Brian Bacon, CEO of Oxford Leadership Academy, and long-time friend and ally of the ALIA Institute, offers this perspective on the global economic crisis.

What a Wonderful Crisis!

Although the future may seem to be painted in varying shades of grey, some leaders are seizing the opportunity that always accompanies a crisis. They are focusing their people with positive energy and fierce determination on the few things that can make the biggest difference.

As Matthew Key, Chairman and CEO of O2 Europe told me, “Let’s not let this crisis go to waste”. Key is directing the companies under his leadership to increase their focus on innovation, to enter new markets, to eliminate waste, to develop new technology services and generally to strengthen their relationships with employees, customers, the community and other stakeholders. He says, “Although no one would have asked for it, I believe that the global economic meltdown can be a good opportunity for us. It is a forced opportunity to positively drive changes for the customer that might have otherwise taken years. We’re making the most of it.”
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By Lyn Hartley

On a bleak February afternoon, a curious e-mail appeared in my inbox with an invitation from Barbara Bash to visit her visual blog.  What caught my attention were the words Barbara used to describe the process she would be using to create it: “I will be posting more images from my sketchbooks occasionally, following the path of slow blogging.”

Hmm, what a concept, “slow blogging.” My interest piqued, I immediately visited the web site to find an intimate view of the world through the eyes of an artist. Reminiscent of her illustrated books, Barbara’s blog consists of fluid images complimented by minimal yet striking words. Read the rest of this entry »

by Wendy Palmer

In the 1990’s the world of business and organization discovered that having a high IQ (Intelligence Quotient) by itself does not make a person a great leader. EQ (Emotional Intelligence) emerged as the new paradigm for developing leaders. The notion that human relations are as important as managing data became the main tenet of leadership competences. This idea evolved into a movement that spread to the far corners of the planet. Mind and emotions area vital part of our capacity to engage with the challenges of today’s demands but they are not the whole of who we are nor do they represent our full potential of human possibility. Read the rest of this entry »

by Glenda Eoyang

We all strive for balance:  Work/life, expansion/stability, asset/liability, risk/reward, freedom/responsibility.  We think of balance as bringing physical health, emotional resilience, organizational sustainability, team productivity, and community stability.  In all these contexts we find it much easier to talk about balance than to achieve it.  More often than not, potential clients call me because they recognize something in their world is out of balance.  They hope that I, as an external observer and experienced consultant, will be able to help get them back into balance again. Read the rest of this entry »

Deep Democracy in Action

By Aftab Erfan

There is something about the Institute’s new name, ALIA, that makes me very excited, and I am pretty sure it is the final “A” - standing for “Action”. There are many stories of new action, collective action, innovative action and brave action that have germinated at the Institute. It is one such story that took me down to South Africa this past February.

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The invitation that convinced me to make the 26-hour journey from Vancouver was for a day-long event called Conversation across the Socio-Economic Divide. The event, which took place on a hot summer day in a simple school gymnasium in the middle of a township on the edge of Cape Town, was the brainchild of Myrna Lewis. Myrna has been on faculty at the Institute for the past couple of years, teaching an advanced facilitation methodology called Deep Democracy. While she was at the Institute in 2008, Myrna was struck by the pervasive talk about the troubling situation in the “third world” and how the Institute’s faculty and participants, predominantly members of the privileged “first world”, wanted to do something to help. She was inspired to host a conversation that would bring the well-intentioned “haves” of the world to Africa and introduce them to the “have-nots”, so that the two groups could meet, explore and be in relationship together, instead of talking about each other from their own corners of the universe. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s daunting to talk to knowledgeable, insightful people who are so sure things are going to fall apart, and also sure that a little better version of the same old thing won’t be enough. Yet each of them, and each of the many people they cite, sees promise. Not a dewy-eyed, mushy kind of promise, not love without power, or a grand ideology to rally round, but a realistic promise that in crisis we will find resilience, that we will be thrown back on ourselves and our communities and what counts. That’s the way of nature, including human nature. Read the rest of this entry »

At the 2007 Summer Institute Bernard Lietaer sent a shudder through the program community with his presentation on global financial systems. Bernard is renowned as one of the architects of the Euro and as an expert on complementary currencies. He began his presentation by quoting Paul Volcker, former Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, who predicted a “hard landing” of the dollar within five years. The quote was dated 2005.

Bernard linked the inherent dysfunctions of our monetary system with the rise of the “unhealthy masculine archetype” in modern history. Certainly we are seeing how financial systems have become increasingly disconnected from real value and a real economy–one that obeys the laws of living systems. As Bernard also pointed out, money is not a neutral force but a powerful blind spot and driver behind other social and environmental breakdowns.

The following video explains the illusory but destructive nature of our global financial systems in easy-to-follow terms.  As another economist, Tony Lamport, recently commented, “Explaining the solution poses a somewhat bigger challenge.” Read the rest of this entry »