Once again, your information and reflection is absolutely on the mark! I’ve just finished reading “Sophie’s World” - after it seemed to land on my desk 4 times I finally took the hint! This is an amazing story of the development of philosophy over the last 5,000 years or so. Once I immersed myself into that timeframe a lot of stuff that seems to be relevant, like up-to-the-minute deadlines and the need for control, sort of drifted away. I bring this up because this book, like your writing here, seeks to have us asking questions of ourselves, rather than imposing our often closed views and values upon others. And this is particularly so for leaders. To lead others by being the change we seek, by allowing others to share our journeys and vice versa, and to always ask “Why?” (funnily enough that was my first word that I spoke as a child, rather than the usual “No”), is in my humble opinion the only way to lead.

Thak you so much, Will.

Blessings
Wendy Campbell

A great grab. I felt a real truth in this view of the territory and work of leadership, not
because I can site many texts supporting his theories, but because I can relate to this at a
personal level. I like where this is going in terms of relationships to Gen Y, as this kind of
leadership seems immanently easier to practice in a small organisation such as ours (at least
this is what we try to do!). With the growth in the number of people starting their own small
businesses (as appears to be the way of many Gen Y people) the opportunites to work in this
way are ever increasing.

First it is a boon to the evolution of coaching… a dilemma faced when a player is playing well and the quest arises of how to stand in to help them play weller in concert with the wider team, the opposition and the scoreboard… your insight makes it simple … see each element as being in a well-state and craft the help to being weller based on a fused platform of those existing states… easy peasy.

Second strike is a fresher view of the organisation, as a living breather (sorry to Clare and his cybernetics platform) or call it an organism in some stage of it growth cycle … herding cells on to an unwanted and unliked path puts the algebra of shepherding into disarray … perhaps this comment needs more thought … so until that happens … have a great day pursued in the way you like, where you want it and in company that’s in sync with the stuff to be done.

Regard Pad

Thanks for yet another insightful missive! I’m seeing some good moves towards “sustainable” as a natural part of the way we do things.

The conference looks amazing - go well:-)

Blessings
Wendy Campbell

I did a scenario planning exercise with a big corporate as the start of some strategy work last year. We looked at 6 core compentency dimensions and the extreme, mid-case and conservative scenarios for each. What happens when you add three critical events over the timeframe is that you very quickly get up to something like 700 scenarios - all valid. While we can be more conscious of what then unfolds, that number is still way too much to manage as proactive strategic action - and so is much better suited to strategic review and response (with professional guidance) like you have described.

The additional step for those organizations wanting to live into their own future is to work out which of those possible and likely scenarios represent their critical path. If we imagine a decision tree with all those possabilities - it is the decision at each turning point (rather than response point) for each major branch which shows the path to choose. This is a harder and uncommon approach, but where the long view is required, more rewarding.

If scenario planning is the useful tool/methodology, perhaps strategic foresight is the skill sought. It is useful when the organisation can choose what to be - as opposed to only choose its response to what is.

How wonderful that you, of all people, to facilitate this emergence. And how perfectly appropriate for the name of your [other] business role

I will pass this on to my son, Tristan Campbell, who is working on the application of geophysics to the healing and sustaining of the earth. His web site is http://www.earthconnections.com.au.

Life is truly wonderful!

Blessings
Wendy Campbell

An interesting shift in cleaner production generally world-wide will be a move from end-of-pipe solutions as we increase the amount of recycled and recovered product used as raw materials in manufacture, design for disposal and eliminate waste at all parts of the process.

We are lucky here in having the smarts to do all parts of the solution.