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New exercises for teaching Cynefin

September 6, 2019 By Collaboration, Complexity, Emergence, Featured, Improv, Learning, Organization 2 Comments

For many years I have been teaching Cynefin as a foundational framework in complexity and participatory leadership workshops and retreats. For me it’s the best and most accessible way to explain the differences between complex problems and other kinds of problems and why we need to make complexity-based interventions in complex systems. And while there are great ways to start learning about ontology in a lecture format, or using te examples of a children’s birthday party, I’m rather inclined to playing games as a way of understanding different types of systems before we do any teaching at all. Especially when …

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Seven Little Helpers for dialogue and action: Part 7 – Stay together

August 26, 2019 By Art of Hosting, Being, Community, Design, Facilitation, Featured, First Nations, Leadership, Practice

Part seven of a seven part series on the seven little helpers for dialogue and action Part 1: Presence Part 2: Have a good question Part 3: Use a talking piece Part 4: Harvest Part 5: Make a wise decision Part 6; Act 7. Stay together. Our final little helper in this series is maybe the most important and it perhaps brings us back to the beginning again. Quite simply, if you have taken the time to do good work, the best way to ensure that it is sustainable over time is to stay together. Important work requires a strong …

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Seven Little Helpers for dialogue and action: Part 6 – Act

August 23, 2019 By Art of Hosting, Being, Design, Evaluation, Facilitation, Featured, Improv, Leadership, Practice 5 Comments

Part six of a seven part series on the Seven little helpers for dialogue and action Part 1: Presence Part 2: Have a good question Part 3: Use a talking piece Part 4: Harvest Part 5: Make a wise decision 6. Act The sixth of our seven little helpers is simple: Act. If you have taken the time to plan, talk, and harvest, you owe it to yourself and your group to honourably act on what you’ve learned. Now it’s easy to get consumed by the cult of action, and to assume that every encounter needs to have a week …

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Seven Little Helpers for dialogue and action: Part 5 – Make a wise decision

August 21, 2019 By Art of Hosting, Being, Collaboration, Complexity, Conversation, Design, Emergence, Facilitation, Featured, Leadership, Power, Practice One Comment

Part five of a seven part series on the Seven little helpers for dialogue and action Part 1: Presence Part 2: Have a good question Part 3: Use a talking piece Part 4: Harvest 5. Make a wise decision I’ve always thought that the essence of good leadership is the ability to make a decision. It requires a certain kind of courage, especially when it seems that there is a zero sum game at stake. It also requires a high degree of emotional intelligence and compassion and empathy, especially when the decision you have to make could result in harm …

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Seven Little Helpers for dialogue and action: Part 4 – Harvest

August 15, 2019 By Art of Harvesting, Art of Hosting, Being, Design, Facilitation, Featured, Leadership, Practice, Stories, Youth 5 Comments

Part four of a seven part series on the Seven little helpers for dialogue and action Part 1: Presence Part 2: Have a good question Part 3: Use a talking piece 4. Harvest Back in 2008, SIlias Lucius, Monica Nissen and I gathered at Phil Cass’s house in Columbus, Ohio and talked about the Art of Harvesting. Monica developed this practice because she found herself often as the “secretary” in participatory processes, typing up notes, clustering ideas, graphically recording landscapes, and generally making sense of the conversation. This was great for her, but she realized that the group was deprived …

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