informal coalitions

Don't put all your 'X' in one basket

On 5 May 2011, electors in the UK will be asked to vote on the relative merits of the UK's current, "First Past the Post" electoral system (FPTP) and the "Alternative Vote" (AV) for UK General Elections.  

The "No to AV" and "Yes to Fairer Votes" campaigns are now in full swing, both trying to stimulate interest in the topic amongst a largely indifferent electorate.   Whatever your views on the referendum, it seems to me that some very dubious arguments have been deployed by those who support the retention of FPTP.

When the financial system is a complex social process

A recent article in New Scientist, When the Financial System is Like an Ecosystem, blames the world’s current financial troubles on the inability of established models and methods to take account of the complex dynamics of the global financial system. It advocates that the system should be re-engineered, using insights from the natural world.

At the same time, though, the article ignores the powerful influence of the complex social dynamics of the overall process. These are fundamental to the way that the ‘system’ works. And it is these that continue to undermine the attempts that governments and others are making to return the economy to some degree of normality.

Paying for performance at the Olympics?

I was dismayed to read in yesterday’s Sunday Times that the British Olympic Association (BOA) is drawing up plans to pay bonuses to athletes who win medals at the 2012 Olympic Games in London (Team GB to be rewarded with gold for gold).

This is not to say that our athletes don’t deserve recognition for their sporting achievements and a generous reward for their efforts. Far from it. But advocating a crude form of performance-related pay as part of the strategy for securing more medals seems to me to miss the point on several levels:

Conversations, coalitions and change in New Labour?

Following recent setbacks at the polls, speculation is rife within the Labour Party over the future of Gordon Brown as leader. And, as we can see from comments by Times Assistant Editor Peter Riddell in today's paper, the dynamics of informal coalitions will have a big part to play in deciding whether the Prime Minister goes or stays.

A deterministic universe - if only things had been different

As someone who believes that outcomes in organizations - and life in general - emerge from the complex social interaction of people in conversation, the cover story of a recent edition of New Scientist (22 March 2008) caught my eye.  Headlined The UnCertainty Principle, it drew attention to a recent series of papers by "a sizeable minority" of physicists which claim that the universe is objective and deterministic.

The world is watching Burma

I have received an email from Holger Nauheimer, author of the Change Management blog, asking me to post the following message on Informal Coalitions. I hope that other bloggers will do the same, as the informal coalition of support grows behind the peaceful protest of the Buddhist monks and against the excesses of the military dictatorship.