I’ve been going down a bit of a rabbit hole these past few mornings, looking at some commentary and writing about Kurt Lewin. Lewin, who died in 1947 was a psychologist whose theory and research had a tremendous influence on the modern movements or organizational development, action research, Gestalt theory, change management and group dynamics. To read his writings now is to read a person deeply interested in the complexity of human systems long before there was much language at all available to even discuss complexity. His ideas – or more precisely other people’s ideas about his ideas – have …
In this video, Harrison Owen discusses the chaos that is disrupting the order we take for granted and begins to create a new order and a different world. Harrison has been saying much the same thing for his entire career, starting with his dissertation on Aramaic and associated mythologies and cosmologies. He has been a long-time student of the dance of chaos and order, and his development of Open Space Technology came from this lifelong inquiry. i encountered Open Space first through an event that was hosted by Anne Stadler and Angeles Arien in 1995, and I met Harrison for …
Part 1: Introduction to the model Part 2: A deeper dive into the model The two loops model emerged from many years of conversations amongst people working in the Berkana Exchange and their friends and mates in the late 1990s and early 2000s. As my friend Tim Merry pointed out on a comment at LinkedIn, the model itself was an emergent framework of how organizing happens on what we called back then “trans local” communities of practice. The Berkana Exchange was made up of many learning hubs around the world in places like Zimbabwe, South Africa, Senegal, India, Brazil, Mexico …
My Epiphone Emperor Joe Pass guitar upon which I am learning…leadership? Read on! It’s a cliche as old as time, one I have been guilty of using occasionally too. Leadership is like jazz, where the members of an ensemble support each other in improvisation. We listen carefully, respond to what each other is doing, offer creative responses and make something amazing together. Yes. Leadership is way more about improvisation than, say, following a step to step guide to assembling IKEA furniture. But there is another set of metaphors from jazz that I have never seen talked about, perhaps because it …
A piece of public art in Berne, Switzerland. Two chairs facing each other in dialogue, but chained to the walls behind them so they can never meet. At the conclusion of Alicia Juarrero’s new book “Context Changes Everything” she writes: “Neither puppets nor absolute sovereigns, human beings and the material and social forms of life they induce are true co-creators of their natural and social worlds. We serve as stewards of the metastability, coherence, and evolvability of both of these worlds. Matter matters. History matters. Social and economic policy matters. Most critically, however, because top- down causality as constraint makes …