Latest Story
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The Dangers of Karzai’s Re-election
Tomas Valasek | September 11, 2009The final result of the Afghan election may not be known until the end of September, but it looks as if President Hamid Karzai will have done well enough to avoid a second round of voting. This is causing dismay in some western capitals, where some senior figures now view Karzai as a key obstacle to Afghanistan’s reconstruction. If he stays in power, people in many European countries are likely to become increasingly disenchanted with the ‘mission impossible’ that their soldiers are undertaking, and that would increase the probability of European forces being withdrawn.
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Business Planning – It’s a lot more than strategy
yardley | September 10, 2009Boards are responsible for strategy and management for operations. Business planning develops the strategy and ensures it is well executed. Each choice sets up future possibilities and closes off others. This is about making the best choices. This is about changing behaviour.
Why is Planning Important?
Planning is a thought experiment saving the energy and resources of actually doing it. Planning is learning to be ready and able to meet any opportunity. It is not about specific anticipated future opportunities.
A Learning Process
At Acumentum we had three strategies:
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What Future Mental Health Services?
Gavin Mooney | September 10, 2009I was very fortunate to be involved in running a survey of the participants at the The Mental Health Services Conference (TheMHS), which was held recently in Perth.
TheMHS is an unusual conference in that it brings together a wide array of players on the mental health stage; mental health service consumers, carers, health care professionals, administrators, academics, government bureaucrats – the whole spectrum of interests in mental health.
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Diplomacy of Opportunism
Sikni Hamka | September 10, 2009The relationship between Iraq and Australia is set to reach new heights over the years to come. Australia’s contribution in the form of foreign aid and assistance has been handsomely rewarded with lucrative contracts and potential leverage in future negotiations with Iraq.
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Why Standards are Good Business
patrickcallioni | September 10, 2009What if I said to you that we have a an opportunity to develop a viable, sustainable export business that is green, clean and creates job opportunities for knowledge workers in Australia; and it does not require significant amounts of capital, private or public, to get going?
I assume most of you would say, why are we not doing it, right now? That would be a very good question, to which there is an answer. Here is that answer.
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Giving Feedback to a Toxic Person
mitchkusy_elizabethholloway | September 10, 2009If you’ve ever worked in an organisation of any kind, you’ve probably experienced what we call a “toxic personality.”
Based on our research of over 400 leaders, we learned that a whopping 94% have had to wrestle with this problem. In this blog, we’d like to address one of the prevalent myths about toxic personalities — that you should give them feedback.
Some popular suggestions for feedback are ideas such as; letting them know how their behaviour is ruining their career, telling them that the promotion they so desperately want is about to be non-existent, or sharing how their behavior is affecting others.
Ever tried having one of those conversations?
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Wired for Social Innovation
David Mejia-Canales | September 8, 2009Empowering people with the skills they need to make new communication technologies accesible is a form of social innovation.
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At Home in Iraq Since the Invasion of 2003
Faiza Alaraji | September 7, 2009The majority of people in our small world, as I see it, don’t know what’s going on in countries which are living in conflict or war zones.
People need extraordinary efforts to search for reality of those events, like in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, etc..
The problem nowadays is not only about corrupted governments and leadership but it is the main stream media, playing the role of the partner of those political leaders, who they use to mislead the masses, through local newspapers or TV channels or even through the news on the Internet.
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Dads Helping Kids Win
Warwick Marsh | September 7, 2009As we celebrate Fathers’ Day this year, we are still feeling the effects of a global financial crisis with an accompanying financial deficit but our society appears to be suffering most of all from a love deficit.
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Happy Father’s Day
Judy Brown | September 7, 2009My husband probably took about a year to come to terms with our son being gay, possibly because he had lost his gay cousin to suicide years ago. However, soon after, my husband volunteered to do the newsletter for PFLAG and we have since become advocates for the basic human rights of gay people.
Our son and his partner of six years are very involved with our immediate family and our extended family. They were sadly missed from our Father’s Day celebrations on Sunday, as they are spending a year in the UK. We hope that our son and his partner could have a family of their own one day, as they are both so good with children. They are both doting godparents to two of my nephew’s children and one of their friend’s children. They are very popular babysitters.
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The harmonisation of national, local and state-based regulation
Martin Tolar | September 4, 2009It is an accident of history that Australia’s constitutional powers rest with the states and not the Commonwealth. Australia’s federal government is limited to passing laws and managing aspects of government business based on the areas of responsibility the states grant them the authority to do so. This has resulted in system of government that has three tiers – and by any measure, made Australia one of the most over-governed countries in the world.
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Wilderness conservation
Peter Cooper | September 4, 2009The global financial crisis has affected many people, but probably most at risk in NSW are our rural communities. Threatened with job losses, industry shut downs and the ever continuing issue of drought and over allocation of water from our river systems, it is easy to see why some communities are in crisis. It’s a crisis that represents a critical test for the Rees Government – can NSW Premier Nathan Rees deliver sound policy decisions based around the best possible economic outcomes or will he play to emotional reactions, to the detriment of local communities?
