There are lots of good comments on my post, The importance of deliberate practice and I was prompted to write this one based on Tony Karrer’s observation that many people are thrust into jobs where they must get up to speed quickly. Tony was wondering whether deliberate practice makes sense in these cases. Do we […]

Last week I gave a presentation to the Canberra Pecha Kucha group on complexity. I subsequently recorded the presentation and loaded it to youtube. Pecha Kucha (explained in a you tube video here) is a presentation format where you have 20 slides and each slide is visible for 20 seconds. Putting the presentation together highlighted […]

I just noticed that Fast Company expert blogger Thomas Clifford has listed Shawn as one of 7 interesting storytellers to follow on Twitter. I better start following him 🙂

It took me a little while to work out what was happening. I snapped my first photo of the motor scooter with clip board attached in Soho but I only got a fleeting glance and then he was gone. But my next sighting was far more informative. This time the motorcyclist was parked so I […]

Three weeks ago I arrived in London for a couple of weeks work and a couple weeks holiday. One of my must-see destinations was the water pump in Broadwick Street, Soho, which was the main contamination source for the 1854 cholera outbreak (my family think I’m crazy). This pump is also the star attraction on […]

I can’t remember who first said to me “you have two ears and one mouth, and you should use them in that proportion” but it is one of the best pieces of advice I have ever received. Also, when working in many organisations, I notice it is not applied that widely. Shawn and I have […]

I am working on a project requiring a major organisational transformation. On Monday, the division’s chief heads off to Canberra to get a mandate to make the change from head office. One of his biggest concerns is head office continuously second-guessing him as he leads the organisation through the change process. He recognises that in […]

Senator Kate Lundy hosted yesterday’s Publicsphere #2 event on Government 2.0. I attended Parliament House for the morning and ‘watched’ online throughout the afternoon (using the live blog, video stream and the twitter traffic (#publicsphere). It was interesting to watch presentations to an audience of 150 people, the majority of whom had laptops open and […]

I started work this week on a major change project. Our ‘three journeys‘ concept for embedding change and making strategies stick is really resonating. I must admit to walking into the project with some trepidation…a broken organisation that needs to be fixed or ‘blown away’ (a nice metaphor…not!). After four days there I feel a […]

On Tuesday I worked with three new communities of practice in a government agency. Each group was quite different but in all of them we talked about the things the groups should do first. I promised to send them ideas on conversations they might consider early on. Here is what I have come up with […]