Changing the World - click by click!

Just a quick one while it comes into my head…if you were ever wondering about how difficult it is to lead and solve adaptive challenges I think you only need to look at the US at the moment. Six people dead, including a nine year old girl and a Federal judge, and a Congresswoman just off the critical list and still there doesn’t look like being any serious debate around the gun laws they have in their country. In fact, gun sales jumped in the few days following the tragedy.

To me it just goes to show how truly awful the present has to be for some people before leaving it becomes a less scary proposition than the uncertainty of change. And that is a real challenge for leadership.

Hiya all

I’ve  added another page over at the website. This one is about the Sloan 4 Capabilities Leadership Framework. Head over and have a read…..http://www.clarksonread.com/articles.html

First up an apology if this entry is a bit rambling and all over the place. I have about a million ideas rushing around my head and don’t really want to censor them too much by worrying about little things like grammar and structure….I wonder how long before some of my students use that one on me!

I  was all set to publish an entry about Australia’s current Resources Super Profit Tax and then my mum stepped in and changed it all. To clarify, she didn’t edit the blog entry, she just gave me something else to write about instead. My mum is an amazing person, with one of the most unique minds I have ever encountered. I hold her accountable for the way my mind works…and works…and works…and never seems to bloody stop, even when I want it to! No, seriously, she is very much responsible for my outlook on life and the way I think about things. But she also bugs the hell out of me sometimes (sorry Rose! :-(……:-) ). (more…)

I do so love my weak puns!

I saw a guy from LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) on TV the other day and was fascinated not only by what he had to say but by why. What LEAP are all about is the legalisation of drugs…but not, as he pointed out, because they are ‘bleeding heart liberals’. In fact he was at great pains to make it clear that he was right of Genghis Khan! But it seems that there is a growing concern among law enforcement that the current strategy on drugs is not only not working but is actually counterproductive, both in terms of its effectiveness in dealing with the issue and it’s impact on the effectiveness and perceptions of law enforcement.

The drug problem is, in my mind, without a doubt an adaptive challenge…. (more…)

Spider goat, spider goat, does whatever a spider….hmmm my kingdom for an appropriate rhyme for goat!

Moving right along…first we had Spiderman, then we had Spider-pig (thank you, Homer Simpson!) and now we have Spidergoat. Seriously….scientists have succeeded in breeding goats with the web-spinning gene from spider. These goats produce milk that has the protein from spiders web in it. They can then take the milk, add salt and synthesise the protein out to make a ‘web-like’ substance called bio-steel. Check it out here….

What is spooky about this is that here is an excerpt from Natural Capitalism (Pge 15), where the authors talk about our need to look to other systems to find ways to boost resource productivity, one of which is nature…

“Science writer Janine Beynus points out that spiders make silk, strong as Kevlar but much tougher, from digested crickets and flies, without needing boiling sulfuric acid and high temperature extruders.”

To quote Hannibal from The A Team….I love it when a plan comes together! I have to say, I get a real boost when I see that there are signs we are moving in the right direction.

A little side-note here…me and my ex-business partner, Steve Clarkson, once wrote a ‘company’ song for our consulting company using the theme tune from Spiderman…I’ll sing it for you one day.

Don’t you hate being a loser! Have you ever argued with someone until you were blue in the face even though you knew that they were right and you were wrong?? Which would you choose…a 90% chance of never losing or a 20% chance of always winning?

One of the ideas that has really stuck with me from the teaching I have done is the idea of loss. When I first started teaching it hit me as one of those real ‘ah ha’ moments. It might say something about me but it had never really occurred to me that conflict revolves around loss. I mean, there are some obvious ones (more…)

I was chatting to a friend last night and she was asking how the stuff on this blog might apply to her….well actually she was saying that she didn’t think I had made it clear what the blog was all about! More than fair comment me thinks. Why would non-business people want to read a blog about adaptive challenges, leadership and such-like? I had lots of stuff running thought my head like ‘we can all be leaders’ and ‘it’s not about being the head of an organisation or the captain of a team’. And then, while reading a leadership text book (oh what an exciting life I lead! ), the words I wanted were there in front of me…..so like any self-respecting IT graduate I adhered to the programming mantra of re-using other peoples work and repeated it here!

“Do you have the capacity and commitment required for taking a leadership role in your school, community or workplace? What does it mean to be a leader? For many people, leadership  stems from a desire to make a difference in the lives of others and the world. It means believing in yourself and those you work with, loving what you do, and infusing others with energy and enthusiasm to accomplish a vision for a better future. There are leaders making a difference every day, (more…)

Part of the impetus for setting up this blog and the web-site is a book I’m currently reading called Natural Capitalism. It is an easy and interesting read and fits very nicely with the central theme of this blog….that the thinking that has served us well in the past isn’t going to work in future. The world has gotten too complex and changes too rapidly for the old ways to work. And, specific to this books ideas, resources are no longer as cheap  and as abundant as they once were.

The book introduces new ways to think about how we account for natural resources in our industrial processes (more…)

I was going to change the title because it is just the title of the default post you get when you set up a blog. But it seems pretty apt and no point changing it for the sake of changing it. So….hello world! Always nice to get the hello’s out of the way I feel.:-)

This blog is my way of making a contribution to the ‘discussion’…if you know what I mean. As those of you who know me can attest, I am very good at having an opinion on something…just about anything in fact :-)…but not so good at doing anything about it. Well this is me ‘doing something about it’. A couple of years ago I was introduced to some very interesting and thought provoking concepts through the leadership unit that I was asked to teach at a Business School here is Western Australia.

The central theme of the concepts (more…)