And so, in the afternoon, down to business. I am here at Harvard to attend a leadership course at the Kennedy School of Government entitled, rather portentously, ‘Chaos, Conflict and Courage: Leadership in the Twenty-First Century.’ As an icebreaker we had to introduce ourselves and then recount a significant episode from our school days. There were plenty of moving examples. I’ll give just three. There was an American, now heading up a police department, who grew up in Chicago’s badlands but, despite all the temptations and violence, refused to get involved in the gangs and the drugs trade. There was a high-ranking civil servant, a permanent secretary, from a Caribbean island who was once embarrassed as a boy because he didn’t know how to eat with a knife and fork. The episode drove him to escape his poor social origins. And there was an Indian senior manager who, as a fourteen year-old, missed the train that would take him from the south to the north of the country in one day and so set off on a three-day epic journey involving bullock carts and overcrowded buses. The experience led to his whole philosophy of life, which is that the journey is more important than the destination. We are a rich mix and I am much looking forward to the week ahead.
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