The Weekly Distillation No.49
Learning from Afghanistan; No Code; Patents; Workrooms; Hearts; Dark Art Distillery
Photo by Andre Klimke on Unsplash
Welcome to The Weekly Distillation. This is a newsletter that seeks to distill the noise and help you be informed, provoked to think, and inspired to create as you lead in life and in your organisation.
People Once Said……..
“Every global leader that I have seen has at least agreed on one point: I do have the world's most difficult job. But I hope to make it easier for my successor.” - Ashraf Ghani, who fled the Presidential Palace in Kabul this week, leaving it to the Taliban
“In Afghanistan, you don't understand yourself solely as an individual. You understand yourself as a son, a brother, a cousin to somebody, an uncle to somebody. You are part of something bigger than yourself.” - Khaled Hosseini
"I'd just come to terms with the fact that Darren's death had freed people and that has taken me 14 years to get to that point. And now I just feel it was for nothing.” - Mother of Corporal Darren Bonner who died in Helmand in 2007
“Resting is not a waste of time. It’s an investment in well-being” - Adam Grant
“We dream in narrative, daydream in narrative, remember, anticipate, hope, despair, believe, doubt, plan, revise, criticise, construct, gossip, learn, hate and love by narrative.” - Barbara Hardy
Skim It In A Minute
"We malted it for them and drove it along the road in the tractor. It basically replicates the original journey in 1494 when the first whisky was made by the monks." This interview with Alison Milne of Crafty Maltsters almost made me want to be a farmer…but not quite. A great story of business expansion, craft expertise and a niche market.
Person of the week for me, staying on the drinks theme, was Andrew Clark-Hutchison, founder of Dark Art Distillery. A new distillery, in the beautiful town of Kirkcudbright, that had just launched its Sky Garden gin - I pre-ordered a bottle. Imagine the surprise when my doorbell rang on Tuesday night and there was Andrew, delivering the bottle himself despite the 85 mile trip to my house. They always say that being good to your customers once will mean they tell ten people - I’m setting out to tell 1000. Go check out the distillery and buy some gin! You can get it here.
South Africa became the first country in the world to award to a patent for an invention created by…………an AI programme. America said no to the same application because 1) you have to have his or her pronouns to invent 2) only the human mind is capable of mental conception and 3) the patent makes the creator have rights - that AI can not possess. Fascinating legal development given the pace at which these systems can potentially create. Is this the beginning of the end of the human inventor?
No code or low code is the future of programming. To that end, AI systems that scour the web, capture billions of language parameters, and then create code for you are pretty critical in the process. This week saw OpenAI (who created GPT-3 that I have discussed in this newsletter before) launch Codex and also AI21 Labs launched AI Studio, a developer platform for its Jurassic-1 language model (178 billion parameters - the largest ever released for developers). You can join a NoCode Gathering on the 23rd of November.
Facebook launched workrooms, a virtual office app for up to 50 people per office.
Some people already hate it. I’m reserving judgement - but I don’t know too many people that want to bring their work too close to Facebook.
Hearts announced that on Aug 30th it will become the largest fan-owned football club in the UK. Good work Jambos.
A Deep Dive Into Afghanistan
Photo by The Chuqur Studio on Unsplash
It’s hard to write about anything else at the moment. I was born in March 1975 - one of the iconic images of that year was the helicopter above the US embassy in Saigon. I claim that my birth and the end of that was might be related but no-one nibbles at this theory for some reason.
Tragic. Predictable. Hopeless. Overblown? Opportunity. Crisis. Shambles. Compassion.
Two differing perceptions - a loss for the West and a win for Pakistan?
The first casualty in war is truth. Have a read of how the Pakistan newspapers are reporting this last week and you’ll perceive a very different angle. Was it, as the Council for Foreign Relations put it, a choice of withdrawal or not?
Pakistani President Imran Khan has said he will not allow the US to have bases in Afghanistan for counter-terrorism missions.
Russia has said it believes Tajikistan and Uzbekhistan will also refuse the US. Iran clearly is not an option. China isn’t possible. So the US leaving actually means leaving - and potentially 9 hour flights for drones to get on target (which doesn’t seem very realistic or clandestine). Drone strikes have been responsible for multiple innocent civilian deaths - and yet have also removed key belligerents from the battlefield. The moral quandary of that could be a discussion for years.
A feeling of betrayal
Aside from the tragedy for women, girls, afghan interpreters, ANA soldiers, aid workers, NGOs in-field, there is a sub-plot to this story that is still evolving in the UK. Every soldier quoted seems to feel betrayed, and families of those who died feel abandoned as their sacrifice is, in their perception, pointless. What impact will this have on the rise of the National Front and Combat18? Or mental health and family breakdown? Or belief in institutions and acts of service?
A lack of a plan
It is always easy to criticise with hindsight, in the same way that the best investing strategy is always hindsight investing. But it’s hard to fathom how the US did not realise that announcing a departure date of 9/11 was going to lead to exactly what we have seen. How going into Iraq in 2003 without a plan could lead to 18 years later leaving without a plan is hard to credit.
America has changed
Tom Tugenhadt, British MP and ex soldier, said it well this week when he noted that being reliant on one nation, one Commander in Chief, for your strategic defence is a very dangerous strategy and the UK would be well advised to build stronger relationships with our European neighbours as well as other international friends such as Japan and Australia. The US is driven now solely by domestic politics and cares little for the outside world (the “international” sphere). This puts the UK in a dangerous position post Brexit. Well worth the 8 mins to watch this. “This doesn’t need to be defeat, but Mr Speaker, at this moment it damn well feels like it”.
What can we learn?
Post Bin Laden’s death, there has been a lack of strategic vision for Western presence in Afghanistan. No-one knew what to do, the mission continuosly changed - defeat the Taliban, find Bin Ladin, fight ISIS, tackle drugs trafficking, build schools for girls, build infrastructure, train the ANA, stop our people dying, make peace with the Taliban, get out over time, get out now, run…………with lack of vision, when tactics run into a wall, it is impossible to strategically reimagine the best way forwards. Competing visions (Pak / Tal vs US / NATO) were a major issue
Partners often will act in their own self-interest under pressure. When the US decided to withdraw troops, every other Western nation had to follow suit as they lacked force projection capabilities. Gaming these scenarios out could have pre-empted some of the crisis management of the last week. What happens if a key partner or supplier abandons your org? Would you survive?
Compassion is always a value worth holding high. The idea of abandoning girls and women to the Taliban has led us to fly C130s out of Kabul filled with young men. But the core here is that the public want our leaders to be compassionate, to be empathetic, to take action that saves people. What would it look like for you to embed empathy as a core value?
Sometimes you have to partner up with people you don’t want to - and that involves compromise. The new sphere of actors in Afghanistan will be Pakistan, India, Russia, China and Iran. The West will need to rely on those nations, as well as the government of the Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan, to control which terrorist groups are allowed to train and exist. It’s hard to see how any of them bar India would play ball. Are you willing to compromise in partnerships if they advance your mission?
Tough decisions don’t get easier with time. Every decision the US made under Trump and Biden could have been made years ago. The writing has been on the wall - eventually the West would leave, the ANA was incapable of controlling enough territory, the Afghan Government was corrupt, Pakistan was continuing to support and advance the claims of the Taliban, the Taliban were not interested in serious peace talks - so the Taliban could just wait out the US and then walk in and take control. If we were going to leave Afghanistan to the Taliban, why didn’t we just do it in 2012 post Bin Ladin’s death in Pakistan? Where are you procrastinating, or deluding yourself about an outcome, and you just need to make a tough decision?
There was no great decision to make in Afghanistan. Once we had decided to leave (a political reality for almost a decade) we pretty much guaranteed the country would return to Afghanistan’s governance situation in 2000. Once again, Afghanistan’s leaders and its partners have failed its people. This is the real tragedy. The best thing now is to help every Afghan who wants a better life a route to leave, whatever that takes. I’d love to get involved with helping next gen Afghan entrepreneurs.
In leadership, sometimes you are faced with the obvious reality that the way you are heading will not lead to a success - either personally, for your team or for your organisation. Simple tips - 1) remind yourself of the vision 2) make the tough decisions 3) develop a new strategy 4) lead with compassion 5) lead with preparation, conviction and collaboration.
I spent a good amount of time today compiling a list of every new Scotch whisky distillery project planned or underway. It turns out there is no sufficiently accurate list anywhere in the public domain - every one I found had errors in it. I’m inclined to put it in a Google Doc and share it as a public resource. Sometimes it’s best to just give things away.