Good morning, afternoon, evening – we stretch across many time zones !

I have spent a few moments when sitting down to write the weekly blog tossing up the dichotomy of writing about business planning and strategy and || or writing about something else. There are so many brilliant minds pouring over business planning and strategy and I pull on the outcomes of their wanderings and findings for my planning structure. What I enjoy is the conversations and discoveries my clients and I develop together. The exploration into how are we going to get to where we want to go ? where do we want to go ? There is a special space that is created between 2 people when present conversation takes place; new and existing worlds are lit up with colors. In the planning context these worlds are the areas of your business that are needed to activate and deliver a plan, sometimes these worlds can expand.

I have recently been re-introduced to the world of poetry. I have very fun fond memories of writing love songs as a young child – primary school so I am surmising somewhere between 8 years and 12 years old. I can actually sense into the type of book I used; well now the memory is blurring between an unlined jotter book and whatever was available. I used to spend hours pouring over the words of love songs and this passion went well into high school – Bridgette used to make the best love song tapes and play them for us in the dormitory (I was a weekly border).

What has all this got to do with Business Planning and strategy ? I turned to the experts and found this fabulous article illuminating our love of poetry and the relationship it can have with our Switchboard Consulting clients:

“ Clare Morgan, in her book What Poetry Brings to Business, cites a study showing that poems caused readers to generate nearly twice as many alternative meanings as “stories,” and poetry readers further developed greater “self-monitoring” strategies that

Before I sign off ….

Poem on the Occasion of a Weekly Staff Meeting

BY MATTHEW ZAPRUDER

Across the deep eternal sky
a thousand changing shapes flit by,

i.e. clouds, or so I have always called them.
But how is it I have never

among my incessant coffee refills
and insectivorous travels

among the cubicles in search
of individual wrapped chocolates

and conversations asked you
if you in my heart detect

several as I do in yours
of the adorable qualities

of broken folding chairs?
Or why we build desired outcomes

on the spots where old ones stood?
I call this meeting to order:

item one let’s go to lunch and order
wild boar. Let’s have an old-world chat

about the original action items.
O fuck the fluting on the donuts!

I feel totally Anglo Saxon!
I want for once in my life to whip

around an actual halberd gleaming
in the sun and win

a great victory versus the air!
Here is my project update:

the file cabinet is watching
over the particles

safely asleep in a beam,
and nothing into our building

has at last so gently crashed
leaving us bored and fortunate.

I move our faces
around this highly polished table

to each other look
almost familiar

so let us slip into the light
blue sleeve this afternoon

so gracefully carries
the next few hours in

and together forget
what our great task is.

Thank you for tuning in, Kate