Reframing the world

I’ve spent the week on two tiny islands in the Greek Cyclades.

One is Sifnos, which you can drive across in under half an hour. I was stunned here by vistas of barren hills dotted with whitewashed higgledy-piggledy villages, and tongues of land reaching into the bluest of seas crowned by tiny chapels.

So, today’s 5MSM comprises three short strategic provocations that these Greek Islands have spurred in me.

Stonewalling

All over Sifnos, you see scenes like this: every rugged hill, no matter how steep, appears to be criss-crossed by ancient walls.

Now, I’m just a visitor who took a few photos of these and was fascinated enough by them to ask, “Who built them, when, and why?”

And, I’m not the only one, it seems.

It turns out there are entire international conferences on Greek drywall construction (16 since the 1980s). There even exists an International Scientific Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Drystone (really!). And UNESCO in 2018 put drystone walls on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

So, let’s ask a few questions here. What is it exactly? What are they for? And, lastly, why should I care?

All you really need to know about the technique is that, as the name implies, there is no mortar used. Here’s a closeup of a modern wall using the technique.

Their beauty is that the walls blend into their surroundings, supporting plants that grow from them, but also move with the subtle movements of the earth.

But it’s their strategic significance that I want to alert you to, drawn from?why?these walls exist at all. There are three reasons, so before reading on, see if you can guess them.

Here they are:

1. They demarcate ownership
2. They turn impossible-to-cultivate hilly land into terraces of flat land
3. They act as windbreaks and goat protection enabling crops to flourish

Drystone walls are truly a case of “when life serves you lemons, make lemonade”. These islands are places where their natural resources were?only?hills, rocks and wind — so from the rocks early inhabitants created flat, protected land which led to viable farming.

Question: What can you do with ‘hills', ‘rocks’ and ‘wind’ in your organisation’s world?

In someone else’s hands

This is the second time we’re on Sifnos. Our yacht captain, Yianni, also brought us here on last week’s sailing expedition, where we anchored one night in a tiny cove.

There was the obligatory church, with waves lapping at its walls, along with two or three small tavernas and a few guest houses. It was magical to walk off the boat, barefoot across the sand to a meal of fried fish and squid, rice wrapped in vine leaves, yoghurt garlic dip and crusty bread, and a vivid red and green Greek salad, all eaten on rickety tables under a tamarisk tree’s vast canopy.

Again, I’m delving into travelogue to make a strategic point: specifically the value of fully surrendering and putting yourself into the hands of experts.

Yianni has spent decades sailing these waters and he knows each cove intimately. When we told him, “We want quiet places, off the beaten track” he knew where to take us. But, he said, “I have other guests who tell me exactly where they want to go, in what order. Maybe the winds aren’t right. Maybe they’ve only heard about the most popular places which are very crowded with boats. Maybe they’ve never even heard of the really good places. I try to tell them, but they don’t always listen”.

I meet this as a consultant sometimes: clients who tell me how to consult. They specify surveys, workshops, even numbers of meetings. But why? What they should do is specify their objectives. Leave it to me to advise them on the best ways to get those objectives. Just like we left it to Yianni to find the best coves with the best tavernas.

Question: How can you save time — and get a better result — by truly putting yourselves in the hands of experts?

When did this become family-friendly?

Not all of our travels were sunshine and frivolity. I was truly horrified to learn of the pirate-infested history of the small island of Paxos, where we spent a few days this week.

As far back as the 7th century the island was deserted several times because of pirate raids. It was repopulated repeatedly, with towns built behind sea-facing hills, so they appeared uninhabited. Nevertheless, attacks were common right through to the 18th century.

But why do I use the word ‘horrified’?

Because think for a moment about what piracy really is (or was). It’s not Jack Sparrow, or Captain Hook, or Treasure Island. They’re all representative of a century of glossy pirate fiction, sanitised for child-friendly consumption.

Pirates certainly didn’t like children. They killed them. Just as they did the old people. They enslaved the men. And, of course, they took the women. So, just imagine, for a moment, how terrifying a pirate attack would have been 500 years ago, amongst the humble buildings that today are bursting with tourist conveniences.

But it got me wondering, why did piracy get ‘reframed’ as entertainment (and not just by Disney)? On Paros, there’s even a Pirate Festival each year, in which the entire town’s citizenry re-enact a pirate raid. It’s a giant cosplay spectacle in which women are ‘abducted’ and subsequently ‘rescued’ by men. (Tourists are worded up in case they think women are actually being dragged off against their will). It all finishes with large-scale public eating and drinking - and fireworks.

There’s certainly a liberation that comes from being able to rewrite a narrative in which you are either a victim (or have feared being one) and turn it into a source of empowerment (like the festival at Nouassa) or at least entertainment (like Pirates of the Caribbean).

The way that local people (as well as Hollywood) have ‘culturally reclaimed’ piracy highlights for me that from any adverse event — whether individually or organisationally — we need the ability to reframe either the occurrence itself, or at least the consequence of it. Rather than ignore or bury it, it’s only when we reclaim power as far as possible, that we can move on and make our fullest positive contribution.

Question: For which past adversities do you need a different narrative?

As always, let me know you’ve enjoyed reading by clicking the ‘like’. I’ll be moving onto a few days in Paris on my way home, and by next Friday’s 5MSM I’ll be touching down in Melbourne.

Until then, enjoy reframing the world around you,

Andrew