Category Archives: Leadership

Leading others to lead is the highest form of leadership.

Florence Nightingale – Infographics Pioneer

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Florence Nightingale was one of the pioneers in the use of statistics and infographics in achieving social reform. Florence Nightingale – Infographics Pioneer is Part 3 of The Can-Do Wisdom of Florence Nightingale series and covers the period of her life after the end of the Crimean War up to her death in 1910. It was during this period that she left the legacy for generations to come by using her knowledge and influence to affect lasting change in army health, medical health in India, hospitals, medical statistics and nurse education.

Florence-Nightingale-Photograph-by-MillbournFlorence Nightingale – c.1890 [1]
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Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War

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The Can-Do Wisdom of Florence Nightingale – Part 2 examines the brief period of Florence Nightingale’s public life covering her first nursing experience and then as Superintendent of female nurses at the Scutari Military Hospital in Constantinople during the Crimean War. This is where her knowledge and organizational skills, her observations, her leadership, her network of contacts, and her communications abilities were used to ‘get things done’ when others said it ‘couldn’t be done’.

Florence Nightingale Receiving the Wounded at ScutariFlorence Nightingale Receiving the Wounded at Scutari[1]
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Vincent Lingiari – Savvy Leader of the Wave Hill Station Walk-off

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Warning for Aboriginal People
Vincent ‘Tommy’ Lingiari’s leadership of the Gurindji people at the time of the Wave Hill Station walk-off in 1966 was a major contribution to the Australian Aborigines struggle for justice and land rights.

Vincent Lingiari - Gurindji Leader

Vincent (Tommy) Lingiari AM
13 June 1908 – 21 January 1988[1]

For some 60,000 years these people had successfully managed themselves and their land, an area in the upper reaches of what is now called the Victoria River, some 600 kilometers south of Darwin. Then the first white settlers arrived in the 1880s with huge numbers of cattle. The lives of the Gurindji people would never be the same again.Continue reading→

John Kotter – Leading Change Guru

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When Professor John Kotter published his seminal work on leading change there was something unusual about this 197-page book written by an academic; there were no references to other works, nor was there a bibliography.

John P. Kotter
 

Dr. John P. Kotter

The centrepiece of the book was an 8-step process for leading change. Kotter didn’t even claim credit for this as he said he gleaned it from observing what successful leaders actually did in transforming their organisations and from other cases that had failed.
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John Boyd – Misunderstood Genius of Warfighting

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How does one begin to pay homage to a warrior like John Boyd? He was a towering intellect who made unsurpassed contributions to the American art of war.
– General Charles C. Krulak, Commandant U.S. Marine Corps

John Boyd in F-86 Fighter Korea

Col John R. Boyd U.S. Air Force (Ret)
23 Jan 1927 – 9 Mar 1997

The UN-dictated rules of engagement for the allied forces operating against North Korea were quite specific. No pilot was to go across the Yalu River into Manchuria (China) under any circumstances. But this didn’t stop Lieutenant John Boyd and his flight leader, RAF exchange officer Jock Maitland, and others from breaking the rules from time to time.
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