If only…

Sometimes my teaching about management and leadership takes on forms that are not in my workplan or in a formal training. Today the emphasis was on inspiring and being inspired, on aligning and mobilizing rather than implementing. The emphasis has been so much on results and implementing that the actual leadership work fell by the wayside, draining me, or, rather, not supplying me with the necessary energy to break through the multiple obstacles that surround us here.

Like for instance when the agreement reached yesterday about breaking through logjams and getting the licenses we need to import the controlled substances was nixed by a lower level person who keeps on singing the same obstructionist tune. How that is possible is something I cannot understand (but imagine).

M and S had lunch together and we talked about makes it hard for them to keep their heads up. I explained what assertiveness by drawing an imaginary picture of ‘standing one’s ground,’ drawing the line that indicates this is mine (my right, my responsibility, my concern, my voice).

In the afternoon we joined with others, some men of influence and authority, to be inspired, once again, by the urban renewal project of the Turquoise Mountain Foundation in Murad Khani. This time the clinic was finished. Last time, in the fall, it was still a construction site, and the craftsmen had not yet moved into the complex, the woodcarvers, the jewelers, the ceramic tile makers, the calligraphers. Now we caught the students hard at work, supervised by their masters, as in an old fashioned guild. I think we all left the site thinking that there is hope for Afghanistan, if only…