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Cash flow

February 01, 2012Posted By Michael Doneman

 If I'm a business educator and I'm trying to convince you that an MBA is worth two years of your life and AUD30,000, it's in my interest for you to understand business as complex, difficult and arcane, isn't it? The truth is (at least for the small and micro enterprises we deal with at Edgeware) that business is actually quite simple. It's succeeds or fails on cash flow.

Here's Dickens, in David Copperfield: "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds,
annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. 
 

How trees grow

January 01, 2012Posted By Michael Doneman

 

It sounds counter-intuitive that, while a tree is rooted in the ground, it actually feeds on what it extracts from the air. I think this is a compelling metaphor for business (and life, if it comes to it): we need to be grounded, based, authentic, and at the same time we have to be aware of our environment, of the threats and opportunities borne along by capricious breezes (or cyclones)

Intentionality and Creative Leadership

April 16, 2009Posted By Michael Doneman

I'm fascinated by the emerging field of 'experimental philosophy', where it seems that philosophers are stepping away from their armchairs and using research methods from psychology to tackle philosophical questions.

Like intentionality.

This is interesting enough in itself, but just recently I've been pondering some of the ideas I heard expressed and saw practiced in workshops here with my friend and colleague Paul Natorp, from the Kaos Pilots. Paul's gigs were mainly about 'creative leadership', the kind of leadership that is appropriate to innovation and...


Edgeware's Build Your Business

September 11, 2008Posted By Michael Doneman

 

Edgeware's Build Your Business program is an alternative to business education for new entrepreneurs, and for entrepreneurs who want to re-imagine or grow their businesses. Each time it runs, it changes, because the needs of participants and the dynamics of the group make changes necessary. Edgeware aims to provide more than just a course, because there is no single pathway to success in business. Each participant comes to Edgeware with a different mix of expectations, ideals, capabilities and needs.

So Edgeware aims to provide practical skills and competencies, but also the kinds of...


Competence and Capability

August 28, 2008Posted By Michael Doneman

Having thought about this idea of phronesis  for a while it didn't come as a surprise to learn that the three 'R's' - usually taken to mean reading, writing and 'rithmatic - were originally conceived as

Reading and writing
Reckoning and figuring
Wrighting and wroughting

... where the third 'R' refers to the knowledge of action, of making and undertaking, of phronetic knowledge.

... and brings to mind, again, the distinction between competence and capability, a foundation of skills and competencies which are not ends in...