Ex-pat Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving has special meaning when you're an ex-pat in one of the countries around the world where this holiday is not celebrated. The only way I know Thanksgiving is through family, food, the Macy's Parade, and collapse. Thanksgiving in Qatar went on for three days and included no less than four invitations to join other ex-pat groups for meals. It was very gratifying to be invited out so many times but I only succumbed to two offers. We all made our own renditions of sweet patatoes, salads, gravies, and more that we cherish from home.

Besides sharing Thanksgiving celebrations this last weekend, I ventured into the desert for a safari. It was very cool. Much of the safari was simply riding around in a comfortable SUV viewing the landscape (picture below and right). However, on several occassions we stopped to really absorb the setting. The last stop we made, the one where we saw this particularly photogenic camel (picture below), the sun was setting in the west while the full moon was rising in the east.
Even though there were about fifty people joining in this experience, there was a deep sense of solitude and connection in what I thought would be a pretty desolate place. It was desolate but it was this apparent void that made room for reflection, connection, and beauty. Arab lands are not filled with the lush colors of more vegetated places but they have a beauty of their own.

Ex-pat Thanksgiving - having a place to call home to which I know I can return and having a new place where being ex-pats is celebrated, even while we work to build another country.

Prospects and progress in the Arabian Gulf

My continuing ninety degree learning curve results in my stumbling into amazing things on a daily basis. One question that I've continued to field from my colleagues when they want to know more about Qatar is related to women and their opportunities. Her Highness Sheikha Mozah is a very strong woman who provides a role model for women in the Gulf and elsewhere. Her remarks from May 2007 made it clear where women's rights stand in relation to human rights. She advocated choices that balance commitments to cultural and spiritual traditions. Her actions speak even more loudly than her words when opportunities are made available for Arab women in Qatar through advancing education and creating opportunities to lead cultural and business organizations.

Beyond opportunities for women, there continue to be some questions about opportunities for various cultural and national groups. The mix of nationalities here is truly and utterly amazing. I so enjoy going places and hearing so many different languages and seeing so many different styles of dress. One of the things challenging Dubai (down the Gulf in the UAE) is the perception that they have exploited different immigrant groups in the working class, particularly in the construction and hospitality industries. I've not sorted out how I see this but I do pay attention to my surroundings. Last week I went for the blood test and tomorrow I go for my eye test for immigration approval. These experiences have exposed me to all sorts of people who are coming to Qatar. The good thing is that Qatar grants working visas to those who are sponsored by a specific organization or entity. While the presence of immigrants helping build this country may be questioned, at least there are processes in place to validate their presence - not something that is available in all developing or developed countries. Those contributing to the building and development boom are people seeking to better their own lives by serving the country of Qatar. While it may raise questions of purpose, many find a place that offers greater opportunity than they would have had in their home country - not so different from the burgeoning frontier days of the U.S.A. Sometimes it feels a little like that in Qatar.

Investing wisely

I had the phenomenal opportunity to work with a group of 17 second-year MBA students from Stanford University yesterday. They were in the Arabian Gulf region on an "Energy Trek," looking at what high-resource countries are doing to invest in their people. I was so excited to share with them the work of Qatar Foundation. From Education City to Reach Out to Asia, to $100,000,000 for Katrina relief, to forming a Qatar National Symphony, and many other things, it is almost overwhelming. The 17 students represented 12 different countries and none had ever heard of or witnessed anything like the Qatar Foundation.

So, the interesting question that floats in my head is "investing wisely" and for what purpose? Obviously, the Stanford students were inquiring whether or not Qatar and other Gulf countries are investing money in ways that will benefit large numbers of citizens and will create a positive future for this region. I hope that some of them read this blog post and join in the conversation by offering their perspective. I know my opinion and I don't hold back from offering it.

However, I left this group after three hours of very interesting conversation by encouraging them to invest in another way - investing themselves. This was a diverse, talented, and engaging group. They can make a real difference in the world but only if they decide on issues that matter and issues that reflect a wise investment on their part. Indeed, they have too much talent to waste an ounce of it or a minute of their time with frivolity. They have numerous opportunities to deepen their awareness of the world, one of which is the Global Management Immersion Experience (GMIX); we may seek to become a GMIX sponsor which would allow Qatar Foundation to have a Stanford intern for project-based work.

The importance of investing wisely came to me in another way today. I received messages from TJ and Anne about one of our dear Miami friends, Joe. Joe has struggled for the last couple of years with cancer and he lost the battle this weekend at around age 22. Joe was an amazing individual, full of wit, wisdom, and will. He was in remission when I saw him last. He was joking and carrying on as if there was nothing threatening his life. In his short years on earth, he invested wisely of his talent and his love of others. There are those who will read this post and know exactly what I mean.

Invest wisely - our talent is too great and our time to short...

Doha before and after

You've seen some pretty incredible pictures in the previous posts. Well, you have to see some comparison pictures to understand what's really happened. The phenomenon of Doha is less that 30 years old. I don't know the exact date of the picture below but it shows Doha probably in the 1970s when the first of the great hotels that are now here was built. You can see in the picture the construction of the Sheraton. A road leads from nowhere to what was the beginning of the Renaissance of Qatar.

The next picture is looking from the Al Sharq hotel across the water to West Bay which is where you can see the Sheraton which is now dwarfed by the emerging skyline (It's the short white building a little right of the center of the picture).

The comparison of these two pictures only begins to demonstrate what a dramatically different place Doha has become in approximately 30 short years. There are lots of issues to work on and lots of challenges ahead but this is one of the most vibrant places in the world and it's important for citizens around the world to know about it. We're talking about what you see above being but a few miles south of Kuwait and Iraq and west across the Arabian Gulf from Iran. The Gulf region is typically portrayed as a dangerous and untrustworthy place. My emerging and deep concern is that western journalists and citizens must begin to understand that they simply don't know what's happening in this area of the world. I'll try to do my part so stay tuned!

No sooner did I get started...

The amazing thing about the time I've spent at Qatar Foundation is that there are so many things that have lined up so well. I had a day of other meetings and work after the Faculty and Student Services team retreat and then went immediately into the Qatar Symposium. The Symposium was sponsored by Carnegie Mellon University - Qatar. The main brain-trust behind the Symposium is Gloria, a wonderful and fun new colleague. The date of the Symposium was determined before I even knew I was coming here but it was uncanny how this event provided the opportunity to establish relationships and get a read on what's going on so quickly.

The Symposium site was a very cool new hotel in Doha - Al Sharq (picture to right and below). It has an Arab village feel with wonderful small villes, meeting rooms, and fountains and pools everywhere. I have to pinch myself when I'm in these kinds of places - not exactly like Oxford.

The Symposium started with a keynote from my superior and led into a reception where all the participants mixed and mingled. The next morning I was given the opportunity to kick off the day with a keynote about the purpose of the Qatar Foundation and the potential we have as colleagues of Education City. I always try to center myself so that I'm speaking from my heart but this particular morning was unbelievable. I felt so present and so focused that it was almost overwhelming. It was also as easy a speech as I've ever given. The primary reason - I believe so deeply in what we're doing.

The response to my keynote, the others who followed, and the general discussion over the course of the day was amazing. By the end of our time together, the branch and center representatives who were there were all ready to work hard to enhance our mutual work. There was a sense of the deep and critical importance of our work and everyone jumped in to say how they wanted to contribute. It was a very exciting day.

My challenges are now two: 1) keep the momentum going by pulling people together to refine the ideas we generated, and 2) maintain a focus on adaptive and facilitative leadership that keeps everyone at the table. In the particular case of Doha, Qatar Foundation, and Education City, things are so overwhelming that people just want someone to take care of it - fix it. The only problem - there isn't an easy fix and it takes all of us contributing everything we have in order to get the job done. Under these circumstances, it would be easy to get sucked into providing heroic and inappropriate leadership just because people want solutions so badly. The good thing is that everyone wants to do the work and we will. I've never seen this kind of commitment anywhere in my life experience - awe inspiring to say the least.

Getting started in planning

I haven't had much of a chance to blog for the last week. Honestly, I've been working from 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. pretty much every day. The work has been exhilirating and the pace exhausting but I've loved every minute of it. The remarkable thing is that my move here was so fast and the work cranked up almost immediately. I created some of that through advanced planning but it has been stunning how quickly things came up.

On the first day of my first full week with QF, we had a staff retreat (picture of our retreat site to the right - Diplomatic Club of Doha) for the Faculty and Student Services team.
Four young professionals took on the responsibility of organizing and preparing for the retreat. They did a terrific job of focusing on getting us more deeply acquainted (we had never retreated before) and looking at the opportunities and challenges of our work. We had a team challenge facilitator from the Reach Out to Asia staff which is another Qatar Foundation program. He was probably the best facilitator I've ever experienced. I'm totally psyched because he will probably be the lead team challenge facilitator for LeaderShape Qatar in January 2008.

The new Faculty and Student Services team is pictured to the left. We're only seventeen strong now but we're adding staff every day. We can hardly add people fast enough, especially when most of our hires involve immigration approval. As you can see, the staff team is very diverse which lends a natural and wonderful flavor to our work.

Continuing to adjust and opportunities it brings

I finished Day #2 and I'm off for Day #3 of Education City today (Thursday), which is the last day of this week. On Day #2 I had the chance to participate in the signing ceremony to bring Northwestern University to Qatar in Fall of '08. The people involved from Northwestern are great, especially the person who will be responsible for coordinating the student affairs work within the branch. She was very eager to collaborate with the QF staff and was eager to get started, and, she's a friend of a colleague I've known for a long time who works with her.

I continue to adjust but I struggled a bit with sleep in my first days. The first two nights, I awoke at 4 a.m. tossing and turning and unable to return to sleep. I was so tired last night that I crashed and stayed asleep until 5:30 a.m. - hoorah! The sleep deprevation was an irritation during the first days and it made me more tired than I'd like to be. However, I found a bit of thankfulness even in lost sleep. Lost sleep represents a disruption, although small, of my regular lifestyle. I started thinking during Day #2 about my transitions in life and what they each brought me.

As I think about it, I've had three major transition points in my life where I was substantially alone - the first was moving to Maryland immediately after graduate school. The second was Luxembourg in the fall of 2005. The third is Qatar. Obviously, each of these presented major challenges for me in adjustment. However, they also opened up pretty amazing things for my future. So, I plan to get my head around welcoming the change rather than freaking out - or at least I'll try.

Learning to embrace the change is a fascinating issue and came to a positive turn the morning if Day #2 at 4 a.m. I awoke, tossed and turned, heard morning prayers broadcast on loud speakers at 4:30 a.m. (actually, a very awe-inspiring sound), and then got up. I ate breakfast, listened to my ipod, and then finished reading Jaworski's "Synchronicity." The end of the book is astounding and brought me to tears as I was sitting in my upstairs gallery. I'll spare you some of the details but Joe Jaworski's life experience has many parallels to mine - a bit strange how much! Leon Jaworski (yes, the Watergate prosecutor) was Joe's Dad and before Watergate days prosecuted Nazi war criminals after WWII. The prosecution of Nazi atrocities deeply wounded Leon and he wrote a book dedicated to his son that revealed his commitment to "transform institutions as well as the individual human heart to ensure that this kind of pain doesn't continue to occur in the world again and again." The story closes with a beautiful poem that follows:
"Tell me the weight of a snowflake," a coal-mouse asked a wild dove.
"Nothing more than nothing," was the answer.
"In that case, I must tell you a marvelous story," the coal-mouse said.
"I sat on the branch of a fir, close to its trunk, when it began to snow -- not heavily, not a raging blizzrd -- no, just like in a dream, without a wound and without any violence. Since I did not have anything better to do, I counted the snowflake settling on the twigs and needles of my branch. Their number was exactly 3,741,952. When the 3,741,953rd dropped onto the branch, nothing more than nothing, as you say -- the branch broke off."
Having said that, the coal-mouse flew away.
The dove, since Noah's time an authority on the matter, thought about the story for awhile, and finally said to herself, "Perhaps there is only one person's voice lacking for peace to come to the world.

The point is that we never know whose life we are touching and it might be that one last person's voice that will turn the tide to peace. It may seem outrageously grandiose to say that I'm contributing in this way but I have to live as if this is what I'm doing. I'm an incurable romantic and I have to see my work as transformative and I think the people of Qatar can transform the world if we can learn to respect each other and work together.

1st day in Qatar

I made it through my first day at Education City. My day began at 4 a.m. when I couldn't sleep any longer due to jet lag and excitement. I got up, listened to music, surveyed my new surroundings, went for a walk, cleaned up, and waited for a ride to work; I don't have a car yet because all my immigration documents have to clear first and my appointment to do that is tomorrow (Wednesday). I took some pictures of my ville and will post these later. It really is a nice place, although I will need to do some personalizing of the space.

The big surprise was that 1/2 hour after getting to the office, I was informed that I needed to go to the Foundation Headquarters building to meet with the Executive Committee of the Board. Dr. Abulla Al-Thani, to whom I report, was reporting on the reorganization of his area and he wanted me to attend to meet the Board. This was my first opportunity to see the Board, and especially the Board chair, Her Highness Sheikha Mozah. The Board was very interested in the work of the Faculty and Student Services area, especially issues of student housing and building a campus culture that is attractive to students and deepens their learning. It is very clear that there is deep understanding about the need to establish a collegiate experience for Education City students.

After my day was concluded at the office, I went over to the LAS building which is where Carnegie Mellon and Georgetown now make their homes. The building was full of activity with the Georgetown students attending a lecture of an Islamic studies expert and the Carnegie students watch "An Inconvenient Truth." It is very evident that students are interested in being involved, in exploring contemporary issues, and in deepening their learning.

The combination of the vision of Her Highness and the responsiveness of Education City students bodes well for the work ahead. It's a matter of getting the work done, the buildings up, and working jointly with the branch campuses to design initiatives that fit for their students. Sounds easy but there's a lot of work to do.

I'm tired tonight and will likely go for a walk, eat, and then let my body collapse. Once I get back in the groove with the timezone, I'll have more opportunity to think. In the meantime, I just need to pace myself, keep up my exercise, and enjoy the music on my ipod.

Last minute thought and off to Qatar

I'm in a rush this morning trying to prepare to board my flight to Qatar this afternoon. I'll be in Doha at 7 p.m. Monday night and at my new desk on Tuesday morning, ready for a new venture that will shape my life and career in ways that I never expected. Being in a rush, I'll post a couple of thoughts and then may return to them; I think it's important to reflect at least for a moment before I depart the U.S.A.

First of all, I am so thankful for the many Miami friends who have helped me so much in my transition. The last three months have flown by but things have fallen together rather nicely. Thanks to all my colleagues who are stepping up as I depart and thank you to students for always being willing to engage your learning and leadership to the fullest.

I am also thankful for the inspiration of colleagues throughout the U.S.A. and now beyond. I returned from the International Leadership Association conference in Vancouver on Saturday after having talked with colleagues like Susan Komives, Ron Heifetz, Sharon Daloz Parks, and many others. It was overwhelming to feel the good will and the affirmation for my new work in Qatar. I wouldn't have a prayer of doing what I need to do without great colleagues distributed around the world. And the friends of friends thing is unbelievable - there are so many connections I've already made in Qatar and the Arabian Gulf as a result of referrals.

As I think of what is ahead, I think of the importance of investing all of myself in every way possible. A colleague at Miami, Michael Kumler, works in cultivation and fund-raising for the Student Affairs division at Miami. He talks about investing time, talent, and treasure in things that make a difference. Different ones of us have more or less of time, talent, or treasure but the point is that we give as much of each as we can. This is a lesson that I've begun to explicitly incorporate into the way I work and engage with others. I think I've done this implicitly but knowing of the idea in more concrete ways draws more attention to it. Because of my career choice, I've had more time and talent to invest. I've realized that one of the things that gratifies me most and has the greatest impact is investing time and attention in developing others' talent. And a realization of this is that I love investing in others because I recognize the unrealized gifts that so many have. When I engage, I know that I'm working with students and colleagues who are likely to have greater gifts and more potential than I do. This makes my investment particularly critical because there is so much need to be addressed in our world. I have been blessed to have many in whom the investment of attention has paid off in such amazing ways. I know this will be the case in Qatar and I appreciate having had the experiences at Miami that have helped me sharpen my commitment to talent development.

For anyone who reads my blog, you're probably one of those who I perceive to have great gifts and potential, if not realized at this point, it is unfolding. I thank you for engaging with me and taking yourself seriously enough to know how important your contributions are to the world around you.