By: Tonette Kellett on March 6, 2023
In Reading Karl Polanyi’s book The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Times, this past week I noted that the author wrote this book in the 1940s. He wrote of the free market system with no government intervention called laissez-faire that was first used in France in the 1800s. [1] He also talked…
By: Jean de Dieu Ndahiriwe on March 5, 2023
As I looked at Polanyi’s work, I saw a troubled sojourner struggling to live a life of impact in a world that is so rapidly changing. Karl Polanyi’s Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time is a source of great insights that can help us see more details of the complexity of…
By: Shonell Dillon on March 5, 2023
I spent a great amount of money (that I will not disclose) on season tickets to see the New Orleans Saints. To say that I am a fan is an understatement. If I could I would follow them to each and every game because I love to see my team playing football. I once did…
By: Noel Liemam on March 5, 2023
During my carpentry apprenticeship years, I heard the phrase so many as it was repeated to us (the newly hired or apprentices), “cut once, so measure twice.” When you heard something repeat and repeat so many times, it becomes annoying, but it becomes part of you. In my first year as an carpentry apprentice, I…
By: Laura Fleetwood on March 5, 2023
Why are you charging a fee for a guided prayer session? Talking to God should be free.” That message appeared in my DMs after I invited my social media followers to an online guided prayer session I was conducting. In spite of more than 30 people happily paying for the online experience, I never offered…
By: Shonell Dillon on March 4, 2023
Map that Changed the World I choose not to focus on war and land, it is such a sore subject. I choose instead to focus on the man that suffered so greatly to create what the book refers to as “The Map that Changed the World”. I would like to speak to the amount of…
By: Henry Gwani on March 4, 2023
The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing your Organization and the World is about possibility, yet not a baseless or pie-in-the-sky sort. But one grounded in a realistic kind of possibility which demands working hard to lead in a fast-changing environment. Drawing from a total of more than 60 years of leadership…
By: Caleb Lu on March 4, 2023
“Do you know ____?” I had a conversation with an old acquaintance that was about 45 minutes of this question in some for or another as they ran through a list of the connections they had made during their time in ministry. It reminded me of conversations around lunch tables at large Evangelical conferences centered…
By: Denise Johnson on March 4, 2023
There are few things I love more than sitting in the back corner of a meeting. It ranks right up there with sitting in a café in the center of a busy square or mall. Both situations provide an optimal view of the people and how they interact with the world around them. It is…
By: Jana Dluehosh on March 3, 2023
Have you ever heard of the concept of Cow trails? When looking at a field where cows often graze you’ll begin to notice trails that there is no longer growth possible. This is because Cows take the path of least resistance. Day after day they follow this easy trail because it requires less work. “That…
By: Chad McSwain on March 3, 2023
“All your big givers are going to leave.” That is what an older church member leveraged over the phone one morning – my day off, no less. I had made changes to the music and it was not received well by some. Enter the threat: if you do not change it back then all your…
By: Esther Edwards on March 3, 2023
Have you ever thought about your thoughts? Thoughts can live in the present, then suddenly think of the past, or dream of the future. They can wander to distant lands and then focus and shut out distractions[1] Well, no doubt, noted psychology professor and esteemed scientific thinker, Daniel Kahneman, has thought much about thoughts. Reading…
By: Audrey Robinson on March 3, 2023
The Great Transformation by Karl Polanyi is an ambitious, encompassing work to uncover what went wrong with self-regulating markets and the corresponding effects on civilization, especially during the turn of the 19th century. Polanyi was born in 1886 in Vienna and was an economic historian, social theorist, and political economist. He lived through two wars,…
By: Mary Kamau on March 3, 2023
The pace of changes has increased significantly since the beginning of the 21st Century, and success in organizations is becoming more about adapting to the environment. The challenge of leadership is not just about adapting to the environment but also leading their followers to change and adapt to the environment. People have inertia and resist…
By: Jenny Steinbrenner Hale on March 3, 2023
Says Joseph Stiglitz in the foreword of The Great Transformation, “It is hard and probably wrong, even to attempt to summarize a book of such complexity and subtlety in a few lines.”[1] With that in mind, the following is by no means a summary, but a few themes discovered and a small personal application. Understanding…
By: Dr. Michael O'Neill on March 3, 2023
Evangelicalism and capitalism have long been intertwined, but the relationship has shifted dramatically in recent years. For Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, and Georg Simmel, the exploration of the institutions of modern capitalism was an important part of their respective social theories, and the neglect of this issue left a void in sociological scholarship during the…
By: Shonell Dillon on March 3, 2023
Tempered Resilence: The author is attempts to explain to us how one becomes a leader after being subjected to challenging circumstances. The author uses the analogy of going through the process of blacksmithing. He explains that those that can stand to go through the tempered times are true leaders. He predicts that those that can…
By: Dinka Utomo on March 3, 2023
The illusion that we understand the past fosters overconfidence in our ability to predict the future. -Daniel Kahneman- Becoming a pastor and church leader who is successful and liked by the congregation in the long term is a dream for many ministers. I also hoped for it and fought hard to achieve it. Therefore…
By: Greg McMullen on March 2, 2023
Reading Polanyi, The Great Transformation I was instantly taken back to political science in community college. I felt a passion start to rise up in where I wanted to dive deeper into Polanyi. In my time in Community College, I became passionate with Karl Marx The Communist Manifesto.[1] John Stuart Mill on Liberty.[2] Jean-Jacques Rousseau,…
By: Jonathan Lee on March 2, 2023
The Practice of Adaptive Leadership was written by Ronal Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky. They all bring abundant insights and professional experience from teaching and leading international leadership consulting. This book expands on the theory of adaptive leadership to invite the readers to perspire in “making progress on the most important challenges you face…
