do, this was all about influence and persuasion, treating each country manager individually, recognising some are influenced by others, some need to see the change in action first, others need to see the intricate details of the cost savings, yet others needed to speak to and know companies who have implemented similar changes. Our stakeholder engagement plan was large and complex. This was not change implemented by ‘sheep -dip’. At the heart of it all was the fact that the operating model had changed, the centre was asserting control over the kings in country.
But I have great empathy with these country managers. My first role in Africa was as ICL’s Business Transformation Director, tasked with implementing our shift from hardware to software and services. When the Regional Director resigned in protest about this change, I found myself with my old job and my new – Regional Director for ICL East Africa and Malawi – poacher and gamekeeper! Getting under the skin of the new role gave me the insight that what we had planned back in the comfort of HQ in UK, would ruin our business across Africa. This was a continent that had no stable power supply, that needed layer upon layer of infrastructure long before we could talk about IT services. 
Our best sellers – cash machines to rival NCR, retail machines for the growing consumer goods market, laying network cables for business growth – had no room in the new strategy.
Throughout the negotiation and the development of the prototype, every document was poured over, debated, re-drafted and discussed by our legal and corporate strategy teams in the UK . On the morning of contract signature a call came from the UK. On reflection, they did not want us to provide the technology or service it. We were not to sign. It was the beginning of the end for ICL in the region. And the most difficult conversation to have personally with the President. This outcome and the reality of who really was in control was one of my big lessons in business.
