The Sydney Institute, run by Ann & Gerald Henderson, is a Sydney icon.  Nearly every week they have a 30-minute talk followed by a 30-minute Q&A on some topic.  Speakers range from authors to politicians.  The sessions start at 6pm and finish at 7pm on the dot.  You can attend the talk in person or hear the talk on YouTube and generally on Sky News.  I am proud to have been a long-standing member which at $99/year is one of the best value for money entertainment packages available in Sydney. On 12 March 2024 the speaker was Professor Gordon Parker, an Australi ..read more

I was prompted to watch this video of Susan Cain speaking at TED 2012 about the power of introverts because Tali Sharot talked about it in her first book, The Influential Mind. that I reviewed in my previous blog.  Tali was also speaking at TED 2012, this time about her second book, The Optimism Bias. I have not worked how the passage then got into her first book but never mind.  What I did discover was a short clip 3-minute clip of Tali summarising her first book https://youtu.be/DOzFRD5LvVk which is excellent. Anyway Tali was in the audience and was impressed with Cain’s talk.&nbs ..read more

Tali Sharot is the author of The Optimism Bias and professor of cognitive neuroscience with degrees in economics and psychology. She is the founder and director of the Affective Brain Lab at University College London.  She has been published in Nature, Science, Nature Neuroscience, Psychological Science, and many other journals. She has been featured in numerous outlets and has written for The New York Times, Time magazine, The Washington Post, CNN, and the BBC, among others. Before becoming a neuroscientist, Sharot worked in the financial industry for a few years and completed her natio ..read more

Recently I came across an interesting book review of Paranoia: A Journey into Extreme Mistrust and Anxiety by Daniel Freeman.  The author is a professorial fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford,  a consultant clinical psychologist, a recipient of the British Psychological Society Presidents’ Award for distinguished contributions to psychological knowledge, the author of almost a dozen books and hundreds of journal articles, and a co-founder of the Feeling Safe Programme, a cognitive-behavioural treatment for patients with psychosis, which is proven to be the most effective psychologica ..read more

The recent loss of electrical power to over 500,000 homes in Victoria has again demonstrated the fragility of the Australia national grid because of the focus on renewables.   I thought it would be helpful to my readers to explain why I am a Climate Sceptic.  Typically, when in an argument with an alarmist two arguments are used.: There is a scientific consensus that anthropogenic CO2 we emit is responsible for ‘climate change’ and this is accepted by ‘every reputable’ climate scientist and 99% of all climate scientists. Ad hominem attacks. Why Consensus is Non-scientific I h ..read more

As explained in my February 2024 Newsletter I am offering to all my readers a free copy of The Humm Handbook plus the Australian cost of packing and postage. The Beginning The story behind  the Humm Handbook begins in 1972 when I was halfway through completing an MBA course at the London Business School.  Charles Handy was my tutor.  This was before Charles had written his first book and had established himself as a leading British management guru.  Nevertheless, Charles was already a quirky character and well-known even then for his lateral thinking. I had just been offer ..read more

One of the first Christmas functions I attended last year was the function organised by The Institute of Managers and Leaders (IML) AustraliaNewZealand.   The organization is dedicated to setting the gold standard for management and leadership competence and excellence.  It was held the day before my 79th birthday.  Three of Jim Mein, David Hayes and myself were sitting around a table agreeing that we probably collectively lifted the average age of the attendees by 10 years.  One of us then asked what is the difference between managers and leaders? This provoked an in ..read more

Reflecting on 2023 I decided that after doing the Ring Cycle in Brisbane in early December my second big Arts moment was attending two performances of The Seagull by Anton Chekhov; the first in London by the National Theatre and the second in Sydney by the Sydney Theatre Company (STC)..  It is not that I am a big Chekov fan; just that one of the actors in the London performance was Emelia Clarke, aka Daenerys Targaryen, the Mother of Dragons.  (And she was just as stunning on the stage as Nina.) The plot has been described as resembling a modern soap opera due to the complexity of i ..read more

Welcome back all my special readers and wishing you all a prosperous 2024. For my first blog I wish to discuss the article “Born That Way” by Gina Mireault, a professor and chair of psychology and human services at Northern Vermont University.  The article discusses the concept of infant temperament and its long-term impact on child development. It delves into the research of psychiatrists Alexander Thomas and Stella Chess, who in 1956 started the New York Longitudinal Study to investigate infants’ innate dispositions and their effect on long-term development. The study recruited 133 inf ..read more

Recently an American colleague, Bruce Lewolt, sent this interesting response by ChatGPT to the following question.  Compare the Humm and 7MTF to other personality assessments. Which one is the most accurate? Answer: The Humm-Wadsworth Model (often referred to simply as the “Humm”) and the Seven Motivations Theory Framework (7MTF) are both models for assessing personality traits and motivations. They are part of a broad spectrum of personality assessments that range from those used for personal development to those applied in professional settings for hiring, team-building, and leadership ..read more