It’s been said by (maybe) Peter Drucker and (definitely) the Internet that culture eats strategy for breakfast. This quote’s truth is solid even if its pedigree is questionable. Our culture shapes us in ways that are profound and often invisible. When I look at how I talk, what I say, and how I express things …
The concept of subscribing to something is an attractive way to build in practices to sustain innovative activities. Whether it is for a magazine, film series, blog, wine club, or season ticket package — subscriptions can provide us with a means to engage with things we otherwise might not have due to the sustained exposure …
When we confuse expertise in one thing with another we risk distrusting experts altogether and losing what they bring. An expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until finally he knows everything about nothing. This tongue-in-cheek quote from Henry Mintzberg has much truth to it. As I’ve developed as a …
Innovators transform the world around them in big and small ways and while a successful effort can be lauded by pundits, politicians and the public there is a long road to making change happen. That road is also a lonely one and doing things different means more than just innovating and experiencing what it means to be …
Developmental evaluation is only as good as the sense that can be made from the data that is received. To assume that program staff and evaluators know how to do this might be one of the reasons developmental evaluations end up as something less than they promise. Developmental Evaluation (DE) is becoming a popular subject …
Individuals, organizations and networks are living with unprecedented social complexity requiring more attention than ever on fostering resiliency at all levels to not only thrive, but survive. Not all of these levels are equal and where we choose to focus our energies makes an enormous difference for whether we design change intentionally (lead) or have …
The Resilient Tribe: Designing Leadership For Complexity Read More »
Create systems that are too bounded (dry) and we risk sucking the moisture from the human elements (the wet) that make real social innovation happen. Our challenge is finding the right balance between the controlled, stable environments that these new technologies afford and the self-organized, emergent and innovative environments needed to implement and scale our initiatives more effectively.
