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Pen and paper sense-making 2.0

February 5, 2015 By Art of Hosting, Complexity, Emergence, Evaluation, Facilitation, Featured, Learning, World Cafe

Two weeks ago in our Leadership 2020 program I experimented with using a signification framework to harvest a World Cafe.  We are beginning another cohort this week and so I had a chance to further refine the process and gather much more information. We began the evening the same way, with a World Cafe aimed at exploring the shared context for the work that these folks are in.  Our cohort is made up of about 2/3rds staff from community social services agencies and 1/3 staff from the Ministry of Children and Family Development.  This time I used prepared post it notes for …

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Anticipatory awareness and predictive anticipation

January 30, 2015 By Collaboration, Complexity, Evaluation, Improv, Leadership, Learning, Organization

Two Tim Merry references in a row.  Yesterday Tim posted a video blog on planning vs. preparation.  It is a useful and crude distinction about how to get ready for action in the complicated vs. complex domains of the Cynefin framework.  I left a comment there about a sports metaphor that occurred to me when Tony Quinlan was teaching us about the differences between predictive anticipation (used in the complicated domain) and anticipatory awareness (used in the complex domain). In fact this has been the theme of several conversations today.  Complicated problems require Tim’s planning idea: technical skills and expertise, recipes and procedures and …

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The village as a venue

January 29, 2015 By Featured, Uncategorized

Last week, we hosted a group of 35 emerging and legacy leaders in the human services sector on Bowen Island to kick off our sixth Leadership 2020 cohort.  Hosting the group on Bowen Island is a powerful way to begin and end this ten month program, and there is tremendous value offered by hosting it on Bowen Island. We are a small island with a working village and we have evolved an inventive way of hosting gatherings.  We call it “Village as a Venue” a name coined by my friend Tim Merry to describe the way he hosts gatherings in …

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Does it feel lighter?

January 28, 2015 By Uncategorized

Yesterday I had my first haircut in 24 years. Since 1990 I have kept my hair in a braid that was probably 18 inches long, for all kinds of reasons. Yesterday, for all kinds of reasons, it was time for that braid to come off. It’s been a bit of a conversation on my facebook page and folks here on Bowen Island are starting to get a look at my new head. News travels fast in small communities. And commonly I am asked, does it feel lighter? And surprisingly, the answer is no. Because when you chop off your hair …

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The complex world is hard.

January 27, 2015 By Art of Hosting, Collaboration, Complexity, Emergence, Leadership, Learning

Just off a call with a potential client today and we were scoping out some of the work that we might do together, with a small organization facing unprecedented change.  They are in a place of finally realizing that they are not in control of what is happening to them.  They are completely typical in this respect. I am constantly struck by the fact that we have so few skills, frameworks and so little language for dealing with complexity.  Clients all the time approach me looking for certainty, answers and clear outcomes.  It’s as if they are searching for the …

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