My wife and I were sitting at he cricket the other day when we heard a resounding "Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!" ring out across the crowd. It was then that I knew the most recent Coke advertising campaign had permeated social culture as the cold drink vendor advertised his product (Coke) to the crowd and the crowd responded with appreciative Brrrrrrr's in return.
When introducing the Cynefin Sense-Making Framework we'll often ask people to do a simple exercise of putting some random items into the framework according to which domain they think it falls within i.e. Simple, Complicated, Complex or Chaotic. In a recent workshop a delegate argued how the movie series Star Wars fell within the Simple domain. His argument? It is a class hero's journey plot. There. Done and dusted. Simple. Case closed. I wondered at this as I was gnawed by a [...]
Sonja handed me a book the other day with these words, "This is the best fantasy novel ever written!" Being a avid reader and an ever-increasing fan of the genre I obliged and took the book. Raymond E. Feist's Magician is the afore-mentioned novel. Barely a few chapters into the book I am struck by a thread in the Hero's Journey narrative plot that is still fresh in my mind after reading Philip Pullman's Northern Lights recently. In both stories the central character [...]
I've heard it said often: "This year has just flown by!" This statement is also sometimes followed by: "It feels like time itself is speeding up!" As I've grown older I've been plagued by similar feelings and perceptions. In a twisted way, it has confirmed the correlation between the increase in ones age and the perception that time moves as a quicker pace. I recently discovered that there is a field of psychology that focuses on the perception of time. [...]
While reading recent newspaper reports regarding the crises these two companies find themselves in, one subject keeps coming up - shortage of skills. Nationwide's airplanes are losing their engines, and Eskom has to implement load shedding due to (among other reasons) inadequate maintenance on their aircraft and power stations, which in turn is due to a lack of skilled technicians. Shortage of skills is a common problem across the globe. What compounds the issue in many South African companies is a short-sighted implementation of Affirmative Action, which led to [...]
Over the last few years, we've seen many people jump onto the 'intelligence' bandwagon, with varying levels of success (and substance). Of these Emotional Intelligence (or EQ), which has become part of business jargon globally, is probably the most well-known. Others such as spiritual intelligence and social intelligence haven't really caught on (personally I feel the jury is still out on the business value offered by these concepts). While reading Stephen Denning's new book, 'The secret language of leadership', I came across the interesting concept of narrative [...]
