Seamless

3: Refusal of the call

Being nostalgic is not strategic.

My heroine, my most reluctant mentee

As I cover in chapter 2, from late 2012 and through the first half of 2013, I worked on the first incarnation of my love letter to my mum — the thesis for my Global Executive MBA — which then evolved into the strategy we called ‘Georg Sörman 100'. Through this process, Birgitta had begun to listen to the call to adventure this process represented. Her interest in the possibilities was piqued and she participated in forming future strategies. But then came the doubts.

At the time of the final delivery of the strategy in the early European autumn of 2013, the first red flag — that is, the first indication Birgitta was going to refuse the call — sprung up. Part of the thesis requirements for the Global EMBA was to deliver the strategy to the board, and to provide them with a copy of the presentation — which we did. Because of the tyranny of distance and the fact that I was working with some of our large corporate clients in Australia at the time, I had to do the presentation remotely. In preparation for this presentation, the task of the board (Mum and Dad) was to read through and reflect upon the strategy so they could then engage in a dialogue about the strategy findings during the presentation. The red flag sprung up when my cloud-based Box.com account showed that the 30-page pdf of the strategy hadn't been downloaded or read. Minor mishap I thought. They will probably read it ...