"A couple of years ago I suffered a severe attack of nostalgia while listening to the voice of Father Paolo Dall'Oglio on Italian radio, a frontline Catholic priest and peace activist in Syria. Being an expatriate Italian myself, and a lapsed Catholic with a deep connection to the Middle East, I loved the story of Deir Mar Musa, the mixed community he founded in 1984 on the ruins of a 6th century monastery.
Nostalgia aside, what caught my attention - as a specialist in burnout prevention among organizations and individuals that work with conflict - was the priest’s insistence that people with different views can live and work together successfully, instead of getting stuck in a quagmire of dysfunctional relationships and institutions.
So as I think about the challenges I’m facing in my work, it’s telling that the best example that sticks in my mind is not an organization, but a community. Maybe the 21st century is the time to think about all organizations as communities, and to see where this radical change in direction might take us."
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