Who would have thought that failure would be held up as something to be desired just a few years ago? Yet, it is one thing to extol the virtues of failure in words, it is quite another to create systems that support failure in action and if the latter doesn’t follow the former, failure will […]
Acting on Failure or Failure to Act? Read More »
Beautiful answers require beautiful (and better) questions and Warren Berger’s new book looks at this very phenomenon of inquiry and asks: What does it mean to ask better questions and what does that mean for the answers we seek and receive? Warren Berger recently published A More Beautiful Question, a book looking at something we
Asking Better and More Beautiful Questions Read More »
Developmental evaluation is focused on real-time decision making for programs operating in complex, changing conditions, which can tax the attentional capacity of program staff and evaluators. Organizational mindfulness is a means of paying attention to what matters and building the capacity across the organization to better filter signals from noise. Mindfulness is a means of
Developmental Evaluation and Mindfulness Read More »
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
Developmental Evaluation and Sensemaking Read More »
Building a mindful organization requires a sense of understanding where you are, where you came from and where you’re going. The first step is grounding your organization and learning about — and (re)creating your point of origin. In 1806, what became the city of Detroit, Michigan was first designed and conceived. Unlike other cities, Detroit
Grounding Your (Mindful) Organization Read More »
Zombies — unaware, semi-conscious, distracted individuals — are all around us and running many of the organizations we work in or with. And just like combatting real zombies there is a need to target the head. There is much musing about what a zombie apocalypse might look like, but anyone paying attention to what is
The Organizational Zombie Resistance Kit Read More »
Information is everywhere (and if you live in cities, people might be everywhere, too) and yet the volume of information we see is overwhelmed by what we do not see. Zombies are among us like information and because of that information might be less attuned to what is going on around them. This has enormous consequences and most of it is not good.
An emerging look at evolutionary behaviour is suggesting that we are better suited for survival by working together than in competition. This cooperation imperative has been called “survival of the kindness” which risks lumping affective social generosity and goodwill with effectiveness and desirability and, in doing so, risks the entire enterprise of collaboration-based efforts.
Kindness Confusion in Collaboration and Co-creation Read More »
Most simply, ‘present shock’ is the human response to living in a world that’s always on real time and simultaneous. You know, in some ways it’s the impact of living in a digital environment, and in other ways it’s just really what happens when you stop leaning so forward to the millennium and you finally
Disrupted Time: Review of Present Shock Read More »
Normative behaviour is what we expect from others operating in the world around us. It is what defines the world “normal”. It’s based on a complex array of history, social conventions, mores, values, context and timing, but it is the reason we know weird or odd from something else. Weird, is by definition, something that
Normative Complexity: Breaking Up is Hard To Do Read More »
