Virtually everything our modern culture believes about the type of leadership required to transform our institutions is wrong. It is also dangerous. There is perhaps no more corrosive trend to the health of our organizations than the rise of the celebrity CEO, the rock-star leader whose deepest ambition is first and foremost self-centric.
- Jim Collins (author of Good to Great)

In this day and age of instant coffee, fast food and DIY blogs, we tend to look for quick fixes, including celebrity leaders, whom we believe can lead our organisations into the sunset. And more often than not, when we talk about leadership, we look to statesmen, generals, politicians and the like, to find good examples of great leaders. It is true that there have been many great leaders in the political field, including people like Mohandas K. Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln. However, we should also look to business leaders to learn certain principles of leadership.
Read the rest of this entry »

The so-called father of modern economics is Adam Smith. If the Communists had won the Cold War, it would now be Karl Marx.

Anyway, the now famous (and notorious) ‘invisible hand’ was ‘invented’ by Adam Smith. All that natural human instincts and pursuit of self-interest sounded real good and worked quite well, too. It was accepted as gospel. Carved in stone, even.

But, Adam Smith said, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” Now, where is it said that we should pursue self-interest without regard for the legitimate self-interest of other people, especially our neighbours?

I like to deal with this topic together with the issue of development, which is natural because development is almost entirely defined in economic terms these days.
Read the rest of this entry »