Published Articles in Pdf Format

Powerpoint-Effective Tool or Efficient Torture - Credits: Harding ;  Broadcast Dialogue
Ensuring a Successful Broadcast Career - Credits: Harding ; Broadcast Dialogue
The price of dumbing it down! - Credits: Harding; Broadcast Dialogue
Corporate impression: What rides on individual behaviour  -Credits: Harding; Broadcast Dialogue
The COC: A model of Canadian business excellence? - Credits: Harding; Broadcast Dialogue
Consequences of one-dimensional Canadian news reporting -  Credits: Harding; Broadcast Dialogue
The Canadian national psyche - Credits: Harding; Broadcast Dialogue
Is there a business value to confrontation? - Credits: Harding; Broadcast Dialogue
The untidy contradiction of strength and vulnerability - Credits: Harding; Broadcast Dialogue
Enjoyment in the workplace - Credits: Harding; Broadcast Dialogue
Intuition: A business competency? -Credits: Harding; Broadcast Dialogue
2008
The Illusion of Work- Credits: Harding; Broadcast Dialogue
Career advancement:Negotiation vs. expectation - Credits: Harding; Broadcast Dialogue
Does it pay to be Judgemental? - Credits: Harding; Broadcast Dialogue
Original thought,time and technology - Credits: Harding; Broadcast Dialogue
Wearing originality with confidence - Credits: Harding; Broadcast Dialogue
Investigative journalism....a service of trust - Credits: Harding; Broadcast Dialogue
Not living in the moment? - Credits: Harding; Broadcast Dialogue
2009
Labels, perceptions and dangerous assumptions - Credits: Harding; Broadcast Dialogue
The power of the media to form public opinion - Credits: Harding; Broadcast Dialogue
Let the magic flow! - Credits: Harding; Broadcast Dialogue
The inescapable value of sustainable business relationships - Credits: Harding; Broadcast Dialogue
The art of deceit - Credits: Harding; Broadcast Dialogue
Being all things to all people–virtue or hypocrisy? - Credits: Harding; Broadcast Dialogue
Disable the reset-button! - Credits: Harding; Broadcast Dialogue
Business leadership and idealism - Credits: Harding; Broadcast Dialogue
Women and the psychology of leadership - Credits: Harding; Broadcast Dialogue
2010
Mentorship … What people might become - Credits: Harding; Broadcast Dialogue
Societal entitlement - Credits: Harding; Broadcast Dialogue
Does excellence still have an opportunity to shine? - Credits: Harding; Broadcast Dialogue
Our personal impact...acknowledging youth wanting more! - Credits: Harding; Broadcast Dialogue
The danger of legal positivism - Credits: Harding; Broadcast Dialogue
Corruption by numbers - Credits: Harding; Broadcast Dialogue

-Accountability - Publication: Broadcast Dialogue
The concept of risk is much discussed in business, but with the post 9/11, Enron, Martha mind set and the rush of those doing business with the US to comply with the Sarbanes Oxley Act (so called accountability/transparency/security) it often seems to me that risk is fast becoming a remote reality. I find it useful to periodically ponder on what risk actually means!
Risk is the plotting or implementing a course of action with uncertain results. Calculated risk refers to the minimization of uncertainty by evaluating any given situation on a balance of probability – Pitting known data/information against the possibility of an unknown event. All business planning that involves creativity, innovation requires leadership that will recognize, assess and strategize for effective management of potential risk.
Real accountability involves strong leadership – Navigating uncharted waters is a risky business. True leadership requires decision making that allows that can be broken down into individual steps, all involving considerable risk.
A true leader will:
• Identify a business requirement
• Choose to intervene/act
• Evolve a relevant solution
• Secure buy-in on all stakeholder levels
• Manage budgetary, resource, time, team and quality realities
• Manage fallout
• Get the job done
Strategy is defined as a plan of action in business that is used in conjunction with words like blueprint, procedure, approach, design, tactic or master-plan. Originally a predominantly militaristic term, it described the best possible tactics to best an enemy on the battle field. Commonly used terms, but to what extent does strategy and being strategic impact everyday individual awareness?
Strategy relates to a target group, and immediately bringing forward the concept/notion of competition or winning. Logically, knowledge of relevant parties and as many of the details/circumstance surrounding their operation would be crucial to a supposedly competitive plan or strategy. This knowledge includes tangible and intangible, overt and covert knowledge of target activity at any point in time.
External targets from a business viewpoint, refer to clients, suppliers, industry partners, government and of course, competitors. Strategic planning would align organizational objectives with target interaction at any point in time.
If competition is a component of business planning, then intelligence or foreknowledge has to be an integral part of any strategy applied. Without the ability to forecast events/trends and predict probable outcomes, strategy cannot exist – It is clear that forecasting and predicting future outcomes involves a good deal of risk. It then follows logically that leadership and proactive objective setting/decision making will result in acceptance of risk, a successful strategy and dynamic targeted action that will reflect the possibility of constantly changing realities.

Living by the Rule Book - Publication: Broadcast Dialogue
Are we abetting a culture of controlled passivity?
A strong body of law is ideally balanced with dynamic interpretation, situation by situation, person by person. A subjective analysis followed by an objective application! Instead we seem to live in a society that looks to the law as a means to certainty. This is especially true of people who, confronted with mishap, instinctively believe “this should not happen” and more specifically “this should not happen to me”. A set of rules, once applied will guarantee certainty. Successful litigation will restore temporary loss of order.
This situation is dangerous. It allows the non-thinker to indulge in the futile notion that if something goes wrong a rule must have been broken…… automatically creating the perception that somebody else must be at fault.
Flipping the local TV channels within minutes of the recent Air France crash at Pearson, this phenomenon was clearly visible…….umpteen interviewers/anchors were already on the line to experts and witnesses all smugly anxious to ascertain blame, all this while it was not yet clear if there were any survivors! Subsequent media reporting seemed thirsty for an outcome that will find someone guilty of something…..Why? Perhaps to reinforce the notion that control is ultimately possible?
Coverage of the so called War on Terror underscores this attitude. If there are enough laws, there will not be terrorist attacks.
Britain’s proposed broad new rules and bannings will drive dissenters deeper underground and of their very nature increase the magnitude of the “enemy”. In Apartheid South Africa, White safety and prosperity relied on unceasing legislation to block threats as they evolved……It did not work. A thousand thumbs in the ever weakening dyke. No repressive law has ever stamped out human despair, the fertile ground that spawns terrorism. History has shown that the only way to stem the tide of terror is to recognize its cause, perceived or otherwise…..!
First airports, now public transport systems have the media spotlight! Does repeated closing of stable doors after the horses have bolted appease public opinion? Will our proposed no-fly list be effective? If not a suspect or a declared terrorist anyone can fly. Will not the Canadian Diaspora make suspects of us all, at least by association? Again, Apartheid & its anti-terror legislation, so similar to that now appearing in the US and Britain, illustrated how, shielded by controlling anti-terror laws, the meanness, and bigotry that lurks in us all, has the potential to surface with impunity.
Why does the media seem so reluctant to remind the public, that while vigilance is necessary, it is Canada’s proud international & domestic record that has not made us a target so far?
Desiring certainty, we seem to increasingly interpret rules as absolute. Fearing litigation, parents regard child protection laws as limits to effective discipline; corporate accountability has become zero tolerance; corporate performance is synonymous with process compliance; the medical profession looks more to technological than to personal diagnosis. The list goes on!
Governance has overshadowed individual awareness – Litigation and legal process have replaced collective consciousness and responsibility. Is a transactional approach to life and fear of rebuke/financial penalty eroding our thinking process? May we impinge on the freedoms of others in the absence of a rule? Do we assert ourselves or confront situations only when armed with an appropriate precedent/law?
Insistence on Political Correctness echoes the same non-thinking! Concern for discrimination against others has now become an obligatory exercise in self-protection. One cannot refer to age, looks, gender, sexuality, race, disability etc. without fear of censure. What follows is stilted interaction where the intrinsic nature of a person is often completely ignored if not diminished.
Job searchers and recruiters regularly bypass subjective discussions, dealing rather in safe clichéd interactions and possibly computer driven profiling output? Immigrants and refugees cannot be addressed as such, but are rejected in the good old stand by of “no Canadian experience”!
Blindly following rules is a passive, one-dimensional quest for certainty. I am again reminded of Pierre E. Trudeau’s famous words: "A society which emphasizes uniformity is one which creates intolerance and hate. A society which eulogizes the average citizen is one which breeds mediocrity." In this dangerous period of value crisis, this wonderful country must preserve its hard earned balance at all cost. A media call for new legislation at the onset of every crisis is not the answer.