Close Encounters with McKinsey
My room at the Hilton Long Beach at TED2009 overlooked a car park. I had come as a newbie TED Fellow and was grateful just to be here. So clearly I wasn't going to call front desk and ask to switch to an ocean view room. Words like teeth, horse and gift come to mind, but not necessarily in that order. Fast forward one year.
Photo attached shows a Long Beach sunset from my window at the Hilton on Sunday 7th February at the start of TED2010. Not quite an ocean view, but pool view is a major improvement from last year, you would agree. Clearly coming back as a TED Senior Fellow comes with extra perks.
Today, at the Fellows pre-conference we had a "Centered Leadership" workshop hosted by McKinsey. The session led by McKinsey Director Joanna Barsh, a fireball of energy and wit, made us ask lots of searching questions from ourselves in a rapid fire sequence. Very rapid for this jet-lagged documentary maker who had just had a big warm sunny lunch by the hotel pool.
One of the aims of the exercise was to identify potential sponsors for our fellowship projects. This was a curious exercise that appealed to my playful mind but left me intrigued and somewhat helpless. Self-generated graphs of career highs and lows, key influences and mentors,etc... ending with a blank sheet of paper and an assortment of crayons with which I was to map out my life, with ME in the middle. Arrows were to go out to people who could be potential sponsors, represented by their initials.
It soon became clear that I was doing it all wrong. In looking back at my career lows I had got so sucked into a vortex of sad bitter regret, planning elaborate revenge schemes, that I had missed Joanna's subsequent instructions. Seeing me struggle with my map, Joanna and her husband, David who was leading my group's table, came and looked over my shoulder. A silence. They looked at each other like a pair of parents with a problem child, and then David said this: "His work is too ambiguous for the corporate structure". I didn't know if I should be ashamed or proud.
Liberated from the constraints put on by "the man", I then picked some of my favourite colours and let fanciful imagination tempered by wishful thinking take over. The result is what you see below. My life for the next three years as a TED Senior Fellow in glorious Technicolor.
Taghi Amirani
@tagz23
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