Pictures of Armenia

Here are some Pictures from Armenia, hope you like them!

The first are some pictures taken inside my appartment @ 58, Marshall Baghramian. The living Room and the Bedroom








The View from the bedroom window and the street it looks out on to, Marhall Baghramian. The store at the corner where I do my shopping







The American University of Armenia ( Aua ) and Marshall Baghramian himself, on horseback! The building behind the high fence is the British Embassy, ha ha ha! Never know where terrorists may come from!







The washing machine and refrigerator at home.










My Leadership Class








Lake Sevan looks beautiful with the mist over it!







Mount Aragat.. and my relief on reaching the top.

Falling in Love in Armenia

Clinging to a rock face, 3800 meters above sea level, I am afraid to look down, I cant see anything above me, I cant go back, I don’t see how I can go forward… time stood absolutely still for what seems like eternity. I cannot remember being so scared in my life. I asked God.. “Just what am I doing here?” And a voice replied.. “This is LOVE”

Chain of Events

It all began early last week when Meline, on of the students of my leadership class said they were going to Mount Aragat and asked if I wanted to go along with them. I NEVER say no to an opportunity to interact more closely with my students, but my experience with HCL in-company programme taught me that I cannot keep pace with others. Progressing at my own pace is something I learnt when I was young, learning Karate despite my asthmatic condition. I have seen my own students surpass me and move on to their Black-belts when I stayed where I was, puffing and panting. So I told my students that I had a breathing problem and I can’t keep pace. If that is ok with them, I said I am game to try. The next day they brought word from their instructor saying that the pressure is low up there and it would not be advisable for someone with respiratory problems to climb the hill. I hid my disappointment, but when you grow up with a handicap, you realize that there are things that people take for granted like breathing…which is sad because being able to breathe normally is really something wonderful.

The next day in class, Arsene asked why don’t I go along. He explained that there would be a van that will take us to the foot of the mountain, where there is a beautiful lake. He said that he himself will probably not go up the mountain and we could sit together at the lake and enjoy the view. That seemed like a wonderful idea, except I had no warm clothes and the temperature had dropped quite a bit even in Yerevan town… Hey, I was supposed to be out of the country before winter!... He promised he would arrange for a jacket and I handed 5000 drams to Meline, the cost of the trek including lunch. We promised to meet at 8:30 am on Saturday, 19.09.2004 at Republic Square, a BEAUTIFUL part of town with fountains and a large open square.

Aragat

Mount Aragat is in the Marz of Aragatsotn ( in Armenia, Marz is an administrative unit, like a state or district ). The Mount has the highest peak in Armenia, which is 4096 meters above sea level. Its about 80 km away from Yerevan. After the delays of picking up people, etc. we drove to the mountain. The route was beautiful with the site of hills with nothing but brown grass on them.. a rare sight in a tropical country like India. I sat near the window transfixed at the unfolding countryside outside. In the van everyone was talking in Armenian and for some reason I didn’t feel left out at all. I was happy to just sit and listen to the conversation. The player on the van played some Armenian pop music which was soft vocal.

We arrived at the lake rather late..at around 10:30 – 11:00 and jackets were passed around. Our team had three professionals lead by the Chief of Armenian Mountain Rescue team. That was reassuring. The Chief, Meline’s friend told her that we will not go for the highest peak and we will try the East Peak which was only 3800m, and that I could give it a shot. He pointed out the peak from where we stood. It didn’t look that difficult. Half way up the mountain, there were patches of snow and I guessed that was the snow-line. I made up my mind not to be a spoil-sport and that I would go as far as the snow line and come back. I also warned them I would be very, very slow. I didn’t tell anyone that I planned to stop at the snow line. Even though I had worn 2 T-shirts under my shirt and they had given me a jacket … which was too small, so I couldn’t close the front…my shoes were ordinary sport-shoes and I was sure that my feet would be wet and freezing if I went above the snow-line.

The Trek

We set off at around 12:00 pm after a sumptuous breakfast of Lavash (Armenian roti…bread), boiled potato, sausages, and tinned sardines ...hmmm delicious. Soon enough the others pulled away from me and I was walking at the back with Aram, one of the professionals who was instructed to stay at the back. I met up with the team once and said that I would walk at my own pace and that the rest of them should move on. The chief told Aram (who spoke about half a dozen English words) that he should stay with me and go along at MY pace. The rest of the team moved on.

When I saw the Chief, Armen, I wondered if mountain rescue Chief was the most romantic of all careers, especially when he is as tall and handsome as Armen. I thought of the movie Vertical Limit with Stallone… that was not the last time I was to think of it.

Breathing

As mentioned before, I am an asthmatic and many people warned me about exertion in a rarefied atmosphere. Early in life, I had promised myself I would never say NO to anything due to my asthma.. many people told me it was a rather unintelligent decision, but I knew I was never going to be cured of asthma, so I had to live life with it. I was not going to let my asthma decide what I can and cannot do. The Chief told me that I could stop whenever I felt that things were difficult. I had taken steroids from the day before in anticipation of this, as well as having brought along my inhaler, so I thought I could push on.

The one thing I quickly realized is that there is a rhythm of breathing and walking as long as the rhythm was in synch, I had surprisingly little breathing problem. In fact I even wondered if the air was really all that rare as they mentioned. Of course I walked slow and took many breaks in between… something I had done all my life. As I walked along I wondered about rhythm not just when climbing a mountain but in life too. I remember reading about rhythm in Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Maybe each of us has a rhythm that we perform best in. Maybe its different for different people. Maybe its ok to be left behind as the “Group” moves ahead. I realized just how delicate this balance was when I absent-mindedly bit on an apple that Aram gave me. I was shocked at the difference that happened when my rhythm broke. When I bit into the apple while walking, I felt I was drowning, and suddenly I couldn’t breathe… all because I had broken the rhythm! WOW! Its amazing what difference the rhythm made to me. Something I could not explain.

In my mind, I did feel bad about being slow. Not because it proved I am weak, but because it meant that others will be delayed (at some point) because of me. But I also knew there was absolutely NOTHING I could do. I realized that in a strange way it was liberating, knowing that there wasn’t much you could do. Strange, isn’t it? I often find it hard to communicate the idea that sometimes lack of choice could be liberating.


Strategy Shift at the Snow-Line

My first “stretch target” was the snow line. After all, when collective wisdom, including my own told me to stay at the lakeside, the snowline is a stretch. I proceeded slowly towards the target soon enough most of the others vanished from site. The going was not always easy, clambering over rocks were making my feet hurt, but I said I will not stop until I reached the snow-line ...about half way up to the peak. The sense of relief I had when I reached there was enormous and I felt proud that I could achieve the target I had set for myself.

I told Aram to go ahead to the top. I would sit here for sometime and I would go back. Aram told me “You go (pointing to the peak)… I go. You stop, I stop”. I was horrified! I couldn’t even discuss it with Aram because of the language barrier. It is then I used my “other” strategy. This strategy means that I do not set targets for myself. Its something I learned during years of Karate training. When I set my own targets, stretch or otherwise, I am using the limits of your own mind. What if I was WRONG about what can be done and what cannot? I think it’s a wonderful feeling to be proved wrong about your own limits. I know that my Karate master, B. Kuppuswamy showed me that first. So I switched strategies and asked myself if I could put one more step forward? The answer was…it hurts, but I can take one step forward.

To the TOP

The climb started to get rapidly steeper and more difficult. We skirted the patches of snow and walked on the rocks.. UGH! But at the earlier points, the rocks were on a gentle slope so even if they shifted with my weight, it didn’t matter. By the way…why is it that when Aram walks there is no sound of shifting stones, while I sound like an express train as I clambered over the rocks?

After a while, we came to a much steeper slope. But it was grassy and had daisies growing on it and I relaxed, as we moved towards it. Somewhere from above came the Chief’s voice and Aram stopped. He told me, in sign language, that we could not go across the grass and that we had to over stones on what seemed to me.. almost a vertical slope. Even as I write this the next morning, I can still feel the feeling in my stomach and legs as I looked up the impossible slope. I sunk and sat down… and would have cried if I could. Aram told me that the gentle grassy slope was actually treacherous mud mixed with water from melting snow. I looked at the slope again and then imagined stepping on to it and it slipping away under my feet. I looked down to see where I would stop, if that happened. I didn’t have to be told a second time. I resolutely got up and started moving ahead on all fours. Armen kept climbing … or was it walking?.. with two bags on his back.. one was mine. I would have gone on all six, instead of fours, but Armen told me not to put my knees on the loose rock. In tough times Armen gave me a hand and offered a lift up. But somehow I trusted my own two hands rather than Armen who was standing (what looked to me) precariously with two bags. I took his hand where I needed a light touch to balance myself, but would NOT take his hand when I needed to put my weight on it.

Armen told me that we would climb straight to the top and then walk along the top to the peak. The last 100 feet of the climb is not something I want to remember. On reaching the top we found that we could NOT walk to the peak and we had to go around a rock that was blocking our way. Aram climbed down beneath the rock and I followed, then to go around we had to cross a very narrow section, which Aram almost skipped across. I stepped out from relative safety and held on to wherever I could on the rock face. I suddenly remembered that I had fear of heights and had not factored that into the climb. I swore I would NOT look down as I clung to the rock. But found I was too scared to move. There was nothing to it than to hold and wait for it to pass. I could not go back to the place where I had stepped off from, I could only go forward. As I clung resolutely to the rock, I felt a small success in not looking down, as I had promised myself. But the mind plays cruel games. As I was standing there, an image flashed across my mind. Silver Stallone in Vertical Limit, hanging under an over hang as the camera pulls away to show the whole scene. It was a scene that gave me vertigo sitting in my living room, and this was NO place to think of that. But that is exactly what came to mind. For a brief moment I felt faint... feeling my consciousness slipping, but I brought it back and my mind came back from the TV screen to the rock face in front of me. For a few moments I tried to focus on the rock alone, seeing its designs cracks wondering how old it could be, all of this while I stood completely motionless. I felt the panic ease in me and I stepped forward into safety. But now breathing was difficult and my pace had changed I would take five steps and then stop to catch my breath… literally five steps. What looked like a gentle and easy slope to the peak was interminable. Then I saw the chief coming down towards me. I thought that the team was on its way back. He came down and started walking up with me. The first thing he said is “Dr. Fenn, you are a man of great character.” I could only guess at what he was saying… obviously not talking about my interpersonal or leadership skills. But I did learn an important lesson about leadership. I guess the most important lesson is about leading yourself to do things that surprise yourself. I did not go to climb a mountain on Sunday, I went to spend time with my students and their friends who had joined us. On my own I would NEVER sign up for a mountain climbing session or even a trek on anything more than gentle rolling hills.

As I reached the top the whole gang cheered. Everyone talked at once and I could only take in bits and pieces of the conversation. What I could gather is that climbing Aragat is something like a pilgrimage. They said EVEN all Armenians haven’t climbed Aragat, the first thing that came to my mind is that all Armenians are supposed to climb the mountain? I later found out that it was an “Armenian” thing to do, to climb the mountain. One of the girls..who were NOT part of my class and who has never talked to me earlier, came up and said “you know, you are probably the ONLY person from your country who has climbed Aragat, and you should be proud of that!”. I had not realized that I was taking part in some cultural ritual, but I am GLAD I did. Armen(The Chief) took me to take a look around the peak and told me about his work and how he comes here during the worst weather to just see if he could rescue someone if he needed to.

The Mountain Men

“The way I look at it, you only live once, and when you are alive you do what you want to do!” Armen told me as he looked down a steep cliff on the other side of the peak. As I mentioned earlier, I think that mountain rescue is about as adventurous and as romantic as it gets. But I wondered about these men. They have been here on the mountain so many times.. it is their JOB! They must be bored with the views that quite literally took my breath away! I could not have been more wrong! The guy who walked down with me stopped every now and then to take a look at the mountain and said just one word “beautiful”. He also stopped to look at rock formations and plants that grew there each time saying “beautiful”. I realized that you can go to a mountain everyday and still say “beautiful” from your heart.

I made a wish that I could live a life where everyday I can say “beautiful” to at least something, however small it maybe... even if I am the ONLY person who thinks it is beautiful.

Photographs

Having been up the mountain, I realized why I see so few photographs of mountains and their beauty. To capture anything of its beauty I will need a camera that can pan 360 degrees one axis and about 180 degrees. Even then I would never capture the full beauty of the panorama. I have taken pictures and I will put them up online sometime. But I learnt that mountains are an unusually tough subject for photography.

Saying Goodbye

I reached the base about 45 minutes after everyone else reached. The food tasted GOOD. I never knew that food was something to “write home about” during a trek. As the sunset, the temperature dropped even further. My feet had blisters and my muscles were tired, but it was an experience I will never forget. The weather was perfect for the mountains. There was some snow, some fog and quite a bit of bright sunshine too. My friend, Aragat had taught me many unforgettable things. As I left the lake in the bus, I knew that I would never forget Aragat as long as I live.

Post Script

The van soon warmed up as we travelled along and we took off our jackets, people were once again laughing and talking around me as we moved homewards by about 8:20 PM. Just as my muscles relaxed the van stopped near a ruined castle and a church… near is not the word since we had to go down a bit again on a small trail…and walk again. This time it was torture to get my feet to move again. The cold air did make it difficult to walk again. But it was worth it to see the castle against the twilight sky and a moon above. That is the last image of a memorable day that I take back with me.

At last the new world order is complete.

On 9th of September 2004, the new world order is complete. On that day Russia announced a policy of "preemptive strike against terror", Putin and his government aligning itself with the Bush doctrine in the United States of America! Ever since the end of the cold war, everyone wondered what would be the nature of a unipolar world? One superpower without a counter power? For a short time Russia tried to play the game it had always played as a counter balance to US opinion.

But President Bush has unleashed a new weapon on the world, Al Qaeda (read about how in this interesting article). Even before the investigation was complete, Russia announced that there were 10 Arabs among the hostage takers. Al Qaeda has joined forces in Chechnya and even in Indonesia now (read this for a list of bombings, etc. Attributed to them).

What does all this have to do with CANCER?

Suppose you accept the theory that cancer is not a local level disease. In other words cancer is not entirely caused by some changes at the cellular level at a site. Rather cancer is also caused by "systemic" problems. This means that the actual cancer is only a local manifestation of a set of conditions that are conducive to the formation of malignancy. I should know. My sister-in-law was diagnosed of cancer when she was 30. Surgery removed all traces of the primary cancer and chemotherapy took care of any cells that got detatched and would be traveling in the lymphatic system looking for new sites (like seeds of a plant). Unfortunately within a matter of months she developed ANOTHER primary and she died by the time she was 32. Was that a freak accident? After all she didn't develop secondaries, but another primary. What is the probability of cancer developing afresh in one person two times?

In my Organizational Behaviour courses I often talk about the organization as a "system", and how the behaviour of an individual could be considered the result of a problem at the system level.

For a good part of my life, the world hung in a balance ..."Of power" between US and the USSR. We existed on the brink of anhilation with an evergrowing stockpile of weapons that could destroy the world many times over. On occasion, we have come frighteningly close too. But there was one good thing. Both sides knew who the enemy was. Everyone knew where to target ICBMs and the rules of conflict and diplomacy were played out with much sabre rattling.

Sheikh Yamani said that the invasion of Iraq would create.. "One hundred bin Ladens". In the same way that treating a cancer at its site is no solution for a systemic disease such as cancer. In fact there are those who believe that cancer is not a disease at all, just biological evolution at work.

Within a modernist world, perhaps, as Jacques Derrida would say, exists the seeds of anarchy and its own destruction. The more President Bush believes that he is on GOD's Mission, the more others will band up against the oppressive modern world. The more that we try to move the world towards rationality, the more we try to build a panopticon, the more there will be regions where anarchy is protected and even advanced. No wonder Al Qaeda is winning the war on terror!

The bussification of Airlines

What IS happening to the airline industry?? Everyday a new company is on the brink of bankrupcy? And now Alitalia will have to fight it out with its unions. BA, sold out their stake in Quantas, and gave up the idea of being a global player.

Airlines was the glamour industry of yester-year. I remember the pride on my uncle's face when he told me that a niece of his has joined as an air-hostess. Taking a plane ride was a luxury and people expected champagne and caviar (sorry for getting carried away...after all I am in a former CIS country at the moment!). I too have marvelled at these huge metal birds that weight tons and hange from the sky.... I still do.

As the era of air travel progressed, so did the market. It was not just the well heeled that wanted to travel, but the ordinary too. This is a cycle we have seen sooo many times. The mobile phone, launched as a fashion accessory soon became a necessity and people wanted to buy functional phones. What is the cheapest way to get from point a to point b on an international map? Does it matter what food I a served as long as I can get there?

In India we are talking about APEX fares and still saying how cheap it is to fly today. If you think so, take a gander at http://wwww.ryanair.com ... now THATS cheap. What is happening is that air travel is beginning to resemble bus travel more and more. Indeed many airlines are trying to woo customers away from buses and trains into planes.. unless ofcourse you are Virgin and own both trains AND planes!!

When the bussification is complete prices will bounce back. But then we would have rather lean mean airlines who will charge you if you need a human being on the telephone to do bookings, but will NOT charge you if you can use an IVR menu, the internet, or even the self help kiosk at the airport. Airport.... which airport? Gone would be the glittering hubs of transport. After all what would Swarovski or Bvlgari or Monte Blanc have to offer to a bus traveller? And if you are going to catch a cheap bus, why not travel on another bus to reach it in the first place?

But bus travellers, too need leg space. They need to use the toilets. Bus travel is not being stripped down like airlines are. Lets all hope for a more practical and cheaper airline where we can travel from Calcutta to Cochin without paying up my salary to the airline. Until then, I will take the bus.

The end of innocence...?

Modern society looks at children as "Innocent" as people who must be "Protected". Part of this rhetoric comes from what anthropologists call "the golden period", the time when we were young and everything we did was magical and cute. A time when we dreamt of princes and kings of fair maidens and fairies. Childhood represents the essence of goodness in all of us before we got "corrupted" by society.

We have special laws that protect this innocence. Laws protect innocent children from sexual predators, from having to work, from consuming corrupting substances like alchohol. We also protect our children from having to view some of the worst aspects of culture through censorship laws. Needless to say children should not be burdened with serious responsibilities of the state, hence they are not allowed to vote.

Between Wed Sept 1 to Fri Sept 3 all this changed at Beslan ( go for a time line of what happened: http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/09/03/russia.school.timeline.ap/index.html.). No longer can we say the affairs of adults are seperate from the affairs of children. Many voices across the world asked "what have these children done?".

I didn't have an idyllic childhood. No, I was not abused, brought up in poverty, nor did I have to see my own friends buried alive when the school gym collapsed, however, I would not like to re-live my childhood all over again. Maybe it is heresy to challenge the idyllic childhood envisioned by modern society?

I have seen children working. Working in restaurants, shops, as delivery boys. These children work to make a little money for themselves and to support their families, because EVERYONE counts. They are not the castrated children of modern society, they are economically contributing members of thier families and communities. These children are not subject to censorship. They grow up seeing the best and worst that soceity has to offer.

I have seen television stations screen out the slightest hints of SEX when it comes to children... and to a LESSER (???) extent violence. Yet Tom and Jerry contain some of the most violent scenes with the possible exception of coyote and the road runner.

Maybe, just maybe, children in our society are over protected? Worst still our protection mechanisms CANNOT hope to be perfect. Do you think your children do not see those censored material? Do you think they dont know about statesmanship? In my home state there was a major debate about whether politics should be allowed in schools. Why the debate? Why cant our children be part of the state too?

Through our practices and laws, we have made childhood one of the most frustrating stages of life. We have NOT succeeded in protecting our children's innocence, we never will. All we have done is to cut off all hope of being prepared for the world. When something like Beslan happens neither the children nor we are ready. The best we can do is to wring our hands in despair and issue more pompous words.

It is time we stopped oppressing our children in the name of protecting them. It is time for us to listen to them and, instead of telling them what they should see and what they should think and do, it is time we asked them what they DO see and what they DO think. Maybe we got it WRONG and they got it RIGHT? Can we take that possibility?

Narrative Performance in Armenia

At the moment I am conducting ... as in conducting an orchestra or as a in what a bus conductor does? Or maybe even conduct as in allowing to pass through me, like a lightning conductor?... a course on leadership at the American University of Armenia ( http://www.aua.am ) in Yerevan. The good thing is that it is labelled as Leadership – II, which means I am here to conduct Act II of something that has already taken place. Yet I was not a direct witness to Act I. I was not present at the time. The actors I work with ...perhaps I should call them actor-audiences, for in a sense don’t all audiences shape a performance? Would a performance be the same in front of an appreciative audience or in front of a hostile one? What if there is no audience at all? And surely the actors themselves are an audience to the performance? Surely they too watch? To the extent that audiences shape the performance and to the extent that actors to are audiences, one may speak of actor-audience. In this particular case, the actors themselves are the audience since there is no one else... already bear Traces of past performances. Act II cannot, indeed must not attempt to, erase act 1, rather to build upon it.

Perhaps it’s a good thing to ask why this course is a narrative performance and not a scientific activity that educates course participants about the “facts” of leadership. Positivisitc science ... which is different from “positive”... is one that “Posits” a world out there. A world that is at once real as well as knowable using reason and sensory experiences. The Real world is "A-historical" and the rules of nature do not change from place to place or from time to time. A-historicity is enshrined in the repeatability cannon of science which says that an experiment has to be repeatable under “similar conditions” (meaning similar physical conditions) and has to provide the same results. Regardless of who conducts the experiment, where or when. Yet human actions ARE not entirely free of their historical contexts. Leadership is as much a factor of the context as it is of behavioural traits of the leader…….the right man in the right place at the right time. Perhaps this is why positivistic approaches to leadership give us a feeling that something important and essential has been left out. While positivistic approaches to studying leadership is a recent phenomenon, humanities and arts have always been vehicles of ideas of leadership, passed on in narrative form.

The narrative is a form of knowledge representation, like Scientific Facts. While science describes the world in terms of rational/logical relationship between observable facts, it leaves out the question of meaning, since it is the use that determines the meaning of these facts. The facts relating to nuclear fission took on a new meaning after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, its even true that the pace of discovering these facts were influenced by the historical context of the war. Yet the facts themselves are universal and in a sense, meaningless.

Narrative on the other hand, is something that unfolds over time. A movie is a narrative, since it unfolds over time. A novel is another form of a narrative. Narratives may play with the notion of time..switching back and forth using flashback or flashforward, but time is a very important part of any narrative. Through the notion of time, the narrative brings in history to the act of knowledge representation. No longer is knowledge purely about abstract relations between universally observable facts. Now there is a reason why Julius Caesar is murdered, or why Joan of Arc is considered to be a leader.

The university and school systems replaced earlier modes of knowledge transfer. Before people started to flock to these modern institutions, knowledge was passed on through society down generations. Skills were passed on through direct observation and learning as in the case of apprenticeships, or those who watched their mothers cook and learned from them. Other kinds of knowledge (the more explicit kind) was passed on through stories, myths and legends… word of mouth. These narrative forms not only explained what and how but also explained why. Learning was not purely a matter of the mind, but that of the heart too. Through such narratives, young people learnt to have heroes and role models. They learnt who to respect and who were the tyrants.

While many societies have whole-heartedly accepted positivistic approaches and replaced earlier forms of knowledge representation with positivist forms. Other societies are yet in the process of making the transition. Positivistic (value free) depiction of the world does not show us how to lead.. this much is obvious. Hence it is of vital importance that studies of leadership should also retain narrative approaches.
Eventhough movies, novels and theatre, are all part of narrative approaches, they are not all performances. Movies and novels are narrative artefacts. Once created by an author or director, it is then frozen forever. What is once a performance is now a product of that performance, frozen, unchanging. While narrative artefacts contain within them, the notion of time, that time is frozen and doesn’t continue to flow. A narrative performance, on the other hand is part of time here and now. In a classroom, a textbook or novel may be a narrative artefact that is used, but the instruction is a narrative performance. Narrative performances, rooted in the here and now is more responsive to the immediate historical context and hence should be of greater relevance to the audience. Ofcourse when watching Ben Hur, time stops and I imaginatively enter the time of Ben Hur. When I come back, I bring with me some notions of bravery, courage and kindness back to the here and now. Performances, on the other hand are in the here and now, even though they may depict a different time. For example, watching Julius Ceasar performed puts us back in the time of Julius Ceasar, imaginatively. But each performance is different. If an actor stumbles on the stage, there is no way to edit it out and it has to be incorporated into the narrative itself.

The course I teach is a narrative performance. While we do study stories of leadership through analysis of narratives from different time frames, we are constantly aware of the here and now. There is a constant going back and forth in time, of understanding how these stories are shaping us and how it relates to the world today.

Armenian society, like the Indian, is one that still has links to non-positivistic thinking and a course based on non-positivistic, narrative performance, would possibly be seen of more relevance here than in a more “modern-IST” society. Coming as ACT II after a basic course on positivistic approach to leadership, I thought this would be very useful in conceptualising learning about leadership.


Wish me luck! Narratives take unexpected turns when lady luck rolls the dice.