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.
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
-John Donne (1572—1631)
Different roles played by individuals and their place in society is central to the Can-Do Wisdom Framework.
Continue reading
Part 2 – Rational Domain Bottlenecks
But things don’t always go smoothly in achieving results. Bottlenecks are blockages or distortions that occur in the in the transitions between the external world and the internal world. These can delay or block the achievement of desired results.
As shown in Figure 3, there are four locations where bottlenecks can occur:
Continue reading
This is a condensed version of an essay on how Newcastle Herald journalist Joanne McCarthy played a major role in bringing about the Australian Royal Commission on Child Sexual Abuse.
The unabridged essay can be downloaded here.
For journalist Joanne McCarthy the events of 2006 was a foretaste of a drama she would never forget.
This is a condensed version of an essay on how Dr Robin Warren discovered the cause of stomach ulcers.
The unabridged essay, Warren and Marshall – Changemakers, can be downloaded here.
It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.
— Henry David Thoreau, American essayist
The 11th of June 1979 was a day clinical pathologist Robin Warren would never forget. It wasn’t just the fact this day was his forty-second birthday and he would be celebrating with his family that evening. No, something he was viewing in the microscope caught his eye which he described as “a funny-looking thin blue line stuck on the surface of the cells in some areas”.
This fable shows a change instigator at work. It was written in 2015 for my granddaughter, Ava, as a 20-page illustrated book for her second birthday. It tells how our hero, Ava, a young honey bee learning how to become a foraging bee, uses her keen observation skills to expose a potential calamity for the hive. But her fellow bees don’t want to change their ways and so they ignore her. In the end, Ava’s persistence pays off and eventually others take up the cause and the colony makes the decision to move out of harm’s way. A wise move by all involved.
Chester Zoo in the north of England is recognised as one of the leading zoos in the world. Home to 12,000 animals set in 125 acres of award-winning zoological gardens, it hosts 1.6 million visitors each year. For more than 80 years, Chester Zoo has been dedicated to protecting biodiversity and saving species from extinction. The only reason it exists is the vision and dedication of one man: George Saul Mottershead. How did it all come about?