Category Archives: Working Smarter

Work That Doesn’t Work, and Work That Does

cartoon by the late New Yorker cartoonist Robert Weber, one of the few cartoonists who worked mostly with charcoal Every year we hear about workplace surveys that say that most employees are “satisfied” with their jobs, which would, I think, suggest more … Continue reading

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Speechless

Midjourney’s take on “a disengaged office worker”; not my prompt Last week I was privileged to participate in one of David Gurteen’s long-standing Knowledge Cafés, this one on the subject of “Silence and Unheard Voices”. It began with a presentation … Continue reading

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Exemplifying and Modelling ‘Teal’

image CC0 from pexels.com I‘m a member of a discussion group around the book Reinventing Organizations and the concept of Teal. The book, and practice, advocates creating organizations that are self-organized, self-managed, self-correcting, transparent and minimally hierarchical. I’ve written about … Continue reading

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Democracy Without Elections

“We can’t rely on anything anymore. Our economic and political systems seem hopelessly corrupt and broken, beyond repair. We can’t trust what the media are telling us anymore. And now AI is creating articles and pictures and videos that look … Continue reading

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Recognizing and Honing Your ‘Information Behaviours’

image referring to the practice of treasuring each unrepeatable moment, from the Next Phase blog Nick Kemp at ikigai tribe just did an extraordinary interview with Yazdan Mansourian, Iranian-Australian lecturer and researcher on information science and information behaviour, who recently … Continue reading

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What Makes Your Life Worthwhile?

the three-circle ‘Venn model of Purpose’ from my book, designed to help you find ‘the work you’re meant to do’ Fourteen years ago, Chelsea Green published my first book, Finding the Sweet Spot, describing what I had learned advising successful … Continue reading

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Ensemble

cast members of The Book of Will, OSF version, written by Lauren Gunderson, directed by Christopher Liam Moore, photo by Jenny Graham A British friend, Johnnie Moore, sent me a link to a book called The Illusion of Leadership, by … Continue reading

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The Purpose of Work

child labourers, Pennsylvania, 1910, photo by Lewis Hine in the National Archives The word “work” originally meant “what we do”, and came into use around 900 years ago. At that time it was mostly about craftwork, and the design and … Continue reading

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Deliberately So

image CC0 from pexels.com Lately I have been enjoying a series of podcasts from a young Toronto-based group called The Stoa. Some of their recent discussions have been about deliberative processes — the work we do, both personally and in … Continue reading

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Facing Collapse: Ten Important Questions for the 2020s

Image of Ken Ward in 2016 Valve-Turners action, from the film The Reluctant Radical.  It has been a year of terrible news and terrible realizations. A year of justifiable outrage and bewildered astonishment. A year of dashed hopes, false expectations and … Continue reading

Posted in Collapse Watch, How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves, Working Smarter | 8 Comments