Catalysts for Capital

By Annie Talve on June 30, 2009 – 12:28 am
Filed under Leadership, Managing change, Urban and Regional Revitalisation
Annie Talvé, Ian Colley and Chia Moan at the graduation ceremony
Annie Talvé, Ian Colley and Chia Moan at the graduation ceremony

They came from Bega, Bombala, Pambula, Tathra, Cooma, Queanbeyan and Canberra. Eight workshops over eight months in six regional locations. Fourteen business and community leaders throughout the Capital Region of NSW and the ACT, celebrated the end of the Leaders 4 Capital regional development program in Canberra on Saturday 27 June. Sponsored by the Capital Regional Development Board and a range of local shires, the program aimed to build a network of confident, collaborative and forward-thinking leaders who could help their local towns and communities thrive into the future.

Chia Moan and Ian Colley from make stuff happen designed and facilitated a program that inspired participants to harness the skills and confidence needed to make tangible things happen in their home patch. Karen Lott from Nethercote said:

“I have felt an increased level of confidence in speaking and presenting, which developed through knowing other participants, and through gentle encouragement and support from both participants and facilitators.”

“The whole journey has been enlightening,” said Paul Pincini from Pambula. Emma Pieper from Theordore, ACT is more confident and “willing to take more risks to put myself out there a little more.”

Millingandi resident, Ivan McKay, summed up the mood of the  group: “I can make a difference in my local community whether employed for that purpose or not.”

And all 14 regional leaders have done just that. Things like community co-operatives, growers’ markets, improved community facilities, re-vegetation and environmental initiatives, women of vision leadership awards, and a youth cafe and meeting place, are just some of the projects that have come to fruition over the eight month program.

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Learning to lead

By Annie Talve on June 2, 2009 – 1:54 am
Filed under Leadership, Learning and Development

When Tony Burke became the new Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry in 2007,  he was in for a surprise.  Sitting down with his Department Heads to review selection committee recommendations for the next round of appointments to advisory boards, he was shocked to discover that 90 per cent of nominees were male.

“How one earth can this be merit?” he said. “How on earth, if we’re basing decisions on merit, can we have committees that keep recommending that merit somehow uniquely resides in blokes?”

He didn’t introduce quotas to increase the number of women. He didn’t make a fuss. He changed one thing: he took away previous board experience from the selection criteria. In 18 months the representation of women on these boards and committees has risen from 20 per cent to 43 per cent.

Structural barriers like this are rife, particularly in the corporate sector. But so are internal psychological and skill related barriers.

Tony Burke removed a barrier that had become invisible and taken for granted. Just like the internal constraints that influence the way we think and act.

Two recent leadership programs designed and run by make stuff happen have helped senior librarians in Australia and New Zealand, and regional leaders from  NSW and the ACT, to learn more about themselves by learning together.

Amazing stuff can happen when smart people come together to change things in their profession, region or community. When they help each other learn to lead.

Horizon:Learning together
Horizon:Learning together

Find out more:

CAVAL Horizon Executive Library Leadership

Leaders 4 Capital

Reference: Tony Burke: Address to the Australian RIRDC Rural Women’s Award 2009: Monday, 25 May 2009

Windows on Pain

By Annie Talve on May 11, 2009 – 12:20 am
Filed under Community consultation
clia_moan
Shrinking World by Chia Moan

Currently on show at CarriageWorks in Redfern, Sydney, Windows on Pain is an art exhibition like no other. Sponsored by the Pain Management Research Institute, it features the work of 30 emerging and established artists, who have used different media -  painting, sculpture and installation -  to depict the stories they each heard from people living with chronic pain.

make stuff happen director, Chia Moan, not only designed the exhibition but is a contributing artist. Chia’s arresting portrait called  Shrinking World, depicts an Alice in Wonderland figure curled up in a confined space with a mask in her hand. The painting alludes to a story Chia heard from one pain sufferer who said she felt like Alice disappearing down the rabbit hole, with the opening at the top growing smaller and smaller.

A recent review of the exhibition in the Sydney Morning Herald featured Chia’s Shrinking World as its accompanying image and quoted her saying:

“People who live with chronic pain deal very literally with shrinking options in their lives. If and how they can work, exercise, socialise and travel. Usual activities are affected, all subjected to scrutiny: what is possible, what is not? They also speak frequently about not being able to communicate their pain, wearing a mask.”

Chia’s multiple skills as an artist, designer, facilitator and journalist, have helped ensure that the Windows on Pain traveling exhibition receives a receptive audience. Creative responses to difficult or complex phenomena, like pain, are what make stuff happen is committed to exploring and we’re thrilled that Chia has applied her creativity and compassion to this valuable community project.

Links:

Sydney Morning Herald article.

Windows on Pain web site

Dead or Alive?

By Annie Talve on May 4, 2009 – 11:36 pm
Filed under Business Communication, Products and Services
I got it!
I got it!

Don Watson called them ‘weasel words’.

We use them everyday to impress, fit in, bamboozle, or show how damn clever we are.

They’re inescapable; but are they inevitable?

Are you willing to let go of your ‘capabilities’ and your ‘empowered workforce’; your ‘stakeholders’ and your ‘benchmarks’? Probably not. And why should you? They serve a purpose - to help you communicate with people like you. But what about when you need to think and act differently? When you need to connect with new audiences or generations?
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Get out of the box, get out of the office

By Annie Talve on March 18, 2009 – 4:08 am
Filed under Innovate, Collaborate, Products and Services

People talk a lot in the business world about ‘getting out of the box’ to solve problems creatively or see things from a different perspective.
There are big advantages in getting out of the box, especially if it leads to new ways of doing business.

But what does ‘out of the box’ really mean to the decision makers who use the term and initiate ways to make it happen?

Attempts to think ‘out of the box’ often take place in the same old box where everything else happens - the office. If not your office, another office down the road or in another city. Seminar rooms in most hotels, with their bland interiors and regular proportions, are just a substitute for  the ‘office’, even if their location is more exotic.

Getting out of the box suggests that we step out of our circumscribed world in order to study it from an entirely different perspective, as if we were in a spaceship looking down on planet earth for patterns and landmarks that we have never noticed before. Doing justice to ‘getting out of the box’ requires thoughtful design and a healthy dose of imagination.
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