For the past 30 years I invited many friends to consider communal living, either locally or abroad. The conversation would flourish primarily for two reasons: • none of us wanted to live in a “drugged and drooling old folks home”…
I am pondering the possibility that globally we are an addictive society. If we were to suspend our defensiveness and open our minds to this possible truth, then is it also true that each of us has been or still…
In 2014, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives reported the top 100 richest CEOs in Canada earned a combined total of $896 M for this one year of work. On the other hand, the average full-time employee in Canada made…
They just aren’t getting it. By they, I mean the large conglomerates publishing the daily news around the world. Over 20 years ago, I quit watching the news
and reading the daily papers because the only stories reported were negative — terrorism, violent crimes, wars, natural disasters, death tolls. Shortly thereafter, enough of the global population must have made their dissatisfaction known as a common occurrence emerged on every news station — the reporting anchor ended her/his reading of depressing stories with one positive event.
Well, a ratio of 10 negative to 1 positive does not a true picture make.
The mass migration of over four million Syrian refugees into the European Union poses a second opportunity for that collective of countries (as well as the entire world) to extend compassion and share resources with those in need. Greece’s near…
In my blog last week, EU Collaboration: No Matter What, I posed this question, “Where does global society need to collaborate and what new economic innovations do we need to co-create in order for all countries, not just Greece, to…
The world watches and waits with bated breath to see how the European Union (EU) will respond to Greece’s “No” referendum vote. Clearly, as North Americans we are so far removed from European politics and economics that it is difficult…
Ecosystems are not a new phenomenon. The term has existed in relation to the natural environment since 1934 when coined by British ecologist Arthur Tansley and defined as the flow of energy and material through ecological systems. Today, the term’s…
If running a small, medium, large or global enterprise truly requires emotional intelligence as well as industry knowledge and technical expertise, then why do so many corporate leaders score low on emotional intelligence? In a recent study of 1500 senior…
Societies with greater equality between men and women are healthier, safer and more prosperous. The Elders Just the other day, I overheard a young woman say to her friend, “gender discrimination doesn’t apply to me.” At that moment, I realized…
In the late 70s, I learned a painful, but effective, lesson in leadership. At that time, I was playing softball in the Pan Am Games for the Canadian National Team. Leadership of the day was typically male and aggressive, which…
For the past 30 years, I collaborated with small, medium and large organizations in redesigning their structures, systems and processes to fit their strategies and enable employees to serve their customers. In the 70s, we referred to this subsequent flattening of the organizational hierarchy as democratizing the workplace, which suited the social-spiritual ethos of the day. In the 80s and 90s, similar efforts were renamed as building high performing teams and workplaces. Almost two decades into the millennium, and organization designers now refer to these streamlined, democratic workplaces as adaptive enterprises. Regardless of what lessons we learned and labels we invented over the past 50 years, the purpose of an organization has never changed — to provide the necessary resources and training to front line staff so they confidently, considerately and joyfully serve clients.
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