Part 1 is an introduction to this model. In the first post on this model, I introduced the basic model. In this one, I want to explain the way I think about the lines and the spaces between them The big moves The “two loops” referred to in the model’s name refer to these two arcs that essentially represent the rise and fall of influence over time. In the original, as I encountered it, only the bottom arc had labels for four big movements of an emerging system. They were the original Name, Connect, Nourish and Illuminate, based on the …
An interesting rabbit hole was opened for me thanks to Tim O’Reilly’s cheeky claim that the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt created the “unconference” in 1828. Through a link on the OSLIST provided by Rolf Schneidereit I’ve just read Humboldt’s opening address at the “Meeting of German Naturalists and Physicians” held over several days and several locations in Berlin during September of 1878. The invitation was to break down barriers between scientists from multiple disciplines to explore diverging opinions and ideas. As Harrison Owen did a century later when reflecting on his development of Open Space Technology, Humboldt drew his …
I love Phil Cass. He’s one of my closest friends in the world of the Art of Hosting and is a long-time collaborator. I’ve been lucky to work with him on some BIG work over the years, including a national Food and Society Conference for the Kellogg Foundation and a two-year scenario planning process for a national effort to change the conversation on palliative care in the United States. These days I am on faculty with his Physicians’ Leadership Academy in Columbus, Ohio, where I get to teach complexity to a couple of dozen incredible physicians every year. Plus, he …
The three-domain version of Cynefin, originally published on Dave Snowden’s blog. I’m trying to organize my thoughts on containers, complexity and constraints that span a couple of decades of work and grounded theory. In this post, I want to lay out how I see these phenomena in the context of anthro-complexity, largely articulated by Dave Snowden, with implications for complex facilitation, or what we in the Art of Hosting community call “hosting.” I’ll lay out some theory first that I’m working on, link it to facilitation and then share a case study of a recent meeting I hosted to demonstrate …
A few months ago, I was immersed in teaching complexity within the framework of the Art of Participatory Leadership program (AoPL). Essentially, AoPL is the application of the Art of Hosting within leadership contexts, extending beyond traditional facilitation and hosting scenarios. With a strong emphasis on personal practice and the use of complexity tools, AoPL encourages a deeper exploration of the connections between the Four Fold Practice, complexity, and dialogic containers – topics I’d previously addressed in my chapter for the book ‘Dialogic Organizational Development‘. My recent revisit to these subjects has sparked fresh insights. In one of these sessions, …