Over the past two decades, Free To Grow, a consulting company based in South Africa, has created rich, stimulating and meaningful learning experiences for well over 1 000 clients and has trained almost 90 000 people during this time. Through many years of experimentation and research in the field of adult learning, Free To Grow has developed…
Tim McClure, Professional Speaker and Brand and Leadership Consultant, noted: “The biggest concern for any organisation should be when their most passionate people become quiet”. Highly motivated individuals – their participation, their creativity and ideas and their keenness to be involved – carry the best of the organisation’s culture and establish it in an aspirational…
Sarah is an intelligent and talented thirty-four year old woman – a graphic designer and skilled one at that. Her business is reasonably successful, but she constantly lives with the anxiety that she will one day be revealed as the imposter that she feels herself to be. She feels that people who really know her…
I see it all the time – leaders abusing their power. Instead of enabling the business environment to enhance productivity and engender trust, they manipulate circumstances to suit their own needs. Because they have authority (and this is particularly true of the chief executive officer/managing director position), they have the ability to manoeuvre people like…
The word “entropy”, from a physics perspective, is the corollary of the second law of thermodynamics, the way in which energy flows from a hotter object to a colder one – entropy goes up as the range of possibility and action goes down. An example of this can be found simply in cooking – once…
According to an old legend, vizier Sissa Ben Dahir presented an Indian King Sharim with a beautiful, hand-made chessboard. The king asked what he would like in return for his gift and the courtier surprised the king by asking for one grain of rice on the first square, two grains on the second, four grains…
The human being has all but lost the capability to manage the preponderance of choice – this has been called “decision fatigue” by some. There are just so many options, be it in grocery shopping varieties to choose from, career decisions or just knowing what to do, why to do it and when to do…
Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, once said: “There are two things people want more than sex and money … recognition and praise”. Repeatedly, the one motivating factor that heads employee lists is appreciation for a job well executed. Good work not acknowledged seems to be a “demotivator” and results in employees not…
One of the benefits of extensive travel, particularly to other cities in the world, is the opportunity to experience client service first hand in a variety of hotels, with some of them being well-known brands. I don’t always get the service that I expect, but occasionally I am blown away by exceptionally thoughtful gestures by…
Organisational health – the status of operating efficiently and effectively with a “happy team” of positive and focused employees – not only provides a seedbed for new ideas, innovation and creativity, but also establishes the necessary foundation for the development of brand reputation, product reach and sustainability in the long run. Company agility, when faced…
In small and large manufacturing and production-type enterprises, apart from technical issues that may occur from time to time, one of the most pertinent issues faced by leadership is getting the various teams focused and applying their energy appropriately. Modern or state-of-the-art production line equipment is necessary for speed and efficiency, but can be rendered…
It is the main task of the CEO or business leader to establish the priorities that hopefully synergise to create a powerful money-making machine. Unless you are a one-person show (like a street vendor), you cannot personally implement them all – you need other key people to get them done. It was Walter Wriston who…
