Organised Inspirational Quotes

Firestarters are flexible. They recognize situational needs and are able to flow into the accessible role identity most relevant to overcome emergent challenges.

Freedom in any moment is a product of two things: the autonomy you feel and the support for autonomy that the moment allows.

Success is not only dependent on understanding your own skill-set. It’s also important to recognize the talents of others and know how to profit from them.

Belief that you can act is a powerful motivator. Belief that change can happen in a flash is an even stronger motivator.

Collaborators don’t steal others’ ideas, take advantage of people, or sit back while others accomplish their tasks for them. Collaborators take action to ensure that everyone with whom they work can enjoy the maximum potential outcome.

Be creative while inventing ideas, but be disciplined while implementing them.

Develop a compelling change vision that inspires employees with purpose and is aligned to the organisation’s strategy, values and beliefs

The flowers are so beautiful, but God's love is infinitely stronger for us than the beauty of ALL flowers and all beautiful things combined!

Coleridge wrote a poem called ‘The Eolian Harp,’ in which he explored the notion of music slumbering on its instrument. It's a gorgeous poem! It moves through thoughts and moods of the soul as if we're all but harps waiting for a breeze to pass through us to animate us. I feel the same way about art: that it is something that on many levels colonises you, gets inside you and changes you from the inside out. I find that happens with books, too. After I’ve read a book, for a couple of days afterwards I think in the patterns of the book’s writing, because the act of reading is an act of organising your own thought process. If you are reading someone else’s writing, you are having to organise your perception along someone else’s structure. So if I read a book by Terry Pratchett, a few days later there is still a little Terry Pratchettness to my thoughts. When I read something by Catherynne Valente, for quite a few days there is a kind of ‘jewelled’ quality to my thoughts. To read a book is to let someone else reach inside me and reorganise me. As a writer, I find it very difficult to start writing immediately after having read another writer's book. I have to digest it first, and let the influence pass…

One should never forget the main aim in a debate, inside and outside the organisations, in political rallies, in Parliament and other government structures, is that we should emerge from that debate, however sharp our differences might have been, stronger, closer and more united and confident that ever before.

Today everybody admits that something is wrong with the world, and the critics of Christianity are the very people who feel this most. The most violent attacks on religion come from those who are most anxious to change the world, and they attack Christianity because they think that it is an obstructive force that stands in the way of a real reform of human life. There has seldom been a time in which men were more dissatisfied with life and the more conscious of the need for deliverance, and if they turn away from Christianity it is because they feel that Christianity is a servant of the established order and that it has no real power or will to change the world and to rescue man from his present difficulties. They have lost their faith in the old spiritual traditions that inspired civilization in the past, and they tend to look for a solution in some external practical remedy such as communism, or the scientific organisation of life; something definite and objective that can be applied to society as a whole.

For organisations to become truly sustainable we believe it is essential to create a new organisation model: a more cooperative leader, a new way for people to cooperate inside the organisation and a new way for organisations to be measured by society.

Retire from work, not from life.

Talking nonsense is as difficult for an intelligent person as talking sense is for an idiot.

Keep in mind that the achievements of every successful person, product and organisation were once no more than aspirations. This is where you are right now.

The best things in life are free but impossible to buy...

Through your influence, vision, ethics and authenticity you create a better reality for your family, community and organisation, where those around you and those who follow you are inspired to dream, learn and act

The very same bourgeois mentality which extols the manufacturing division of labour, the life-long annexation of the worker to a partial operation, and the unconditional subordination of the detail worker to capital, extols them as an organisation of labour which increases productivity - denounces just as loudly every kind of deliberate social control and regulation of the social process of production, denounces it as an invasion of the inviolable property rights, liberty and self-determining genius of the individual capitalist. It is characteristic that the inspired apologists of the factory system can find nothing worse to say of any proposal for the general organisation of social labour, than that it would transform the whole of society into a factory.

If we take all possible eventualities into consideration about the creation of our universe, it comes down to three radically different alternatives. First, the universe has been created supernaturally by a divine entity (the theistic principle). Second, everything exists as the result of natural occurrences devoid of any divine, creative, or naturally-inspired organising force (the atheistic principle). Finally, our universe exists because it was created by intelligent beings – most probably, beings similar to us (the anthropic principle). I provisionally believe that the last alternative, given the circumstances in which humanity now finds itself, is the most likely scenario.

There is a curious phenomenon in Western intellectual life, namely that of being right at the wrong time. To be right at the wrong time is far, far worse than having been wrong for decades on end. In the estimation of many intellectuals, to be right at the wrong time is the worst possible social faux pas; like telling an off-colour joke at the throning of a bishop. In short, it is in unforgivable bad taste. There was never a good time, for example, to be anti-communist. Those who early warned of the dangers of bolshevism were regarded as lacking in compassion for the suffering of the masses under tsarism, as well as lacking the necessary imagination to “build” a better world. Then came the phase of denial of the crimes of communism, when to base one’s anti-communism on such phenomena as organised famine and the murder of millions was regarded as the malicious acceptance of ideologically-inspired lies and calumnies. When finally the catastrophic failure of communism could no longer be disguised, and all the supposed lies were acknowledged to have been true, to be anti-communist became tasteless in a different way: it was harping on pointlessly about what everyone had always known to be the case. The only good anti-communist was a mute anti-communist.

To illustrate: A man with 314 employees joined one of these courses. For years, he had driven and criticised and condemned his employees without stint or discretion. Kindness, words of appreciation and encouragement were alien to his lips. After studying the principles discussed in this book, this employer sharply altered his philosophy of life. His organisation is now inspired with a new loyalty, a new enthusiasm, a new spirit of teamwork. Three hundred and fourteen enemies have been turned into 314 friends. As he proudly said in a speech before the class: ‘When I used to walk through my establishment, no one greeted me. My employees actually looked the other way when they saw me approaching. But now they are all my friends and even the janitor calls me by my first name.’ This employer gained more profit, more leisure and – what is infinitely more important – he found far more happiness in his business and in his home.

Idealism, particularly idealism of a cultural or artistic kind, has become such a rare phenomenon in the contemporary world that it may often be hard for us to feel our way into the spiritual background of much of the art, music, and literature that burst upon an unsuspecting European public in the last years of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th. It has become fashionable to suppose that what we have come to term variously “modern art”, “modern music”, or simply “modernism” took its origins in some collective artistic rejection of the styles and norms of the past, and in an adoption of a sceptical and anti-idealistic world view. While it is true that the “iconoclastic” movements of expressionism, futurism, dada, and early surrealism relied for much of their public impact on shock-tactics and a philosophy of ‘making it new’, a close study of their artistic programmes shows that their primary concern was less the destruction of the past than the reinterpretation of both past and present in terms of a visionary future, a hoped-for world in which the artist, like some divinely inspired child, would endow mankind with a new innocence, exorcising from it the demons of war, revolution, technology, and social organisation. Such a transformed humanity would be a worthy successor to the mankind of previous ages

Dotcom believes one of the reasons he was targeted was his support for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. He says he was compelled to reach out to the site after US soldier Bradley Manning leaked documents to it. The infamous video recording of the Apache gunship gunning down a group of Iraqis (some of whom, despite widespread belief to the contrary, were later revealed to have been armed), including two Reuters journalists, was the trigger. “Wow, this is really crazy,” Dotcom recalls thinking, watching the black-and-white footage and hearing the operators of the helicopter chat about firing on the group. He made a €20,000 donation to Wikileaks through Megaupload’s UK account. “That was one of the largest donations they got,” he says. According to Dotcom, the US, at the time, was monitoring Wikileaks and trying better to understand its support base. “My name must have popped right up.” The combination of a leaking culture and a website dedicated to producing leaked material would horrify the US government, he says. A willing leaker and a platform on which to do it was “their biggest enemy and their biggest fear . . . If you are in a corrupt government and you know how much fishy stuff is going on in the background, to you, that is the biggest threat — to have a site where people can anonymously submit documents.” Neil MacBride was appointed to the Wikileaks case, meaning Dotcom shares prosecutors with Assange. “I think the Wikileaks connection got me on the radar.” Dotcom believes the US was most scared of the threat of inspiration Wikileaks posed. He also believes it shows just how many secrets the US has hidden from the public and the rest of the world. “That’s why they are going after that so hard. Only a full transparent government will have no corruption and no back door deals or secret organisations or secret agreements. The US is the complete opposite of that. It is really difficult to get any information in the US, so whistleblowing is the one way you can get to information and provide information to the public.

Je dus faire très tôt la connaissance d'un syndrome très répandu parmi les militants noirs. En peu de mots, ils confondaient leurs activités politiques avec l'affirmation de leur virilité. Ils pensaient - et certains continuent à le penser - que le fait d'être un homme noir leur donnait des droits sur les femmes noires. Ces hommes pensaient que les femmes noires menaçaient les acquis de leur masculinité - et particulièrement celles qui prenaient des initiatives et travaillaient à devenir des leaders de leur plein droit. Les hommes de l'organisation de Karenga me harcelèrent en m'enjoignant de redistribuer mon énergie et de l'utiliser à donner à mon homme force et inspiration, afin qu'il puisse mettre plus efficacement ses talents au servcie de la lutte pour la libération des Noirs. p.189

In theory, if some holy book misrepresented reality, its disciples would sooner or later discover this, and the text’s authority would be undermined. Abraham Lincoln said you cannot deceive everybody all the time. Well, that’s wishful thinking. In practice, the power of human cooperation networks depends on a delicate balance between truth and fiction. If you distort reality too much, it will weaken you, and you will not be able to compete against more clear-sighted rivals. On the other hand, you cannot organise masses of people effectively without relying on some fictional myths. So if you stick to unalloyed reality, without mixing any fiction with it, few people will follow you. If you used a time machine to send a modern scientist to ancient Egypt, she would not be able to seize power by exposing the fictions of the local priests and lecturing the peasants on evolution, relativity and quantum physics. Of course, if our scientist could use her knowledge in order to produce a few rifles and artillery pieces, she could gain a huge advantage over pharaoh and the crocodile god Sobek. Yet in order to mine iron ore, build blast furnaces and manufacture gunpowder the scientist would need a lot of hard-working peasants. Do you really think she could inspire them by explaining that energy divided by mass equals the speed of light squared? If you happen to think so, you are welcome to travel to present-day Afghanistan or Syria and try your luck. Really powerful human organisations – such as pharaonic Egypt, the European empires and the modern school system – are not necessarily clear-sighted. Much of their power rests on their ability to force their fictional beliefs on a submissive reality. That’s the whole idea of money, for example. The government makes worthless pieces of paper, declares them to be valuable and then uses them to compute the value of everything else. The government has the power to force citizens to pay taxes using these pieces of paper, so the citizens have no choice but to get their hands on at least some of them. Consequently, these bills really do become valuable, the government officials are vindicated in their beliefs, and since the government controls the issuing of paper money, its power grows. If somebody protests that ‘These are just worthless pieces of paper!’ and behaves as if they are only pieces of paper, he won’t get very far in life.

You find nothing like that among humans. Yes, human groups may have distinct social systems, but these are not genetically determined, and they seldom endure for more than a few centuries. Think of twentieth-century Germans, for example. In less than a hundred years the Germans organised themselves into six very different systems: the Hohenzollern Empire, the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich, the German Democratic Republic (aka communist East Germany), the Federal Republic of Germany (aka West Germany), and finally democratic reunited Germany. Of course the Germans kept their language and their love of beer and bratwurst. But is there some unique German essence that distinguishes them from all other nations, and that has remained unchanged from Wilhelm II to Angela Merkel? And if you do come up with something, was it also there 1,000 years ago, or 5,000 years ago? The (unratified) Preamble of the European Constitution begins by stating that it draws inspiration ‘from the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe, from which “have developed the universal values of the inviolable and inalienable rights of the human person, democracy, equality, freedom and the rule of law’.3 This may easily give one the impression that European civilisation is defined by the values of human rights, democracy, equality and freedom. Countless speeches and documents draw a direct line from ancient Athenian democracy to the present-day EU, celebrating 2,500 years of European freedom and democracy. This is reminiscent of the proverbial blind man who takes hold of an elephant’s tail and concludes that an elephant is a kind of brush. Yes, democratic ideas have been part of European culture for centuries, but they were never the whole. For all its glory and impact, Athenian democracy was a half-hearted experiment that survived for barely 200 years in a small corner of the Balkans. If European civilisation for the past twenty-five centuries has been defined by democracy and human rights, what are we to make of Sparta and Julius Caesar, of the Crusaders and the conquistadores, of the Inquisition and the slave trade, of Louis XIV and Napoleon, of Hitler and Stalin? Were they all intruders from some foreign civilisation?

So is he a radical?” non-Muslims often asked when I told them about the Sheikh. “Not at all,” I’d say, assuming we were all speaking in post-9/11 code. “Of course not.” And I’d meant it. He is not a radical. Or rather, not their kind of radical. His radicalism is of entirely another caliber. He’s an extremist quietist, calling on Muslims to turn away from politics and to leave behind the frameworks of thought popularised by Islamists in recent centuries. Akram’s call for an apolitical Islam unpicked the conditioning of a generation of Muslims, raised on the works of Abu l’Ala Maududi and Sayyid Qutb and their nineteenth-century forerunners. These ideologues aimed to make Islam relevant to the sociopolitical struggles facings Muslims coping with modernity. Their works helped inspire revolutions, coups, and constitutions. But while these thinkers equated faith with political action, the Sheikh believed that politics was puny. He was powered by a certainty that we are just passing through this earth and that mundane quests for land or power miss Islam’s point. Compared with the men fighting for worldly turf, Akram was far more uncompromising: turn away from quests for nation-states or parliamentary seats and toward God. “Allah doesn’t want people to complain to other people,” he said. “People must complain to Allah, not to anyone else.” All the time spent fulminating, organising, protesting? It could be saved for prayer. So unjust governments run the world? Let them. They don’t, anyway. Allah does, and besides, real believers have the next world to worry about.

follow you. If you used a time machine to send a modern scientist to ancient Egypt, she would not be able to seize power by exposing the fictions of the local priests and lecturing the peasants on evolution, relativity and quantum physics. Of course, if our scientist could use her knowledge in order to produce a few rifles and artillery pieces, she could gain a huge advantage over pharaoh and the crocodile god Sobek. Yet in order to mine iron ore, build blast furnaces and manufacture gunpowder the scientist would need a lot of hard-working peasants. Do you really think she could inspire them by explaining that energy divided by mass equals the speed of light squared? If you happen to think so, you are welcome to travel to present-day Afghanistan or Syria and try your luck. Really powerful human organisations – such as pharaonic Egypt, the European empires and the modern school system – are not necessarily clear-sighted. Much of their power rests on their ability to force their fictional beliefs on a submissive reality. That’s the whole idea of money, for example. The government makes worthless pieces of paper, declares them to be valuable and then uses them to compute the value of everything else. The government has the power to force citizens to pay taxes using these pieces of paper, so the citizens have no choice but to get their hands on at least some of them. Consequently, these bills really do become valuable, the government officials are vindicated in their beliefs, and since the government controls the issuing of paper money, its power grows. If somebody protests that ‘These are just worthless pieces of paper!’ and behaves as if they are only pieces of paper, he won’t get very far in life.

Ne devancez pas les choses, prenez-les comme elles viennent, un moment à la fois. Tout s'organise et se développe dans le temps

Anyone seeking to draw closer to God needs to curb the horizontal and ascend to God vertically,’ he said. ‘And this means giving oneself fully to God – with all one’s heart, body, mind and soul. There mustn’t be any dark corners.’ Skimming the surface wasn’t an option, he stressed. ‘People often tend to merely skate around the edges of religion, but what they really need is to plunge into its depths like deep-sea divers looking for treasures. Too many people nowadays make selective choices from various faiths – the New Age approach, but never embrace any one of them fully,’ said Nasr. It was true, so many people didn’t believe in organised religion but liked to take the best from every religion or spiritual teaching. ‘The most direct means of communication with God,’ he concluded, ‘are prayer and dhikr.

Nul ne conteste l'appartenance de cette savane au Brésil et don droit d'en user comme bon lui semble. La querelle ne surgit que plus haut vers le nord. Une belle question de droit international: à qui appartient une richesse essentielle à la survie générale de l'humanité ? La forêt amazonienne est la première réserve de biodiversité de la planète (le cinquième des espèces de plantes, le cinquième des espèces d'oiseaux, le dixième des espèces de mammifères). Et, plus vaste foret du monde, elle freine les progrès de l'effet de serre. Dans ces conditions, à qui appartient la forêt amazonienne? Pour obtenir le poste de directeur général de l'organisation mondiale du commerce, le français Pascal Lamy était venu faire compagne au brésil. Quelqu'un l'interroger sur l'Amazonie: Faut-il envisager pour elle un statut particulier? - la question pourrait être évoquée, répond le candidat. Il croyait s'être montré prudent. Il vient d'allumer un incendie qui mettra des semaines à s'éteindre. Qu'en se le dise, s'exclame la presse de São Paolo et vocifèrent les politiques, jamais, au grand jamais le Brésil n'acceptera la moindre limitation de sa souveraineté sur quelque partie que ce soit de son territoire! Combat des Titans: la plus grande ferme du monde face à la plus grande foret du monde. Pour nourrir la planète, faut-il l'asphyxier?? Et bataille de juristes: Amazonie, Antarctique: le plus chaud, le très froid; le très humide, le très glacé. Comment préserver ces deux espaces essentiels à notre survie??

Nul ne conteste l'appartenance de cette savane au Brésil et son droit d'en user comme bon lui semble. La querelle ne surgit que plus haut vers le nord. Une belle question de droit international: à qui appartient une richesse essentielle à la survie générale de l'humanité ? La forêt amazonienne est la première réserve de biodiversité de la planète (le cinquième des espèces de plantes, le cinquième des espèces d'oiseaux, le dixième des espèces de mammifères). Et, plus vaste foret du monde, elle freine les progrès de l'effet de serre. Dans ces conditions, à qui appartient la forêt amazonienne? Pour obtenir le poste de directeur général de l'organisation mondiale du commerce, le français Pascal Lamy était venu faire compagne au brésil. Quelqu'un l'interroger sur l'Amazonie: Faut-il envisager pour elle un statut particulier? - la question pourrait être évoquée, répond le candidat. Il croyait s'être montré prudent. Il vient d'allumer un incendie qui mettra des semaines à s'éteindre. Qu'en se le dise, s'exclame la presse de São Paolo et vocifèrent les politiques, jamais, au grand jamais le Brésil n'acceptera la moindre limitation de sa souveraineté sur quelque partie que ce soit de son territoire! Combat des Titans: la plus grande ferme du monde face à la plus grande foret du monde. Pour nourrir la planète, faut-il l'asphyxier?? Et bataille de juristes: Amazonie, Antarctique: le plus chaud, le très froid ; le très humide, le très glacé. Comment préserver ces deux espaces essentiels à notre survie??

.....the discourse of the Qur’an-e-Sharif, rich in parable and allegory, metaphor and symbol, has been an inexhaustible well-spring of inspiration, lending itself to a wide spectrum of interpretations. This freedom of interpretation is a generosity which the Qur'an confers upon all believers, uniting them in the conviction that All-Merciful Allah will forgive them if they err in their sincere attempts to understand His word. Happily, as a result, the Holy Book continues to guide and illuminate the thought and conduct of Muslims belonging to different communities of interpretation and spiritual affiliation, from century to century, in diverse cultural environments. The Noble Qur’an extends its principle of pluralism also to adherents of other faiths. It affirms that each has a direction and path to which they turn so that all should strive for good works, in the belief that, wheresoever they may be, Allah will bring them together. - His Highness the Aga Khan, The Ismaili Center London, October 19, 2003 ‘Word of God, Art of Man: The Qur’an and its Creative Expressions’ An International Colloquium organised by Institute of Ismaili Studies

[A]bove all, it has been the Qur'anic notion of the universe, as an expression of Allah's will and creation, that has inspired in diverse Muslim communities, generations of artists, scientists and philosophers? Scientific pursuits, philosophic inquiry and artistic endeavour are all seen as the response of the faithful to the recurring call of the Qur'an to ponder the creation as a way to understand Allah's benevolent majesty. As Sura al-Baqara proclaims: 'Wherever you turn, there is the face of Allah.'" His Highness the Aga Khan's 2003 Address to the International Colloquium 'Word of God, Art of Man: The Qur'an and its Creative Expressions' organised by The Institute of Ismaili Studies (London, United Kingdom)

Only a Systemic approach of organisations can produce sustainable changes because companies are ecosystems and as such are alive

One promising way of redefining the meaning of ‘economist’ is to look to those who have gone beyond new economic thinking to new economic doing: the innovators who are evolving the economy one experiment at a time. Their impact is already reflected in the take-off of new business models, in the proven dynamism of the collaborative commons, in the vast potential of digital currencies and in the inspiring possibilities of regenerative design. As Donella Meadows made clear, the power of self-organisation—the ability of a system to add, change and evolve its own structure—is a high leverage point for whole system change. And that unleashes a revolutionary thought: it makes economists of us all. If economies change by evolving, then every experiment—be it a new enterprise model, complementary currency or open-source collaboration —helps to diversify, select and amplify a new economic future.

The unscrupulous political movers, dishonest political beggars or financial political parasites used by politicians, political organisations, political coalitions, or political parties, the unscrupulous political black propagandists used by current or former politicians, the lobbyists and power hungry politicians with impaired conscience, the Machiavellian manipulators and manipulations of current or former politicians: should never politicise international legal and judicial institutions which uphold justice, fight against criminality and end impunity. ~ Angelica Hopes, an excerpt from “Sfidatopia” Book 2, Stronzata Trilogy Genre: inspirational, political, literary novel © Ana Angelica Abaya van Doorn

Hans Rosling, a Swedish statistician and renowned public speaker, founded an organisation called Gapminder with his son Ola Rosling and Ola’s wife Anna, which addresses the negative news bias. In Hans’ inspiring and insightful TED Talk ‘The best stats you’ve ever seen’, he shares the results of an original study he conducted among Swedish university students called ‘the chimpanzee test’.10

[On action filled leadership] Telling your team what to do is showmanship. Showing people how to do it is leadership. Leading for the purpose of visual effect will not accomplish the vision.

We put our thoughts, knowledge and ideas into what we write. We fill it with our passions, sometimes creating new businesses, new jobs, new organisations that work to make the world better than the one we already have. We write to discover and share what we think, what we feel, and what we know. We write to discover gems of ideas that nudge the world a little. Sometimes we start seismic revolutions, using words to form nations or write laws that embody our principles. We hold people to account and we inspire them. We connect.

Simple ideas INVOLVE individuals; INSPIRE crowds; INNOVATE HUMANITY

When your working in an organisation with all abilities and talents but at that time you impacts are not really felt. This is not so, your impacts are mostly felt in life when you are no more there.

When your working in an organisation with all your abilities and talents but at that time your impacts are not really felt. This is not so, your impacts are mostly felt in life when you are no more there.

Bunkers provide safety but deprive you of the sunshine.

It’s cozy to shut down the windows and draw the curtains. But, this coziness comes at the cost of disconnecting from opportunities. Is this a good trade off?

Someday, someone will create a better version of your work. Progress does not wait for you to catch up.

Retire before you expire.

Retire before you expire. But, retire from work, not from life.

You can have only one conversation at a time. Don’t think when you are in conversation with someone.

You can have only one conversation at a time. Don’t converse with yourself when you are in conversation with someone.

Organisations always want input with creativity and innovation but often have hierarchical control in place.

If you are not willing to empower or encourage people, you should not be a leader. You need to like people and like the vision of your organisation to do it.

When we realise obstacles are a rite of passage on the journey towards success, we see the them as mile stones rather than mill stones.

Groups, teams and organisations are operating systems. Individuals don't exist as disconnected modules from others, from situations, from contexts... Build up perspective no only in yourself and your now, specially also to connections to others.

So instead of forcing top-down organisational charts, which is an outdated archaic legacy tool from the 1800’s and hasn't evolved, embrace organic growth with inter-related responsible teams that are autonomous and self-organised teams.

We need to also make decisions in smaller batches, so that can be faster & economically viable.What I see way too often: teams can go fast, real fast! But if the rest of the organisation doesn’t keep up, it defeats the object.

some abduction accounts may also regard ritual satanic abuse as another childhood trauma that might surface in a similar fashion. But here it is necessary to strike a particular note of caution. While it is an undeniable fact that some people practice black magic, and some people sexually abuse children as part of organised paedophile rings, many believe that ritual satanic abuse is a modern myth, unsubstantiated by any hard evidence, and inspired by a mixture of sexual abuse, black magic, False Memory Syndrome, and simple exaggerations and lies.

Be innovative in leading people. Within our organisations we are continously innovating procedures, systems and technology but we fail to consider how we can innovate in our leadership.

Being a true leader, as opposed to a competent manager, requires a willingness to get your hands dirty. I have said before that I do not expect anyone to do a job I cannot do myself. While this is clearly unrealistic as a company grows and expands, the perception of being willing to step in and assist must remain. The weight of leadership includes staying calm while others panic and coming up with solutions rather than joining the chorus of complaints. The Covid-19 pandemic has certainly helped distinguish the leaders from the managers. Leaders are prepared to take responsibility when things go wrong, even if the true responsibility lies with someone else. Leaders are visible. Leaders have a vision, even if it is only short term. I don’t really believe in long-term planning. I make up the rules of the game based on one-year plans. This means I always retain visibility and control. Five years is too long a time to have any certainty that the objectives will be met. Leadership is not a popularity contest, but it also should not inspire fear. Leaders earn respect and loyalty, recognising that these take a long time to earn and a second to lose. A leader is not scared of collaboration and listening to the opinions of others, as well as accepting help when it’s needed. Leadership is not a quality that you are born with, it is something that you learn over time. I was not a leader in my Coronation days, and I am the first to admit that I made a lot of mistakes. Even at African Harvest, as much as I achieved financial success and tried different techniques to earn respect, I never truly managed to deal with the unruly investment team. But, having built on years of experience, by the time I hit my stride at Sygnia, I was a leader. Within any organisation of substantial size, there is space for more than one leader, whether they head up divisions or the organisation itself. There are several leaders across Sygnia weaving the fabric of our success. I am no longer the sole leader, having passed the baton on to others in pursuit of my own dreams. To quote the Harvard Business Review, ‘The competencies most frequently required for success at the top of any sizable business include strategic orientation, market insight, results orientation, customer impact, collaboration and influence, organisational development, team leadership, and change leadership.’ That is what I looked for in my successor, and that is what I found in David. I am confident that all the leaders I have groomed are more than capable of taking the company forwards.

What can happen if employees can take back more energy to their homes than they came with?

As leaders you can never tell people that they are empowered, all you can do is to create the environment and give people the skills and tools to enable them to grow. You feel valued for the part that you play and from that you breed loyalty. Loyalty not only to the team, the leadership, but to the organisation as a whole.

Leadership is largely ignored by recent liberal theorists. I suspect that the very idea of leadership has a non-egalitarian and authoritarian quality to it, best left to those (inspired by Max Webber) with a fascination for charisma or revolution; or left to fascists or management consultants and organisational psychologists. But this neglect by liberal theorists comes at a cost. Institutions and procedures are run by imperfect human beings and without ongoing maintenance, care and investment they decay. While I do not claim that 'leadership' is a sufficient response to the challenges of institutional decay and renewal, it may well be a necessary one.

Le spectacle au travail a pour conséquence une déresponsabilisation sans pareille des personnes. Il produit une mise à distance entre l'individu et sa fonction qui induit une forme de "déréalisation" des effets de son travail. Le fonctionnement bureaucratique et la division du travail contribuent à diluer les responsabilités au sein des organisations et le spectacle vient encore renforcer ce phénomène : ce que les individus prennent au sérieux c'est essentiellement leur rôle dans le spectacle -au point d'en souffrir- et non pas la finalité de leur travail. Comment, dans ces conditions, pourrait-on sérieusement se préoccuper des conséquences de son travail et avoir quelque considération éthique ?

From Mom-Pop stores to Organised Retail, from Organised Retail to e-Commerce, from e-commerce back to Mom-Pop stores, commerce in the world is going to come a full circle.

When you feel stuck in your creative pursuits, it doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with you. You haven’t lost your touch or run out of creative juice. It just means you don’t yet have enough raw material to work with. If it feels like the well of inspiration has run dry, it’s because you need a deeper well full of examples, illustrations, stories, statistics, diagrams, analogies, metaphors, photos, mindmaps, conversation notes, quotes—anything that will help you argue for your perspective or fight for a cause you believe in.

Inspiration is one of the most rare and precious experiences in life. It is the essential fuel for doing your best work, yet it’s impossible to call up inspiration on demand. You can Google the answer to a question, but you can’t Google a feeling.

a note could include a passage from a book or article that you were inspired by; a photo or image from the web with your annotations; or a bullet-point list of your meandering thoughts on a topic, among many other examples.

Those who dedicate themselves to planting and nurturing culture, people and organisation will reap significant growth and change.

Every entrepreneur is free to decide how to structure their company, how to embed and lead the people in it, and how to organise the implementation of tasks. Smart entrepreneurs will try to understand the different options, methods and approaches available before implementing, modifying or rejecting them.

Leading is about people and their wellbeing the first foundation to the organisations wellbeing.

The myth of the writer sitting down before a completely blank page, or the artist at a completely blank canvas, is just that—a myth. Professional creatives constantly draw on outside sources of inspiration—their own experiences and observations, lessons gleaned from successes and failures alike, and the ideas of others. If there is a secret to creativity, it is that it emerges from everyday efforts to gather and organize our influences.

Consequently, both political and business organisations are hunting down the leaders who have an aptitude to inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and achieve more.

Clare also got to know author and adventurer Fitzroy Maclean (one of the many supposed ‘inspirations’ for James Bond) during his stint with the SOE in Cairo. Paddy Leigh Fermor was another of the colourful SOE characters whom she could not avoid meeting at the SOE boys’ wild parties, which took place in a grand rented mansion in the Gezira district, and whose guests ranged from the British ambassador to Egypt’s King Farouk. It was true that the SOE did not always maintain the low profile one might have assumed from a supposedly secret organisation. There was usually always at least one SOE representative, drink in hand, on the Shepheard’s hotel veranda. And the location of the SOE headquarters was the worst kept secret in the city. Fitzroy Maclean recounted his first visit, when having whispered the street address to a ‘villainous-looking’ taxi driver the Egyptian just nodded – ‘ah, you want Secret Service …

J'ai de plus en plus, l'obsédante impression d'écrire pour les rescapés du futur : l'immense iceberg se profile à l'horizon, qui va croiser notre navire entouré de brume. Il y a quelques années encore, on pouvait croire à une organisation de combat ouverte et officielle, à la vertu immédiate de l'information, de la polémique, voire au vote pour tenter d'édifier un barrage contre le pire. C'est fini, aujourd'hui. D'ici une trentaine d'années, la plupart des matériaux indispensables à la continuité de notre civilisation industrielle vont manquer irréductiblement ; les riches sols d'Europe commencent à s'appauvrir sous l'effet de l'agriculture industrielle, et la pollution marine s'accumule, catastrophe après catastrophe, de marée noire en marée noire ; le Tiers Monde se désertifie et la famine y galope comme jadis les pestes ; le choix nucléaire va couvrir le monde de nos enfants d'un semis de pyramides obligatoirement épaissies tous les 25 ans à cause de leur danger radioactif, grâce à un matériau énergétique qui disparaîtra complètement à la veille de l'an 2000. Ce n'est pas un tableau poussé au noir ; c'est à peine un survol. Et vous croyez encore échapper à la catastrophe ? Si l'homme ne disparaît pas, victime de sa propre connerie, de sa pathologie du Pouvoir et de son sexisme, s'il reste, comme je veux le croire, des rescapé(e)s du Futur aux couleurs d'Apocalypse, peut-être quelques écrits comme celui-ci n'auront pas été tout à fait futiles. Si seulement, dès aujourd'hui, les femmes s'unissaient pour de bon ! Oui, si les femmes, les jeunes femmes d'aujourd'hui prenaient subitement conscience que le féminisme, c'est beaucoup plus que le féminisme, et que le cri le plus radicalement vrai est le féminisme ou la mort !

Individuals in any organisation [...] need to see beyond their wallets and use a better measure of progress.

To be able to co-create in your organisation, you need to connect information and relationships, both to be driven by transparency and fairness, focus on learning and what is achieved—rather than just what it’s been done.

Management by objective (MBO) which means purposeful leadership to achieve a strategic objective is one of the keys to successful airline management. MBO is also referred to as Management by Results – MBR. This is a system where subordinates coordinate with their superiors to achieve the desired objective. Under this principle, the goals of the organization are linked to employee goals. Management objectives are made to meet operational objectives. And both management and operational objectives are made to achieve organizational long-term objectives. Organisational objectives are linked to the vision and mission of the organisation. The team is made aware of the achievable goals of the organization and unified effort is exerted in that direction; on the other hand, the employee whose performance is noteworthy will be rewarded by the organization. This builds a transparent and clean work culture on one hand and the other unclogs communication blocks.

People and organisations should want to be associated with you as a brand. A sign of a depleted and irrelevant brand is unwillingness of your market or peers to associate with you.

You choose the leaders and place them strategically around the table of your vision and mission. They are already around you because of some degree of loyalty, so if you continue putting 80% effort in enhancing loyalty that already exists, you will end up going into overkill and igniting a toxic level of internal office politics that was not originally existent in your organisation.

Our ultimate goal is to empower people to look at organisations and to compare them so that organisations can be valued by what they do – free from speculation.

The 4 "I" in Simple Ideas: Involve individuals; Inspire crowds; Instil creativity; Innovate humanity !

If my brain isn’t overloaded with information to be organised, I will be up all night twiddling my thumbs.

The opposite of inconvenience is innovation. Where you dont innovate there'll be inconvenience, where the is inconvenience shall be innovation

Pour illustrer ceci et mieux faire comprendre ce que nous voulons dire, le meilleur exemple nous paraît être celui des Principes du calcul infinitésimal, ouvrage dont on parle peu et qui, bien qu’il ait été publié après la Seconde Guerre mondiale, est typique de l’inspiration première et de la méthode de René Guénon. On aurait d’ailleurs tort de le considérer comme un écrit d’importance secondaire car il contient, notamment dans les considérations développées sur la notion d’« intégration », un enseignement essentiel dont on ne trouve pas l’équivalent dans le reste de l’oeuvre guénonienne. Cet enseignement s ’appuie conjointement sur un examen critique des théories avancées par Leibniz pour justifier la méthode infinitésimale, de sorte que la lumière de l’Intellect primordial est projetée ici, non pas sur une doctrine ou un symbole traditionnel, mais bien sur les thèses d’un philosophe « semi-profane ». On juge mieux, par cet exemple, comment certaines méprises ont pu naître au sujet de la portée exacte de la doctrine exposée par Guénon : s’il est bien évident qu’aucune organisation initiatique n’a jamais fondé sa méthode spirituelle sur la lecture de Leibniz, la compréhension parfaite du symbolisme mathématique exposé au chapitre XVIII du Symbolisme de la Croix implique, en revanche, une connaissance approfondie de la méthode différentielle et du calcul intégral.

Corruption is an inferior value that feeds and climbs on the ladder of impunity and when it is strong it goes to the battlefield to fight with the superior value of integrity and if the inferior value of corruption wins the battle that begins the announcement of the funeral day of any organisation or nation.

I believe in our organisations, we can mix business with pleasure because as service extraordinaires it is always a pleasure to do business with our guests.