Today I had quite a peculiar experience. I was sitting in the foyer coffee shop of the hospital, waiting for Fransie and working on my laptop. In came a smartly-dressed guy and sat with his back towards me. After a while he turned to me and asked whether I managed to connect to the wi-fi hotspot in the hospital. He was about to connect with his Vodafone 3G card when he realised that he could pick up a free wireless network. Then I recognised him – well-known and widely acclaimed Industrial Psychologist Dr Gustav Gous.
The funny thing, though, is that I had a coffee meeting with him while I was in my first or second year at varsity. My mother showed me a newspaper article that he wrote and told me that she thinks this guy does what I hope to be doing one day. So I phoned him and he agreed to have coffee and we talked about what he did for a living and what I need to do to do the same one day. That was almost ten years ago.
Now we sat next to each other in a hospital coffee shop where his daughter and my wife happen to have appointments at the same time. We had a great conversation about our profession, our businesses and our clients. Compared notes, shared ideas, discussed trends. They have a great new product to map culture in an organisation. The only tool of it’s kind at the moment. He does a lot of work in Dubai and Qatar. He knows about TomorrowToday.biz and that we are a strong player in the field. He knows Graeme’s dad Redge and he knows Michael and I suppose Michael’s dad Arnold as well. He was in Sonop Residence at Tuks many moons ago.
I think this is someone we could do some interesting work with. Either by being pulled in to help with his clients, or by pulling him in to help with ours. Check out his website
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Jean, I believe that this is an important part of the connection economy which someone might have mentioned or posted somewhere, so apologies if I’m repeating anything.
I do not believe in coincidences. At all. My thought is that you ‘accidentally’ bump into someone because they are meant to be a part of your life at that specific moment. They might have something to share with you. Or maybe your role is to share something with them. Encouragement, a connection to someone or something they’ve been looking for, a catalyst for something else…
My point is that one should always be very aware of who crosses your path everyday. If you take the view that it’s not a coincidence, then you’re able to look at all ‘meetings’ with new eyes. And then open yourself up to a myriad of other opportunities you might otherwise have missed.
And yes, it’s probably an esoteric, tree-hugging view, but I believe there are so many things ‘out there’ which cannot be explained by science and yet are real and able to impact our lives. If we only know how to look.
Ever read Joseqph Jaworski’s Syncronicity? Interesting read. Stilll not convinced, but interesting.
Adding this to my reading list! Thanks for the info – had a look at the book on amazon and it looks really interesting.
So we are captives of Prejudice behind Paradigm bars? hmm. I don’t know that a walk on this island would help but I guess I’d have to experience the seminar to see what it’s like.
I see also that the seminar is targeting senior executives. Why is that?
If I were him, I would make and market a tape.