Improving indigenous community outcomes through a “Community Capability Uplift Metrics” improvement initiative that explicitly connects funded activities to individual benefits through to long-term community capability uplift outcomes The problem Current government funding for provision of services to indigenous communities is based on activity and output rather than benefits and outcomes. That is, government agencies fund … Read more
Information on the family history of our Malcher and Mason lines. Malcher Genealogy We’ve traced our line of Malchers back to 1630, in Fulnek, Czech republic, and the nearby Odrau and Wolfsdorf, in north eastern Moravia (Mähren) in the former Czechoslovakia, within what was the Austro-Hungarian empire. Our family more recently came from Innsbruck, Austria. … Read more
. Summary A person with intellectual humility recognises that their beliefs might be wrong, and understands that other people can know considerably more than them in important fields. When practiced well, intellectual humility opens people up to learning, improvement, and positive cooperation. The absence of intellectual humility can lead to failure to learn, higher susceptibility … Read more
Different Brains in the Office
Building organisational value through the complementary skills of diverse staff expertise
The hypothesis: Distributed systems operating within open unifying frameworks are more likely to achieve their stated long-term aims than highly centralised systems controlled from a single point or small set of points, or which operate according to a single unbending concept.
A few years ago I started developing an idea of different forms of business architecture across the project lifecycle. In more recent years, we’ve been implementing this model in my workplace, and it appears to have been going quite well. The concept has potential implications for how business architecture is practiced and described, and may … Read more
Back in 2006 I wrote a piece on the relationship between distributed power and the successful distribution of knowledge. It demonstrated that the benefits of sharing knowledge throughout an organisation are dependent the distribution of power within the organisation. The full paper is available here. Here’s the abstract; [The paper] examines the relationship between power … Read more
Summary To raise a child well, immediate practical actions are only one part of parenting. The most critical part focuses on deeper impacts – things that will impact the type of adult the child becomes. In addition, the first three years of a child’s life are the most critical, so these things need to be … Read more
Advanced thinking is humanity’s most important learned skill. It has allowed us to create every social and technological improvement we now take for granted. Advanced thinking skills lifted us from ancient doctrine-based primitive thinking to enable humanity’s progress across recent millennia. Continued progress, and resolution of current issues, is dependent on the continued expansion and development of these skills in ourselves, and throughout our societies.
Originally published February 2018 Question Imagine a situation in twenty years or so in which the public service is genuinely designing and/or delivering what the nation and its people need. What models, motivations and measures would need to be in place to encourage a public service genuinely driven to design / deliver what the nation … Read more
Originally published 31 May 2017 Introduction With the increasing prevalence of open plan offices, it’s worth having a look at the evidence of the impact such environments have the on people in them. The research in this area is relevant not just for the workplace, but also for education environments of all forms, and any … Read more
Originally published 26 Feburary 2017 A proposed speech befitting the current President of the United States of America The man who Made His Country Great Again I know it’s not politically correct to say, but Adolf Hitler was a Great Man who Made Germany Great Again, and he could have kept doing it if all … Read more
Originally posted 21 October 2015 It seems to me that the events that were truly critical for humanity’s history are not the ones we were taught about in school, or even in university. They’re not wars, they’re not the rise or fall of nations, and they’re not actions of “great men”. They’re bigger than that. … Read more
Originally posted 15 February 2012 Background In my work analysing and designing business solutions for clients I sometimes find that one useful line of questionining that gets people out of their “we could never do that” mode of thinking is to ask what the ideal solution would look like if you had no restrictions on … Read more
First posted 20 November 2011 On the 14th of September 2011 I was in the village of Chi Pat, in the jungle of Western Cambodia. Chi Pat is, by Western standards, a very basic and not at all wealthy little village with very basic accommodation, electricity five hours a day and, strangely enough, 24-hour 3G … Read more