Client: Major international oil company Problem: How to get more out of our people without relaxing the tight controls our industry needs Enterprisecoach contribution: Mish and Ronnie took 60 senior and middle managers through three month programme to develop their ability to hear all the voices in the system, have the hard conversations in a constructive and engaging way, and add a systemic team coaching [...]
I’m inspired by Toronto’s social entrepreneurs. As Keita Demming would say, we could drop the “social” epithet and recognize that they are really just good entrepreneurs, who understand that innovation and business success must serve people and planet. Over the last month I’ve met so many inspiring people at the Centre for Social Innovation, including: Food upcyclers who transform “waste” from food production into inputs to other [...]
Having recently arrived in Canada, I am inspired by the first people of this land who created a wampum (covenant) called The Dish with One Spoon. And grateful to meet so many people here in what was first called “T'karonto” who are moved to honour this treaty made between the Anishinaabe, Mississaugas, and Haudenosaunee, where nations entered into an agreement to protect the land and responsibly [...]
Just over ten years ago, I sold my shares in the hi-tech business I had co-founded, and stepped out of the founder-CEO role. Recently I asked the buyer (who took over as CEO) to look back on the time of negotiating my departure and his takeover. Since then he and his team have taken the business to new heights, leaving me filled with joy [...]
Business cases for smart collaboration abound, yet genuine creative collaboration in business is remarkably rare. As Distinguished Fellow at Harvard Law School Heidi Gardner PhD points out in her forthcoming book Smart Collaboration, people need to collaborate across a variety of specializations as well as personal and cultural differences for them and their businesses to really garner the dividends of smart collaboration. What’s needed is both the logical [...]
Long distance runners worldwide know Bruce Fordyce. He's famous for winning the 89 kilometre (55 mile) Comrades Ultramarathon 8 times in a row, and nine times in total. He is quite simply a legendary athlete on the global stage. Yet he is creating a bigger legacy as a systems-inspired leader in South Africa, via the parkrun movement. Free parkruns are getting South Africans out into [...]
Last week it was brought home to me just how important constellations are as the language of humans in relationship. A group of relatively new South African systems coaching practitioners was meeting on Skype, coming from a variety of dimensions of our world – working in the cities and the townships, in companies and the public sector. What struck me was the way our [...]
We grew up in an era dominated by individualism and competition. These human traits have driven the accumulation of wealth, power and technological advancement and taken the world to a place where we stare into an abyss of global inequality and conflict. Many decisions are still being made on the assumption that it is human nature to be narrowly selfish. Yet a bigger picture, going [...]
My Dad was an optimist about business. When I was young and hotheaded, I remember explaining to him how wrong he was. And I still think business is not all sweetness and light. And yet, maybe thanks to Dad, I prick up my ears every time I hear a story about business that is generative and life-affirming. Here’s one: a business leader who identifies generosity [...]
I heard an investment ad this week saying "you only get 480 paycheques in the average lifetime - followed by 300 paydays with no paycheque." As if life is divided between a monolithic earning phase followed by an equally uninterrupted spending phase. What a crazy idea! This model is OVER and it is time to align our thinking and life planning for 21st century [...]
