Have you ever arrived somewhere you had never been before and felt, almost immediately, that you somehow knew it?
That happened to me with Cyprus.
It was my first time on the island, and yet there was something strangely familiar about it. Not because Cyprus was the same as somewhere else I had lived — it isn’t — but because so many small things felt recognisable.
The light. The intense blue of the sky. A smile that arrives easily. Conversations that become louder as they become more animated. The importance of gathering around a table and the almost universal Mediterranean conviction that food is rarely just about eating.
And yes, occasionally the temperament too. The passion that can turn a minor disagreement into considerable noise — only for life to carry on afterwards.
Different. And somehow familiar.
A sea that connects
We often talk about the Mediterranean as a border between continents, countries, religions and cultures.
But for thousands of years, it has also been exactly the opposite: a route between them.
People have crossed this sea carrying languages, beliefs, food, music, knowledge, goods and ideas. Cultures have met, collided, borrowed from one another and evolved.
I was reminded of that recently in a surprisingly personal way.
Like many people, curiosity got the better of me and I took one of those DNA ancestry tests that have become so popular. The results described someone largely Italian and Portuguese, with some Spanish ancestry — but also French, Greek, Albanian and Algerian.
I smiled when I read them.
There, in a few lines, was a journey around much of the Mediterranean and beyond. And it made me wonder how many of us are far less easily defined than the labels we use for ourselves — or for others — might suggest.
Most of us are the result of centuries of movement, encounters and mixing. Somewhere in our histories are people who crossed borders, changed languages, married outsiders, migrated, traded, escaped, settled somewhere new or simply fell in love with someone from somewhere else.
We may carry more of the people we think of as “different” within us than we realise.
That doesn’t make our differences less meaningful. Quite the opposite.
It makes me more curious about them.
Because recognising what we share shouldn’t mean assuming that everyone thinks, behaves or experiences the world as we do. Sometimes the most valuable thing we can do is listen long enough to understand why someone sees the same world differently.
The result of all those centuries of encounters is certainly not one Mediterranean culture.
Travel from one shore to another — sometimes even from one village to the next — and the differences can be remarkable. Those differences matter. They are part of what makes each place worth discovering.
But underneath them, I increasingly notice a certain shared way of being.
Warmth. Expressiveness. Hospitality. Family. Conversation. The table as a place where relationships are built.
And music.
Different instruments, different rhythms, different languages — yet across the shores of the same sea, there is music that somehow makes people want to get up and dance.
Perhaps we sometimes become so interested in identifying what makes us different that we forget to notice what already connects us.
Different shores. One sea.
I think something very similar happens inside organisations.
We become extraordinarily good at describing our differences.
Sales thinks Operations doesn’t understand the customer. Operations thinks Sales promises things nobody can deliver. Finance wants discipline. Innovation wants freedom. Technology has its priorities. Management has another perspective entirely.
And every function develops its own language, incentives, pressures and view of what matters most.
Those differences are not the problem.
In fact, we need them.
A business where everybody thinks in exactly the same way would probably be a very poor business. Different expertise, personalities and perspectives allow us to see problems from more than one angle and build better solutions.
The problem begins when we become so absorbed in defending our particular shore that we forget the sea we share.
And, just as with cultures, understanding that common ground begins with listening. Not listening simply to respond, persuade or defend our own position, but listening to understand what the other person can see from their particular shore that perhaps we cannot see from ours.
Purpose needs to become practical
Most organisations have a purpose somewhere.
It may be beautifully written on a website, printed in a corporate presentation or displayed on an office wall.
But shared purpose only becomes powerful when people can connect it to the decisions they make every day.
- What are we actually trying to build together?
- Why does it matter?
- What does my contribution make possible for somebody else?
- And when two perfectly legitimate priorities conflict, which choice takes us closer to where we have collectively decided we want to go?
Sometimes organisations don’t need another strategy.
They need to remember, clarify and talk about the one thing they are trying to achieve together.
Then they need to translate it into choices, behaviours and specific actions.
A shared vision does not make differences disappear. Nor should it.
It gives those differences direction.
Sales brings one kind of value. Finance another. Operations another. Technology another. Different people bring different experiences, instincts and ways of looking at the same problem.
The question changes from “Why don’t they see this the way I do?” to “What does the way they see it contribute to what we are trying to achieve together?”
That is a very different conversation.
What the Mediterranean reminds me
Perhaps this is one of the reasons Cyprus felt familiar so quickly.
It wasn’t because I had been there before.
It was because I recognised something.
A place can have its own language, history, traditions and identity and still contain gestures, rhythms and ways of connecting that feel surprisingly close to those found thousands of kilometres away.
Difference and belonging are not opposites.
Maybe organisations could remember that more often too.
We don’t create shared purpose by making everyone the same. We create it by understanding what our differences can contribute to something larger than ourselves.
The Mediterranean has been doing something like that for thousands of years.
Many cultures. Many languages. Many histories. Plenty of disagreements — and, admittedly, quite a lot of noise.
But one sea between them.
And, somewhere along its shores, there is almost always a table being shared, a conversation getting louder and a piece of music capable of making everyone dance.