Author: Donovan Palmer
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After Crashing My Blog, I’m Back, but Now There Are Two!
Do you ever click a button on your computer and instantly know you have done something very, very bad? Well, that’s what happened with my site and it is part of the reason I have been gone for so long. Part of the delay is that I could not figure out how to get my…
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Books I read in 2022 and will read again
I love reading… and this quote sums it up! “You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.” ~ C.S. Lewis (British writer and lay theologian) Some books in particular will never be long enough and the only answer is to read them more than once.…
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Breaking up can be hard!
Working next to the gangway When I was the Managing Director of the m/v Africa Mercy, a Mercy Ships hospital ship, my office was the closest to the gangway. This meant that hundreds of people passed by my office door every day, which was less than three meters away. The gangway and reception area was…
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It is only you and the mountain!
A pleasant day out About five years ago I spent the day climbing a 13,000-foot mountain in Colorado. I was in good physical condition and making rapid progress towards the summit. To set my pace I was wearing a Fitbit monitor, keeping my heart rate in an ideal zone for the altitude and my capabilities.…
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Three Reasons why I use the Humble Notebook
I have a paperless office. I rarely print a document and it has been years since I used a filing cabinet. I read more digital books than physical ones and I love my cool digital tools. Technology enables me to do more linked-up thinking than ever before. It is as some would say, ‘my second…
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When is an Organisation Healthy?
I have a whole virtual and physical bookshelf on organisational leadership and development books. I currently have three books on the go reading different views of what we have gained and lost from working virtually. Ultimately, one of the main goals of all these books is to create an environment that is healthy. As I…
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North Star Perspectives
It has been about a year since I took a break from blogging. More and more I am feeling inclined to do some writing…
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Throwing Out The Family Silver
In 2019 we had a fire that destroyed a good chunk of our personal belongings. As it always is with a fire, irreplaceable things that we would have handed down to future generations were suddenly gone. It was a sad day of grieving because it was such a huge loss of family history. History is…
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Mirror, Mirror, On the Wall… is This Leader On The Ball?
If your team or some of its members are struggling, could they be a reflection of you as a leader not being ‘on the ball’? There are a number of dimensions of this mirror, but in this blog let’s focus on just one aspect: leading through being generous with encouragement. Most everyone at some point…
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Drifting Towards the Rocks of Insanity…
No organisation ever expects to drift. Never in a board room or a senior leader management meeting has there been an objective to set the organisation adrift. Yet organisations do drift and sometimes it is too late before they wind up on the rocks. There are lots of reasons why organisations have come and gone.…
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If I had only Six Organisational Leadership Books on my Bookshelf…
Organisational growth relies on character based leadership creating healthy teams, battling for clarity of vision and investing disciplined work into implementation. I have a stack of organisational books in storage on two continents, but if I could only own and read six that summarise this mix well, this is what would be on my bookshelf……
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Finding the Special Sauce of Teams and Organisations
As I have worked in a number of teams and organisations over the years, I have come to recognise that there is sometimes something very special missing. The problem is, you either sense it, see it and nurture it to create an extra special team or organisation, or you default to some other mode to…