Posts Tagged ‘environment’

If you build it, they will come…

Sunday, May 25th, 2014

My partner is a beekeeper (a sad but honest confession) and last year like many others her hive died. It stood vacant and cold through the winter and she resolved to get some more bees this spring. She even donned her beekeeping suit and rushed off to gather a swarm that was terrorising a young mother with a baby…

Last week we were away and came back to find that a swarm had found her empty hive and made themselves at home. It only goes to show that sometimes, all you need to do is provide the right environment and the results will ‘spontaneously’ manifest!

The converse is true too. Don’t tell people you want to run a tight ship and provide a professional service then put them in a dump of an office without adequate resources. People will mirror how you treat them usually.  Provide the right kind of environment and you are much more likely to get the right results.  Think of examples like Google and Apple…

Some things just shouldn’t change!

Thursday, December 6th, 2012

It is really worth taking the time to watch this video.  It is a beautifully edited, wonderfully shot film.  It shows some of the most beautiful places and some incredible people who show just how inventive and indomitable we can be as a species.

I guess that sometimes the latter is a threat to the former but we really do need to preserve this kind of beauty for our children and their children.

Some things are just meant to be and not be changed by man interfering, using or despoiling…

 

 

 

 

 

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Pond Life?

Saturday, April 11th, 2009

I have always wanted a pond since I was a little boy; I remember being fascinated by one my grandfather had.  Eventually, once our kids were old enough for it to be safe, my son and I built one and it gives me huge pleasure every day.  I was recently given a number of beautiful fish and had to upgrade the filtration to handle these new fish.  The thing is that fish generate waste that poisons the water and you need to make sure that there are enough plants and microbes to convert the waste from poisonous ammonia into harmless nitrogen.

When you gather  people together in close proximity they also generate ‘stuff’ that needs processing and you need to create a healthy environment and systems to handle this.  You need to provide space, time and opportunity for them to communicate both their good ideas and their peeves.  In a properly balanced team environment the bits that one person leaves behind will be picked up by others.  One person’s weakness will be balanced by another’s strengths.  As a leader, you have to take responsibility for creating an environment in which your people can thrive….

“Language screens reality as a filter on a camera lens screens light waves”

“It is your human environment that makes climate”   Mark Twain