Category — Thought

Tammy Ericsson writes on Harvard’s DiscussionLeader about the leadership qualifications of the next US president. Interesting stuff. However one thing stood out:

Future leaders in all spheres will have to contend with an environment that is complex in many dimensions - a world with finite limits, no easy answers, and the sobering realization that we are facing significant, seemingly intractable problems on multiple fronts.

I think this is both true and false. Yes, the world is a complex place. But to think that there was ever a time for easy answers seems wrong to me. What there was was a time to PRETEND that there were easy answers and forcing those on the rest of us. THAT time is long gone.

Just a small thought experiment here:

Imagine your sitting in the living room of a house, where - up the stairs - there is a door that’s ever so silently slamming open and shut in the wind. How long will it be, before you decide to get up, head up the stairs and close it properly?

We have such a door at home. I have been listening to it on and off for about half an hour, until I decided, I had had enough. What about you?

There is of course great speculation about who is going to be the running mates for the US presidential candidates, Obama and McCain.

Personally, I find the question of the latters running mate the most interesting. Because it seems like right now this is the place where a VP candidate could have the most to win - and the most to loose. Why? Well, McCain isn’t young anymore, so even though the odds still are slim, there could be an opportunity to step up during the term, if the worst should happen. Even though nobody would admit it - and one should never hope for such uglyness - my bet is that this is a factor for the potential candidates in question.

On the other hand, McCain has so little real momentum that a lot of people see it as a foregone conclusion that he will loose. And who wants to be on the loosing side?

As advertising becomes ever more targeted, will our receptiveness towards advertising messaging decrease?

The reason I ask is because I can imagine a future where the intrusiveness of the ads become so all-dominant that we, collectively, decide to say ‘No!’ to it. A time when we come to the realization that not even the proposition of something being free to use in exchange for intrusive messages is enough.

What do you think? Am I seeing ghosts here?

I met with a former employee today. She’s going to spend some months as an intern at a big interest organisation in Denmark, and she has a real opportunity to be the face of a very important subject for debate going forward. And this gives her some grief.

She’s thinking that there’s a limit to how far she could push this publicity in the view of her employment. I’m saying that she shouldn’t bother and just go all in, because by going all the way, opportunities will present themselves and secure her a nice career doing something she’s passionate about.

What do you think?

I’ve been reading Naomi Klein’s thoughtprovocing book “The Schock Doctrine” (more on that in a later post), and today I made a startling discovery.

Back when I was president of the local chapter of Junior Chamber International, I got a lot of positive and negative feedback for driving a hard line with members, who didn’t contribute anything to the common good. When some decided to put me up for President of The Year, part of the feedback from the judges were that “…sometimes the forest has to burn down in order for something new to grow”. I was quite proud of this.

What striked me today is that this is exactly the argument that Naomi places with the disaster capitalists.
Does that make me a disaster capitalist in spe?