Ini's MUSE

I have been thinking about the concept of the work before the work. Every major thing I have built - the consulting practice, the Africa CEO Roundtable and Conference on Sustainability and Responsibility (The ARCSR), the breakfast meeting - Sustainable Conversations, the CSRFiles publications, and the books I am currently writing- none of them arrived fully formed when I needed them. They were possible because of years of preparation that did not look like preparation at the time. The research done quietly. The relationships tended without an immediate agenda. The craft of facilitation refined across hundreds of rooms and thousands of hours. The intellectual frameworks developed not for a specific client, but because the questions themselves mattered to me. There is a version of ambition that is always in a hurry, always chasing the next opportunity, the next visibility, and the next launch. And I understand it. I have lived it. But the leaders I most respect are the ones who have buil...