Bob MacKenzie's Page

Where do you live and work (City)?

I live in Southampton and work almost anywhere

What are your top professional skills?

fresh thinking, writing, coaching, mentoring, critical friendship, facilitating, action learning

What kinds of management education and development services are you involved in?

Promoting purposeful and effective learning and development in organizations, especially through the strategic uses of writing and conversations.

What is your main interest in the AMED network?

education, networking, inspiration, collegiate discussion/debate, collaboration

Please share your favourite management development insight or quote.

I'm currently intrigued - and exercised - by W Ross Ashby's (1956) Law of Requisite Variety. This states that:

'The larger the variety of actions available to a control system, the larger the variety of perturbations it is able to compensate'.

What, if anything, does this mean for our work in developing people, developing organisations, especially in the light of current thinking about chaos and complexity?

What kind of person are you?

Morning

More about you (Short Bio or any other details you’d like people to know)

I am an independent organizational thinker, consultant, coach, mentor, facilitator and writer. My strategic uses of writing, and the conversations I facilitate, promote the interaction of rigorous thinking and practical application. In this way, I aim to inform, refresh, energise, inspire and encourage others to go on and do something new and satisfying.

Previously, I gained wide ranging professional and managerial experience in the public, private, not-for-profit and higher education sectors. I am a Director and Council Member of AMED, and Principal Consultant with Bob MacKenzie Associates. I am also Professor of Management Learning with the International Management Centres’ Business School, and Set Adviser on their Senior Executive Action Learning (SEAL) doctoral programme.

My work and travels have taken me to Africa, India, Europe and the USA, as well as throughout the UK. I am currently working on a book called ‘Writing as Strategy.’

What I’d like from the AMED network is…

I'd like AMED to continue to grow, flourish, adapt and contribute in what I see as its 3rd Renaissance period.

What do you do for your own development?

I write, read, talk, walk the dog, interact with keen minds and seek out convivial company. Another favourite quote - variously attributed - is "Sometimes I just sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits".

Your Business Website

http://www.mackenzie.explication.org.uk/