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The two loops model of change, Part 3

January 18, 2024 By Complexity, Emergence, Facilitation, Featured, Leadership, Learning, Organization, Philanthropy 4 Comments

Part 1: Introduction to the model Part 2: A deeper dive into the model The two loops model emerged from many years of conversations amongst people working in the Berkana Exchange and their friends and mates in the late 1990s and early 2000s. As my friend Tim Merry pointed out on a comment at LinkedIn, the model itself was an emergent framework of how organizing happens on what we called back then “trans local” communities of practice. The Berkana Exchange was made up of many learning hubs around the world in places like Zimbabwe, South Africa, Senegal, India, Brazil, Mexico …

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The two loops model of change, Part 2

January 15, 2024 By Complexity, Conversation, Culture, Democracy, Emergence, Featured, First Nations, Leadership, Organization, Philanthropy 6 Comments

Part 1 is an introduction to this model. In the first post on this model, I introduced the basic model. In this one, I want to explain the way I think about the lines and the spaces between them The big moves The “two loops” referred to in the model’s name refer to these two arcs that essentially represent the rise and fall of influence over time. In the original, as I encountered it, only the bottom arc had labels for four big movements of an emerging system. They were the original Name, Connect, Nourish and Illuminate, based on the …

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Sharing protects history

January 9, 2024 By Culture

My laptop died this week after many years of faithful service. It is an example of something that was used and loved to death. This post is about the opposite. On January 1, Steamboat Willie’s copyright protection finally lapsed. The Internet Archive posted a blog post about it. Three days ago, they followed up that post with another about the implications of the ever-extending terms for copyright protection. In that article, these paragraphs caught my attention: The time extension of copyright, from 14 to 28 to “75 years or life of the author plus 50 years” to the current “95 …

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The two loops model of change, Part 1

January 8, 2024 By Art of Hosting, Complexity, Emergence, Featured, Leadership, Power 10 Comments

It occured to me this morning after I posted that piece on affordances last night, I haven’t really blogged about the two loops model of change in living systems. That’s kind of a surprise to me because for the past 15 years or so this is one of the models that has formed a deep part of my practice in working with organizations. Like the Chaordic Path, it is a simple way to grasp deep and complex topics and a good way to introduce groups to concepts that explain more deeply how complex systems work. (You’ll see me refer to …

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Affordances in the two loops

January 7, 2024 By Complexity, Emergence, Featured 7 Comments

A quick note here to connect a key idea from complexity work with the two loops model of change that I’ve used essentially as a theory of change in living systems ever since I started working with it back in the Berkana Institute days when we were looking for ways to explain why networks alone weren’t the answer to change work. Just a warning. This is a theory-heavy post, and I recommend you read the linked papers and blogs to dove deeper. What is unique about the model pictured above (and click through if you’re reading this on email, as …

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