Monthly Archives: November 2005

Adrian Gore (Discovery) and Miream Zwane (Praxis Computing) at FNB BizNetwork, 17-11-05

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Adrian Gore

Adrian focused on business ‘Vision’ embodying the ‘core ideas’, and placed a lot of emphasis on ‘mega trends & innovation’ as well as ‘time’ vs. ‘eventing’ oriented business management. I.e. the difference between waiting for and responding to the actions of competitors and the market, or blazing your own trial by formulating and committing to your own deadlines and intentions, e.g. announce and plan a launch for a product/service, yet to be developed or finalised.

(Resonates with Eduard de Bono’s sur/petition, surpassing the competition, looking at Discovery’s growth, No S**t!)

Eric Parker the host, asked for three or four tips for building a successful growing business. I counted the following eleven critical success factors in Adrian’s response, go figure!

  1. people quality
  2. timing & luck
  3. entrepreneuring vs. mega-view
  4. fleet footedness
  5. values set
  6. accountability
  7. integrity
  8. stay alive
  9. there is always a solution when you run at the problem
  10. Optimism
  11. Everyone know everything!

Mirream Zwane

Mirream wasn’t asked for specific ‘tips’ as such, in my mind she exuded a spirit of optimistic audacity, and forthrightness that seems to be the foundation of her and PRAXIS Computing’s success. She also referred to building a business as a ‘home away from home’ – which says a lot about her attitude towards organisational culture.

Three Business Threads

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Right, here we go…

Pursuing, initiating increased and expansive marketing management via a ‘professional plexus’, a.k.a. a network with three important threads;

  1. Immediate Imperatives – Stay in business, get paid, pay the bills, maintain and improve relationships, tools, capacities, resources etc. (Four P’s, Sensing, Etc.)
  2. Fast Future – Identify challenges, formulate strategies/plans/intentions/premises to bridge into resilience and growth. (Immersion)
  3. Fundamental Truth – Formulate and facilitate journeying towards long-term essential objectives, ideological parameters and fundamental characteristics. (Realisation)

FNB’s BizNetwork

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Just joined FNB’s BizNetwork, R300 (US$44) for a three month trial membership, members get free access to monthly events. Hopefully this will help me in the process of re-inventing my business.

Interactive monthly events

I’m rather curious to check out the events, where speakers are broadcast via Cinema theatres in main centres. These are billed as ‘Interactive monthly events with local & international business gurus, where you can network with other business’ – how this, interactivity, is to be facilitated should be very interesting.

Tomorrows event under the topic ‘Expanding Your Business, Tips for Managing Growth’ features Adrian Gore, founder and CEO of Discovery, and Mirriam Zwane, Director of Praxis Computing.

Networking Forum

As far as I’m aware this is a rather new initiative, so Its understandable that the forum is a bit thin. I hope and trust it will develop over time to include for example a forum help section. I have started a ‘Welcome’ thread, partly because I would like to introduce myself in a civilized manner instead of via blatant spamming. (I’ve started wondering why South African forums seem so far behind the times, often populated predominantly with shortsighted self-righteous criticism and outright flaming matches, or otherwise blatant spamming, for examples see many of the forum threads in BizCommunity, a local online advertizing and marketting portal – (maybe that’s just the nature of the advertising community?) no wonder they mederate the posting of threads, (oh, for significant domestic discourse, at least LitNet gets some of it right – maybe now that we all no Media24 is top of the traffic charts, their servers will get a bit faster?)).

Some of the content certainly looks worthwhile.

The Idea(l)s behind PixelPLEXUS

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Initiating premises:

  • To deal with energy. We see that energy is expressed and managed in different mediums, as for example money, information and meaning.
  • Skilful interactive management of energy can and does yield sustainable reward. Its a good idea to apply this principle to information and transactions.
  • We explore, investigate and work this phenomenon, in increasing scope and extent.

    • A business is also a constellation of relationships, and concerned with the qualitative as well as quantity of flow of value and of energy. The ‘kind’ of money is as important as how much money. The kind of work is as important as the kind of result.

    PixelPLEXUS is about design.

contemplating LOCUS

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hmm, yes interesting, again I am struck by the fact that it is not the availability of information that is holding us back, but our difficulties in navigating organisation and implementation.

By the way, I think your choice of Rogers as a kind of meeting and collective departure point is wise and I interpret it as a kind of ‘orientating generalisation’ that lies close to the vision that aspirates you in this, the LOCUS process. Are you open to start formulating a kind of dna code, for what LOCUS intends to be, nothing cast in stone tablets or such like, but a kind of conceptual handle for us to use as a kind of landmark? I would like to see such formulation happen as collaboratively as possible, and gauging from what I’ve heard about what you have in mind – I imagine it will – if we accept that LOCUS will be a a Point of Learning.

squeakyG wrote:
http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/index.html

Rogers’ main objective was ‘Learner Centeredness’, if my investigations into contemporary emerging thinking has suggested anything, it is a move towards ‘Learning centeredness’, I think learning in its truest sense is an open ended <a xhref=” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_system_%28system_theory%29″>Open system</a>. Say we codify learning as the primary focus and fundamental objective and governing principle of LOCUS.

Which I think suggests a “what’s next?” question around what we understand and believe ‘learning’ to be.

” Learning is sense making that enables manifestation of purpose.

Education is the conscious attempt to promote learning in others. The primary function of “teaching” is to create a safe, viable, productive learning environment. Management of the total learning environment to promote enhance and motivate learning is a paradigm shift from a focus on teaching to a focus on learning.”

(above quote from Wikipedia again)

I could gurgle supporting theory and citations indefinitely but instead I would like to just express my hope that we are engaging with something that looks at learning, and by implication ‘education’ not as something like a machine or factory, but instead as a collaborative endeavour. A pursuit of Co-creative Mutual Development.

Reading Presence : Profound Change – Senge

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Presence : Exploring Profound Change in People, Organisations and Society

Peter Senge, and C. Otto Scharmer, and Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers, engage in dialogic form with a pretty significant theme. This is a book about change, it is also a book of change. It’s a book about reality, its also a book about reliability.

Think about the metaphor of peak performance and invert that peek into a valley, and extend its depths into sophistication of consciousness, and you have something like the ‘U’ curve they outline in the text. It’s a kind of honest confrontation, of ideas and ideals.

Looking at organisations like VISA International, ‘arguably the largest business in the world and how it emerged from change in consciousness, an ecologically inspired perspective.

Its also about the potential unleashed by discarding control-mania.

Politics of the future