“ The word Kintsugi comes from the Japanese Kin (gold) and Tsugi (join), and therefore literally means: join with gold. The art of Kintsugi is called Kintsukuroi, meaning “mending with gold”.

This ancient technique, discovered in the fifteenth century in Japan, invites us to repair a broken object by enhancing its scars with real gold powder, instead of trying to hide them. This is a long and extremely accurate repairing process, with many steps, taking several weeks or even months. It is even said that it sometimes takes a whole year to achieve the best Kintsugi…

The Kintsugi technique, step by step : The shards of the broken object are first assembled one by one, then cleaned, and glued with a traditional natural lacquer derived from the tree lacquer tree . The object is set to dry and then sanded. Then its cracks are underlined by successive lacquer layers and, finally, sprinkled with gold, or any other metal powder, which, mingling intimately with the moist lacquer, gives the illusion of flowing metal. Then the gold scars are burnished.

The object can then reveal all its brilliance”.

Dear Friends,

Let us live a new way of life, join with gold… even more precious, sensitive, sense of solidarity and sharing… with the traces of our lived experiences…

Life is ;
• Understanding, which gives liberty…
• Getting out of comfort zone, which gives challenges…
• Adapting, which gives empathy…

and then,
• Concentrate to the next steps, which gives innovation…
• Acting intelligently, which gives peace…

Meltem Etcheberry – 05/2020

One of my favourite quotes is by the writer, Eric Hoffer, and it frames a key point: “In times of change learners inherit the earth; while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.”

Yes, it takes some thinking about to understand what he is saying. As authors of this new and very insightful book, we seek to unlock the “Secrets of Working Across Five Continents”. We wrote the book, with insights from over 145 people from across the globe. This helped us frame the thoughts and ideas we wanted to get across for the reader to learn.

We completed the book in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Make no mistake, the fundamentals of the book, and in particular the section I wrote about, “Visionary and Authentic Leadership”, are even more important and valuable today than they were before the pandemic outbreak.

Why? Very simple! Probably at no other time in our recent history, or certainly in the lives of those living today, has there been a greater need for leadership. You only have to look at the pandemic itself and the responses and strategies from so many different Presidents or Prime Ministers, and you can see for yourself that not everyone is singing from the same sheet of music.

Today, we desperately need Visionary and Authentic leaders for our communities, our businesses and our countries. Our hope is that our book will shed light on the path for strong but empathetic leadership at a time when we really need it.