After a successful change management project for which I was consultant, I was invited by the client to join them for an evening celebratory dinner at an upmarket venue overlooking the sea. Upon arrival, I was surprised to find one table reserved for nine people – as it turned out, the eight executives and the…
success
One of the key roles of leadership is to assist your employees with their growth and development. Jim Rohn noted: “A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better”. This involves the mind-set, skills and knowledge…
Agriculture is the cultivation of plants, fungi and growth of animals and other life forms for food, fibre, bio-fuel, medicinal and other products used to sustain and enhance human life. Until the Industrial Revolution, the vast majority of the human population laboured in agriculture. Initially, agriculture was subsistence farming for self-consumption, but in the last…
I took my grandchildren to the park yesterday – a shaded playground, well-appointed with an appropriate slide, jungle-gym, see-saw, swings and the favourite merry-go-round or “round-about”. All of the activities represent one or another challenge for little ones – the swing (how high can I go?), the jungle-gym (how daring can I be?), the slide…
There is a story that is read to many children all over the world – some of you may have had a deprived childhood not having this classic read to you when you were young (tongue in cheek), but here it is – a railroad story, the story of a train carrying toys. Now, the…
One of the most frustrating problems we face in Africa is the lack of tangible investment or re-investment in infrastructure, particularly felt in the sub-standard network of roads and tracks that link its countries. In some countries, it is not uncommon to come across potholes the size of which could quite comfortably accommodate a fully-grown…
Fish have always fascinated me – not only are the edible ones tasty, but it is also such a relaxing and particularly interesting experience to go down to the local aquarium in Cape Town to view what one does not normally have the opportunity of seeing in their “natural” environment, unless you are a regular…
There are numerous stories of those who had to overcome difficulty, were resilient and triumphed, even in the face of criticism or extreme hardship – Ignace Paderewski, the great Polish pianist, was told by his first piano teacher that his hands were too small to master the keyboard; Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper…