Things change in different ways. A couple of weeks ago, I took a deep dive into Glenda Eoyang’s Human Systems Dynamics, learning about her theory of complexity and getting my hands on the tools and methods that HSD uses to work in complex adaptive systems. (The tools are very good by the way, and highly recommended as ways to both get a good introductory grasp on complex problems, and work within those contexts to make decisions and lead). One of the useful ways of looking at things concerns the kinds of change that happen, and if you’ve been reading …
Some interesting links that caught my eye this week. Why Black Hole Interiors Grow (Almost) Forever Leonard Susskind has linked the growth of black holes to increasing complexity. Is it true that the world is becoming more complex? “It’s not only black hole interiors that grow with time. The space of cosmology grows with time,” he said. “I think it’s a very, very interesting question whether the cosmological growth of space is connected to the growth of some kind of complexity. And whether the cosmic clock, the evolution of the universe, is connected with the evolution of complexity. There, I …
I was always a social justice minded kid. But on December 6, 1989, when I was 21, my lifelong support for the feminist struggle was cemented. Every year I publish the list of women who died that day and whose deaths changed the lives of so many of us. Never forgotten are: • Geneviève Bergeron (born 1968), mechanical 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 …
Thinking of resuming a weekly round up of links that have come through my feed in one way or another. I haven’t gotten around to blogging about these links, but I’m sure my readers would be interested in some of them. I’ll post a few each week, on Sunday evening, if that works for you all. Let me know if you’d welcome this as a little repeated pattern. Developing Human Capital: Moving from Extraction to Reciprocity in Our Organizational Relationships Careful about the terms you use and the metaphors that drive our thinking about “resources.” “Environmentalists and systems thinkers underscore …
In the world of non-profits, social change, and philanthropy it seems essential that change agents provide funders with a theory of change. This is nominally a way for funders to see how an organization intends to make change in their work. Often on application forms, funders provide guidance, asking that a grantee provide an articulation of their theory of change and a logic model to show how, step by step, their program will help transform something, address an issue or solve a problem. In my experience, most of the time “theory of change” is really just another word for “strategic …