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Shallow dives into chaos in teaching and leading

December 14, 2017 By Complexity, Facilitation, Featured, Leadership, Learning

In the Cynefin framework, the domains are really shades with some clear boundaires.  Strategic work using Cynefin is about making various moves between different domains for different reasons.  This is called Cynefin dynamics, and there’s an old but good paper on it here. In Cynefin dynamics there is a strategic move of “taking a shallow dive into chaos” which is useful for strategic purposes when one needs to break pattern entrainment.  It is a very useful move in teaching contexts when we are trying to get people to let go of some of their fixed ways of seeing and doing …

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Today, let’s speak their names again

December 5, 2017 By Being

Geneviève Bergeron (born 1968), civil engineering student Hélène Colgan (born 1966), mechanical engineering student Nathalie Croteau (born 1966), mechanical engineering student Barbara Daigneault (born 1967), mechanical engineering student Anne-Marie Edward (born 1968), chemical engineering student Maud Haviernick (born 1960), materials engineering student Maryse Laganière (born 1964), budget clerk in the École Polytechnique’s finance department Maryse Leclair (born 1966), materials engineering student Anne-Marie Lemay (born 1967), mechanical engineering student Sonia Pelletier (born 1961), mechanical engineering student Michèle Richard (born 1968), materials engineering student Annie St-Arneault (born 1966), mechanical engineering student Annie Turcotte (born 1969), materials engineering student Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz (born 1958), …

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Better decision making

December 4, 2017 By Collaboration, Conversation, Emergence, Facilitation, Leadership 4 Comments

At the end of a couple of weeks in Europe and being here in Glasgow during this past week has heightened my sensitivity to how democracy, devoid of deliberation and focused only on numeric results, has been hijacked and rendered ineffective for making complex decisions related to governance of complex issues.  The UK is currently paying the price for a ridiculous decision made in June of 2016 to leave the European Union.  Whatever you think of the merits of Brexit, there can be no denying that the method for doing so has been deeply flawed both in its democratic implementation …

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Learning from indigenous voices on twitter

November 1, 2017 By Featured, First Nations

The other day a friend asked me who is doing good writing that can inform her own journey with reconciliation.  She is a very involved white woman, doing work with universities and indigenous communities and even she was having trouble finding good resources to keep her learning going and share with others. I couldn’t point her to sources for a couple of reasons. First, the world is moving really quickly, and good articles and papers that are written are often out of date fairly quickly. But more important, to get published, a writer often has to sanitize the outrage, emotional …

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Learning a craft

October 28, 2017 By Uncategorized

In his book Sea Room Adam Nicholson describes meeting John MacAuly, a Hebridean boat builder who has just built a boat for him to sail across the Minch to the Shiants.  “And do you think I’ll make a good sailor of her” “If you had another life,” John said.  “Ah yes,” I said reeling a little. “I suppose one needs to know these things instinctively.” “No,” he said. “You need to be entirely conscious of what you are doing and why you are doing it.”

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