Jeff Havens
Jeff Havens is a stand-up comedian, business consultant, and
professional speaker. His presentations combine sensible business advice with
comedic insights into the absurdities of the business world. Jeff's
presentations are laced with irony – he teaches people how to succeed in business by telling them to do the exact opposite of what they ought to do. This ironic approach extends to the titles of his books,
which include "Unleash Your Inner Tyrant!" and "How to Get
Fired!"
Jeff and Teleologic partnered to develop courses that would
supplement his presentations and books. Given the task of developing lessons for Jeff's courses, I had to write content that matched
Jeff's sense of humor. I wrote this page in a section titled "How to Run
an Ineffective Meeting":
A Frank Digression
I want you to consider the hot
dog.
We are told there is meat in a hot
dog, but the hot dog does not behave like any other meat product.
If you take a hot dog and bend it,
twist it, or flatten it, what happens? It immediately springs back to its
original shape. No one can tell you've done anything to it. It looks exactly
like every other hot dog in the world.
And by what sorcery does the hot
dog accomplish this feat?
Filler.
It's not the meat in a hot dog
that makes it special. It's the filler.
I want you to think of your
meetings like hot dogs: Loaded with filler, impervious to change, and
indistinguishable from one another.
Leader Development and Education for Sustained Peace (LDESP)
The Naval Postgraduate School's Leader
Development and Education for Sustained Peace (LDESP) program asked Teleologic
to develop a series of courses that would serve as a primer for U.S. military
officers who are deployed overseas. The courses would briefly summarize the
history, culture, geography, economy, politics, and security situation in
countries and regions where the officers could be deployed.
These courses were simply to
provide a brief initial overview of various regions. Later, the students would
complete more detailed on-site coursework with instructors. I've written many lessons for
these courses. The following is a brief excerpt of a course on Southern Africa:
Security in Southern Africa
The security situation in Southern
Africa has evolved significantly in the past 15-20 years.
In the first decades after gaining
independence, many nations of Southern Africa were wracked by both internal and
cross-border threats. Angola, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mozambique, and Namibia
experienced civil wars. Zimbabwe continues to experience internal political
conflict, with an ever-present possibility of violence.
From the 1970s to the 1990s,
apartheid-era South Africa used its military and intelligence services to
intervene in conflicts in neighboring nations, in an attempt to destabilize
governments unfriendly to its policies and to stave off the movement for
independence and civil rights.
When apartheid finally fell in
1994, the region's center of gravity shifted. No longer was regional security
defined as a stand-off between the Front-Line States (FLS) and South Africa,
the region's economic and military giant. In the wake of apartheid, the
region's nations were able to adopt a more collaborative security strategy.
Although Southern Africa has
generally moved toward greater regional cooperation in security matters, the
transition has not been without its flaws. Because so many Southern African
nations experienced existential threats in the post-independence era, the
regional security arrangements have tended to prioritize protecting each
state's security against potential external threats. But this emphasis does not
adequately address many of the region's most pressing security problems, which
are threats to individual human security, such as disease, crime, malnutrition,
and poverty.
Over time, Southern African
nations have established mechanisms for addressing these issues, most
significantly through the Southern African Development Community. But much work
remains before the region can be considered secure from these and other
threats.