Where is the blue dot in your organisation? This lovely little exercise from Barry Oshry reveals and opens up a lot about how organisational systems work - and how management fails, and innovation and creativity are blocked. We start a session with a group by telling them that, under three of their chairs, there's a … Continue reading The blue dot and the terrible dance of power →

I got interested in this today because I saw a tweet quoting an old blog from Matt Webb: "Our ancient ancestors were so worried about bears, they didn’t even want to name them because they feared [the bears] might overhear and come after them. So they came up with this word – this is up in … Continue reading What’s your favourite management euphemism? →

For many years, a favourite exercise of our is what we call 'the Obolensky game' - because we learned it from Nick Obolensky and his book 'Complex Adaptive #Leadership'. It is in fact, I think, a classic of the #systemsthinking | #complexity | #cybernetics genre - various called 'the triangle game' and something like 'assassins and shields' - you can google Nick or me … Continue reading When is #selforganization… not? And does it matter? →

It can unlock #innovation, #creativity, and improve #customerrelations and #productivity. Today I’m talking to sensemaking.rs about my ‘five worlds’ model. 1) In customer or citizen world, we live our lives and try to achieve our purposes 2) In service world, we try to deal with the complexity of all the customer demands (which never *quite* seem to fit our services - the … Continue reading What does seeing the different worlds that make up an organisation show you? →

In the 90s, I trained to be an FA coach (soccer/football)* I learned from the coaching and #management wisdom of the time, led by a Football Association coach/apparatchik called Charles Taylor. They'd done analysis of every game in the 1966 world cup - the first to be recorded - and discovered two critical things.The vast … Continue reading Have you seen data, ‘best practice’, benchmarking, or ‘learning’ applied in ways which block innovation? →

Do you know someone who does #training, is a facilitator, or a #management #consultant? Where do they sit on the facilitrainer rainbow – and how do they feel about their #job? This might seem like a confusing question: let me explain. I was introduced to the ‘facilitraining rainbow; in 2021 by Kevin Purcell at the … Continue reading Do you know a trainer, facilitator, or consultant – and how do they feel about their job? →

Can you add insight to help #adultsocialcare #commissioning? The way that councils and their partners arrange for #socialcare to be provided is one of the things that makes a huge difference to people and #communities. It's the difference between: - an older lady (a real night owl) being 'put to bed' at 7pm because that's … Continue reading Your help needed – Supporting Adult Social Care Commissioners – Strategic Commissioning Options Appraisal →