Pen Thoughts

  I want to start by correcting something I almost got wrong myself. Cruise control is not, by itself, a sign of a failing organization. Some of the best-run institutions I have ever encountered work exactly like cruise control: a founder, or a generation of leaders, built a system so well designed that it began running itself, delivering results without needing a hand on the wheel every hour of every day. That is not failure. That is craftsmanship. The danger is not the system. The danger is time. Since the 1990s, the environment around every organization has been changing at a pace that keeps compressing: every few years, then every few semesters, now every few months, sometimes every few weeks. A system built for the road of 1995, however well engineered, was not built for the road of today. It can keep running, and keep delivering, for a long time after it has stopped fitting the world it operates in. That is the trap. The most dangerous organizations are not the ones that ...

Lebanese people have to voice the truth that have been studiously avoided since before the beginning of the civil war in 1975. It is clear that through voicing the truth, we will run the risk of causing deep discomfort and we will definitely injure false patriotic sentiments, which have only served to mask the historic dysfunction of our nation.   But it is a necessary reflection, a vital and essential one in a country that have wasted the entire twentieth century without achieving an identity, a viable economy and a developed regime. The process of development in Lebanon is still elusive in the present global chaos, regional uprising and national parallelisms. This illusion of development has to be replaced by a realistic pact for national survival