Dogs are animals of integrity. We have much to learn from them.
Month: Oct 2009
Stop doing what you are doing and watch Jacqueline Novogratz!
Small things add up to make larger things! This concept of “integration” is seen everywhere that we look.
The subject and content of this presentation are fundamental to the future of the world. And the presenter is showing what can be done.
I found this presentation particularly poignant.
By John Lewis
Core differences about how society spends that really need to be understood.
Government spending is fundamentally a different animal than private spending!
Private spending is the essence of the freedom of choice. When you mull over the decision to purchase an item, you are making a very personal decision based on your current income or resources, the prices of the other goods and services you currently purchase or may purchase, and your personal tastes, risk preferences, needs, and wants.
You make so many mental comparisons and tradeoffs when you consider a purchase that they truly cannot be listed. And then you live with the consequences of your choice, for better or worse. If bad, you learn. If good, you enjoy. And the process repeats itself every time you make a buying or investing decision, updated with new personal, private information on the circumstances, choices, and preferences of the individual.
These are hard times for millions – transformation is the only practical option.
I’ve been working with most of my clients recently through painful transformation brought about by the recession.
An interesting metaphor really because, since the first wave of uncertainty in the UK banking system triggered panic, I 
have been picking up on that uncertainty.
That uncertainty feels like it’s stalking the globe at the moment; one has been aware of an underlying fear that was difficult to name and source in me. It has been rather like a deep river in that whilst the surface feels slow moving, currents are moving things powerfully below.
Read more of this Post
In a reversal of business models which are all too common, Ten UK sets out to help customers: what a novel idea!!
The following video describes the need to recruit and train staff who understand the real value and expectation behind asking:
What do you want in the context of … ?
Alex Cheatle describes what they do and how they do it.
Read the article on Real Business here.
By John Lewis
Continuing the theme that extraordinary people are just ….. ordinary.
Another explorer …. who began polar exploration a little later than most of them, has a staggering story of “mind over matter”.
Ann Daniels is the only woman to have become a polar guide for groups walking to both the North and the South Poles. The stories on her web site are quite extraordinary and are told in such a disarmingly easy style that one needs to think 
carefully about what she is actually saying when recounting stories of:
In praise of thoughtful, articulate people who reason their way through life.
Let me say that I know no more about the person who is Neptunus Lex than anyone else who takes the time to read his Blog. And after I justify the sub-heading of this Post I will give you those links to Mariner Lex.
If you have come into the topic just now, then you may want to read the two Posts on fate.
The first Post was published on October 6th, the second Post the next day. In a sense, these Posts connect with the Carrier series by PBS that you can link to here.
The introduction to this Post was published yesterday. The rest of this Post is Lex’s words and published with his written permission.
I don’t tell this story very often. Although the events inside it happened almost 12 years ago, the memory is still fresh, and still painful.
Over the years I’ve told it to two ready rooms, both by way of instruction – a kind of “been there, seen that,” in order to prevent anything like it from ever happening again. But it’s not one of those sea stories you tell over a beer, among friends. It’s a sad story. Maybe I post this one. Maybe I don’t.
Mary King, another example of quiet achievement.
More on people who add up to something …
Through my young son’s school, we meet some of the other parents, as you might expect. As with any individuals, we are frequently learning of interesting aspects to their life stories. No doubt, there are many more private achievement and challenges which they have overcome; but then there are the public achievements.
A theme about flying, pilots and fate.
Many, many pilots whether civil or military or private, have read the book by Ernest K. Gann entitled Fate is the Hunter. Ernest Gann was born a little under a hundred years ago, on October 13th 1910 and died, aged 81, in 1991. He
is known, in the main, as an aviation writer and airline pilot pioneer but achieved much more besides.
Fate is the Hunter is a book about the workings of fate. And this Post is more than a reminder of Ernest Gann’s book and the message it carries, it is also about fate, as Part Two published tomorrow reveals.
Fate or serendipity has happened along to cause a number of recent Posts to be about flying. We had the Post about low-level RAF flight training in North Wales – Mach Loop. Then we had three Posts about air carrier operations prompted by the PBS Series, the first one being published on the 2nd October. Today, circumstance brought me to the Blog of another naval aviator, published by Neptunus Lex. More about him and links to the Blog later.
I want to set the scene by using the words of Ernest K Gann as he starts the preface to his book.
Sir Ranulph Fiennes, a British explorer.
How do we complete a journey? The easy answer is one step at a time; it turns out that that is also the hard answer!
The aspect of integrity that is related to “wholeness” is well illustrated by individuals who show a dedication to something over a long period. By continually taking small steps, the contributions of those steps accumulate to create substantial achievements.
Explorers seem to know a lot about this. They perform some extraordinary feats; and among explorers, one of the
most outstanding is Sir Ranulph Fiennes.
When asked about his approach to climbing Everest at the third attempt in May 2009 and, at age 65, the oldest Briton to do so, he captured the full spirit of separating actions from goals when he said:
Plod forever! Don’t expect to get there. Don’t think there is going to be a top to this mountain. Just plod forever!
His record of exploration is quite staggering, and he also the man who ran seven marathons on seven continents in seven days, shortly after having a heart bypass operation!
Oh, and as there is a faint geographical thread on this blog, he lives in the south west of England. [not far from John, Ed]
By John Lewis
Learning from Dogs 