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I
have been
at home in Greece for nearly thirty years. When we first went there in
1975, Greece was changing from an isolated Balkan dictatorship into
today’s vibrant and democratic member of the new Europe. As Middle
East representative for an American
bank, I was posted to Athens as a substitute for war-torn Beirut.
It soon became central to our family's life. When we were transferred in
1980, we left behind a house on the island of Evia, which we have gone
back to every year.
I
can't be described as having a career, more a succession of occupations
that seemed interesting at the time. After an MBA from, INSEAD I sold
stencil duplicators in Eastern Europe before moving to Pittsburgh to
join a bank. I spent fifteen years in New York, London and Athens, doing
business at one time or another in most countries of Europe, Middle East
and Africa.
In
1985 my fortieth birthday present to myself was to quit what V.S.Naipaul
calls the humiliation of employment. The main reason was to try writing
full time. For ten years after graduating from Oxford University I
reviewed the modern French novel and then science fiction for the Times
Literary Supplement, the TLS. I tried my hand at literary fiction but,
like the acquaintance of Doctor Johnson, who tried to be a philosopher,
cheerfulness was always breaking through. I published three comic novels
– Sail or Return, The Monogamist
and Thanks, Eddie!
After
leaving the bank, I was still curious to know what effect the management
techniques I had learned actually had on the people who worked for me. I
went back to work as a typist and clerk and messenger in the kind of
offices I managed, to see what management was like from the bottom up.
The result was Management
Mole (subsequently republished as Brits
At Work) and a brief
career of consultant and writer on people management.
Another
lasting interest, from working in many countries and with colleagues of
many nationalities, was the differences in how people work together and
how they can be reconciled in global markets. In 1992 I published Mind
Your Manners, a guide to
the business cultures of the new Europe. This launched another career as
consultant and writer on cross-cultural management. Mind
Your Manners has recently
gone through a third revised edition and has been published in a score
of languages from Japanese to Latvian.
Meanwhile
I tried my hand at various entrepreneurial capers. In 1992, I set up a
joint venture with the Russian Union of Private Farms and Cooperatives
and a South London fast-food restaurant to set up a franchised chain of
British-style jacket-potato take-aways in Moscow. This was abandoned
shortly before the opening of the pilot outlet when the Russian Mafia
expressed a keen desire to participate. I had more success with INBIO
Ltd, an environmental protection and remediation company I set up in
partnership with an institute of biochemistry of the Russian Academy of
Science. It imports into the west advanced biotechnology from Russia
through partnerships with Western companies. In 1995 I set up and
implemented a project to control the spread of water hyacinth on Lake
Victoria, Tanzania.
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