This week:
- Artificial Life
- Creative adaptability
- Anarchist Cybernetics
- Systems and complexity in organisation
Upcoming event:
Leading Self, Leading Systems (October 10 & 17): https://bit.ly/3JWV1go
Are you ready to embrace profound transformation in today’s rapidly changing world? Join our highly engaging and thought-provoking workshop to become a catalyst for positive change in your life, organization, and community.
🌐 Online Sessions: October 10th & 17th, 2023 🕘 Time: 0900-1300 BST | 1000-1400 CEST
💡 Unlock Your Leadership Potential: Leadership is not confined to titles; it’s a practice available to everyone. Discover the power of leading self and systems to create something new in the world.
🔍 Session 1 – October 10th: Explore the impact of context on relationships and behaviors through an interactive online simulation. Distinguish between personal and systemic factors with powerful frameworks. Increase self-awareness to overcome reactive patterns and boost your contribution.
🎯 Session 2 – October 17th: Immerse yourself in an organizational exercise designed to challenge your assumptions about leadership. Break down communication barriers, generate a shared vision, and lead in partnership. Learn to recognize underlying patterns that influence relationships and enhance your leadership choices.
🌐 Where: Online on Zoom 💲 Workshop Fee (Both Sessions):
- Standard Fee: £399 (VAT included) for private sector companies.
- Reduced Fee: £299 (VAT included) for charities, public sector, NGOs, and non-profits. 👥 Group Discount: 20% off for 3 or more participants from the same organization (use promo code GROUP).
🤝 Making a Difference: We believe in widening the impact of our work and offer bursaries for grassroots change-makers who cannot afford organizational rates. Reach out to john.watters@livingleadership.org.uk to request bursary places.
🗣️ What People Say: Our workshops bring together diverse participants from various sectors and communities, providing a stimulating and revelatory experience. “Experiential, immersive, illuminating.” “A game-changer in online learning.” “I was engaged throughout the session and immediately saw opportunities to grow and build on my work.”
🚀 Embrace the Future Today: Seize this opportunity to become a transformative leader in your life and beyond. Spaces are limited. Secure your spot now by visiting our website: https://bit.ly/3JWV1go
Link Collection:
My Weekly Blog post:
In life, I’ve learned that finding stability requires conscious effort and understanding where to invest my energy. Whether it’s in a project, organization, family, or personal life, striking the right balance between continuity and adaptation is crucial. Too much stability can lead to losing control, while excessive adaptation can erode identity. I’ve realized that creating a garden with defined areas of certainty and uncertainty offers the best approach. Like Pixar, I embrace chaos and creativity within a structured framework. This mindset has helped me navigate life with a mix of order and flexibility, like a snail with its portable paving, making progress while staying grounded. Click the link to read more.
In this three-part series, the authors explore the concept of creative adaptability achieved within groups through Liberating Structures (LS). Creative adaptability involves reaching a heightened state of consciousness and productivity in response to challenges, fostering vitality and cultivating relationships for inventiveness. Part 1 introduces LS and connects it to complexity science concepts. Part 2 discusses field observations and the potential of designing micro-organizing elements with variability for imaginative play while maintaining macro-scale stability and creative results. Part 3 offers design advice for LS users to enhance creative adaptability. Their goal is to shed light on the theoretical basis and encourage adventurous yet disciplined work with Liberating Structures.
More Magic, Less Mystery – S. Fisher Qua and Keith McCandless (2020)
Evgeny Morozov interview with Brian Eno
ORGANISE PUBLIC Reading Group This month we’ll be reading: “Anarchist Cybernetics ” Texts available via The Anarchist Library:https://tinyurl.com/yn23wszd Everyone is welcome to join in, we keep it very relaxed. Listeners welcome. Non-Anarchist welcome! https://discord.gg/CdaCccFJ
ORGANISE PUBLIC Reading Group – this month we’ll be reading: “Anarchist Cybernetics”
“Postcards from Work (Healthcare Edition)” is a collection of micro-narratives, short stories capturing real-life experiences of healthcare professionals. The narratives revolve around four varieties of human work: work-as-imagined, work-as-prescribed, work-as-disclosed, and work-as-done. Seven archetypes emerge from the interactions between these varieties, such as “The Messy Reality” and “Congruence.” These postcards serve as tools for reflection and discussion, encouraging exploration of complexities and perspectives in healthcare settings. Thought-provoking questions guide the discussions among professionals, fostering deeper insights and understanding of different situations. The aim is to improve how work functions by understanding its complexities and nuances in healthcare.
Postcards From Work: Exploring Archetypes of Human Work Through Micro-Narratives
To effectively work with complexity, consider these nine principles: 1) View the system through the lens of complexity rather than rigid metaphors. 2) Create a flexible vision with minimum specifications, avoiding excessive planning. 3) Employ both clockware (data-driven) and swarmware (intuition and action) together. 4) Embrace the edge, fostering diverse information flow and connections instead of strict control. 5) Embrace paradox and tension rather than avoiding them. 6) Take multiple actions at the fringes without needing complete certainty. 7) Listen to the informal “shadow system” of gossip and conversations influencing actions. 8) Let complex systems emerge from well-functioning simple systems. 9) Balance cooperation and competition instead of choosing one over the other.
This paper explores the challenges faced by business family members due to diverse role expectations and systems logics. To address these issues, the authors combine social systems theory with systemic family coaching tools like “internal maps,” the “expectation carousel,” and the “tetralemma.” Through an illustrative example of family business succession planning, they show how systemic approaches can help members (a) reflect on personal and interpersonal expectations and (b) manage decision-making in dilemmatic or paradoxical situations. By creatively addressing these complexities, business families can navigate succession and interpersonal dynamics more effectively.
Key posts? Dave Snowden reference links
Gordon Brander twitter comment
Freakonomics Radio episode 546 – Are E.S.G. Investors Actually Helping the Environment?
The Santiago Boys nine-episode podcast season – Yevgeny Morozov on Project Cybersyn
How an eccentric English tech guru helped guide Allende’s socialist Chile
What’s the new Office for Local Government all about?
LGiUWhat’s the new Office for Local Government all about?
ORGANISE PUBLIC Reading Group – this month we’ll be reading: “Anarchist Cybernetics”
Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Books, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine
How to fix any bureaucracy by hacking its networks of human behaviour from the inside
Marina Nitze on the You Are Not So Smart podcast
America’s superpower. https://tomforth.co.uk/americassuperpower/
Always a bunch of fantastic events coming up from SCiO – systems and complexity in organisation:
Events | SCiO https://www.systemspractice.org/events
A funeral for fish and chips: why are Britain’s chippies disappearing?
chosen path 