Author Archives: David

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Economics as a Moral Science and the Capitalist Dilemma: An Ecological Perspective

As I mentioned last week, Kenneth Boulding was and is my favourite economist and I was reminded again of his work when I came across a New York Times article on capitalism and the Dalai Lama. In it His Holiness … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged Adam Smith, Alfred Marshall, capitalist dilemma, Clayton Christensen, Dalai Lama, ecocycle, economics, evolutionary perspective, exchange, integration, Jeffrey Pfeffer, John Dewey, Kenneth Boulding, Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman, moral science, Paul Samuelson, Pitirim Sorokin, real world economics, threat | Comments Off on Economics as a Moral Science and the Capitalist Dilemma: An Ecological Perspective

Don’t Throw the Past Away

The late Kenneth Boulding, environmental advisor to JFK and one of my favourite economists, once said that “Anyone who believes in indefinite growth in anything physical, on a physically finite planet, is either mad – or an economist.” I used … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged ancestor, ecocycle, Erik Erikson, generation gap, identity, Kamloops, Kenneth Boulding, narrative, Northrop Frye, psychosocial development, retirement, Rotary, sustainability, William Blake | Comments Off on Don’t Throw the Past Away

The Nature of Uncertainty: Hunting Black Swans

This past week I gave the opening keynote at the 2014 Conference Board meeting on Enterprise Risk Management. It gave me an opportunity to bring an ecological perspective to risk and uncertainty as well as allowing me to promote The … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged algorithm, black swans, Cohen and Gooch, Confucius, COSO, Enterprise Risk Management, George Box, Guntram Werther, Jung, Kant, knowledge, Michael Mauboussin, models, Nassim Taleb, pattern, phronesis, risk, syncretic thinking, T-shaped, uncertainty, understanding | Comments Off on The Nature of Uncertainty: Hunting Black Swans

Exploring Leadership Using Metaphors

Last week I spent a day-and-a-half with a group of senior managers from a large global company discussing leadership. The company faces all the challenges one might expect it to face – globalization, digitization, cross-cultural difficulties and so on in … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged budget, CCL, Chuck Palus, David Horth, ecological perspective, financial forecasting, Leadership Metaphor Explorer, mental model, metaphor, performance management, The New Ecology of Leadership, Visual Explorer, VUCA | Comments Off on Exploring Leadership Using Metaphors

Learning: The Power of Simulations

Last week I facilitated a day-long course on the “Fundamentals of Finance for Decision Making” as part of the DeGroote Executive Education program. I was using the Apples & Oranges simulation from the Swedish company, Celemi. I say “facilitated”, rather … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged Alfred North Whitehead, Apples & Oranges, Celemi, Center for Creative Leadership, DeGroote, ecocycle, EVA, Hartwick College, Klas Mellander, learning, simulations, teaching | Comments Off on Learning: The Power of Simulations

The Great Transformation – Getting a Handle on Wicked Problems at the 2014 Global Drucker Forum

The theme for the 6th Global Peter Drucker Forum to be held in Vienna November 13-14 is “The Great Transformation – Managing Our Way to Prosperity”. The launch event took place in that city last week. Over 120 people gathered … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged Anglo-Saxon capitalism, Bretton Woods, bubbles, Carlota Perez, change, deployment, ecological perspective, financial capital, gilded age, Global Peter Drucker Forum 2014, golden age, Great Recession, inflection point, installation, probe-sense-respond, productive capital, Schumpeter, techno-economic paradigm, technological revolution, turning point | Comments Off on The Great Transformation – Getting a Handle on Wicked Problems at the 2014 Global Drucker Forum

The Spring Campaign

Last Sunday we put our clocks forward in Canada to reflect the return of the sun to the Northern Hemisphere and the possibility that winter might come to an end and give way to spring. It cannot come soon enough; … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General | Tagged Apples & Oranges, Celemi, Center for Creative Leadership, Conference Board, De Groote, Enterprise Risk Management, finance, ice, Kamloops, Leadership Metaphor Explorer, Rotary, San Diego, spring, Thompson Rivers University, United Jewish Appeal, Visual Explorer, winter | Comments Off on The Spring Campaign

BOOM! – The Perils of Big-Bang Rollouts

Late last year Target, the Minneapolis-based American discount retail chain, suffered a massive data security breach. Just before the busy Christmas season hackers broke into the corporation’s computer systems and stole information from over 100 million of its credit and … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged big bang, change, ecological perspective, hacking, HMO, Hudson's Bay, Learning from the Links, Lowe's, Obamacare, Oxford Health Plans, positive deviance, RONA, security breach, Stephen Wiggins, systems, Target, W.T. Grant, Zellers | 1 Comment

Sweet But Dangerous: The Challenge of Institutional Change

There was a very interesting story in the Sunday Telegraph a couple of weeks ago about John Yudkin (1910-1995), a British physiologist and nutritionist who did pioneering work on the connection between the consumption of sugar and all manner of … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged Alfred Wegener, conscious capitalism, continental drift, fructose, institutional change, John Yudkin, paleomagnetism, sugar, Whole Foods | 2 Comments

Watch Your Language! Why Metaphors Matter in Management

It’s another launch of another strategic plan to the company’s senior and middle managers and the CEO is rattling on about “roadmaps” and “blueprints” that will generate “traction” in the market and “buy-in” from the employees. The employees are watching … Continue reading →

Posted in Change, General, Leadership, Strategy | Tagged Aristotle, blueprint, buy-in, change, ecological perspective, ecological rationality, embodied cognition, Gareth Morgan, George Lakoff, Gibson Burrell, Mark Johnson, metaphor, roadmap, Thomas Kuhn, top-down | 1 Comment ← Older posts Newer posts →