Two ideas are pinging around in my head these days: First, a deep concern that we in the United States no longer have a clear social compact that unites us. No shared values, no clear mission. Joe Nocera sums up the American climate perfectly in a recent op ed, in which he describes the German [...]
On Saturday I had the fortune to go down to Zuccoti Park with Jeff Sachs, his daughter, Hannah, and a couple of his staff from the Earth Institute. I had been wanting to get down there for weeks, but I’m on crutches with a bad femoral stress fracture and haven’t wanted to risk going alone, getting [...]
No discussion about improving the quality of political leadership can omit the critical role of followers or constituents who, inevitably, affect even an autocratic leader’s behavior. As John Gardner observed, “Leaders are almost never as much in charge as they are pictured to be, followers almost never as submissive as one might imagine” (On [...]
In the corporate world, leadership development programs are standard fare. Such programs often include well-defined competencies and performance metrics, as well as regularly scheduled feedback and mentoring sessions, especially for those employees designated “high potential” performers.
Not so in the public sphere. There are no defined career paths or standardized training curricula for heads of [...]
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Here’s an interesting tidbit: Pew did a global survey asking citizens of many countries around the world if their country was heading in the right direction. In only one case did a significant majority of those polled say yes, their country was heading in the right direction: China (87% positive). Fifty percent of Brazilians answered [...]
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Many years ago when I was a budding and impassioned young painter in junior high school art classes, a teacher found me staring morosely at a canvas on which I had just made a giant mistake. “It’s ruined,” I said. He looked at the canvas, unsure which from my young perspective comprised the offending colors [...]
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I am sitting in the MoFEA of fice in Unguja. It’s been an interesting few days since Richard Ayah arrived in Pemba. Because Lorenzo wasn’t feeling well, he didn’t come with us to the meeting with the community, which took place after prayers on Monday afternoon. Instead, Richard and I met with Said at the PHL to [...]
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I’m a tad more cynical than I was when I first arrived here – about how global NGOs’ missions get translated on the ground, about governance and the rare moments when the pursuit of justice triumphs over the pursuit of power. I see now what Jan Engeland meant when he said that one of the [...]
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I’ve always been slightly jealous of people who knew from the beginning exactly what they wanted to be and proceeded, as if on a super-highway, through the training, apprenticeship and mastery, earning respect and a stable place in the hierarchy to which they aspired. I knew many of them from the classical music world – [...]
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Ah, the perils of a little knowledge. I’ve misplaced my blog. It will be back up again in a few days – as soon as I’ve recovered the database I forgot to pack when I migrated from one host to another. And I was so proud of myself for how deftly I had downloaded all [...]
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I had a lot of time to think and read this weekend. I’m reading two books – one, a history of the revolution on Zanzibar, written by Don Petterson, who was an American attache to Zanzibar in the 1960s; the other, a book on engaging communities by Peter Block. The book about the revolution surprised [...]
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Around the country there will be barbecues, fireworks and mid-summer revelry. At Coney Island, 20 prodigious eaters – 10 men and for the first time 10 women (a dubious indicator of gender equality) – will vie for the coveted mustard-yellow international belt at Nathan’s 96th annual hotdog eating contest. Nathan’s will atone for its annual [...]
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Astute change management and communications professionals have long recognized the need to engage social networks in any major change project. Social networks came long before Web 2.0. The best discussion of social networks in the analog world comes from Everett Rogers’ classic book, Diffusion of Innovations. Everett uses concrete examples of change – condom use [...]
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News today from a friend in Pemba that (FINALLY!) KPMG is following through on its commitment to help the people of Kiuyu Mbuyuni achieve the Millennium Development Goals. She writes, “MVP is now taking off based at the PHL as from your suggestion.” Ah yes, and I made that suggestion a mere 20 months ago [...]
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All the frenzied commentary about Sarah Palin’s video gives her more credit than she deserves. You barely had to understand English to know what was wrong with her presentation. It was so completely devoid of authenticity, it really didn’t matter what she said: the rhythm, syntax, tone of voice and body language lacked what [...]
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