Category Archives: Purpose
JIT training

Just in Time (JiT) education & training is ” … the negotiated provision, in corporate (or community) workplaces, of learner-generated immediate skill formation.”* It’s a little like automobile manufacture. Car plants don’t have warehourses full of wheels and windscreens ….»
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 ….»
Altruism in business

A kind of dog-eat-dog mindset seems to be at the heart of many business cultures, capitalism framed as ‘looking after number one’, and if that has to happen at the expense of another, then sorry, it’s just business. I ….»
What you measure is what you get

Few trends could so thoroughly undermine the very foundations of our free society as the acceptance by corporate officials of a social responsibility other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible. – Milton Friedman I ….»
Rope sight

In the 16th Century, due to radically improved bell technology, the English developed church bell-ringing into a fabulously complex art form. ‘Ringing the hours’ is a method for ringing a set of bells in various combinations (many with evocative ….»
Practical wisdom

I’m inspired by a presentation at the 2009 TED Conference from Barry Schwartz on the increasing need and value of what he calls ‘practical wisdom.’ He actually mentions Aristotle and the Greek values understood as the ‘virtues’ at one point, ….»
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 ….»
Happiness comes from experiences, not things

From the blog Neuronarrative Not only are people happier experiencing than possessing, but they are also happier having the experience of thinking about possessing something than actually getting it. Understanding that bit of knowledge about ourselves goes a long ….»
Thinking/doing good

“Doing good makes us feel good. Altruism enhances our self-esteem. It gets our eyes off ourselves, makes us less self-preoccupied, gets us closer to the unself-consciousness that characterizes the flow state” (1). In other words, caring for others creates a ….»
Love signals real

In this Age of Metaphor, love will be the signal of real. One of the ways we will know when a thing has passed from “as-if” to “is” is when it earns unalloyed love from humans. Kevin Kelly, As ….»
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 & ….»
Positive psychology

Positive Psychology has three central concerns: positive emotions, positive individual traits, and positive institutions. Understanding positive emotions entails the study of contentment with the past, happiness in the present, and hope for the future. Understanding positive individual traits ….»
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 ….»
Podcast on Ethical Entrepreneurship

I’m pretty new to the world of podcasting, but I found this interview refreshing in that Cameron Reilly, the owner-operator of the G’Day World Podcasting Network, allowed time to really explore and flesh out ideas in a way that ….»
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 ….»
6 Word Memoirs

Smith Magazine invites us to summarise our lives in six words – ‘Six Word Memoirs’. I thought, ‘Easy! I have the Edgeware motto, near enough to six words: make money, have fun, change the world. I could lose the article ….»
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 ….»
Intentionality and Creative Leadership

I’m fascinated by the emerging field of ‘experimental philosophy‘, where it seems that philosophers are stepping away from their armchairs and using research methods from psychology to tackle philosophical questions. Like intentionality. This is interesting enough in itself, but just ….»
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 ….»
Generosity

I can think of four things to say about generosity. It’s a quality of behaviour which requires very little in the way of resources but which has enormous power to influence and change things, beginning with yourself. Firstly, generosity is ….»
Universal Placebos

A side project, and a source of considerable joy – Universal Placebos. The idea came originally from a class I was teaching at QUT. The discussion was on branding, and moved our thinking to the value of untraded intangibles. Pet ….»
Hard Wired for Stories

We are social animals We are hard wired for stories We use stories to sing the world: Body as Land, Land as Story Discourses arrive after the singing, as both agents and actors We make category errors all the time, ….»