Mind the gap

People have rightly asked me my positions on transport, the environment, the Basin Reserve flyover, and libraries.    These weren’t put in my manifesto in April 2013 because I expected that candidates (whomever they might be—since only Dr Keith Johnson had declared then) would have largely the same views on them. I was wrong.   […]

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Getting ready for global

I’ve known of this for some time through Medinge: the globalizing of The New York Times. This has meant the retirement of The International Herald–Tribune name, one which brand experts are divided on.    On the one hand, the NYT doesn’t have it wrong. There are global newspaper brands already, namely those that have taken […]

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What Is a Brand? Well, there is one we’ve relaunched …

My good friend and colleague Stanley Moss has written a new book, What Is a Brand?, which provokes some thought on the question in the title.    Those who know Stanley and have followed his work know that each year, he issues a Brand Letter, which closes with various definitions of branding.    If there’s […]

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Leaders need to be humble if co-creation is to be effective

I’d been meaning to refer readers to this for a few weeks (it has appeared on my Facebook pages, including the “fan” page—a good place to go if you prefer my musings filtered, without the minutiæ and without clogging up your feeds). My friend and colleague, Dr Nicholas Ind, has been writing about leadership and […]

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A triumphant Olympics was helped by a well organized Olympic Delivery Authority—lessons for business

I’m glad to see that the third Foundation Forum’s notes (originally sent to me by Medinge life member Patrick Harris) are now public, which means I can refer to them. The latest one is on the Olympics, at a forum held in June, where the speakers were Olympic medallist Steve Williams, Dr Pete Bonfield, CEO […]

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Nicholas Ind’s Meaning at Work: finding fulfilment in the early 2010s

Two of my friends have books coming out. I’ll discuss one for now, as it’s been a long long weekend.    The first is my Medinge Group colleague Nicholas Ind’s Meaning at Work, which has now made it on to Amazon, and is getting wider distribution.    You can get an idea of what Meaning […]

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Fighting the politics of division

Loving this excerpt from Nancy J. Adler’s ‘Leading Beautifully: the Creative Economy and Beyond’ in the Journal of Management Inquiry, vol. 20, pp. 208–22, at p. 211, which my fellow Medinge Group director Nicholas Ind referred to me: McGill University strategy professor Henry Mintzberg asked the people in his native Quebec to see the world […]

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Finishing off 2011 with the most fun radio interview I have ever done

Photo by Xavier Collin/Snapstar Live Friday morning’s interview with Sonia Sly on Kiwi Summer was the most fun I have ever had on radio.    Radio New Zealand National was the most fair and balanced medium I dealt with when running for Mayor of Wellington in 2010, and I was glad that Sonia thought of […]

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Occupy, the brand

VBlessNYC, under Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic It was in the fourth quarter of the year that Occupy became a brand. Just capitalize it, and everyone knows what you mean. The original geographical indicator of Wall Street disappeared—to be fair, it began disappearing when similar protests began happening across the United States and then, the world—but I’ve […]

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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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