Yesterday was spent working with my friend and colleague Ciaran Camman yesterday on a design for a workshop on evaluation in complexity. We had the utter joy of being able to be together, having a high bandwidth human experience, which enabled us to really dive into some interesting existential questions after which we were famished and so we retreated to Kulinarya Filipino Eatery for dinner, feasting on Crispy Binagoongan and Batil Patong. The food was great and as usual our conversation wandered all over the place and at some point – possibly when we were standing outside a small rehearsal …
For Mother’s Day, have a read of Crawford Killian’s new piece in The Tyee about fungi and forests as he charts his learning about mushrooms, trees, and fungal networks through disbelief to reverent awe. Our common mother is so much more than we can ever understand. Read: Why fungi are more sophisticated than we can imagine thetyee.ca/Culture/2022/05/06/What-Do-You-Say-To-Thinking-Forest/
It’s an old post by Henry Mintzberg from 2015 but he tweeted it out today and the message is as current as ever. If Mintzberg is retweeting seven year old essays, it’s probably worth paying attention to them. Here’s the essence: Someone I know once asked a most senior British civil servant why his department had to do so much measuring. His reply: “What else can we do when we don’t know what’s going on?” Did he ever try getting on the ground to find out what’s going on? And then using judgment to assess that? (Remember judgment? It’s still …
Laureen Golden is one of those people that is able to just get me talking. From the first time we met back in 2015, she and I have had dozens of great conversations about complexity, facilitation, participatory design and leadership. I’ve supported her in her work with leaders and Montessori educators and also in teaching a course on system work and trauma. Here are a couple of offerings from her YouTube channel, where she has edited some of our conversations into teaching pieces that we are happy to share with you A playlist of four short videos on working with …
One of the quotes I keep rolling out all the time is this one from Christina Baldwin: No group can prove itself safe by the definition of one member; it can only prove itself healthy and responsive to the the needs of different people over time Christina Baldwin, Calling the Circle, p. 172 I sometimes reframe this quote as “No one person can be responsible for safety in a group, but a group can learn to take responsibility for its own safety.” For a group to work well, especially if it is confronting challenges, uncertainty, complexity, or conflict, it needs …