Getting near Christmas, and I love the sacred music that gets sung at this time of year. Although this track isn’t Christmas music, it is from the Ukranian Orthodox Christian tradition, and is a haunting and meditative chant. This is from a fine site of russian orthodox music and information. This is an Antiphon, chanted text that is sung in a servics, often in a planisong setting. mp3: Brethern of the Valaam Monestary – First Antiphon of the THE Valaam Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom
I just had lunch with Jessie Sutherland from Worldview Strategies. It was one of those encounters that was a long time in coming: we both seem to run in circles that intersect and I’ve known about her work for about a year but until today we had never met. I first became aware of Jessie’s work through an email inviting me to join a conference call on residential school reconciliation. Following the links, I found her website and her company, Worldview Strategies. Jessie’s life and work is about reconciliation and peacemaking and it intersects with my work on a number …
It’s hard to get enough of Ricardo Semler, the CEO of Brazil’s Semco. In a new article from Strategy+Business he talks about participatory management: Asked why true participative management is still such a rarity, Mr. Semler cites two elements that he says are in sadly short supply: “One, the people in charge wanting to give up control. This tends to eliminate some 80 percent of business people. Two, a profound belief that humankind will work toward its best version, given freedom; that would eliminate the other 20 percent,” he says. The only reason there aren’t more people like Ricardo Semler …
Friday, and time for another mp3 posting. This one is in honour of the fact that yesterday I was promoted to brown belt, which in my tae kwon do training is two belts below black. So to celebrate, here is a solo track played on a Korean flute called a Dae Geum. I love the way this instrument cracks like a trumpet or a sax. I don’t know if there is a reed involved or how the mechanics of it work, but it adds to the despairing feel of the piece. It reminds me of how much martial arts there …
I was in a meeting yesterday, a policy consultation actually, which went quite well. As expectations are sometimes low for these types of meetings, and ours came off as a pretty good time, I spent some time thinking about how we made it work. This was a very typical kind of policy consultation. Government creates a policy, in concert many others, and checks back with the “stakeholderss” (a term I loathe) as to where we should go from here. In this particular consultation, history has made relations between the government and the participants particularly rocky. Consultations are often characterized by …