Travelling North

TRAVELLING NORTH is the home of Next Steps, a forum for people seeking to re-examine their lives and their contribution to society, and Tadorna Consulting, a consulting and development centre which works with organisations in all sectors of the economy on leadership, innovation, and strategy.

Next Steps is a new venture that will be developed over the course of 2011. Its core is a seminar which takes as its starting point the much quoted comment by Socrates that 'an unexamined life is not worth living”. The purpose of the seminar is to help participants think about the life they are living, and to consider what he or she might want to do differently in the future. It puts choices in the context of responsibility exploring what each person might want to give back to society and to their community. The moderated discussions are not intended to provide answers, nor tell each person what decisions he or she should make, but rather invite them to explore choices about such subjects as loyalty, artistic creativity, wisdom and knowledge, managing time, and determining how to live with others. This venture will also allow participants to enrol in an on-line website which will provide support, networks and contacts, helping those who choose this option to keep in touch with evolving ideas from the Next Steps venture.

Tadorna Consulting has run for more than ten years, and has worked with a wide variety of clients in Asia, Australia and the USA. It specialises in conducting high level workshops focussed on building strategy, policy and leadership capability. It also offers innovation workshops that are targeted on developing new business models and organisational strategies. Tadorna Consulting offers a facilitated approach, working with organisations to help them grow and develop their staff, rather than undertaking packaged courses and programs. A list of past clients is attached.

Both these enterprises have been established by Peter Sheldrake. Peter commenced his working life as an academic, and reinvented himself several times before returning to teaching. His work in universities began as a Teaching Fellow at the University of Cambridge in the UK, then Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, and finally an Associate Professor at the Flinders University of South Australia. After ten years he left the academic world and joined the Shell Company of Australia as Senior Development Adviser. His next transition was to work in the public service, joining the Commonwealth Government's Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs. He worked there for 6 years, eventually as Director, and then ran his own consultancy before joining the Australian Institute of Management in 1988, where he stayed for just over nine years, the last two of these as its National CEO. He was Executive Director of the Institute's Victorian Division for nine years. Finally, he returned to the academic world, where he was Professor of Business Entrepreneurship at RMIT University until 2010. He is a Visiting Professor at three universities in the Peoples Republic of China – Zhejiang University, the University of Science and Technology Beijing, and Qingdao University.

Peter Sheldrake has a BA, MA and MSc, all from the University of Cambridge, and a PhD from RMIT. He has written over 100 articles, and co-authored five books: Looking at Innovation, Medical Education in Australia, Design for Adversity, Accountability in Higher Education, and Inclusive leadership. He recently published two books as the sole author – Ronin and Revolutionaries and The Ronin Age. His latest book How am I to Live? is in manuscript.