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From Despair to Action – Leadership’s Role in Rebuilding Hope
“At times like this the game goes to the one with the loudest voice, but everyone wishes their mother was there.” – Captain Jack Harkness, Torchwood Crises take more than a physical toll; they strike at the heart of our emotional resilience. Among the most corrosive effects of a crisis is despair; the sinking feeling… Read more
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Three Levels of Crisis and How They Impact Leadership
“Wherever there is danger, there lurks opportunity; whenever there is opportunity, there lurks danger.” – Earl Nightingale Not all crises are created equal. Their scale, intensity, and duration vary, and so too must our leadership approach. One of the most valuable frameworks for understanding these differences comes from Professor Dennis Mileti, whose work on natural… Read more
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The Chaos Factor – How Leaders Stay Grounded
Chaos is the score upon which reality is written. – Henry Miller When a crisis hits, chaos is unavoidable. Systems fail. Information becomes unreliable. Emotions spike. The environment is in flux. In these moments, leaders face a defining challenge: not eliminating chaos, but staying grounded within it. Drawing on lessons from The Crisis Leader and insights from… Read more
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The Human Needs that Shape Crisis Response
In every crisis, beyond the logistics, strategies, and press conferences, there’s a quieter battlefield: the human mind. Understanding how people think, feel, and act under extreme stress is central to effective crisis leadership. And one of the most useful frameworks for doing so comes from Tony Robbins’ Six Human Needs model. These needs drive all… Read more
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What is a Crisis and Why Leadership Matters
Crisis. The word alone evokes urgency, unpredictability, and disruption. Yet, behind every headline-grabbing disaster, behind every public meltdown or system breakdown, there lies a deeper truth: leadership is either what makes things better, or what makes them worse. We live in an increasingly unstable world. Pandemics, cyberattacks, natural disasters, economic volatility, political unrest, the list… Read more
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Lessons from the Humanitarian Sector in Dealing with Climate Change
Today we celebrate #EarthDay in the shadow of a lack of progress in dealing with climate change. Food insecurity due to severe floods and droughts has more than tripled the number of people living with hunger. Places like Pakistan have seen “hundred-year floods” return in a decade and the Horn of Africa has not seen a drop… Read more
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The Need for Innovation in Financing Loss and Damage Efforts
The creation of a new Loss and Damage Fund (LDF) agreed upon at COP27 in November 2022, represents a long and hard-fought win, especially for small and vulnerable states, and is an essential step towards climate justice. Yet, it is important to note that this fund is years away from becoming operational, let alone being financed. A… Read more
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The Collective Impact of COP27
After a short hiatus, the Climate Innovation Chronicles are back and over the coming days, the plan is to move to a more frequent schedule of publishing, to coincide with my participation in the COP27 conference in Sharm el Sheik in Egypt. The Conference Of Parties (COP) is an annual conference held by the UNFCCC (UN body on Climate Change), where… Read more
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Financing Climate Innovation
Humanity is facing its largest problem ever – Climate Change. Yet with great challenges come great opportunities and as discussed in the last newsletter, a critical part of ensuring we stay within the 2°C limits defined as a critical threshold by scientists is driven by finding new ways to produce the goods and services we currently… Read more
