I will say it’s very in a way looks very physical. You know, it’s like a dance. At the end, you are moving your hands in front of an orchestra, your arms, but it’s like a choreography, and that is, that is a dance part of, of conducting. … But at the end, yes, is something that starts from that, but then it gets very deep in a very, I will say philosophical, metaphysical, psychological thing, conducting—more than. Spiritual. It’s more than moving your hands in front of an orchestra and the people watching you jump or move or do these kind of things, it’s something very spiritual, that is right.

That is true. That one little corner of South Africa, Port Elizabeth and its immediate surroundings, is a region that I know like the back of the hand that holds my pen as I write about it. I can stand on a street corner in Port Elizabeth, look at anybody and put together some sort of biography. I know where they come from, where they’re going. I have a feel of the textures of their life. If I stand on a street corner in New Haven, which is a place I’ve gotten to know as well as any place outside of South Africa, I am still at a total loss to identify the people passing me on that street.

I’ve done almost 4,000 operations for brain tumors. I’m thinking of what’s going to happen ten or 12 steps before. I’m anticipating what’s going to happen in the operation, and I’m comfortable with where we are.

Well, it wasn’t a game to me. We were taught, interestingly enough, given the current state of political affairs, that you should try not to hate anyone, that hatred was a sickness and a weakness, and that there were very few people who were completely evil, so you should go out of your way to figure out what makes them tick and see if you can find some way to communicate with them. I learned that more with my family — even before I was old enough to know what I was doing —when I was eating meals, my grandmother’s brother and his family had — they had four kids, and they always fed a lot of people, and we ate there a lot, and they would talk about whatever had happened that week. And the kids could talk, but they had to prove they could listen first, so before I could tell a story I had to recount what I had just heard, because if you weren’t listening, nobody wanted to listen to you. And it was like a primer in human nature, and I was fortunate in having people all along the way who tried to help explain other people to me, and I developed an obsessive interest in doing it.

One cannot overemphasize the importance of observation and a full assessment — the failure to do so leads to some of the greatest mistakes, not only in war but also in business and government. A full assessment is critical. To properly manage any business situation, you need to perform a full and complete assessment of it. In business, you have to understand your competitors, their distribution, their economics, their innovations, and their strengths and weaknesses. You also need to understand customers and their changing preferences, along with your own costs, your people and their skills.