Time for a fresh start

Easter is the festival of new beginnings. Christians commemorate the resurrection of Jesus. Many other people celebrate the arrival of spring. Starting over is fascinating, exciting and at the same time sometimes dire necessity. You look at your home workplace and your agenda this weekend and think: this has to be different. Cleaning everything. Time for a fresh start.

You look around you in a world full of big problems and you ask yourself: how could this be done differently, better?

In 1991, a year after Nelson Mandela was released, a group of people gathered at the Mont Fleur conference center, near Cape Town, South Africa. They were 22 representatives of the main political, social and economic parties involved in the transition from the apartheid regime to free elections.

At the time, a joke was doing the rounds in South Africa. (I met him in the Harvard Business Review.) Given the enormous challenges of the country, there were two options: one practical and one miraculous. The practical option was for every South African to pray that a group of angels would descend from heaven to solve the problems in the country. The miraculous option was for the South Africans to talk to each other until they found a solution together.

The participants of the Mont Fleur conference went for the miracle. Under the leadership of leading academics Pieter le Roux and Thabane Vincent Maphai, they worked on formulating future scenarios for South Africa in three meetings of three days each.

Ultimately, the participants came up with four possible scenarios for the period 1992-2002. Three predicted major social and economic problems. Like a new government that would spend too much money too soon. Or a transition process that is too slow that would put a brake on all development.

It was not the intention to negotiate the scenarios or to choose the best option together. The aim was to reflect with a very diverse group of South Africans about their common interest: the future of their country.

After the meetings, the four possible stories about South Africa’s future were put together in a report that was distributed as an insert to a major national newspaper. Also became half hour video made about the scenarios. In addition, fifty presentations were given by those involved within large companies, trade unions and political parties, among others.

The facilitator of the Mont Fleur meetings was conflict mediator Adam Kahane, who the book Solving Tough Problems wrote about. According to him, the project did not immediately lead to concrete solutions. But to the development of important informal relationships between the participants, and new ways to think and talk about the problems in the country. This ultimately had a positive impact on policy after the first free elections, in 1994.

And after that? Did everyone in South Africa live happily ever after? Well.

Still, the story of Mont Fleur is worthwhile. Because it shows that new beginnings are possible. And that is quite hopeful. At least until the next new beginning.

Ben Tiggelaar writes weekly about personal leadership, work and management.