About my old lloyd shoes

Yesterday I threw away my old brown lloyd shoes. I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it so I just took them with me in an orange plastic bag and hanged them on the door of a second hand store. When I came back an hour later, they were gone. Hopefully in the hand of someone who disagreed with that the shoes had walked their last mile…

My brown lloyd shoes had on my feet walked their last mile and every time I throw away a pair of shoes I take the opportunity to think about where those shoes have taken me…For example I have celebrated in them and I have cried in them - I have experienced the world and life in them. I dare to say that my brown lloyd shoes have always been with me as I have experienced the world and some of the most transformative years of my life so far.

I had my brown shoes on me the 9th of September 2009 as I was entering the doors of my new learning environment in Cadbury. Last week the board of Cadbury recommended the shareowners of Cadbury to accepted a bid from Kraft Foods to acquire the company so my employer of choice will change ownership and there are strong reasons to believe that many others things will change as well! I would lie if I would say that I am not welcoming change as I really believe that the only thing that is really, “always constant in my life is change”, and most times change for me means expanding my worldview and learning new things! Having said that, I curious to see how Kraft can maintain what’s great with Cadbury as they are trying to improve the Cadbury-Kraft business. I do have hypotheses on some of the challenges, but also on some of the opportunities that await everyone involved in this process, but I do feel a need to allow the nearest future to enfold before speculating too much on what’s a reasonable and good ways forward.

The week ahead is about reviewing the past and gain inspiration for the nearest future. I am looking forward to explore spiral dynamics and to host the first “Late night with a leading thinker” here in London! Our first guest is Andrew from Catalyst! I shall look forward to this and a lot more!

As much as this blog post was about my brown shoes, it was about gratitude to life more than anything ells!

Until next exchange
Emanuel