Australia - and other countries too - need a cold shower

I have had to be very disciplined during my short break from posting not to post. There have been many things I wanted to comment on.

One of the reasons I have taken the short break from posting has been the need to catch up on posts on some other of my blogs and especially Managing the Professional Services Firm. There I have been writing some posts on depression.

One of the things I felt while writing is that Australia and some other western countries at least needed to take a cold shower to wake them up from the constant obsession with doing better, going faster. The human cost is becoming just too high, the overall results too negative.

This actually links across a number of the things that I have tried to write about, from my concerns about performance pay for teachers to broader problems in management, education, public administration and public policy.

We need to stop and take a fundamental look at what we are doing and, more importantly, why we are doing it.