What with so much going on in the world to tire our eyeballs and adrenal glands, I’ll keep this Quarterly short. Please read on if you are interested in…
– getting to the root of the malaise in the world, that’s found in our monetary systems
– what environmentalists should do as we realise we won’t beat climate change, or
– some of the latest ideas on meaningful leadership in disturbing times
Otherwise, just delete, walk away from your device, breathe deeply, look at the wind swaying in the branches of the trees, and marvel at the wonder of being alive despite all the troubling stuff going on.
Still here? OK…
Money. It’s the root of all evil. Or rather, the way it’s issued. Things are changing fast, sometimes aggressively, as with demonetisation in India. What happens with money will shape the future of humanity. If there’s one free course you do this year it should be ours, starting Feb 19. Sign up here. Once you have done that course you can join us for our free Money and Society Summit in London in April. You will meet awesome people and be gently inducted into the global network of people who have had the veil taken from their eyes.
The summit is part of my University’s celebration of our 10th anniversary, where IFLAS is doing 10 free events. It will be the 2nd summit we have done, the first was in Bali (someone’s gotta). The video of the super speech my MOOC co-author Matthew is here.
You can also get qualified in this field with the Sustainable Exchange certificate course in London, for 5 days from April 19th. You can attend that for 600GBP without enrolling in the University (here). Or you can enrol, do assignments, and receive University credits of 20 points at Masters level, for 795GBP GBP for UK or EU students, and 1167GBP for others (here)
OK, enough sales talk. In November I had the privilege of giving a keynote speech to a group of climate scholars. It was a bit scary as I decided to talk about climate change as a tragedy, not challenge, and what that means for our future work. My background notes on the talk are here. Things are bad. I don’t hold back. I will post this link on our Sustainable Leaders Linked In group, so it would be good to hear your thoughts on the issues raised, over on that thread.
So what does meaningful leadership look like in disturbing times? I discussed this with consultant Mark Drewell in that enclave of contrarian cultural creatives who still drink great coffee and homebrews. The town of Totnes. He has had some “fun” chats with police about the coming collapse. As a paid speaker, not arrestee. We recorded it on Facebook Live, so you can see the recording here. That followed my first three attempts at IFLAS live conversations. Lynne Franks, is the PR and womens leadership guru, also known for inspiring the TV show Absolutely Fabulous. We discussed a bunch of things which we labelled “Eat, Pray, Lead” because we were so pleased with ourselves for catching up in Ubud. I also discuss with long term Bali resident Stephen, who is a world expert on complementary currencies. We discussed why development NGOs and donors aren’t very good at backing such innovations, so what next. I then caught up with fellow “Young Global Leader” Toshi, who founded and runs a dynamic NGO bringing eco tech to rural poor communities around the world. We discussed leadership. You can hear him here and feel useless by comparison. Or inspired. Yep, let’s try inspired.
Leadership is a theme that my university works on in various sectors, such as health and education, so we summarised our research and outputs in 2016 here.
If you want to work in developing leaders then the best course you can do for that is, obviously, an MA with me, at IFLAS, and it happens to be less than 8,000 pounds, and can be done with just 4 week-long visits to the UK. The feeder courses have got rave reviews, with people becoming new colleagues as a result (“best educational experience ever” said one senior manager of an environmental group). If interested, then the course info is here, and please contact me after looking at it.
Our MBAs are also focused on leadership and we launched our alumni network for them recently, bringing together hundreds of our executive students from around the world. We encourage ongoing reflective practice, and so I shared some thoughts on the books I read during 2016, and invited the alumni to do the same. My thoughts on those books are here. I recommend doing it as a gratifying exercise as well as a learning one.
That link to sign up to our phenomenal online course: http://mooc1.communityforge.net
Time to go look at some wind in some trees…
Until April,
Thx for reading, Jem
Upcoming public talks and workshops.
London, April 22, Money and Society Summit, University of Cumbria London Campus, chairing and facilitating. Info here.
Barcelona, May 10-14, Complementary and Community Currency Summit, two papers plus co-facilitating PhD student workshop. Info here.
Lancaster, July 18, Critical Perspectives on Leadership, University of Cumbria. Limited external participation. Request attendance via pete.boyd@cumbria.ac.uk
Brussels, October 12-15, multiple panel presentations at the International Leadership Association conference, on Leadership in Turbulent Times. Info here.
Professor Jem Bendell 