These posts focus on the challenges societal leaders face as we transition into the age of disruption.
You have had a stressful day, so rather than cook you order a delivery. Having wolfed the flavoursome takeaway, you barely have the energy to regret what just happened. The idea of disposing of the packaging and menu via your recycling containers feels like too much effort. So you lob them in the nearby bin. […]
Technology wasn’t always brushed chrome and beeps. The technology industry’s roots go back over two million years to when our ancestor first picked up a rock for the purposes of using it as an implement. That coincided with our realisation that augmenting technology could increase our chances of survival. Need a shelter, rock. Need a […]
I am fascinated by the popularity of the three-branch government model: Executive – Run the government. Legislative – Make the laws. Judicial – Apply the laws. We need leadership, but not necessarily in a centralised format. We need laws and we need them upheld and regularly reviewed. This model seems to major on control, rather […]
The spectrum of national government models runs from distrust/fear through to trust/respect. Transparency is a measure of trustworthiness. According to US News, the top 5 in descending order of transparency are:DenmarkCanadaGermanyNetherlandsNew Zealand.Using the GDP per capita figures from the International Monetary Fund, these countries all rank in the top 28. So transparency is not necessarily […]
Would I lie to you?Both your team members have just returned from a business trip. You can’t be sure, but one of them is falsely claiming she did all the work. Keep in mind that this is 8 million years ago and we hadn’t yet mastered speech. The business trip was to capture lunch and […]
Keep off the pavement Cities come and go. Pompeii, Thebes, Petra and Machu Picchu come to mind. Cities decline for many reasons including maladministration, natural disasters and an inability to adapt to increasingly volatile macro-environmental forces. Human settlements first appeared 50,000 years ago. We were all nomadic hunter gatherers up until 12,000 years ago. Movement […]
You’re not so special In many respects, humans are nothing special. We are playing the same game as all other lifeforms, ie. to stay alive long enough to create the next generation. Everything else is a detail. To play we need to acquire resources in an energy efficient manner. In other words, the cost of […]
Save your breath Humans are prediction engines. Each moment of every day our brains are scenario planning. What is likely to happen next? Often, we act before we have time to consciously rationalise our behaviour. This neural wiring kept us alive on the savanna. Humans, like every other lifeform, value energy and are thus wired […]
Nobody knows the future of work, or the future of anything for that matter, there are too many interacting macro-environmental forces at play. But let’s make a few assumptions and see where that takes us:People have a natural distaste for despair and terror.Some people are curious about discovering their true potential.Leadership is becoming decentralised.First, let’s […]
There are certain phrases being bandied about. ‘post-Covid’, ‘new normal’ and ‘next normal’ come to mind. I do not think they are useful terms, but I do understand that human nature craves a return to what it is familiar with, even if it must settle for a variant. A different normal? New normal was a […]
