Gerrit Cloete, former colleague and now owner of Productivity Pitstop, told me about one of his weekend adventures – he often walks among the beautiful mountains of Cape Town, both for exercise and relaxation and also for the opportunity presented for reflection. On this particular occasion, Gerrit decided to park near Signal Hill and climb…
“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,…
A senior manager in a large corporation in downtown Manhattan was hosting a lunchtime business meeting in the boardroom of the company. At about 10:00 on the day of the meeting, he took the elevator to the penthouse floor, the same of which housed both the boardroom and the CEO’s office. He had gone up…
A beautiful evergreen tree graces the area outside my bedroom window – commonly called “Yesterday-Today-Tomorrow”, the endemic Brazilian brunfelsia pauciflora, with its mauve, lavender and white sweet-smelling flowers, provides a perfect picture for the onlooker and lovely aroma for one to drift off to sleep at night. Apparently, the tree gets its common name from…
The 20th century will probably be remembered for many things – two world wars, the hippy (peace) movement, democracy, the establishment of human rights, the space age, global financial crises, exploration and the subsequent growth in knowledge. Perhaps, however, it will most be remembered for amazing advances in science and technology. In fact, Time Magazine…
Professor Reginald Revans developed the concept of action learning. It originated with his experience training as a physicist at the University of Cambridge. In his interactions with this bright group of scientists, several of whom won Nobel prizes at a later stage, he observed the importance of each scientist describing his/her own ignorance, sharing experiences…
After a particularly busy period, having spent weeks on end in other countries in Africa, I was emotionally and physically exhausted. The stress of facilitating culture change processes in large corporations, having to deal with the “sometimes hidden” agendas of others and sorting through the quagmire of the politics that seem to characterise the upper…
I have travelled on but a few of the great and sometimes famous rivers of our world – the Zambezi (near the Victoria Falls) and the Orange Rivers in Africa, the Colorado and Mississippi in the USA and the Thames in the UK. I still need to get to the Amazon, Nile, Volga, Danube, Yangtze…
All of us make mistakes – we are “human” after all! Some of us make really stupid errors – a moment when no thought is given to a particular action, when no real thinking is applied to the possible consequences that could eventuate from a chosen path and the hurt that can be caused if…
I have always been fascinated by the squirrels that live and forage in our neighbourhood, playfully scurrying backwards and forwards to collect sufficient food for the winter, having petty squabbles over titbits and seemingly having more serious disagreements over mates. I was walking in the garden one evening enjoying their company and discovered about 25…
A lady friend of mine went to go and do her regular shopping in one of the many malls that dot our cities and on this particular day, she was mugged and her handbag was snatched by an opportunist thief. She was devastated and although physically unharmed, felt scared and emotionally distraught. She was also…
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, an eminent Russian novelist, historian and tireless critic of Communist Totalitarianism, Nobel Prize in Literature (1970), when delivering a Harvard Commencement Address in June 1978, referred to the calamity of a de-spiritualised and irreligious humanistic consciousness and noted: “To such consciousness, man is the touchstone in judging and evaluating everything on earth –…
