Paul's Provocations
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Leadership in a VUCA World – Harish Manwani
Excerpts from Manwani’s talk. ….The dynamic and fast-changing nature of our world today is best described by VUCA, a term coined by the US Army War College. VUCA stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity…. Digitisation The first of these megatrends is digitisation. It is worthwhile to step back and look at the recent history […]
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So you want to exercise, but don’t feel like doing it?
So you want to exercise, but don’t feel like doing it? I’m pleased to post an article by Stephen Guise, author of Mini-Habits: Smaller Habits, Bigger Results. The book is a top-ten bestseller on Amazon and, having read it, he has some of the most interesting AND novel things about getting yourself to do stuff […]
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Too Busy To Meditate? This May Get You Started
In this beautiful five-minute clip, Martin Boroson suggests not only that one-minute meditation is a way to bootstrap into longer, but even better! He suggests that having a one-minute practice means we do it much more often, and eventually become able to practice becoming present in an instant.
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Spirituality and Business: Good thing? Fad? Worrisome
For over a decade I’ve tacked this question, through academic research, and through starting several companies with spiritual principles in mind. There is no straightforward answer, but rather this question leads us to a number of important, related questions. 1) Does it matter what kind of spirituality? 2) What does it mean ‘in business’: individual […]
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How do you create an ethical business culture? Storytelling at Shell, BP, and Microsoft
Creating an ethical culture in your business You cannot create a good enough ethical mousetrap – humans are vastly creative (even at fraud). The mishaps at LIBOR, VW, 2008 financial crisis, Deepwater Horizon, Wells Fargo all happened at businesses which had multiple layers of controls. So what can you do? Create an ethical culture – […]
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What makes a business “good” (in the ethical sense)? Fearless conversations about values
Is ethical business, good business? When you talk about a person being good, you mean more than they follow the law. Yet some people think following the law is all that is required of business – notably Milton Friedman who won a Nobel Prize. It is clearly a nonsense idea – Friedman was a good […]
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Post-truth: A list of excellent resources and links
Post-truth resources This is a brief list of (in my view) excellent post-truth resources. They were an early part of the research I’m doing for the Truth Wars book. I hope you find them useful. The Economist (a conservative international news magazine) ran a quite brilliant pre-election post-truth overview. Steve Inskeep, from NPR, wrote A […]
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Truth Wars: A post-truth survival guide for consumers and citizens
(This is the first of a series of blog posts on post-truth (from 23rd February 2017). The posts are drafts from the upcoming book Truth Wars. The drafts are rough, but as there are new developments daily, I’ve opted for speed over perfection. Comments very welcome, ad hominem attacks, or attacks on particular groups are […]
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Accountability: The difference between management and leadership
Accountability and the inner work of leadership Leadership gurus are often asked about the difference between management and leadership, and how to make the transition. My two answers: accountability, and inner work. The perfect manager, but not yet a leader Charlotte is an experienced and highly trained senior manager. She knows good management starts with […]
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Glass cliffs and ceilings: Statistics, gender balance, market failure, and loss of top talent
Sometimes, though I hate driving, my mind turns to randomly interesting areas. Today, it was gender balance – and I was reflecting on how much of the development work that I’ve done with senior teams puts me in a room full of men. When my classes are full of 50 something senior leaders, it will […]
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