Celebrating the 12 days of Christmas
with short reflections on 12 gifts
From Harper’s Index to Small Dead Animals, juxtaposition offers new ways of looking at things, and enables us to comment while retaining the ability to deny having done so. What could be better? An insightful yet passive-aggressive gift!
As we make our plans for the coming year, may we use the gift of juxtaposition less to beak off with impunity and more to make new connections, as well as old connections, more vividly. In this context, here’s one of my favourite juxtapositions for strategic planning:
On the one hand:
No operation extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the main body of the enemy. (Huh? Maybe more familiar as its edited version [what the Field Marshal meant to say….]: No plan survives contact with the enemy.) Helmuth von Moltke
And on the other hand:
We have met the enemy and he is us. Pogo
