As World Values Day approaches I am considering my own personal journey to spending more time considering and living by my values. I first began thinking deeply about values when I was tasked with writing a research essay during my masters course; Fashion & The...
Capitalism is under fire. Populist parties argue that capitalism should be neutered, and mainstream parties argue for more of the same. But there is a movement of new thinkers who have been developing another, progressive solution. A new, neutral term has been coined...
If you are a creative person, or a coach, or run a purpose driven business which supports the well-being of people/the world – or if you are simply drawn towards more value-laden and collaborative ways of working, this post is for you. There really is only one...
“Often people know the price of things, but not the value… If we do not have value, we have no life” – Satish Kumar, Resurgence Editor-in-Chief and Network of Wellbeing Chair of Trustees The pressures of everyday life can make it easy to take...
Jane Austen created many fabulous female characters. Whether your taste warms to the prejudice of Elizabeth Bennett or the meddling of Emma, I guarantee you will find at least one central protagonist amongst the 6 novels by this cutting-edge writer of fiction in the...
The body is the key to becoming free to live our values fully At the centre of World Values Day is the call to live our values more fully. Usually this starts with thinking about our values, talking to each other about our values, deciding on an action to take or...
Charles Fowler reports back on a beautiful day in quiet of the country at the Global Retreat Centre, a serene Palladian mansion in rolling parkland at Nuneham Courtenay near Oxford, where with a group of 22 others he spent the day reflecting on and discussing the...
The following is a summary of my new book, Everything I Have Learned About Values. It is dedicated to all those who aspire to live a values-driven life. You can download a free PDF version by clicking this link now. The free download will be available until October...
One of the most important and rewarding parts of running any organisation is listening to your stakeholders and reacting to their needs. It is however even more rewarding when you are part of an association where the feedback is coming from an involved membership. ...
How a values-driven approach is being implemented at what will be one of Europe’s largest prisons, Berwyn, in Wrexham, Wales. World Values Day is an opportunity for everybody to think about our most deeply held values and to act on them. This year special attention is...
In ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces’ (1949) Joseph Campbell stated “every failure to cope with a life situation must be laid, in the end, to a restriction of consciousness”. In today’s Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) world many of our leaders express...
“A society is a link in relationships among people and institutions, so that we can live together. But it only works if we have a culture-which implies we share meaning; i.e. significance, purpose and values. Otherwise it falls apart. – David Bohm David Bohm was...
In Chapter Four of Winnie The Pooh, which is entitled “in which Eeyore loses a tail and Pooh finds one”, there’s a problem. Eeyore (who, for the uninitiated, is a donkey of dour disposition) plunges into sadness as he becomes aware that his tail is...
“Values literacy” is about understanding a wide spectrum of values and being able to choose and apply appropriate values within different contexts in real-life situations. We can learn to use values to think, make choices and behave in ways that help us to live...
Generally in Africa, and more specifically in Ghana, we list a number of causal factors for our appalling rate of economic, social and personal development. One of such factors is colonisation; however, after 60 years of independence, we haven’t significantly...
The current focus in our school system is a single-minded drive to improve educational attainment. Yet education is much more than a mechanistic process, which achieves its highest state with the maximisation of academic performance. Exam success is a necessary but...
In the run-up to World Values Day 2017 on Thursday 19th October, we’re inviting people to share their personal stories about their values along with a photo. We’ll then pick some of these stories to share on social media on and before World Values Day! Important: If...
On World Values Day, 19th October 2017, we acknowledge the importance of values in our personal and professional lives. Values are often likened to our moral compass. Values direct how we think and behave; what we regard as permissible and prohibited. There are some...
This year’s World Values Day falls 10 years on from the first rumblings of the financial crisis. We all now know how the story panned out: a tale of greed, short-termism, unaccountable institutions and public outrage. What caused the financial sector to drift so far...
Organisations usually have no problem working out what values they should have. They spend a lot of time and effort planning, consulting, holding meetings, writing reports, maybe even conducting an internal survey. Then they put up these values chosen with such care...
World Values Day should be a red letter day for all high performing organisations because it reminds us that values are the compass, which drive what we do. Values are important because they help organisations engage their people. Over the years, while I have seen...
“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities” One of my favourite lines from any Harry Potter book. This one appears in Chapter 18 of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets when a troubled Harry is remembering with his...
Introducing values through a game on co-operation With World Values Day approaching, I am thinking about how to have the conversation with those I work with around the Values Challenge – how do we live up to what we hold most dear. Values are the compass guiding...
We are living in extraordinary times – volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous. The pace of change will never be this slow again. In the service sector, many traditional approaches are no longer relevant and there is a new business agenda emerging. The landscape of...
If you have ever played mixies with a child you will know what fun it is to create characters that obviously don’t fit together. A bear head with a clown middle and a zoo keeper’s feet can keep children in stitches for hours. Unfortunately mixies are not so much fun...
