Leadership and management development has stayed roughly the same over the last thirty years; chalk and talk, but maybe disguised as more exciting through new technology.

I was doing some fundraising research for a client recently when I came across the Forbes website, and specifically their list of billionaires. This site tracks the stock portfolios of billionaires in real time (http://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/).

The refugee crisis has been brewing for the past 12 months, and has suddenly come into sharp focus following the pictures last week of the body of three year old Aylan Kurdi washed up on a Turkish beach.

The word ‘customer’ is often viewed negatively by charities. I’d like to challenge that perception. I believe it is the most accurate catch-all term to mean the recipient of goods, services, products, or ideas.

Systems thinking has been around for a while in the private and public sectors, and surely it’s time has come in the charity sector. Before we go any further, let’s be clear about what systems thinking means.

The recent death of Olive Cooke was tragic; as the red tops put it, a hard working charity worker hounded to suicide by heartless charities praying on her good will and manipulating her conscience.

Performance management has embedded itself in most organisations in the last few decades. It is now a part of the modern manager’s work. The question is, what value does it add when many see it as a mere tick-box exercise?