Clear Your Head; Business Leaders and Tricky Geopolitics: deftness in diplomacy and politics (iPhones, Teslas, Semiconductors)

How do you clear your head?

At the end of a week, or when you finished a big project? During any stressful period?

Stay with me here, even if you are allergic to the word “mindfulness”.

I, for one, am a walker. I have always been. When I was twelve my family moved to the other side of town and I convinced them to let me keep attending the same school. While there was a safe, regular, public bus (it was the 80s, it was fine) I preferred walking all the way home after school. Walking remains to this day, many decades later, my favourite way to discover new cities, to feel the pulse of the city where I live, or just to clear my head.

There is something to be said for repetitive, vigorous physical activities that don’t require too much thinking, such as running, swimming or fast walking, when it comes to helping release the tensions and stresses of our lives. But sometimes these are not enough.

One day as a completely stressed-out young executive who just couldn’t stop thinking about the myriad problems I needed to solve I joined a taichi school. My head was full and I figured the graceful slow movements that one sees elderly Chinese people in parks do will surely make me all calm and serene. Well… not really, no. For sure it was very enjoyable but the game changer was when only a month in the teacher invited me to a 5-hour Sunday workshop. It was the opposite of slow and calm: full-on martial training, fast drills and punches. While I was so exhausted after the ‘workshop’ that as soon as I sat down on the couch I fell asleep, the most amazing thing was that the intensity, ferocity, and variety of movements kept my mind completely focused on what was in front of me: not getting hit in the face and, just as importantly, not hitting anyone in the face.

Finally, I managed to switch off! The lesson thus was as complex as it was obvious: in order to learn to leave behind the incredible stresses of the job I needed an activity that was both mindful and literally hard-hitting, anchoring me in the moment and not allowing my mind to wander.

After a year the impact was such that I could switch off even when I wasn’t training. The combination of extremely precise fast and slow movements also trained my mind to let go and stay in the present.

Fast walking in familiar (and safe) urban terrain while listening to podcasts, or hiking in nature and having an engaging conversation with someone do something similar. Repetitive movements while engaging the mind are a beautiful elixir for modern stresses.

So, if you’ve been told to start meditating for stress but have been putting it off for fear of sitting still, I hear you. Try something that involves mindful, repetitive, not-too-hard but not-too-easy movements first. Or touch the grass, as they say, go for a long hike. Forget the rules, mindfulness is whatever works for you and makes you happy.

A friend sent me one sentence about the IMF’s most recent World Economic Outlook: stable but underwhelming global growth. I am a glass-full kinda gal, so I’ll take that over “volatile”. (And I confess I haven’t yet read the report.)

But whatever the economic outlook looks like, a big difference between now and twenty years ago is that geopolitics creates a significantly more complicated picture these days even if you are but a business person. We (as in businesses everywhere) spent decades creating world-spanning, integrated supply chains and played off lower costs in one place with higher purchasing power in another, supported by policies aimed at keeping borders open and business flowing.

We are now living in a reality where, aside from the obvious disruptions because of wars and a pandemic, regulatory approaches are diverging and power is rebalancing itself – while our businesses and interests in different geographies remain entangled.

Exhibit A: Apple’s inability to disentangle its manufacturing