In the second part of my YouTube talk “The World of Work has Changed Forever – Factoryisation Proceeds Apace” I talk about the mechanistic, bureaucratic, controlling, reductionist, “specialist”, disenchanted direction society is heading and mention that Max Weber predicted this over a hundred years ago. Underlying all this must be a dynamic in the psyche, in the brain. What that is and how we can find (our own) meaning and start reboot society is very much what this article is about.

One of the 21stC characteristics is fragmentation – no longer do we have a common body of knowledge – other than vacuous “celebs” that the old media is so obsessed with. Thus one can come across folks who have never even heard about, say, Eckhart Tolle.  A less Oprah-ed alt-celeb (?) name is Iain McGilchrist. If I could only recommended one living person whose work was a must-know-about it would be this chap.

I was reminded of him in a very recent and excellent ConsciousTV interview (more on that below).  I certainly hadn’t previously got the fact that although he is a bona fide academically based rational guy that he really cares about not just the “intellectual correctness” of his work but more the impact of his work in changing people (the psychiatrist and alround nice guy in him).

As per our various levels of knowing about various stuffs some of you out there may have not heard of him. Some of you may have. Some of you may have read his first book. Few might know of his second book and I am sure next to none of you know about his forthcoming third book. Continue reading →

I’ll finish the Visionary-Manager-Soldier series next week. In the meantime this article below is this weeks blog post from my companion site TheTaoofBizDev.com. It is a great crossover between TTEM (Pope Francis gets a key mention) and TTBD 🙂

In the seminal, if dated, 1999 HBR article “Unbundling the Corporation”, Hagel and Singer declared that every company contains three different kinds of business and that in future they would unbundle. nice work for consultants if you can get it (which is probably why it’s free at McKinseys site lol) … followed only 5yrs later no doubt by them “Rebundling the Corporation” 😀

This is a nice way in (well I think so lol) to framing things in a different take.  Using the first three steps in the BizDev Cascade – Value, Marketing, Sales – we can “Unbundle the Corporation” in a different way.

Starting with Marketing-driven business, I would say that the sans pareil definition of most Global American Mega Cos in the food industry – is that Marketing has become the product.  When you drink Coca-Cola you are drinking a brand not benefitting from a dozen teaspoons of sugar and some chemicals.  Continue Reading–>

In recent posts I have focused on the Visionary function. Dreaming. Getting some idea of at least some thing(s) you would like in life if you could just order them at the bar of life.  I laboured that as many people in this disenchanted, machine age have slid into “just getting by”.  Sailing from day-to-day with no guiding stars, no real changes of course, blown hither and thither by the winds and drifting on the tide.  Certainly sounds like my typical day 😀

So now onto Manager!  A good time to recall Thomas Edison’s assertion:

and this quote from a unique pen:

“He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher… or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.” ~Douglas Adams

We have a vision and now we need to translate that vision into a bunch of tasks, commands that your inner soldier just gets on and executes.

As with prior articles in this series Continue reading →

A chum who liked the Visionary-Manager-Soldier model – which I had discussed with him at length over some particularly nice beer:

…asked whether having a vision is “too yang”.  I thought this was such a good question.  It covers so many traps in what is commonly perceived as the “spiritual” path.  I personally have (de facto) experienced this take and seen many other people going through versions of this.  There is much contained within this apparently simple question that might be of interest and of use to you – or someone near and dear to you.

So here are my thoughts.  See what you make of them – or more importantly see what your thoughts are – mine aren’t meant to be “right” or “wrong” but rather to spur you on to arrive at your own views. Continue reading →

Are you just taking what comes in life, reacting to events, and just about managing to keep all the plates spinning?  Is life controlling you most of the time?

If so are you happy with that? Do you enjoy the life you have right now?

Is this what you want? Or is it more like that lyric from the classic Talking Heads Album “Fear of Music”:

Don’t look so disappointed
It isn’t what you hoped for, is it?

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Lack of a Vision is Prevalent – Why?

Last week’s post on the Inner Visionary, Manager, Soldier technique attracted a lot of attention. Most folks I spoke to really lack a Vision.

Most folks have no idea WHAT they would ask for if I was their fairy godmother with a magic wand. Ok so maybe they ask for $30m, but then they don’t know their second wish.

This is very interesting. I was never a fan of Continue reading →

I’ve written this one for me lol – as it’s something I am thinking through – but also importantly for assorted friends for whom this would seem to be really helpful right now at this time of great and rapid transition in society.

If you feel stressed, are reacting to life, being blown around by the winds and the tides it’s a great way of taking control back of your life and its direction.  It’s also an ongoing discipline to make sure you embody each of these for enough hours each week to keep your life in balance 🙂

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Overview

Visionary-Manager-Soldier is a simple but very powerful transformational model I picked up when Continue reading →

My last article – Form, Patterns, Emptiness and Stuckness – on the spectrum from crystal to gas, from frozen form to emptiness led to some interesting conversations.

To a Psychotherapist (who is also a Hero of TTEM with over 500 posts) it was clear – and very much meat and potatoes of the day job – aka freeing people from being stuck with frozen patterns. Moving from solid towards gas. And some of those stucknesses have lasted for decades so need some strong juju to nudge folks out of those grooves. Stuck in ruts, a concept which surely derives from our Indo-Aryan roots – samskaras (Hindu) – being very much ruts in the mind that we repeatedly tread which become paths we then stick to/in.

However – hence the increasing purpose and relevance of TTEM – the poor therapist in the modern world is increasingly form-ed by the statist narrowing of therapeutic options (see Excellent Critique of UK Statist Regulation of Psychotherapy).

To an Architect the article meant something different. Continue reading →

This one isn’t a pot-boiler.  However it’s utterly profound and utterly a meta-pattern about life and next to every tool in TTEM.  We can never grok this one enough.

We live in a world of form – ie persistent patterns.  And good job too – if my pc was in random parts of the house, my railway station moved and sometimes there were elephants instead of trains in the morning – I would either be dreaming or someone would have bought the wrong kind of mushroom at Waitrose for my omelette 😀

However excess form is rigidity, stuckness.  If there is one meta-lesson from TTEM it’s to beware of (and to alleviate) stuckness.  Stuckness is a terror. Stuckness is a dinner guest who just doens’t know when to leave. Stuckness is like buying a sundial but never upgrading when they invented mechanical watches. Stuckness stops you flowing, stops you learning, stops you growing.  Stuckness is a relationship which worked, stayed the same but now doesn’t work. In a world of change, of time, of flux, stuckness is as inevitable as it is undesirable.

About twenty years ago I was interested in the work of the Santa Fe institute on complexity.  Actually I don’t think it really went anywhere as such (once someone is using something for courses on how to make more money in business you know the research is floudnering tehe).  However the one thing that stuck (ha!) in my mind was Continue reading →

Having read 12,000 posts and started thousands of threads I am aware of many things, many claims, and many extraordinary results. But if you are just passing by, want easily delivered health benefits that have been proven by my experience and by others what would I recommend?

Right now Earthing is top of my list as it’s free 🙂 … or rather free if you live in a warm country – I wouldnt recommend walking round barefoot in the wet UK – you’ll probably catch your death of cold.

If you don’t know anything about this one it’s fascinating to research – and of course to use.

This is just a pointer – I have written a comprehensive overview HERE and there is a whole section of material in re HERE.

TTEM was formed in 2005 – before social media took off.  The main two purposes were to have a multi=modality site where people could interact in a friendly and respectful way.  The web then, as now, being dominated by “my paradigm is the best” fora/places.  On the other hand I think web etiquette has improved.

Nine years later we have nigh on 12,000 posts, over 80 members, and getting on for 100,000 hits (whatever that means lol) per month  – purely by word of mouth. I never once promoted TTEM.  In the meantime social media has exploded and most people are far too busy keeping up with Facebook and twitter feeds (and their pages/feeding) to have much time for foruming.  We live in a world of digital overload.

Sections have come and gone. We had a very active section on The Now when that was big 🙂 However I think “now” is a misleading concept for many people (one still comes across people trying not to think of the past or future 🙁 … Tolle himself tends to use the much better word Presence these days.  The earthing section is a recent addition … little feedback from folks in forum but many people are benefitting 🙂

Someone recently referred to TTEM as “your blog” – well over the years the percentage contribution from me has increased – and in a way it was become something of a blog/feed with notable exceptions when some of the old friends show up 🙂

One of the problems of the sheer mass of content is the – er – sheer mass of content.  There are real real diamonds in those 12,000 posts – but it’s a hell of a job to find them.

The purpose of this blog is to post about key angles of interest and my observations when I come across them. Having read all those 12,000 posts the thing that strikes me is that “everything is connected”.  Now one hears this espoused all the time – but folks behaviours belie this – I know that certain sections of the forum will get more views than others – but sections are only there for convenience.

Anyway in a world of digital overload let’s see whether more snowflakes are useful or whether TTEM should just slide into old age as a repository, an old attic, of all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff 🙂