Some leaders just “have it” – the ability to resonate with how people are feeling and the skill to “work” that emotion in a trustworthy way towards a potential solution and indeed, the possibility of success in the future. Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Barak Obama are perhaps some of the “celebrity”…
What would you do if your 10 year old daughter or son came home from school one day and announced: “I’m not going to school anymore!”? You would be dumbfounded, of course, but then you may do what countless parents do worldwide – try to convince the child to think differently and perhaps decide that…
Life is full of “curved balls” – some of them surprising and pleasantly beneficial, but others testing and even painful, to say the least. Just when we think all is turning in our favour (“things are getting better now”), some or other hardship comes along to seemingly confound our good attempts at making real progress….
The Year 2000 Problem (or Y2K) was a crisis for both digital (computer-related) and non-digital documentation and data storage situations which resulted from the practice of abbreviating a four-digit year to two digits. This practice became problematic with logical errors possibly arising upon roll-over from x99 to x00, causing date-related processes to operate incorrectly for…
“The most important, and indeed the truly unique, contribution of management in the 20th Century was the fifty-fold increase in the productivity of the manual worker in manufacturing. The most important contribution management needs to make in the 21st Century is similarly to increase the productivity of knowledge work and the knowledge worker” (Peter Drucker,…
The current world economic context is dismal, to say the least – financial analysts and the World Bank continue to predict slow growth, volatile markets and the possibility of a longer or deeper recession than was first suggested. Governments are attempting to send the “right messages” internationally to continue attracting investment, and fiscal efficiencies, disciplined…
I used to work for a banking corporation in South Africa. As part of my role of leadership and management development for the bank, I travelled all over Southern Africa, visiting branches to train and coach current and future leaders. While visiting a branch in an outlying town, I happened to walk in on a…
1. Absent leadership can’t address important issues. I was fascinated reading a tweet recently regarding the lack of visible and relevant leadership by the president of the country and I quote from David Kibuuka: “It is sad that I have to get inspired by other peoples’ presidents, ‘cause our guy is busy at Builders’ Warehouse”…
I love watching soccer and religiously follow my favourite club’s exploits – FC Barcelona is “my team”. Their style, skill, finesse on the ball and the brand that they represent seem to lift the game of football to new heights. I am generally proud of them. Imagine, however, this scene– Lionel Messi scores a magnificent…
