Category Archives: Vocation
Cutting diamonds
In The Diamond Cutter, Michael Roche proposes a simple and very powerful way of dealing with your shortcomings or challenges: find someone with a similar challenge and help them with it, that is, with no immediate thought for your ….»
Signs of Creeping Entrepreneurship
Since the 90’s there has been a tsunami of studies and treatises and papers about entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs; the field has been burgeoning as a subject of research – in other words, as the term gains currency and academics ….»
Persistence
A number of Edgeware presenters, and writers on entrepreneurship generally, emphasise the value of persistence, of constant striving and application to your business goals. But if you feel you’re not strongly inclined this way, how might you develop this core ….»
Johnny Bunko’s six lessons
Ever read a business book in manga comic format? That’s what Dan Pink and the illustrator Rob Ten Pas have achieved, and it’s a cracker. Edgeware has used the book as a discussion point for some time now, and feedback ….»
High touch, high concept
Interesting to hear the increasing use of the word ‘touch’ in marketing: how many times, and in what way, does your product message and brand ‘touch’ your customers? Daniel Pink says that products and services of the ‘concept economy’ focus ….»
Nouns & verbs
Things are fast and getting faster. Whole industry groups, whole professions, are disappearing from view. Who would have thought 10 years ago that General Motors and Chrysler would go broke? What’s missing, and where’s the opportunity? It’s not a ….»
Your business as your baby
Starting up, emerging entrepreneurs need mentors, coaches and critical friends. We can think of these as the uncles and aunts to the growing baby. (Edgies so often claim they feel that their *business is their baby*, with all the ….»
How trees grow
It sounds counter-intuitive that, while a tree is rooted in the ground, it actually feeds on what it extracts from the air. I think this is a compelling metaphor for business (and life, if it comes to it): we ….»
3D business plans
At Edgeware’s first Upload Young Entrepreneurs Camp (Jan 12-16, 2009) we tried out our first 3D Business Plan. Everyone selected materials and objects which represented elements of their plan, then arranged and connected these to indicate the dynamics of ….»
After a certain point, money is
meaningless
Just for fun, here are some thoughts from much better heads than ours … A business that makes nothing but money is a poor kind of business. Henry Ford After a certain point money is meaningless. It ceases to ….»
Failures are inveitable! Brave failures are necessary!
Some formulae … High Self-Efficacy: Failure = lack of effort Low Self-Efficacy: Failure = lack of ability A Brave Failure = learning + spur to greater effort or effect A Brave Failure builds resilience Effort & ….»
Edgeware’s Build Your Business
Edgeware’s Build Your Business program is an alternative to business education for new entrepreneurs, and for entrepreneurs who want to re-imagine or grow their businesses. Each time it runs, it changes, because the needs of participants and the dynamics ….»
Education-zen
“The problem of the steady change of ideas (or the perpetual need to imagine new ideas) also demolishes the notion that the essence of education consists in mastering certain contents or materials. You are not little birdies sitting in the ….»
Coaches as Uncles and Aunts
Putting together a coaching bureau is an interesting challenge. I’ve been working on this for some months, gathering together half a dozen friends and colleagues with coaching experience in a group I hope will make a very wide range ….»
Speaking at the Hive
I was asked to give a short talk at a Brisbane networking function called The Hive on 30 June 09, on the topic of ‘entrepreneurship’. The talk was filmed, and video is now on Youtube, but to save the bother ….»
Business Ethics
Business ethics is an important field for Edgeware because it’s in the ‘change the world’ bit of our DNA. You don’t ‘adopt’ ethical practices; you can’t operate without ethics, even if you couldn’t name them and you don’t have a ….»
Coach as Cartographer
Everyone is coaching or being coached; there are life coaches, career coaches, personal coaches, fitness coaches, executive coaches, coaches for getting out of bed in the morning and coaches for getting to sleep at night. Why do we need coaches ….»
Speaking at the Brisbane Ideas Festival
I was invited to convene a session at the Brisbane Ideas Festival in March 2009, a panel on the topic of Creative Entrepreneurs: The Artists of Commerce. I selected a group of Edgies from a variety of businesses and a ….»
What a Coach Does
I think a coach does four things: 1. Mentoring – a coach should have the capacity to empathise, and to relate the coaching experience to his or her own mind-set, world view and direct experience of analogous situations and contexts. ….»
360 Degrees
I’ve noticed that I’ll often use optical illusions or some kind of perceptual trick in my presentations, to indicate not only how easy it is to trick the eye or the brain, but that the way see the world is ….»
Physician, heal thyself
A working hypothesis: every coach needs a coach. Like every shrink needs a shrink. Something about keeping yourself honest, setting up a sounding board for reflection on the practice, shrugging off the Mantle of the Expert (something I learned from ….»
Dancing About Architecture
Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. Laurie Anderson In 1994 we stayed for a couple of nights with our friend Klaus Maier, Director of Theater von Menschen für Menschen in Nürnberg. Not a terribly gloomy place – I ….»
+617 3369 6897
0402 394 166
michael4832
Add me
Add me
Add me
www.edgeware.com.au