Four ingredients of leadership

I was asked by my Alma Mater, Victoria University of Wellington, to give a 90-minute lecture on leadership last week to students visiting New Zealand from Peking University and the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. (My half-serious suggestion that I spoke Cantonese and the three students from Guangdong who understood could translate to Mandarin to […]

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Being answerable to your public (or, if you can’t engage now, can we expect you to in office?)

One of my supporters Tweeted to say I was the only candidate at Vote.co.nz who has bothered to reply to citizens’ questions. It’s good for me, but sad to see my opponents so disengaged. I was also surprised to see that only three of us have bothered to register for the website this time, despite […]

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It’s official today: I am running for Mayor of Wellington again

It’s probably the worst-kept secret among some of the political circles, but I am running for Mayor of Wellington.    Wellington is a world-class city, with generous, creative, industrious, innovative and independent people who punch above their weight. And it’s time, I believe, for some leadership and some 21st-century thinking, to bring the right people […]

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Thinking to the future as Lucire turns 15

I’ve written so many editorials about Lucire’s history for our various anniversaries that now we’ve turned 15, I feel like I’d just be going over old ground. Again. I’d do it maybe for the 20th or 21st, but the story has been told online and in print many times.    But 15 is a bit […]

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Source4Style launches today, seeking to revolutionize the business of fashion

[Cross-posted] Summer Rayne Oakes and Benita Singh’s Cartier award-winning venture, Source4Style, which helps designers source sustainable fabric through a well designed, transparent website, launches its second version today. Lucire has the low-down in the main part of the site, and this story forms part of some of our next 2012 print and other non-web editions. […]

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Panos Emporio: dare to be human

We weren’t responsible for the layout or photography, but our contribution here is in the tagline, ‘Dare to be human’.    In my 12-year friendship with Panos Papadopoulos, the designer behind Swedish swimwear (and now clothing) label Panos Emporio, we’ve often worked on marketing tasks. The most recent one: come up with a tagline that […]

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Wikileaks’ brand of transparency is the enemy of the establishment

There are probably two things, chiefly, that fuel support for Julian Assange.    First, the idea that the mainstream media are not independent, but merely mouthpieces for the establishment. There’s some truth to this.    Secondly, the fact that Wikileaks is revealing, this time, things that we already knew: that governments are two-faced.    While […]

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TPPA could turn the clock back

During the campaign trail, people tended to ask me if I was left or right. While I cheekily said, ‘Forward,’ many a time (and had at least one imitator), there’s something to be said for abandoning what are, effectively, nineteenth-century constructs.    And unless you are DI Alex Drake in Ashes to Ashes, you need […]

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What we need from leaders in the new decade: creativity leads the list

My friend and colleague at the Medinge Group, Ava Hakim, passed on a few papers from her day job at IBM. The first is the latest edition of a biennial global CEO survey, while the second asks the next generation of leaders—Generation Y. The aim: to find out what these groups think about the challenges […]

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Embrace life

I may be later than many in writing about this, but I only saw it in my Tweetstream today.    What a welcome departure from the blood-and-gore approach of many road safety public announcements, from the Sussex Safer Roads Partnership. You may also like Finding the heart on Top Gear again Funny how the war […]

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