Spring Newsletter, April, 2009
Spring has finally sprung. This season represents new beginnings and hope for the future. This outlook is perhaps more intense given what most of us have had to endure since last fall. Is the worst behind us? Perhaps this is the wrong question. We naturally seek stability, when what we really need is resiliency - the ability to continuously adapt to what is happening outside our control, and the will to pay enough attention to reality to anticipate what is outside our control. The courage to endure does not mean one must sit still and be pummeled by all the injustices of the world, it is rather to work tirelessly to confront and change the "realities" that are not serving us. This is especially difficult when they served us in the past. These pieces by Tom Bowes of InCourage, Jan van der Hoop of HiringSmart and Thomas Homer-Dixon, Professor in the Centre for Environment and Business in the Faculty of Environment at the University of Waterloo carries the theme of resiliency and challenges us on what must we unlearn first.
The 5 Easy Steps to Solve Complex Problems
By: Tom Bowes
"Nothing is more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain of success, than to take the lead in the introductions of a new order of things". - Machiavelli
A New Lesson in Resilience
By: Jan Van der Hoop
For the last five years, my business partner and I have been “out there”, pushing the envelope with lots of leaders in the business community. We’ve been missionaries of sorts, railing against the status quo which is so badly broken, and working hard with organizations to change at a fundamental level how they attract, select and engage people. We’ve been constructively contrarian and controversial by choice… and of course in so doing we’ve built a loyal following and turned a whole bunch of people off with our own brand of inconvenient truth.
Make Room for Doom and Gloom; An article from the Globe and Mail.
By: Thomas Homer-Dixon
Originally published April 6, 2009.
Scorning pessimists as 'Cassandras' is destructive: Reckless optimism is what got us into this mess and it may take worry and prudence to get us out, argues Thomas Homer-Dixon, who has edited a new collection of essays on potentially coming calamities