21st Century Leadership

Deep Linking Leadership Development to Organisational Behaviour

Posted on by Elaine in 21st Century Leadership, Business education, Deep Sustainability, Leadership in the 21st Century | Leave a comment

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 …


How Gaming helped me become a better strategist

Posted on by Elaine in 21st Century Leadership, Agility, Art and Business, Curiosity, Gaming, Leadership in the 21st Century, Lessons Learnt, Strategy | Leave a comment

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

Posted on by Elaine 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 | Leave a comment

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

Posted on by Elaine in 21st Century Leadership, Agility, Attention Economics, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

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 …


When Work no longer works

Posted on by Elaine in 21st Century Leadership, Commentary, Curiosity, Leadership in the 21st Century, Learner Readiness, Learning, Managing staff, Paradox, Productivity | 5 Comments

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 …


The Art of Noticing

Posted on by Elaine in 21st Century Leadership, Art and Business, Curiosity, Interesting Events and Courses, Leadership in the 21st Century, Learning, Web 2.0 and Leadership Development | Leave a comment

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 …


Talking Heads – Speed Dating for the Brain

Posted on by Elaine in 21st Century Leadership, Curiosity, Learning, Pitching Ideas | Leave a comment

I have had the good fortune of attending Talking Heads for the last two years that it has been running in Cape Town and it is truly one of the highlights of my year. If you are around try and get to go. I always leave feeling TOTALLY inspired. I have pasted the details below. They only have one hundred places annually so if you want a ticket, best to get ‘op it’ now.   Talking Heads: “This information could change …


How to Create a Curious State

Posted on by Elaine in 21st Century Leadership, Agility, Curiosity | 3 Comments

Agility is being viewed as a critical skill for 21st Century Leaders. One of the components that helps create an agile mind and attitude is curiosity. But how exactly does one go about creating a curious state? Here are three useful mantras which might enable your journey of discovery – one, be fascinated by your own ignorance; two, answers don’t change the world, questions do; and three, go slow to go fast. Be fascinated by your own ignorance Nobel Prize …


Speed Kills – Running to Stand Still

Posted on by Elaine in 21st Century Leadership, Curiosity | Leave a comment

It has been mooted that the ability to learn is far more important than any one nugget of knowledge (Near Future Laboratory, 2009). Increasingly, the assumption that the ability to learn faster than anyone else will be the key competitive advantage for those wanting to succeed in the 21st century is becoming commonplace. This kind of thinking is being reflected in practise where many are working longer hours, taking shorter breaks and multi tasking more than they have ever before. …


The Curious Paradox of Curiosity as a Learning Enabler

Posted on by Elaine in 21st Century Leadership, Attention Economics, Curiosity, Learning, Paradox | Leave a comment

This is the abstract for a paper I am currently writing for a conference on The Future of Learning – What excites me about the notion of curiosity as an area for study is that it is an arena which is so often spoken of as something which re-enervates but is also an area which has so many conflicting opinions about what really consitiutes its becoming. I suppose that if one is going to undertake an investigation of a field of study …