The MBA Oath - Coincidence

Before I begin, let's get one thing straight. I don't subscribe to notions of determanistic futures, the concepts of fate or all the supernatural mumbo jumbo. I do, however believe that everything in the universe is connected, but that's only because our traditional naive understanding of Gravity tells us so. I also believe that there is much more to the physical world than imagine and much much more than we can visualize. But sometimes weird stuff happens, and it seems that this weird stuff happens much more often that it should... Statistically speaking of course. For instance when you are thinking about someone, then they call you on the phone. Or in more extreme circumstances; you are about to call someone, you pick up the phone and they are already there because they just dialed your number but your phone didn't even get a chance to ring yet. Well something like that happened today but in a much weirder way:

A few days ago I was chatting with a colleague of mine. Lets call him "Harley". So Harley tells me he is creating something called "The Great Canadian MBA Oath". The purpose of the oath is to increase integrity and accountability of MBAs (who will eventually be in command of the corporations that control our lives and the lives of our beloved children, friends and family and what you will). So, as it went, I tell him that he should talk to the Aspen Institute because they are into that sort of thing. I had talked to one of their depute directors a few weeks ago (lets call her Nancy) and sent an email introduction between her and Harley asking if anyone at Aspen would be interested in MBA oaths or oath related business. So Nancy replies to Harley referring him to a director at Aspen, who will be "henceforth" known as Rich.

Nothing happens for a day or so. I am wandering around on Twitter and find this guy who is suggesting some good CSR people to know about on Twitter. I decide to follow them reading each of their last tweets. Who would have guessed it? One of them just Tweeted about an MBA Oath just launched at Harvard Business School (HBS) by the 2009 graduating class! What a coincidence I though, so I read further. I then learn that the students had talked about this idea with a professor of theirs named David Garvin. David then referred the students to professors Rakesh Khurana and Nitin Nohria. It turned out that Rakesh Khurana and Nitin Nohria had already been working on an oath for MBAs with the World Economic Forum and ... guess who? That's right! The Aspen Institute! Wow another coincidence! Just then, my eye catches my gmail tab in Mozilla indicating that I just received a new email. I click over and read it and who is it from? None other then "Rich" from the Aspen Institute. Guess what Rich was sending? Nothing less than a copy of the Harvard Busines Review entitled "It's Time to Make Management a True Profession" by none other than Rakesh Khurana and Nitin Nohria. Now I'm not allowed to copy or post this document but let me tell you 2 things: It was about oaths and MBAs. That's enough coincidence for me for a while. But I am now quite curious about this MBA oath business as it is so closely related to CSR and corporate sustainability. Cheers for now.