In 1990, Peter Senge wrote one of the most influential business books of all time. “The Fifth Discipline” revolutionised many companies’ approach to knowledge management, and introduced the business world to systems thinking in an accessible way. (Get it at Amazon.com or Kalahari.net).
There is a great summary of the five core disciplines, and, in fact, the whole book, at: http://www.infed.org/thinkers/senge.htm#_The_core_disciplines.
There is a high level executive summary of most of the key concepts related to “Learning Organizations” available at: http://www.skyrme.com/insights/3lrnorg.htm.
A book review of a book that is sitting on my reading list: Davenport’s “Thinking for a Living“. (Get it at 
“The oldest baby boomers are six years away from retirement. Will your company continue to thrive if they take their knowledge with them? Here’s how to identify who has key knowledge and how to keep it within the company walls.” So starts an article in the 
I’ve been asked to compile some Dilbert advice for new graduates who have no idea what’s awaiting them in the business world. I’m talking about practical advice. Here are some of the ones that come to mind.
The reason they teach biology before they teach chemistry in high school is that biology was invented first. Even though you need chemistry to do biology, but not vice versa.
The guys at Performancing have posted an informative entry explaining how to get going with podcasting. It’s a comprehensive read and should help you engage in this exciting new medium - check it out 
Around the world, a growing number of organisations are starting to realise that it is a massive loss to lose women in the 30s and 40s - women who opt out of the rat race in order to focus attention on family issues, including child care and ageing parents (see previous post on the 
“Too old to retrain but too young to retire, men aged 45-60 are making Prime Minister John Howard and the Labor state premiers anxious because they don’t fit into their model for the 21st-century economy where China and India will be rivals.” So says a feature entitled, “
The statistics are very clear. The role of women as leaders in the corporate world is stagnant, and even declining in many developed countries. In America, only 7 of the Fortune 500 companies have women CEOs (down from 9 in 2004), and only 13% of Board members are women (many non-Executive). Similar stats emerge in the UK: only 1 FTSE 100 female CEO (Pearsons, which also has a female CFO); only 2% of Executive directors and less than 4% of all FTSE 100 directors.
We’ve just had a new manager join the team at the company I’m working for. To give you a bit of background … I joined this company because it’s small and creative and there were no heirarchies or political games. (Well - ok, there is always some level of politics …)
Today is the 100th birthday of the humble cornflake. William and John Kellogg had started the sanitas Food Company to provide America with whole grained cereals in the 1800s. They stumbled across the cornflake after leaving some dough out overnight by mistake. They served the first bowl of their experimental breakfast on March 7, 1897. The Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company (later to become 
In the future, with the avalanche of data available (via Google, for example), we will rely more and more on trusted sources of “filtering”. We will allow other people to decide what we need to know on various issues. At some levels, we do this already - we listen to certain radio shows, read certain magazines and newspapers and watch certain TV shows, read certain blogs, etc. We can’t take in everything, so we choose various “channels”. This process will become more and more important in the future, and opens up a line of business opportunities for trusted sources of information filtering and packaging.
Today’s 
I often ask myself the question “How did I get here?� Looking back on the choices I’ve made in my life so far, this question cannot always be answered. Try it – look back on the last 5 years and see if every decision you have made makes sense in getting you to where you are today. The answer will probably be no.
New research has proven what we’ve been saying for some time: that technology (and innovation) is not the key to successful corporate renewal or knowledge management. The real key to success is PEOPLE. Intellilink Solutions puts it this way:
Starting this year, those people born in 1946 or later will start effectively retiring. We believe that they will, in fact, start re-tyring. These Boomers are the youngest, healthiest, and richest retirees of all time. We like to think of them as being in “Prime Time”.
Social scientists have coined a new word to describe the phenomenon many of us have been talking about for some time. It describes the 19 to 30 year olds, who have no desire to leave their parent’s home, get married, or find a permanent career. In the past 20 years, the average age of first marriage has increased by over 5 years in most countries - this is a tidal wave of demographic change. Similarly, the age of birth of first child has increased dramatically since 1990 in most countries. Anecdotal evidence also indicates a surprising number of late 20s and early 30-somethings who still live at home (or who have come back home again).
Where is everyone? TMTD used to be one of my favourite blogs – it had posts that were relevant, and participation was high if not always comfortable. Now it is comfortable, less relevant (the blog used to be ahead of me, now I seem to be ahead of the blog), and there is little feedback. The town square has become less a collection of voices and ideas and more a platform to shout your stuff in a one way dialogue – not because people cant answer back - but perhaps because they have no wish to. Why is that – did they get bored, were they discouraged, have they run out of things to say? The sad thing is that when the blog was very active it gave me a stronger feel of what TMTD was about and who the people were. More recently there seems to be a stronger HR/talent development focus to the website and even the blog, is this because these are areas of “expertise� of the bloggers, or is this more the focusing of the TMTD core business (is this the TMTD core business)?
At 
When I saw this on 
James Frey is the author of A Million Little Pieces. This was one of Oprah’s book club books, and was supposed to be a true life memoir. But, some of the facts in the book were in fact made up. For more info, read the follow up interview with Oprah 
I was chatting to my business colleague, Keith Coats, the other day. His daughter, Tamryn, registered for university this past week. Keith was amazed at the choices of course packages that were available. This sparked a discussion. Keith was at varsity in the 70s. I was there in the early 90s.
My understanding of the TomorrowToday value proposition to our clients is that we actively and purposefully monitor the shifts that take place in society that will have an impact on the way business is run. In doing so, we then advise and educate clients on how best to confront and deal with these changes to generate competitive value propositions of their own.
U2 member Bono has been in the media ‘a-plenty’ this year. In January he launched ‘Red’, a project to raise money for AIDS in Africa. Last week he spoke at the US National Prayer Breakfast, and this week U2 won a couple of Grammy Awards.
It was announced today that the new daily Joburg newspaper, 