I’ve been working in the world of program development with a lot of complexity and innovation and co-creation lately and have seen these three terms used sometimes interchangeably to describe a strategic move. As a result, I’ve been adopting a more disciplined approach to these three kinds of activities. First some definitions. Taken explicitly from Cynefin, a probe is an activity that teaches you about the context that you are working with. The actual outcome of the probe doesn’t matter much because the point is to create an intervention of some kind and see how your context responds. You learn …
One of my favourite concepts from the complexity world is the fallacy of thinking that comes from the truth of retrospective coherence. The mistake is that, because we can look back in time to understand causes of our current condition, we can therefore see forward in time and affect the causes of a future condition. Complex systems are emergent, so we can never be sure what the future holds, regardless of how well we can trace how we got here. Despite the fact that it is illegal to sell an investment instrument without the warning that “past performance does not …
“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” — TS Eliot Our Beyond the Basics team is about to host our last gathering of the current cycle of offers, back in North America. Over the past five Beyond the Basics offerings I have learned more than I feel like I’ve shared. I can feel that my practice has changed as a result of doing this work, and I’ve become interested in the way our team’s ideas and lessons from working …
I was back at St. Aidan’s United Church in Victoria yesterday, hosting another conversation in their continued evolution into their next shape. Last December we worked together to explore four possible scenarios that were being proposed for the congregation. In the past few months they have been working on implementing one of these scenarios – the one which featured a plan to develop a Spiritual Learning Centre. Yesterday was a short strategic conversation called to explore the shape of what that Centre could be and how it will change life at the church.
Recently in BC, we have a had a child die in the care of the state. This does happen from time to time, and when it does a process is triggered whereby the Representative for Children and Youth lanuches an investigation and makes recommendations which usually result in more rules and procedures to govern the child welfare system with the express purpose of never having it happen again. I work closely with child protection social workers in BC and there is not a single one I know of whose heart does not break when something like this happens. Everyone wears the …