From The Tao of Pooh and The Te of Piglet by Benjamin Hoff (ISBN 0-416-19526-1), this story illustrating the Taoist principle of Effortless Action or Wu Wei:

The Old Master and the Horse

A horse was tied outside a shop in a narrow Chinese village street. Whenever anyone would try to walk by, the horse would kick him. Before long, a small crowd of villages had gathered near the shop, …

Dr. W. Edwards Deming, the originator of TQM (Total Quality Management), put forth 14 points of organisation behaviour change towards better performance.

Stilgherrian’s post on being real on the web brought to mind Deming’s eighth point: Drive out fear.

Point 8: Fear is a barrier to improvement so drive out fear by encouraging effective two-way communication and other mechanisms that will enable everybody to be …

Nick Smith’s post “The joy of wallowing in a perfect mess” was a timely opportunity for me to gather together all the stray thoughts in my head.

I realised all too many “shoulds”, too many “can’ts”, have silently crept in over the recent years, especially during the final year at Vermillion. Success made it easy to succumb to the “we are consultants now, we should …

“Integrity is something of fuzzy word. People with integrity tell the truth, and they keep their word. They take responsibility for past actions, admit mistakes, and fix them. They know the laws of their country, industry, and company – both in letter and spirit – and abide by them. They play to win the right way, by the rules.” Jack Welch in his book Winning.

Worth pondering.

Integration – what individuals (and businesses) seek to create within themselves. We are talking about being whole and acting seamlessly together. Where the left hand not only knows what the right hand is up to, but all hands are on deck, united by the same values, and aiming for the same horizon.

Differentiation – the more an individual (or a business) is integrated internally, the more differentiated one will …

“To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch… to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This …

Many of (most of? ALL of?) us maintain multiple facades. We are one person at work, a different person when with our friends, parents, partners; and yet another person when on the Internet. And it even varies depending on where on the Internet!

Imagine if we could harness and channel the energy we spend on maintaining these façades towards something more constructive!

The same situation exists for businesses too. We …

There are those who believe and expect the best out of others. And there are those who believe and expect the worst. Which are you (most of the time)?

Our beliefs about others determine how we treat others, and how we expect to be treated.

We can approach the world with openness and generosity, and receive the same in return. Or we can expect every …

This is something I sketched up a couple of weeks ago:

Our subconscious determines our very first and immediate reaction to a given stimuli. This generates raw feelings. We cannot help but react at this level to the stimuli. Once we are aware of the stimuli, and note our immediate reaction; we then have conscious choice over how we respond to the stimuli emotionally and rationally. …

I caught up with a friend the other day and we had an interesting conversation which has bearing on what we have been talking about.

She is a life/personal/business coach/consultant. Over the past three years or so she has been trying to find her place, to clarify what she is about and how she does business. She did courses, created workshops, wrote books, did …