Of Meerkats and Men

On the RSA blog recently, Matthew Taylor hoped that his readers would be "more responsive to [my post on an advertising campaign using] meerkats than they have recently been to my fascinating posts on public service reform".

Sure enough, the wave of ensuing comments referenced Malcolm Gladwell, Richard Dawkins and memes, affordances, epidemics, Seth Godin and much more. Matthew's response:

So, do I laugh at the brilliant comments already up on this post or cry at how much easier it is to get comments on jokes and adverts than public services and the future of democratic socialism?

I laugh.

And I pledge to write more posts about things that actually interest people rather than reheated versions of the commentariat blather you can read every day in your ‘viewspaper’.

It's the last paragraph that matters. There's no point banging on about dumbing down or bemoaning declining levels of engagement with nice but dull theory. That's just how it is.

So, in the same vein, I know that almost all of you really despise the soundbite and would infinitely prefer to read a 324 page monograph on Systems Thinking and Leadership. But, just in case anyone is feeling frivolous, here's author Bill Tate's take on what's wrong with polishing fish (an analogy for leader development programmes) in a recent audio interview he did for Management-Issues.com.

Audio interview ~ Sample chapter ~ Buy the book

You can also read a sample chapter of Bill's book (it's called The Search for Leadership) here.

Finally, if you insist, you can buy the hardback, the paperback of the e-book here.

[The interview has a nice reference to Simon Caulkin's systems-based argument that looking to individuals to cure systemic problems is a doomed exercise because we live in an organisational economy not an individual economy. Note to The Observer: Axing Simon Caulkin was a bad decision. You'll lose more readers and money than you save.]