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A few days away in Normandy

Read much of Robin Niblett’s book, The New Cold War, on the Eurostar to Paris yesterday. Wonderfully written, but pretty bracing. That said, it’s surprising how quickly I have relaxed in the new surroundings of Trouville – it used to take me several days to “land”. The weather has been kind, if also pretty bracing when we were on the beach this afternoon.

And bad news landed while we were at lunch in Les Voiles in Trouville, which threw an unexpected shadow over the proceedings. Still, we made our way across to Honfleur to see the Naturospace butterfly collection and to walk around Honfleur, which I had wanted to visit again since we passed through some time in the 1980s.

I experiment with a new channel.

A few weeks ago, I opened a new Substack channel, Surfing the Future. It won’t replace this blog, but it may mean that at times some content that might have appeared here will appear there.

The latest post, my twentieth, reflects on a fascinating week of visits and conversations that helped me refine my thinking on various aspects of system change. It also explains the dragon image above, topical because this is the Year of the Dragon and relevant because of the varying symbolism of dragons in the East and West.

The hummingbird, our Volans mascot, symbolises my year-long quest to work out how I can best advance the change agenda once I have reached the age of 75 in June.

What a wonderfully refreshing break that was, meeting some family and some friends, but otherwise immersed in books and films. Although I worked hard to nail down the theme of a new book, the process was not entirely successfully, in that I ended up with too many themes. But I also spent a great deal of time reading. Indeed, though I don’t do New Year’s resolutions, if I had they would probably have included more time spent on reading and listening to podcasts, something I haven’t really got into yet.

I also spent a fair amount of time soliciting endorsements for my new book, Tickling Sharks, due out in May from Fast Company Press. Happily, some truly wonderful ones have already come in.

One book I had been looking forward to reading was The Year of the Locust, Terry Hayes’ long-awaited follow-up to I Am Pilgrim. While I see why some critics think it goes a bit wobbly towards the end, I think it works well as a slightly mad scramble of thriller, sci-fi and fantasy. And it is always well – tautly – written.

Other books I enjoyed included Orbital by Samantha Harvey, which I loved so much I gave a copy to all members of the Volans core team; The Worlds I See, by Dr Fei-Fei Li, a wonderfully personal exploration of the rapidly evolving AI landscape; Einstein in Time and Space: A Life in 999 Particles, by Samuel Grayson, a truly compelling read; Lawrence of Arabia by Ranulph Fiennes, which filled in some of the gaps in my understanding of the Arab Revolt after our recent trip to Jordan; and, to clear the palate, Playback by Raymond Chandler, his last novel – and a delight.

Now queueing for my attention are books like Toby Wilkinson’s Ramesses the Great, which I’m already half-way through; selected poems of Rumi and of Ai Qing; Barnaby Rogerson’s The House Divided, exploring the 1,400-year-old schism between Islam’s Sunni and Shia factions; and Shane O’Mara’s Talking Heads, billed as “the new science of how conversation shapes our worlds.”

Not sure what sort of year 2024 will turn out to be, one of locusts or of honeybees? But struck this morning to read that falling numbers of pollinators is already triggering evolutionary processes in plants, whereby plants like field pansies are opting for self-fertilization over cross-pollination.

And perhaps we are seeing similar processes at work in geopolitics, with deglobalization encouraging countries and regions to fold back in on themselves? To counter such trends, one of my plans for this year is to undertake at least one learning journey, to get into conversation with people at the cutting edges of related fields.

We arrived in Dubai for the COP28 climate summit just after midnight on Sunday 3rd, returning on Friday 8th. In between, Louise (Kjellerup Roper) and I experienced multiple different worlds – hinted at in the following images. A separate sequence on our subsequent trip to Masdar City and Abu Dhabi follows. Among other things, we launched our new white paper – on greenwashing and green hushing – with the First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB) and the UAE Global Councils on the SDGs.

Up very early to take train and Drain (Waterloo & City line) to Bank station, ahead of an event at the very top of The Gherkin. Watched the sun come up in the east from the top of the Gherkin. The event was hosted by Tech Nation and a range of other organisations. Our CEO, Louise Kjellerup Roper, co-chairs their Climate Committee.

We kicked off with my fireside chat with Elisa Moscolin, EVP for sustainability at Sage Group. Our theme – and that of the event – was the rise of CSO (Chief Sustainability Officer) and the challenge of Sustainability Leadership.

Early on, I recalled being taken around the building by the then site engineer, Sara Fox, a formidable Texan managing 200 male construction workers, while some of the glass was still going in. And, some time later, I had also chaired a long-ago Nestlé dinner atop the Gherkin when their Shared Value Advisory Council, of which I was a long-standing member, came to town.

One highlight today, I think for most of us, was the concluding address from Sir David King. Bracing, to put it mildly.