I just came across this excellent summary of the DLMA framework by Managing Director of Better Boards Australasia, Raph Goldworthy. For those new to DLMA, Grant Thornton UK sums it up this way: It is a simple yet powerful tool which provides a framework with which to evaluate how well an organisation is performing regarding the balance of skills, understanding of roles and responsibilities between…
“he DID say anus?” murmured someone to my right. Admittedly, anus is not a word typically associated with corporate governance. Obvious jokes aside, what do butt holes have to do with corporations and the work of boards? But, on a pleasant October day overlooking London’s Finsbury Circus, t he theory proposed by my fellow Australian Graham Logan , that all that was going on in the city below owed…
If there’s a reality that defies economic sense it’s this: if profits are soaring, stock markets are hitting records and global GDP has doubled in the last two decades why is it that social welfare and genuine sustainability, when measured by the accessibility and availability of objectively useful things like, clean air, fertile soil and fresh water, are in decline. Economists have promised for…
A vulgar market is the real and visceral market. An ignoble co-ordination device in which producers exchange their unwanted goods, services and income based on the utility of an unmistakable gamble of excrement. A type of calculated bet premised on the idea of everyone producing things that they can’t use and don’t want for the purpose of wagering that another producer has produced something they…
In the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith argued that the “propensity to truck, barter, and exchange” was inherent in human nature. But in the following passage, Jean Baptiste Say offers a more viceral explanation for trade. The urge to sell being less about human nature and perhaps more about the call of nature. “When the producer has put the finishing hand to his product, he is most anxious to sell…
2026 marks the 250th anniversary of The Wealth of Nations and Adam Smith’s water-diamond paradox. Considered among the most foundational puzzles in economics, no theory of value can pass into history without offering up a solution. Smith described the paradox as follows: “ Nothing is more useful than water: but it will purchase scarcely anything; scarcely anything can be had in exchange for it. A…
“But surely you’re mistaken” smiled Hermes. With promethean hubris, the mischievous god announced that he, being smarter than their father, could do much better. “I wager, I could squeeze out even more efficiency” he winked. “I’m the god of finance you know. Trust me. I know exactly what I’m doing.” With that, and loving a good poo joke, he transformed the herd so that from then on the horses…
Over 60 years has passed since the word “corporate governance” entered the boardroom. In that time much has changed for company directors. But not the language. Company directors still have only word to describe what they do. Leaving boards defined by a term that ignores the binary nature of their role and responsibility.
Conceived in 2012, my first 2x2 matrix was designed to visualise the work of any board and management team based on two opposing decision criteria - value creation and value protection. Incorporating the tension between leading and managing and identifying the same tension within the boardroom - directing and governing. Value creation was something that was more spoken than practiced by directors.…
Mademoiselle X was dead, or so she thought. According to her medical records she was convinced that “she has no brain, no nerves, no chest, no stomach, no intestines… only skin and bones of a decomposing body”. Her neurologist diagnosed “délire des negations”. Cotard’s Syndrome, named after the 19th-century doctor who first treated the unfortunate French woman, is a condition whereby sufferers…
Elon Musk is obsessed with the Kardashev Scale. Conceived by astronomer Nikolai Kardashev to measure a Civilization’s technological progress based on total energy use, the Kardashev scale appears core to his mission. But there is also a Kardashev paradox. I wager that the total energy use of an empire is greatest just before its fall. At the point where a civilisation maximizes its entire energy…
When it comes to usefulness, economics has a supply problem. Things with with the greatest value in use are in short supply and things with the greatest value in exchange are not. The economic style of reasoning that underpins contemporary capitalism emphasizes prices, markets and efficiency over the production of useful things. And despite the social welfare promise behind the brutal faith that…
“the problem of value must always hold the pivotal position, as the chief tool of analysis in any pure theory that works with a rational schema” Schumpeter When theory of value, understood in terms of exchange, was first conceived the planet was degrees cooler, plants and animals were more diverse, water and air were cleaner and Adam Smith’s water diamond paradox captured the imagination of…
In this part, with the help of Thanos, the evil villain of the Marvel universe, I consider the opposite of value in use - counter-value. Counter-value is the core premise of Avengers: Infinity War . At the end of the movie, while wearing the Infinity Gauntlet, the “evil” warlord Thanos clicks his fingers and wipes out half the planet's human capital. A world of less people. But not all Infinity…
In this part of the series, I want to return to the concept of the prime mover or principia media introduced in part 10 . As it has been some time since I’ve provided an update on my work, I’ll first try and summarize where I’m up to in the Millennia Challenge - beginning with my conclusion. I’ve proposed that the best use of a thing: is the use that results in an increased capacity to bring about…
There are only two dimensions to my matrix- value and control. But there’s no magic quadrant. Just four organizational mindsets that don’t always play nice. The latest evolution puts value in use at the core of the matrix. The technology was never intended to generate the most profit. Rather, it was designed to help align everyone’s role with a corporation’s primary interest - to generate value in…
In 1944, Erwin Schrödinger, the founders of quantum mechanics famously said “life feeds on negative entropy”. Negative entropy was in his words “ a measure of order.” “just as a living organism attract a string of negative entropy to offset the increase in entropy it generates in life, so as to maintains itself at a stable and low entropy level.” In the context of the capitals, negative entropy is…
So far I have connected the concept of change to energy in it’s social form - value in use, recognized that potential value in use is stored in various forms of capital and described how capitals are transformed to animate open social systems such as corporations. None of this is rooted in a natural metaphor or analogy. By creating links between value in use, the phenomena of change and the energy…
The systems symbol So far in the Millennia Challenge Series the focus has been on the foundational concepts of value in use, the capitals and the ways in which capitals are transformed to generate more or less value in use. This highly theoretical work might seem academic. Disconnected from any obvious practical application you could be forgiven for thinking that understanding the theoretical best…
I use the Greek letter Phi ( Φ) to represent the idea of value in use. My first podcast hosted by long time collaborator and friend, Valeria Maltoni. The podcast serves as a great introduction to the Millennia Challenge and the largely forgotten idea of value in use. In an effort to do my bit for the planet, I set the Millennia Challenge as a competition to solve the Value Problem: how to decide…