By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 27 Nov 21
The last three blog posts provided the core scaffolding for what I have been calling the Estuarine framework (pending getting a proper name for it). I’ve got a lot of work to flesh out the summary I provided in the last post, and also connect it with earlier material including a key post on the subject of learning in anthro-complexity. But overall I am increasingly thinking it is as, if not more important, than Cynefin. In the main, all approaches to strategy derive in some way or other from Military planning based on political objectives. That said the various non-military …
The last three blog posts provided the core scaffolding for what I have been calling the Estuarine framework (pending getting a proper name for it). I’ve got a lot of work to flesh out the summary I provided in the last post, and also connect it with earlier material including a key post on the subject of learning in anthro-complexity. …
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 19 Nov 21
I’ve got into the habit of tweeting a summit picture from each Wainwright summit as a part of my challenge to complete all 214 in less than 40 days. For those interested I’ve summarised the current status at the foot of this post. I have a clear end date – my 68th birthday on the 1st April 2022, a constraint (no more than 40 days) but within that I have buffer stock that can allow for weather and some injury. Also on each day I have exit options, target time to each summit and I’m constantly monitoring time, weather, ground …
I’ve got into the habit of tweeting a summit picture from each Wainwright summit as a part of my challenge to complete all 214 in less than 40 days. For those interested I’ve summarised the current status at the foot of this post. I have a clear end date – my 68th birthday on the 1st April 2022, a constraint …
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 11 Oct 21
Thanks to a sudden slip on greasy rock descending from Red Screes I’m home a couple of days early. The absence of cartilage under both patellas, managed through kinesiology tape and strength and conditioning classes, means any fall or slip (and you can’t avoid them) can leave me with a week or more’s ibuprofen and icepack recovery. It was a real pain (literally and figuratively) as I was moving at pace thanks to working on balance and taping over the previous month and looking forward to several days, so it was a depressing setback and after two days of attempting …
Thanks to a sudden slip on greasy rock descending from Red Screes I’m home a couple of days early. The absence of cartilage under both patellas, managed through kinesiology tape and strength and conditioning classes, means any fall or slip (and you can’t avoid them) can leave me with a week or more’s ibuprofen and icepack recovery. It was a …
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 5 Oct 21
This post follows on from the September series which looked at the whole issue of the learning organisation, and I have no intention of getting involved in the debates about who first created that term. I’ll say now that one major error was that the idea of a learning organisation, which was the subtitle of “The Fifth Discipline” transmogrified into The Learning Organisation and became an end its own right. This is one of the general issues with most popular forms of systems thinking in that they confuse an emergent property with a manageable cause. In fact, learning is an …
This post follows on from the September series which looked at the whole issue of the learning organisation, and I have no intention of getting involved in the debates about who first created that term. I’ll say now that one major error was that the idea of a learning organisation, which was the subtitle of “The Fifth Discipline” transmogrified into …
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 29 Sep 21
In bringing this three-part series of blog posts to an end I just want to remind readers that they are in effect an extension of the original post on learning which identified seven steps for mapping, three pervasive practices and three things to pay attention to. I’ve been using a theme to the images, namely a natural scene for the banner and various toolsets for the opening picture. The tool pictures have also been chosen too show a journey from metal bashing, to carpentry to gardening. I am a good carpenter and a really bad gardener by the way. …
In bringing this three-part series of blog posts to an end I just want to remind readers that they are in effect an extension of the original post on learning which identified seven steps for mapping, three pervasive practices and three things to pay attention to. I’ve been using a theme to the images, namely a natural scene for the …
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 28 Sep 21
To continue from my post of yesterday, and with less intent to be polemical, but definite intent to disturb, I want to advocate an approach to design and development within organisations that is based on creating an ecology in which good things (some of which cannot be anticipated) are more rather than less likely to emerge. Coupled with that is the institution of distributed feedback loops that allow emergent patterns of behaviour to become visible enough, early enough, that the cost of amplification or dampening is low. This also picks up on my earlier post on learning in organisations (the …
To continue from my post of yesterday, and with less intent to be polemical, but definite intent to disturb, I want to advocate an approach to design and development within organisations that is based on creating an ecology in which good things (some of which cannot be anticipated) are more rather than less likely to emerge. Coupled with that is …
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 27 Sep 21
From time to time I am invited to speak at The Stoa, a group that got together at the start of the pandemic and has continued since. Always an interesting group although some of their sessions verge on the esoteric end of new-age fluffy bunnydom. I did a whole series for them on Naturalising Sense-making and at the end of follow up session (I think on Intuition and Anticipation) I casually mentioned that I could speak for hours, from personal experience, on the subject of “HR Bullshit” and was promptly taken up on the offer. You can listen to the …
From time to time I am invited to speak at The Stoa, a group that got together at the start of the pandemic and has continued since. Always an interesting group although some of their sessions verge on the esoteric end of new-age fluffy bunnydom. I did a whole series for them on Naturalising Sense-making and at the end of …
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 26 Sep 21
I can’t imagine that anyone interested in complexity in organisations will not know the work of Ralph Stacy, or not be saddened to learn of his death earlier this month. The Complexity & Management Centre, which he founded, at the University of Hertford, published this brief obituary earlier this month and his early history is laid out in his Wikipedia article; which deserves some attention given his overall status within what has become a movement. If you want a personal tribute then it can be found in the picture I snapped from my bookshelf earlier today which show not only …
I can’t imagine that anyone interested in complexity in organisations will not know the work of Ralph Stacy, or not be saddened to learn of his death earlier this month. The Complexity & Management Centre, which he founded, at the University of Hertford, published this brief obituary earlier this month and his early history is laid out in his Wikipedia …
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 11 Sep 21
The love of wicked men converts to fear, That fear to hate, and hate turns one or both To worthy danger and deserved death. Richard II Act V Scene i 59-68 I thought through this post, keeping notes on the iPhone as I walked from Salcombe to Torcross on the South West Coastal Path. I was passing around Gara Point just after 9 am and starting to appreciate that I was probably on one of the most delightful sections of coastal walking I have come across. Twenty years ago I was driving around the M25, just coming up to the …
The love of wicked men converts to fear, That fear to hate, and hate turns one or both To worthy danger and deserved death. Richard II Act V Scene i 59-68 I thought through this post, keeping notes on the iPhone as I walked from Salcombe to Torcross on the South West Coastal Path. I was passing around Gara Point …
By: The Posts Author | Posted on: 9 Sep 21
If you go back in time then two books could be considered to have laid the foundation for what I have termed the ‘systems thinking’ era which runs from the 1990s and is now (hopefully) starting to run out of steam while leaving much of value. They are Hammer & Champy’s 1993 Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution and Peter Senge’s 1990 The Fifth Discipline, the Art and Practice of the Learning Organisation. Hammer had previously published an HBR article in 1990 and there is some argument that Tom Davenport also originated the term in the same year. Whatever those …
If you go back in time then two books could be considered to have laid the foundation for what I have termed the ‘systems thinking’ era which runs from the 1990s and is now (hopefully) starting to run out of steam while leaving much of value. They are Hammer & Champy’s 1993 Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution and Peter …