Chris Dalton's Personal Development Blog

We all know how important first impressions are – so much is communicated, even if it is never surfaced. It’s funny how, after a period of absence, re-acquaintance with a place or a person can re-form that first impression and allow you to contrast it (albeit from memory) to your second or, in this case, third impression.

So here I am once more in Johannesburg, bleary eyed after a day spent awake after a night spent awake on a plane. But through the bleariness I can see that in the last 12 months plenty has changed in many ways since March 2008.  The airport is well on its way to 2010 readiness (big clue: the World Cup) and the route of the planned fast-link railway to the commercial centre of Sandton is under full construction. There is actually construction everywhere, and somehow the roads seem less , though still just as congested. But even these choked highways are being widened, and there is  a sense of greater order than my last visit.  I’ll see whether this feeling is substantiated or countered over the coming week or so.

Tomorrow we launch the third MBA intake with the new curriculum here in South Africa, and we are expecting somewhere between 70 and 80 managers to turn up. It’s going to be quite a challenge to deliver a memorable day one!