Year: 1999

December 22, 1999 While I wouldn’t ordinarily be writing a second issue of Aha! in December, I wanted to examine a major event in my life this past year, sharing some wonderment, and ask you the reader for some feedback. So, this is a “special issue” of Aha! , but it is also a request. […]

November 8, 1999 In the hotel corridor I was introduced to this incredibly beautiful young Nigerian woman who was one of the participants in the fifth annual State of the World Forum, sponsored by the Gorbachev Foundation in San Francisco. Her name was Khafila Abiola and she was attending the Forum with her older sister […]

October 12, 1999 I was told once that nothing meaningful ever happens until someone takes a stand. I know that my life changed very dramatically one day in 1985 when I took a stand on a personal issue, between myself and another person. It had to do with walking tall for my own self-respect after […]

September 29, 1999 We’ve been hearing it for decades: People resist change, especially people in organizations. Managers, consultants and business academics have consistently added to this “reality” as they have personal experience after experience that supports their perceptions. Organization development consultants – those people who are charged with facilitating large scale change, corporate culture change […]

September 6, 1999 The tag line for the Aha! newsletter is “the E-newsletter for the awakening workplace.” So, if the workplace has gone to sleep, what caused it to do so? How did people in the workplace get this unconscious? How did we go to sleep and allow the conditions to deteriorate to such a […]

September 6, 1999 I recall talking with some colleagues at a World Business Academy (WBA) meeting in the late 1980s and the word “paradigm” (pronounced ‘pair-a-dime’) was being used a lot. The word’s roots are tied to the academic and scientific communities, and popularized by Thomas Kuhn in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. […]

August 6, 1999 Newsbrief #1: The Berrett-Koehler Publishers newsletter At Work is featuring an article by John in its May/June 1999 issue, which has just come out. The title of the article is “Important Work or Self-Importance?” Newsbrief #2: Reception to the July 16 posting of “The 21st Century Agenda for Business” on the Internet […]

July 16, 1999 Newsbrief #1: Starting in July, John can be heard on Wisdom Radio, a new network of television and radio broadcasting, available through satellite, Internet and a few radio stations in the U.S. He’ll be doing short commentaries for WholeNEWS, a subsidiary of the Wisdom Network. Newsbrief #2: “The 21st Century Agenda for […]

May 14, 1999 Newsbrief #1: The late futurist Willis Harman is being honored by the World Future Society at their Ninth Annual General Assembly in Washington, DC on July 29. Charlene Harman (Willis’ wife for over 55 years) will be accepting the Society’s Distinguished Service Award on his behalf. Newsbrief #2: John will be co-hosting […]

March 10, 1999 If you were paying attention to the recent literature of what might be called the “new paradigm movement” or the overlapping worlds of the New Age and business transformation movement, you’ve probably seen a now-famous quote by South African President Nelson Mandela. The passage is incredibly uplifting. It has been repeated by […]