Van Chitgo - The Art of Life

now some of you might remember that I had chaired a conference in germany last year in a small and quaint little town called bacharach. armed with 15 top quality facilitators i had a phenomenal experience overseeing a 180 member conference focussing on leadership development and cultural training for members of @ in germany from the 'roman' region. the facilitator team (as is quite often with chairs of a conference) became good friends of mine, one of whom (markus the name) got in touch with me recently mentioning that he was looking for an opportunity to come and work in india. proud i am to mention that decisive action, speed and dedication is a trait instilled in most members in india. needless to say im confident of having markus in the country very soon. our economy, our ability to capitalize and yet innovate furiously will be a trump card forever.
anyway, coming to the point, i took this opportunity to ask markus his opinion on the supposed 'bonding' of germany as a country during the WC. is it really giving the country a kick in its behind towards a positive outlook ? here's what he had to say:

It is amazing what happened in the last four weeks. I never experienced such a collective feeling in whole Germany before. Probably it was like the feeling after reunion 1989 (I was too small to really get what was going on), and that because of a sportsgame!

I believe the reason is people have s tough time in Germany at the moment. Unemployment is high, globalisation is too fast for especially old and not well educated persons, we have to change our social security system totally, we have to change our health system, we got lot's of higher taxes shortly ago, ....

Everybody needed something just to forget about all this. Of course football won't solve any of these problems but I believe it can help to change the atmosphere in Germany and the attitude of the people which was very negative and a little resigned in the last years.

Germans always tend to be a little pessimistc and over-critical. So one year ago NOBODY believed in the national team at all (2 years ago they played a horrible European Cup). Now people see what can happen if you work hard, believe in yourself and think positiv (to say it on a very basic level)

Of course in one month back in normal life we will see what stayed but I think it can be an impluse for the future...

I have never ever seen so many German flags on cars, houses, people .... normally nobody would ever have done this ... in the last month it was the second time in my life I sang the national anthem loudly in public (first was at military service).... so as well I think it was a good step against the Neo-Nazi scene, as they often abused this symbols for their stupid ideas, which is not possible at the moment!

i have to add the importance of raw leadership in germany's semi-success (i believe they were good enough to win) - klinsmann paved the way and im sure this young team is going to explode onto greater laurels in the future.
what i also heard from some of my swiss homies like carissa was that a lot of the patriotism had seeped into the alpine as well....thoughts guys?

Posted by chitgo on Tuesday, July 11, 2006 at 7/11/2006 11:22:00 AM | Permalink