Is swearing good for you and your team?

I feel like I’m opening a can of worms with this post, about swearing. I’ve been blogging for ten years. This is my 401st post. I rarely swear. As best as my memory serves me, the number of times I’ve cussed on this blog is not far removed from zero. That seems a bit odd […]

Alternate Dispute Resolution helps support a growing entrepreneurial culture in Tanzania

Last month, November, I was in Tanzania. Stationed in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s largest city, I provided Alternate Dispute Resolution (ADR) advisory services to the Tanzanian Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture (TCCIA). TCCIA has 20,000+ members. I was there as a Volunteer Advisor with the Canadian Executive Service Organization (CESO). I’ve volunteered, internationally, with […]

A good metaphor for why habits are so hard to change

A good metaphor is gold. Here’s one about how habits are created and why they are so hard to change. It’s from Harvard neurology professor, Alvaro Pascual-Leone, via Norman Doidge’s book, The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science. I love this metaphor. It’s brilliant. And, so winter. So Canadian. […]

Remembering the Brilliance of Ursula Franklin: The Real World of Technology

Ursula Franklin died last month, in Toronto. She was 94. Ursula Franklin was a “Canadian giant” for a whole lot of reasons; she was a world-renowned physicist, feminist, Quaker, author, pacifist, professor, Holocaust survivor, public intellectual, mother, and mentor. She was honoured as an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1982 and with the […]

The Existentialist Mediator

I was reading Sarah Blakewell’s At The Existentialist Cafe on the weekend. It’s an engaging window on the key proponents of modern existentialism; Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, Marting Heidegger… and others. Blakewell’s book weaves biography and thought, and “takes us to the heart of a philosophy about life that also changed lives, and […]