On the Art of Hosting email list last month, there was an inquiry posted by Monica Nissén asking about scaling the Art of Hosting as a leadership practice through levels of engagement. By “Art of Hosting” Monica means the four fold practice, which is the basic framework for leadership that gives our community a coherent centre of practice, around presence, participation, hosting others, and co-creation. Monica asked whether hoping these practices would just go viral in a networked way is enough, and I replied with the following, tracing a couple of long term projects I have been involved in that …
I’ll be away for a couple of weeks, so here is the last set of links for the year. Happy New Year. I am worried about democracy these days. Our electoral politics are ravaged by social media manipulation, an absence of policy discussion, and the influence of money. Governance affords very little opportunity for meaningful citizen participation. Harold Jarche is worried too, and in this pots he tackles the question of how to save democracy head on. Our institutions are failing us. They were designed for the age of print, not an electrically connected one. We need new structures and …
I’m moving these posts to Monday morning and will try to provide a theme each week to connect the five links. Enjoy. Dave Snowden’s 12 Shibboleth’s of Christmas Back in 2015, Dave Snowden took on 12 aspects of organizational and corporate culture that were basically enemies of complexity thinking. The list is still very valuable these days. In each post Dave offers the problem and the way complexity theory helps you do better. Evaluation and complexity – lesson from 5 big evaluations in the UK I’ve recently found the blog of Marcus Jenal, who is yet another guy who is …
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 …
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 …