Insight comes from the remotest places. Yesterday, I left my relatives at a Cotswold inn tucked away between lush green hills and lots of cows. It was cold, raining, dark. My urbanite relatives joked nervously that I was abandoning them for the night in the middle of hostile territory (http://bit.ly/mOEr3M). Before leaving for London, I clandestinely asked the restaurant to prepare some menus without prices. I was paying and didn’t want my guests to focus on economising. An hour later the hotel calls. The guests walked out. I call my mother; “they do this in Syria” she tells me, viz., give menus without prices… No amount of explanation from the restauranteur could convey it was a gesture of hospitality, not a حيلة. They escaped a pleasant dining experience to eat horribly prepared fish and chips in the damp.
Once a bunker mentality sets in, truly “new information” becomes nearly impossible. The desire to test one’s hypothesis disappears, and reinforcing the original paranoia becomes the easiest interpretation. This unexceptional inn is where we will die –tonight– and the proof is that they tried to fool us by menus without prices…
None of this pop-psychology is new to anyone, but it’s everywhere. It’s pervasive because the mental fortitude required to pursue knowledge, particularly in circumstances of perceived danger and powerlessness, is huge. And clearly, we in the Middle East have experienced this “powerlessness-paranoia-bunker-nothing new” cycle in myriad contexts and for too long. Indeed, modern Arab culture may only awaken from this if the Egyptian revolution manages to succeed. – I believe that is what is at stake.
We at Tootcorp are in the midst of one of these revolutions, perhaps because we are just so morally affected by what happened on Tahrir Square. One of our founders, Kareem, in February wrote a passionate internal email about the relevance and irrelevance of our work to our society. Along with other Arab social media, Tootcorp sites under-performed the global giants, precisely in the moment we should have been relevant. The email was radical, incisive, and received by complete rejection by most of the founding team. Bunker mentality? But now we are overcoming this inertia by an enormous amount of personal energies, renewed dedication, and confluence of fortuitous events. And while we are not adopting any of the specific ideas Kareem advanced at the time, I think the emphasis on brutal honesty and radical re-examination is becoming an internal mantra. This is paired with another mantra I have been advancing internally: be hyper empirical. Respect the “object” of your study. Let it tell you. Listen to it. All the time.
We are radically rethinking how we do things, what we offer, what we need, what we want to be, etc. We are willing to take more risks as well. In our vocabulary we mention a lot more words like passion, user, mission, focus, iteration, data, feedback, early adopters, honesty, etc. It is an exceptionally exciting time for me as we try to be very decisive about our various businesses, and equally importantly, about what we want our collective and individual careers to be about. Much more to follow in later posts…
(One closing point on the Arab Spring. That social media played so central a role is itself a reason to be hopeful: socially disseminated knowledge triumphed over fear. The regime couldn’t control it effectively, and people came out of their bunkers… For a while they will be open to new knowledge. Carpe diem.)
