The difference between what’s wholeand what’s held, what’s withheldor revealed, what’s real and what’s revelation – that’s what I seek,rest of my life spent in search of little epiphanies, tiny sparks surging out of the brain during the clumsiest speech. – Allison Joseph from Little Epiphanies It feels like that, combing through stories, looking through graphs and charts and frameworks to find the little insights that spark the little actions that spark the little changes that might topple the biggest dragons. (Poem published today at whiskey river)
Yesterday was spent working with my friend and colleague Ciaran Camman yesterday on a design for a workshop on evaluation in complexity. We had the utter joy of being able to be together, having a high bandwidth human experience, which enabled us to really dive into some interesting existential questions after which we were famished and so we retreated to Kulinarya Filipino Eatery for dinner, feasting on Crispy Binagoongan and Batil Patong. The food was great and as usual our conversation wandered all over the place and at some point – possibly when we were standing outside a small rehearsal …
It’s an old post by Henry Mintzberg from 2015 but he tweeted it out today and the message is as current as ever. If Mintzberg is retweeting seven year old essays, it’s probably worth paying attention to them. Here’s the essence: Someone I know once asked a most senior British civil servant why his department had to do so much measuring. His reply: “What else can we do when we don’t know what’s going on?” Did he ever try getting on the ground to find out what’s going on? And then using judgment to assess that? (Remember judgment? It’s still …
Laureen Golden is one of those people that is able to just get me talking. From the first time we met back in 2015, she and I have had dozens of great conversations about complexity, facilitation, participatory design and leadership. I’ve supported her in her work with leaders and Montessori educators and also in teaching a course on system work and trauma. Here are a couple of offerings from her YouTube channel, where she has edited some of our conversations into teaching pieces that we are happy to share with you A playlist of four short videos on working with …
For much of the past few years my facilitation and evaluation practice has been steadily merging together. When I FINALLY came across Cynthia’ Kurtz’s body of work, Participatory Narrative Inquiry a few years ago, I felt simultaneously validated and challenged. Validated in that the participatory facilitation work I have been doing since I stumbled on Open Space Technology in 1995 met the complexity work I have been in since 2005 and the developmental evaluation work I’ve been doing for the past ten years. Challenged in that it opened up new streams for my practice, and that has been gratifying. Nowadays …