It's not just a language thing...

You already heard that “Crisis” was the combination of Danger & Opportunity.

Well, this came from JFK whose Chinese was not great… Here is what linguist Benjamin Zimmer says: it appeals because of its "handiness" as a rhetorical device and optimistic "call to action", as well as to "wishful thinking". [source Wikipedia] & if you want the full story, click here.

 @PolyglotGroup, we help organisations grow globally which means we get many opportunities to get “lost in translation” and to learn from these opportunities.

Today in Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain, Europe, we are at a critical point.

Watching this animation from Jose Maria Algar sent by a Catalan friend, I caught myself thinking about: 

1) The concept of “Community of Inquiry” which I got a chance to rediscover in the great company of @SandraSieb & @TimLaporte during my last trip to Sydney.

Asking my Google/Wikipedia friend for another explanation here is what I found:

"The community of inquiry is a concept first introduced by early pragmatist philosophers C.S.Peirce and John Dewey, concerning the nature of knowledge formation and the process of scientific inquiry. The community of inquiry is broadly defined as any group of individuals involved in a process of empirical or conceptual inquiry into problematic situations. This concept was novel in its emphasis on the social quality and contingency of knowledge formation in the sciences, contrary to the Cartesian model of science, which assumes a fixed, unchanging reality that is objectively knowable by rational observers. The community of inquiry emphasizes that knowledge is necessarily embedded within a social context and, thus, requires inter-subjective agreement among those involved in the process of inquiry for legitimacy."

In the US, they use a lot the empire state building to describe this concept. Depending on the side you stand from, you’ll get a different Empire State Building and it’s unlikely that one will be able to fully appreciate the perspective of each of its pieces..

Not having much explanation about the elephants, I searched further, always asking my same Google / Wikipedia friend:

“The parable of the blind men and an elephant originated in ancient Indian subcontinent, from where it has widely diffused. It is a story of a group of blind men, who have never come across an elephant before, learn and conceptualize what the elephant is like by touching it. Each blind man feels a different part of the elephant body, but only one part, such as the side or the tusk. They then describe the elephant based on their partial experience and their descriptions are in complete disagreement on what an elephant is. In some versions they come to suspect that the other person is dishonest and they come to blows. The moral of the parable is that humans have a tendency to project their partial experiences as the whole truth, ignore other people's partial experiences, and one should consider that one may be partially right and may have partial information. The earliest mentions of this premise occurs in the Rigveda, and a complete version of the story is traceable to the Buddhist text Udana 6.4, dated to about mid 1st millennium BCE. According to John Ireland, the parable is likely older than the Buddhist text.”

So from a "discovery" from an American philosopher of the late XIXst century, I went to about mid 1st millennium BCE & got a better understanding of the same concept...

2) Then I thought about a couple of quotes from Claude Onesta who spoke to business leaders during the recent gathering of the French Trade Advisers a few days ago in Indonesia:

? Le seul ego qui peut faire échouer une équipe c'est l'ego du chef ?

“The only ego which can make a team fail, it’s the boss’s one”

? Il faut travailler sur les fondations plut?t que de seulement repeindre les murs ?

“We have to work on the foundations instead of repainting the walls”

? L'action singulière n'amène que des petits résultats. L'action collective peut amener de grandes réussites. ?

Individual action brings small results. Collective actions can lead to big successes.

? Le r?le d'une équipe n'est pas d'être homogène, facile et obéissante. Il faut qu'elle "disrupt" ? 

“The role of a team is not to be homogeneous, easy, obedient, it needs to disrupt”.

So I got myself to think about a phone call with Isabelle Piquer from Le Monde about our current situation as a company operating in Catalunya.

"Do we have a plan B in case of geopolitical risk?"

I caught myself thinking: Any reasonable business has a plan B for geopolitical risk.

Question is: "are we going to press play or not and when?" I also caught myself thinking about the power of media & the huge impact of self-fulfilling prophecy in today’s society. Who pulls which string and why do they do it?

Rather than having a plan B, I feel it is urgent for society to think about the community of inquiry concept: at our level, with the perspective we have, the language we spoke (i.e: how the way we have been raised, educated and trained, the industry we work in etc.) impacts our views and how looking at the empire state building or the advertising billboard we repaint from “too close” may prevent one to see a better solution for society at large.

Recognizing politicians for the important work they do, engaging with them to make sure they listen to different views, pushing them to be better and asking them to ask us to do exactly the same, work on the foundations rather than painting the walls, disrupts and lead collective actions for big successes.

What's best for individuals, families, groups, teams, Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain, Europe, beyond? :) Dialogue, community(ies) of inquiry, work on foundations, not just repainting walls, disrupt (for the better), leave the ego on the side, talk to people who are distant from our own "wall", "empire state" or "elephant". It is not about taking side. It is about finding out what is best for both. Even if JFK was wrong, crisis does not mean danger & opportunity, it means we have a problem which needs a solution.

@ Polyglot Group, our team works every day to help organisations understand other “languages”, help organisations get smarter with recruitment, HR, language & internationalization solutions and foster cross-cultural dialogue… and no, it’s not just a language thing… ??