“Who decides and enforces the decision?” is a big question that has defined political economic inquiry and practice for all humanity for a long time. Nomos or whims of the divine ruler. For many years, it was the domain of the gods. Eventually, divine representatives in human form, such as those calling themselves kings, began […]
The folks at Gallup, whose global studies have shown that most people are disengaged at work, are now finding and studying groups who are actively working to not disengage their people. A 2020 report found four factors that drive higher engagement. Actually engaging with the people who already show up at your work is possible, […]
Suzman, J. (2021). Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots. New York, Penguin Press. You can hear a sample from the book (here). Why do you work? Who are you working for? What, even, is work? In the book Work, anthropologist James Suzman takes us through a deep history, […]
As I described in an earlier post, one way to be more resilient is to shift from thinking about rules to standards and principles. John Rawls, a moral and political philosopher, highlighted in his book, A Theory of Justice, the differences amongst the terms rules, standards, and principles. Rules are straight lines, asking yes/no questions, looking for […]
You assume there is only one set of agreements, one reality. This is the way it is. If I like it, I like how it is. If I don’t like it, I don’t like how it is. And, that’s how it is. That’s reality, and I cannot change reality. I can like the experience or […]
Conley, Chip. Wisdom @ Work: The Making of a Modern Elder. New York: Currency, 2018. Great innovations. They always come to people when they are in their 20s. The brilliant wunderkind. No wait, some of those society-changing innovations came to people in their 40s. The mastermind. Oh, and some big-system changes came to people in their […]
Berlin, Isaiah. Liberty. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Cahoone, Lawrence. The Modern Political Tradition: Hobbes to Habermas. Chantilly, VA: The Great Courses, 2014. Fukuyama, Francis. State-Building: Governance and World Order in the 21st Century. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004. Keltner, Dacher. The Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence. New York: Penguin […]
The top 4, most-read blogposts of 2018 focused on the big questions that guide how we understand impact, collaboration, and leadership today. Top 4 Blogposts 4 Questions that Changed the World, Again and Again From a Theory of Change to a Theory of Impact Resilience Collaboration Basics: Essential Agreements Leadership — How We Get to […]
Leadership. While everyone has a different definition of what leadership is, how one achieves it, and what it does, it might be much simpler than that. You know it when it is there, and when it is not there. From the perspective of the choices we have in the agreements we either unconsciously accept or […]
Klarman, Michael J. The Framer’s Coup: The Making of the United States Constitution. 2016, New York: Oxford University Press. Kishtainy, Niall. A Little History of Economics. 2017, New Haven: Yale University Press. Are the agreements that we live with today, whether consciously chosen or unconsciously accepted, the only agreements that are possible? Are they “true,” in the sense […]
