I just came across a nice little interview with Stephen Gilligan on his personal encounter with the founder of hypnotherapy and one of the most important human sources for systemic therapy, Milton Erickson.
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Last week, we went live with the new version of the Change Management Toolbook. While we are quite busy to fix unavoidable bugs, we are happy to report that the website has been widely adopted. Yesterday, we crossed the 1000 users line, and we are expecting more visitors to come to our site as the content grows. We have now about 9200 members in all parts of the world.
Beside the rich background information and a large selection of Change Management Tools, we expect the Forum to be one of the most attractive parts of the website. Here you can create your own topics, ask for and provide advice, and discuss hot topics around Change Management and Change Facilitation. Today for example, we are discussing "Why do change projects fail?". Why don't you join one of the discussions right now?
...That is why voters are not only interested in their tax rate but also in the next higher one. ... They don't want that the people they want to be are punished. ... To simplify: the majority of voters is living on the left side but voting at the right side.
Towers Perrin, a global consulting company, has carried out research on what drives people to engage themselves at work. The results, which are based on a survey of 88,600 employees who work full-time for mid-sized to large organizations in 18 countries across all regions, are sobering. More...
We know that babies take nine months after conception until they see their first light. It took Ivan Overton, Julian Pereira and myself 9 months to conceptualize, develop and implement our new website. It is a milestone in the ten years history of the Change Management Toolbook.
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It is Blog Action Day 2007. I had reported about this initiative some weeks ago. Today, thousands of blogs will write a posting related to the environment. The official figure of participating blogs is:
Total number of blogs: 15,861
Combined rss reach of blogs: 12,697,713
Quite impressive. Even if at the end maybe only 30-50% of those who registered will actually participate, it is certainly the biggest concerted blog action that has ever been launched. Chapeau!
I thought about the topic I shall refer to, and I came back to the issue of global scenarios. We all know that whatever people write on the environment, they base their judgement on mathematical models. Although some models seem to be more robust than others - they are all models.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) who received the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Vice President Al Gore (Congratulations), has once published an interesting research on scenarios. Although the study is six years old, I still believe it has much to tell about how much current future scenarios differ.
Global Futures Scenarios: Range of Possible Futures tells a vivid story of how much our political action is based on subjective descriptions of the world. I often use this text to explain people about the complexity and the unpredictability of the world. Have a look at the following tables. Here, the IPCC investigated how many scenarios were describing different aspects of economy, environment and global society. In their research, they found for example 65 scenarios that were predicting a general rise of the global economy, while 37 (about 35%) predicted a stagnation or even a global economic collaps.
What scenarios do you base your belief system on?
Read more at Global Futures Scenarios: Range of Possible Futures.
Yesterday, the Financial Times published a McKinsey report showing that "...European companies with the highest proportion of women in influential leadership roles...do better than their sector in terms of return on equity, operating result and share price growth.". The report further explains that those companies who have three or more women in their boardroom are the biggest out-performers. McKinsey explains that "A sole woman on a board often feels marginalised,... the appointment of a second woman can help reduce this isolation but can also create difficulties: two women may have to be careful not to be seen as “conspiring”, said researchers... A “clear shift” occurs when there are three or more women... The women tend to be seen just as directors, rather than female directors, the boardroom dynamic becomes more collaborative and the discussions richer and more informative."
Look at your boardroom. Feel like you have to change something?
Photo: "Boardroom" by celinet on Flickr.
There have always been individuals who had a significant impact on the world - for the better or for the worse. Usually we know the big names, for example Mohamed Yunnus, last year's nobel price laureate, who helped to improve the lifes of millions of people in Bangla Desh by giving them access to micro-credits. There are, however, a lot of people who remain unknown to a wider public. It is thanks to authors like David Bornstein that we get know about those people.
I haven't read a non-fiction book for long that kept my full attendance for quite a while, a page-turner so to say.
How to Change the World is such a book. It is the story of the Ashoka Foundation and of social entrepreneurs and the power of new ideas. The Ashoka Foundation was created by Bill Drayton in the eighties and it has become the leading organization for supporting social activists who create new concepts to help marginalized groups in all parts of the world. People who were able to find innovative solutions for the pressing problems of our times.
Bornstein, besides recording the history of this unique organization follows the path of some of the Ashoka fellows who are selected according to the strict system of the foundation. Take, for example, Jenoo Billimoria, who gave the kick start of what now has become an India-wide network of telephone hotlines for street kids, called Childline. Or Fábio Rosa, who fought against windmills until he was able to implement a programme for affordable electrification in rural Brazil. Or J.B. Schramm, who developed a system for helping underpriviliged kids to enroll in universities of the U.S.
These are stories of people who share a few things in comon: they are brave, they follow their vision regardless of how many stones are put into their way, and they find innovative ways of marketing and reproducing their ideas. They are true entrepreneurs - in the original sense of the word ("undertakers").
Reading this book, I was reaffirmed that a better workd is possible, and that there are lots of people out there who have helped to make that dream come true for millions of poor and marginalized people.
It goes without saying - this is a must read book. More information can be found on the website howtochangetheworld.org.
"The Partnership was ahead of its time in recognising that commercial success depended on showing the highest level of good citizenship in its behaviour within the community. Today we are best known for the fact that our business is owned for the benefit of our employees – all of whom are Partners and share in its profits – but we know that to cut our way through tough competitive conditions, we have to continue to prize sound relationships with our customers and suppliers, and sustain a keen sense of civic responsibility."
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