In the past decade much of the truly transformational leadership work happening in organisations has been driven from a place of self mastery. This approach is however being challenged by Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize-winning psychologist and the author of the new book “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” who shows by categorising our cognitive flaws, that knowing oneself is not enough, not nearly enough to be the effectual leaders we need to be. Separate research released in September 2011 by the Minneapolis based consultancy Modern … →
Blog Archives
Deep Linking Leadership Development to Organisational Behaviour
October 30, 2011
in 21st Century Leadership, Business education, Deep Sustainability, Leadership in the 21st Century
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Creative Entrepreneurship – Going Beyond the Business Plan
September 12, 2011
in Art and Business, Business education, creativity, Deep Sustainability, Strategy
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This is a post written for my Business Acumen for Artists students at UCT GSB. Background Much of the criticism levelled against the use of a business plan for artists has been that many wanting to start a business have neither a need of venture capital nor a bank loan. Traditionally, business plans have been viewed as useful for these kinds of endeavours. I have changed the nature of this session to be focused on Creative Entrepreneurship because I do … →
Planting Flowers
I spent today planting flowers Petunias, pansies, spirea, statice Not Waitsian halloween orange or chimenee red But green as wise Rosemary Pink as my desire to remain curious and as Purple as the disobedient. I spent today planting flowers on a tiny balcony because I needed to feel grounded and connected. I have spent years growing others and more lately staring at digitised screens to construct meaning. And I realise now that nothing could be more sensuous and beautiful than … →
How Gaming helped me become a better strategist
September 4, 2011
in 21st Century Leadership, Agility, Art and Business, Curiosity, Gaming, Leadership in the 21st Century, Lessons Learnt, Strategy
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In the last five years, I can safely say that the majority of what I have unlearnt and relearnt, as far as strategy is concerned, comes from Gaming. I have learnt many things about strategy from the world of work and higher learning but Unlearning and Relearning have come from a different place. When I understood that the rate of change was happening faster than my ability to respond to it strategically, I started looking for another place – somewhere … →
Truths, Trends and Trifles in Business Education – A Hacker’s Guide
June 6, 2011
in 21st Century Leadership, Agility, Attention Economics, Business education, Curiosity, Deep Sustainability, Leadership in the 21st Century, Learner Readiness, Lessons Learnt, Productivity, Web 2.0 and Leadership Development
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One of the most important issues we are currently facing as business educators, and certainly in the field of executive education is the ability to separate out the truths from the trends and the trends from the trifles. I am indebted to my partner, Dave Duarte for this elegant distinction between these three lenses. It is well worth reading his blog post on this as it relates to the problematics of Social Media strategies. Truths The truth of what it … →
Productive Presencing – Six Hacks To Get Learner Ready
February 21, 2011
in 21st Century Leadership, Agility, Attention Economics, Uncategorized
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This is pretty much a rough guide of a plenary/workshop I am running at Melbourne Business School next week as part of the Future of Learning conference. My first experience of learners was a group of maximum security prisoners in three South African prisons – Pretoria Central, Johannesburg Maximum Security prison and Diepkloof Women’s prison. The year was 1995. I was running what would become creative therapeutic workshops to build rehabilitation in prisoners. One thing I knew was that in … →
Still Stranded in Frankfurt – Lessons Learnt
I was supposed to fly home on Saturday night. Instead, I have been grounded like 6.5 million other travellers. Rather than be furious, I thought this would be a really opportune time to reflect on the lessons I have learnt (and, sob) continue to learn from this experience. Gelassenheit Letting things be. There is something quite extraordinary about giving up. Everything is an offer. Watch what happens when you stop fighting and trying to control things. Observe what you notice and … →
The Art of Noticing
March 22, 2010
in 21st Century Leadership, Art and Business, Curiosity, Interesting Events and Courses, Leadership in the 21st Century, Learning, Web 2.0 and Leadership Development
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Noticing is a skill which is seen as central to creative literacy. Could it also be that it is a practice which is critical to business success? I think that it is. The problem though with the rate of change happening faster than our ability to respond to it is that many of us just seem to want knuckle down and get on with it, using the well worn filters and models which worked in the past and pray they serve … →
When You Leave South Africa
When you leave South Africa I will sit in the fruit-laden streets in the brightly painted cafés in the maze-like bookshops and play once more with the stories we created I will throw your laughter high into the pine trees as I drive the same roads without you I will send you postcards of Sunday morning Africa with its Gospel voices and street-corner gossip through richly patterned curtains But I know that all these are scenes you may well find … →
When Work no longer works
I remember when Work was the place you went to, to get things done. Increasingly I find that when I really have to get things done – which in my industry is coming up with new ideas and designs for executive leadership development work (apart from managing a whole lot of people and bringing in revenue), work is probably the last place I would think of to do this well. Why is this? Well, frankly work is the place where … →