Despite fuel crisis alarms and environmental awareness drives since the 70’s, North Amerca has consistently deemed the production of electric cars a bad business prospect. Instead we forged ahead with the production of gas-guzzling traditional vehicles.

It would appear China reading the clues, analyzed future market requirements, decided to risk developing a product that is ready to roll at just the right time.

China’s Changan Automobile Group “will roll out 30 electric cars developed jointly with Electrovaya in Canada before the end of this year, potentially becoming the first Chinese auto maker to tap the North American market.” Eventually the made-in-China clean-energy cars will be shipped directly to “ the hotly-contested market”

“Other Chinese players, such as BYD auto, an automaking unit of Hong Kong-listed rechargeable battery maker BYD Co are set to tap the clean energy vehicle market at home and overseas. BYD Auto has signed up 10 distributors for its self-made plug-in hybrid car in Europe, well ahead of its targeted entry into that market in 2010.”

Quebec Hydro modernized its infrastructure with a view to provincial self-reliance after the power outings of 2003/4 is apparently now capable of providing electrical recharge to 36 million vehicles, Canada wide, without going off the grid – Remarkable foresight!

Ref: http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSSHA33460720081104

PMI-SOC Breakfast Meeting

On Tuesday, November 13, 2007 Rodger Harding will discuss Corporate Intelligence from a Project Management perspective with the Southern Ontario Chapter of the Project Managent Institute   

The presentation will be entitled:

The Project Management Team, the Eyes & Ears of an Organization

Content will include:

·          Intelligence Gathering VS Espionage

·          Unnecessary sharing of information - What walks out the door

·          Information Gaps - What the organization needs to know

·          Establishing Client Confidence - The Human Factor in Information Gathering

·          Negotiation: Overcoming resistance – Ensuring relevance to decision-makers

·          Measurable Communication Success – Effective delivery techniques - An awareness of personal/team/company intelligence impact on others

For more information on the event visit:

http://www.soc.pmi.on.ca/cde.cfm?event=179233

Rodger Harding’s book Corporate Intelligence Awareness has been nominated for the 2008 Axiom Business Book Awards (www.axiomawards.com) in Category 5: Business Ethics.

We are particularly pleased with the category of nomination as we believe the book content deals with the murky area of what is ethical in a business world that is experiencing a dramatic rise in corporate espionage/spying.

As technology evolves more people will spy internally and externally just because they can. Oftentimes current law and business ethical mores are vague or undefined, leaving the field open for unethical opportunists.

Corporate Intelligence Awareness, Securing the Competitive Edge explores ways to gather and protect critical business data using inexpensive people skills that are already in place.

We believe our approach will not impose a 'zero tolerance' type solution that in time stifles individual/team intitiative and creativity.

Dear Clients & Friends,

Harding International & Associates Inc. opened its doors exactly ten years ago. Exhilarated by my role in launching and directing the challenging initiative that enabled government officials to present the New South Africa to the world, I was inspired to open a consultancy that would utilize my legal and diplomatic background to successfully assist in the difficult task of fully marrying individual/team talent and expertise to greater organizational objectives/goals. A decade and several thousand consultations, seminars and speaking engagements later, I am strengthened in my vision that this may be accomplished to great advantage by accommodating people who want to be what they are rather than what others expect them to be.

Interestingly my original mission statement holds true to this day. I was not interested in growing a vast company with teams of people that needed to be managed, but rather in providing clients with a hands-on, customized and personal service that ensures residual value. This approach has attracted a diverse, yet like-minded core client base. New clients are as a result of referrals or when individuals move on to different organizations. I am deeply grateful for this, as selling is perhaps the most time consuming and challenging aspect of the job. 

My own evolution mirrors that of the business. Sustaining the operation has been an exciting adventure that has fully brought to life resources that I did not know I had. Intrinsically I considered myself a creative person with little time for detail and process. This was especially so as prior employ had always provided an existing structure that allowed me to pursue what I considered to be the more important issues. Looking back, I have a distinct feeling of satisfaction at the administrative, technical and business acumen that I have developed without sacrificing spontaneity, originality or my strong sense of professional individuality. In client scenarios and in my own life, I am more and more conscious that we often have to pay prices for the choices we make. I believe making trade-offs and choices should be a normal part of the process of being true to who we really are. Encouraging this consciousness has become the key message of all my consulting and training initiatives.

Conflict Management, Strategic Communication, Leadership, Team-building & Presentation Skill Enhancement were the stalwart services of the early years. Career & Outplacement Counseling was added as a direct outflow from relationships built in client organizations.  In 2002 our Corporate Intelligence Awareness Program evolved in direct response to corporate requirement to factor future uncertainty into planning, strategy and marketing initiatives. This is my favorite activity as it enables the contribution of every employee or team member in the competitive evolution of any organization. 
 

My book Corporate Intelligence Awareness, Securing the Competitive Edge, published in November 2006 generated sufficient client interest and media attention to establish this program as a permanent offering and the creation of this site. In turn, application of the program has resulted in the increased demand for our Leadership, Negotiation, Strategic Communication, Relationship Building & Writing Modules, effectively bringing our service deployment full circle.      

Words cannot express my gratitude to clients and friends for their support and encouragement over the last 10 years. I can honestly say that you have enabled me to reach a degree of fulfillment that I did not believe possible. I look forward to keeping in touch in the same spirit of collegiality in the years to come.

Warm regards,

Rodger           

The organization that embraces a culture of Intelligence Awareness (thinking & aware people) in conjunction with available technology has the best shot at dealing with potential disaster. The greater the capacity of an organization and its people to act proactively in the realm of uncertainty, the greater the ability to realistically predict, recognize and prevent catastrophe.  

This standpoint is well illustrated by the saga of astronaut Lisa Novak and her indictment on an assortment of criminal offences. The incident sends a strong and clear warning to those employers, desirous of certainty, who believe profiling technology alone can provide an accurate read as to psychological well being.  

With the rank of Captain and a career spanning twenty years in the U.S. Navy and NASA’S Space Shuttle Program, Ms. Novak would have had pass many psychological assessments, the most recent being in preparation for her role as Mission Specialist in the Discovery voyage of July 2006. Is it believable that someone with such bizarre emotional potential could slip through the cracks in such a closely monitored environment?  

My underlying standpoint is that people change day-by- day, year-by-year in direct proportion to their life experience. Much like life, the wild-card factor is ever present. We also often seem to forget that people, in contrast to machines, technology and set process, have intuition, instinct and common sense that, rolled into one, constitute an invaluable competency - Human Awareness.

Surely in the case of Miss Novak, deployment of this innate capacity would have sent up red flags in the tight collegial environment she works? What went wrong? Were there no indicators as to her building anguish? If there were, why did someone not put out a hand to her? Did her supervisor really supervise her?

Human ability is more often than not ignored in deference to an organizational culture that cowers behind technology, regulations and known process. I hear so many saying, after a major fiasco, how “inappropriate” it would have been to address unproven gut-feelings, especially in a professional environment where we pretend to ignore 80% of who a person is (physical, emotional, social etc.) “We thought it more appropriate to wait for the performance review to address these issues”, is another favourite explanation.

The outcome speaks for itself. Like it or not, all of who a person is comes to work…The organization that understands, acknowledges and manages all of who their employees are would reach out to the Lisa Novaks of this world before they unravel.

Toronto, ON (PRWEB) November 14, 2006 -- The recent speech delivered on November 9, 2006 by Eliza Manningham-Buller, Director-General of MI5, on the terrorist threat facing the UK is one of those rare occasions when an expert outlines the true nature of intelligence work. Rodger Nevill Harding, author of the recently released book "Corporate Intelligence Awareness: Securing the Competitive Edge," discusses the direct business parallels.

Good intelligence predicts what might happen in the future - a series of often disparate clues that gives rise to theories that, if applied in time, might influence business strategy and planning. There are a lot of mights and maybes in intelligence, says Harding.

It would appear that Manningham-Buller agrees: "It is understandable that people are reluctant to accept assertions that do not always appear to be substantiated. It is right to be skeptical about intelligence… I wish life were like 'Spooks,' where everything is (a) knowable, and (b) soluble by six people. But those whose plans we wish to detect in advance are determined to conceal from us what they intend to do. And every day they learn. From the mistakes of others. From what they discover of our capabilities from evidence presented in court, and from leaks to the media. Moreover, intelligence is usually bitty and needs piecing together, assessing, judging. It takes objectivity, integrity and a skeptical eye to make good use of intelligence: even the best of it never tells the whole story......."
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