Blog

WaysFinding - Enabling coherent explore spaces

Boundaries, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Flow, Innovation, Leadership, Methods and practices, Resilience

I have written before about the need to embrace messy coherence or in more technical terms, coherent heterogeneity, a term I first encountered in the work of Dave Snowden. While most intuitively understand this need, how to achieve it practically remains elusive. We are emerging from a time where alignment and efficiency were pursued like […]

Rhythm, ritual and boundaries

Boundaries, Change, Resilience

“When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge.” ― Tuli Kupferberg A few weeks ago, I wrote about what I experienced as the “strange in-between”, knowing that everything has changed, but still feeling as if nothing has changed. So much has changed since then. As we enter our third week of lockdown here in South […]

Facing the scary (but exciting) boundary between competence and incompetence

Uncategorized

“This is not just an era of change; it is increasingly a change of era.” y General Sir Nick Carter, head of the British Arm I tend to avoid using the term VUCA; it has become overused (particularly by consultants) and increasingly is ‘just another buzz word’. It is, however, interesting to reflect on why […]

Navigate Complexity: Three Habits of Mind

Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Leadership

Too much of our understanding of complexity is intellectual. There is very little that embodies what complexity philosopher Edgar Morin would term “lived complexity”.

Reconceptualising organisations: from complicated machines to flowing streams.

agility, Boundaries, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Flow

Too often we still view organisations through a mechanistic lens and this impacts on the flows we pay attention to. If we see them instead as living systems, organisms or ecosystems, it soon becomes clear that flow is central to every aspect of the organisation.

7 lessons I've learnt consulting as a "complexity practitioner"

Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Learning Out Loud, Methods and practices

I've now been using a complex and emergent approach to consulting for around 17 years. A friend of mine read me his coaching "manifesto" recently including his approach to internal change consulting. It made me think about what I've learnt about using this approach so I decided it might be useful to reflect on them […]

7 Differences between complex and complicated

Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Leadership, Resilience

Decision-makers commonly mistake complex systems for simply complicated ones and look for solutions without realizing that ‘learning to dance’ with a complex system is definitely different from ‘solving’ the problems arising from it. – Roberto Poli Many people believe that complexity is just higher order complicatedness i.e. that there is a continuum and that the difference […]

All that jazz ... making coherence coherent

agility, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Cynefin, Future of Work, Healthy organizations, Insights, Leadership, Metaphor, Resilience

One of the assertions I make quite often nowadays, is that we need to move from focusing on alignment, to focusing on coherence. I've found it interesting that out of all the potentially controversial statements I make, this one seems to generate an inordinate amount of questions and disagreement. It is understandable as this notion […]

Why we suck at "solving wicked problems"

Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Cynefin, Metaphor, Uncategorized

Problems: Wicked, complex, intractable, or adaptive … whatever we choose to call them, we seem to suck at solving them and we often get profoundly overwhelmed and stuck. I believe the reason for this is hidden in the language I used in the title and previous sentence (… and no it's not the adjectives ... […]

The peripheral; extravagance; and paradox: Whistler reflections by Renée Koch

agility, Complexity and adaptive leadership, General musings, Guest blogs, Innovation, Metaphor

I asked my friend Renée Koch, who was a faculty member at the Whistler Retreat earlier this year, to contribute a guest blog reflecting on her experience and learning at the retreat and beyond. I love her focus on the peripheral; extravagance; and paradox. What struck me is how the notion of extravagance again challenges […]

How organisational OCD is stamping out innovation and agility

agility, Change, Cynefin, Innovation

Obsessive-compulsive disorder is a debilitating anxiety disorder that can have devastating consequences for the individual that suffers from it. I think there is a similar disorder that organisations suffer from ... I call it Obsessive Certainty Disorder. It too is linked with anxiety and the need for control. And it too has devastating consequences, […]

8 guidelines to enable organisational fluidity

agility, Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership, culture, Cynefin

While preparing for my recent keynote at Agile Africa, I came across the work of Prof Adrian Bejan, a mechanical engineer who contributed to the field of thermodynamics through his constructal law, which is formulated as follows: “For a finite-size system to persist in time (to live), it must evolve in such a way that […]

Ten things to keep in mind when facilitating an emergent process

Boundaries, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Learning Out Loud, Methods and practices

"Traveler, there is no path. The path is made by walking. Traveller, the path is your tracks And nothing more. Traveller, there is no path The path is made by walking. By walking you make a path And turning, you look back At a way you will never tread again Traveller, there is no road […]

Learnings from Whistler: Scaffolding emergence

agility, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Cynefin, Insights, Learning Out Loud, Metaphor, Resilience

In June this year I had the privilege of attending the Cynefin Retreat in Whistler, Canada along with many Cynefin practitioners that up to then, I only knew virtually. The opportunity to finally meet in person was incentive enough to attend, however even that couldn’t compete with the stimulating ideas we engaged with over the […]

Two Sensemaker® projects to understand opposites on the generational spectrum

Complexity and adaptive leadership, Leadership, Narrative, sensemaker

More Beyond is partnering with KLA on two open Sensemaker® based research projects to understand how South Africans on opposite ends of the generational spectrum view the future. The first project was done in partnership with The Refirement Network and seeks to understand how South Africans over 45 think about their next season. We are […]

Enabling adaptive space

agility, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Cynefin, Innovation, Leadership, Learning Out Loud

I had the privilege this week to co-facilitate an Adaptive Space workshop with Prof Mary Uhl-Bien at a local business school. I’ve long been intrigued by her work, so it was really good to see it applied practically. As always, I’m left with a need to make sense of where it fits into other complexity […]

Is faster always better? The case for a certain slowness

Uncategorized

In the so-called VUCA world where greater agility seems to have be the only response, this is an important question. Even though agility is about much more than speed, the first response I often get when I ask leaders why they’ve embarked on so-called Agile Transformation processes is “we need to be faster”. The maturity […]

Seven implications of complexity for organisations

Complexity and adaptive leadership, culture, Insights, Uncategorized

My last post was about Paul Cilliers's 7 characteristics of complex systems. In this post I want to explore 7 of the implications of complexity that he thought was important for those working in and on organisations (his original text is in italics). 1.Since the nature of a complex organization is determined by the interaction […]

7 Characteristics of complex systems

Complexity and adaptive leadership

I have been re-reading the work of Prof Paul Cilliers, who truly was a pioneer in complexity thinking. I came across this summary of the general characteristics of complex systems in a piece he wrote in 2000. It is a concise and accessible qualitative description of complexity and I thought it would be useful to […]

Recent Sensemaker project roundup

Insights, Methods and practices, Narrative, sensemaker

Over the last year we've had the opportunity to do a couple of really interesting Sensemaker projects. For those who are interested in South African cases, here's a summary: Financial services: We have gotten a lot of traction in the customer insights space, specfically in the financial services industry. This industry operates in a very […]

3 pieces of advice for leading a system turn around (especially for our new SA President)

Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Leadership, Uncategorized

“We incline to see history through the lives of great men. That inclination blinds us to the real complexity …” - John Kay, Obliquity Ever since his election as South Africa's new president, my news feed has been filled with posts from people telling Cyril Ramaphosa what his priorities should be. He faces a seemingly […]

Dave Snowden at TedX: A succinct overview of his groundbreaking work

Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Cynefin, Narrative, sensemaker

I first met Dave in 2002 when we were both employed by IBM. I remember experiencing an immediate resonance with his work, especially the inherent integrity of honoring context and not mindlessly applying best-practice recipes as the big consultancies tend to do. It is now 16 years later, and it has been a privilege to […]

What Van Gogh & Cape Town's water crisis can teach us about innovation

Complexity and adaptive leadership, Innovation, Leadership

Most people believe that innovation requires creativity, and therefore that creativity is a pre-condition for innovation. This has somewhat "mystified" innovation and sparked entire industries focused on creativity training, design thinking courses and all manner of "creative disruption" processes to help people "think outside the box" in an attempt to unleash the latent creative genius […]

Levers, blueprints and roadmaps: 3 tips to combat "dark" metaphors

Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership, culture, Metaphor, Metaphorology

For those who follow me, it’s probably become apparent that I have a love for metaphors and analogies. Because much of what I do involves introducing others to new concepts, I find them to be useful “hooks”, linking the new idea to something familiar, thereby providing a “scaffold of mind” while understanding grows. Because of this, […]

7 principles to help organisations resist the siren song of copying recipes

agility, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Innovation, Leadership, Metaphor, Resilience

“You can't replicate the end point of an evolutionary process, which by its success has changed the context anyway. However we can seek to copy the starting conditions and enable the emergence of new contextually unique successes that learn from it.” - Dave Snowden “… the fact is, if you don't know what makes things […]

Befriending uncertainty

Change, General musings, Learning Out Loud, Meaning and purpose

Having just returned from one journey into the unknown (visiting Sweden for the first time), I am preparing to enter the unknown once again as I pack for a residential Tavistock working conference that starts today. Having been through this experience before, I am torn between excitement about what I will learn, and a profound sense […]

Using Cynefin to make sense of preparing for the future of work

Complexity and adaptive leadership, Future of Work, Learning Out Loud

These past two weeks, I've had several conversations with executives and OD/L&D professionals who are trying to make sense of the complexities that automation initiatives are introducing into the workplace. We found it helpful to use Cynefin to understand some of these dynamics. Now we know things tend not to fit neatly into the domains, […]

Want resilience? Nurture diversity.

Complexity and adaptive leadership, culture, Metaphor, Metaphorology, Resilience

One of the learnings from complexity that I find particularly valuable in the workplace is the need for a “requisite diversity”. Too little diversity limits the system’s adaptive capacity and too much diversity leads to a loss of coherence. One way to look at this is the tension between efficiency and centralisation e.g. instead […]

Coaching leaders in the networked economy: reflecting on learnings from the A-N coaching course (LOL 1)

Complexity and adaptive leadership, Leadership, Learning Out Loud

When you’re at sea and need to find your way, it is key to first locate yourself i.e. know your current position. Before we had GPS, mariners did this by getting a “fix” - taking a compass heading on three widely spaced objects and determining where these headings intersect to get a “fix” on their […]

Finding our way together

General musings, Methods and practices

In a recent post, Jeff Goins describes that moment when the so-called “imposter syndrome” prevents a writer from publishing his work. I could relate to that feeling … I often find myself agonising about whether or not something I’ve written is “worthy of publishing”. Typically it sounds like “Who am I to write about this? I’m […]

Walking with the elephants

Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership, culture, Metaphorology

Today I want to share one of my favorite analogies. I use this in almost every presentation as a way to challenge the prevailing paradigm that priveleges expert design and control. There are two ways to lay out a park … ... one is to employ an expert landscape architect to design an ideal layout […]

Think like a Chef

agility, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Metaphorology

The trouble is that, in my view, the continual bombardment of quick and simple recipes is doing nothing to teach us how to cook. We are in serious danger of becoming slaves to recipes, rather than having the confidence to be able to walk along a supermarket aisle, or look through fridge and cupboard, to […]

Metaphorology

Metaphorology, Methods and practices

I have always loved metaphors and analogies. Stumbling upon a really great metaphor always feels like discovering hidden treasure (see what I did there?... :-)) Metaphors are pervasive Research says that we use 6 metaphors a minute (!) - at first this seems impossible, but once we tune into metaphors, it soon becomes apparent just […]

Storyscaping culture

Uncategorized

“The temptation to lead as a chess master, controlling each move of the organization, must give way to an approach as a gardener, enabling rather than directing. A gardening approach to leadership is anything but passive. The leader acts as an “Eyes-On, Hands-Off” enabler who creates and maintains an ecosystem in which the organization operates.” ― […]

If you want to innovate, don't say so

agility, Cynefin, Metaphor, Methods and practices, Narrative, Teams

"Innovation is not so much about having ideas as it is about making connections" Harold Jarche Last week I had the opportunity to facilitate a week-long "innovation sprint" for Agile 42, an international agile coaching company. After recovering from my time spent facilitating 39 other facilitators (on my own!) I finally had time to reflect on […]

Video: Evolving Cynefin Shadow Domains and constraints typology

agility, Cynefin, Innovation, Methods and practices

I recently had the privilege of listening to Dave Snowden give a short explanation of the evolving Cynefin constraints typology and new shadow domains. I find the shadow domains helpful when thinking of interventions - specifically in combination with/in place of the subdomain models. This is still emerging, so expect these to change ...

The complexities of Responsible Leadership

Complexity and adaptive leadership, Cynefin, Leadership, Uncategorized

Earlier in the week, I had the privilege of spending the morning exploring ideas around complexity and leadership with two friends who understand both fields. Our conversation mostly centered on Responsible Leadership as one of the participants runs the Albert Luthuli Centre for Responsible Leadership and it's a very relevant topic at the moment. At Davos […]

Avoiding incorrect expectations: positioning Sensemaker®

Methods and practices, Narrative, sensemaker

As the Sensemaker® approach gains traction in the market, more and more people are attempting to convince others to use it. So whether you are trying to sell it internally (e.g. to your insights team) or to a client, here are a few tips to ensure that it is positioned properly (especially in relation to other […]

On mayonnaise and survival

agility, Complexity and adaptive leadership, culture, Metaphor, Resilience

I recently attended the 4th International Conference for Responsible Leadership, hosted at Gibs by the Albert Luthuli Centre for Responsible Leadership (University of Pretoria). One of the highlights was getting the chance to facilitate a panel discussion on Complexity Leadership in South Africa with a group of highly respected local and international academics. Another was […]

A short chronicle of 2016

agility, Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership, culture, Cynefin, General musings, Methods and practices, sensemaker, Uncategorized

I always admire those writers who have the discipline to publish consistently regardless of circumstance. I tend to write in spurts. I find that when I become really busy with projects and speaking engagements, my writing suffers. So in case you were wondering why I've been so quiet, I thought I'd write a short update […]

Three lessons from a marshmallow

agility, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Cynefin, Innovation, Methods and practices, Teams

It's amazing how much one can learn from a simple game using a marshmallow and some spaghetti. I first came across the so-called Marshmallow challenge when I discovered Tom Wujec's Ted talk. I later also found his site where he generously shares detailed step-by-step instructions as well as presentations one can use as facilitation aids. In short, small groups […]

Jungle vs Zoo - Reflections on change and resilience

Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership, culture, Healthy organizations, Innovation, Leadership, Metaphor, Resilience

In my previous post I introduced the analogy of a jungle vs a zoo to help us make sense of the complex contexts we face and the often ordered organisational structures and processes we tend to create. In this post I want to explore this analogy further and look specifically at how change and resilience from the […]

It's hard to survive in the jungle if all you know is the zoo

Complexity and adaptive leadership, culture, Engagement, Healthy organizations, Leadership, Metaphor

I recently posted a tweet that created an unexpected enthusiastic response. It read: “It’s hard to survive in the jungle if you were trained in a zoo” I love using metaphors and analogies to explain the concepts I work with, like the difference between complex (jungle) and complicated or obvious (zoo) contexts. This is one […]

What I learned from speaking at TedX

General musings, Meaning and purpose, Narrative

Last year, while browsing my LinkedIn feed I came across TedX Pretoria's call for speakers. On the spur of the moment, I decided to nominate myself, never really considering the consequences if I was actually accepted. A couple of weeks later I received the email that my nomination had been successful, and promptly had a "what were you […]

Reflections on consulting

General musings, Uncategorized

In a recent Acumen (GIBS Business School's magazine) there was a pretty scathing piece on consulting with the heading: Consultants or Insultants? The author's basic premise is that aside from a limited number of tech projects, no self-respecting executive can ever justify the use of expensive consultants and that more often than not they only […]

Enabling agility: reflecting on the role of heuristics

agility, Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Resilience

I've been doing a lot of work lately working with organisations to build strategic agility and resilience to continuous change. This has caused much reflection on what potential enablers might be for strategic agility and distributed decision-making in this increasingly complex and volatile world. I've come to believe that one of the key enablers is an understanding of […]

Enabling (vs mandating) change

agility, Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Narrative, sensemaker

One of the intractable problems that seem face most companies is effecting real and lasting change across the entire organisation. Many organisations are littered with failed change initiatives and more and more it seems that traditional change management methodologies are failing. Most large organisations seem to be profoundly stuck when it comes to enabling change; plagued with stories […]

The story of SenseMaker® in UNDP Eastern Europe and CIS

Complexity and adaptive leadership, Narrative, sensemaker

A very useful blog by Tony Quinlan posted on the Cognitive Edge site. The real value is in following the links and reading about the various UNDP Sensemaker® sites. The story of SenseMaker® in UNDP Eastern Europe and CIS.

Believing you're in chaos can become a self-fullfilling prophecy

Complexity and adaptive leadership, Cynefin

One of my new favorite things to do is facilitating Cynefin 101 workshops within my corporate clients. It allows me to be quite provocative and disruptive (which I've started enjoying of late), and I love seeing "the lights come on" when people get it. The interactions between attendees can also be pretty illuminating. A week or […]

Connectivity or coupling: keep Goldilocks in mind (Building resilience: Principle 2)

Complexity and adaptive leadership, culture, Healthy organizations, Resilience

My mother always said that nothing with a "too" in front of it is good. That is certainly true about connectivity, too little and too much can be equally detrimental. High levels of connectivity can facilitate the fast recovery of a system after a disruption, but at the same time some disruptions spread faster in highly […]

Maintain diversity and redundancy (Building resilience: Principle 1)

Complexity and adaptive leadership, culture, Leadership, Resilience

"Systems with many different components (e.g. species, actors, or sources of knowledge) are generally more resilient than systems with few components. Redundancy provides 'insurance' within a system by allowing some components to compensate for the loss or failure of others. Redundancy is even more valuable if the components providing the redundancy also react differently to […]

Building resilience: what organisations can learn from social ecologists

agility, Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership

I have been blessed with a very diverse network, which includes among others many renowned thinkers and scientists in the field of social-ecological systems. I am therefore exposed to thinking that I would otherwise not gain easy access to. Most of my work happens in the corporate world (although I do get to play with scientists […]

What I believe to be true about organisational culture

Complexity and adaptive leadership, Narrative

A client asked me to write down some thoughts about a complexity based approach to culture. I thought I'd go ahead and publish some of my initial thoughts here as well. (I've woven together my own ideas with those of Dave Snowden & Dr Chene Swart - so much credit to them!) Thinking about culture from a […]

Reflections on the 'edginess' of change

agility, Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Metaphor

I was part of a "real play" scenario (you play yourself i.e. how would you respond in the scenario, vs playing a role) the other day, to demonstrate a wonderful coaching modality called ORSC. The scenario we were playing out was one of a large and established insurer who had aquired a small, agile and innovative […]

Useful: Dave Snowden on resilience

Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership

While preparing a proposal for a series of leadership workshops on resilience, I came across this list of seven characteristics of resilience in an older post by Dave Snowden: They've probably changed, but I thought they were useful nonetheless. Original text in italics. For a system to be resilient it must be capable of dynamic re-organisation […]

Complexity, snake-oil and silver bullets

Complexity and adaptive leadership, Cynefin

I just returned from a trip to London to experience the updated 4-day Cognitive Edge accreditation training and to meet some of the CE'rs I've known virtually for many years (like Michael Cheveldave and Peter Stanbridge) face to face. Several new ideas were introduced, probably the biggest one being the renaming of the simple domain of […]

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The soft stuff has become the hard stuff

Boundaries, Engagement, Healthy organizations, Leadership, Meaning and purpose

The Gallup State of the Global Workplace report was released recently, containing employee engagement results per country. The results are generally pretty dismal, an indictment on the prevailing cultures in our organisations. For sub-Saharan Africa, the report states: In most sub-Saharan African countries, formal employment for an employer is still relatively rare; many residents work at subsistence […]

Regime Shifts: a new way to think about culture change?

Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership

Towards the end of last year I attended a Complexity Forum hosted by the Center for Studies in Complexity in Stellenbosch. There were academics, researchers and practitioners from many different disciplines, and it was fascinating to hear so many different perspectives on complexity. A dominant theme that emerged was around the concept of resilience. It […]

Building the adaptive core of your organisation

agility, Change, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Innovation, Meaning and purpose, Narrative

A discourse that has been gaining prominence in business nowadays is around adaptive and resilient organisations. Some of the world's leading business thinkers like Prof Gary Hamel are making the case for adaptive capacity as being critical for businesses today. In this HBR article the authors speak of Adaptive Advantage as the new competitive edge. Similarly, resilience has been […]

Workshops with Prof Dave Snowden in Jhb & Cape Town (October 2013)

Complexity and adaptive leadership, Innovation, Leadership, Narrative

As promised in an earlier post, here are the details for the various public workshops taking place with Dave Snowden in October. In Gauteng: 1. A full day workshop at Worldsview Academy in Johannesburg on 17 October with a focus on complexity & leadership Find out more about it here 2. A half day workshop at […]

One sure-fire way to poison your culture

Complexity and adaptive leadership, Healthy organizations, Innovation, Meaning and purpose

Sometimes I come across ideas in business that is just so counter-productive that I really cannot understand how they ever became accepted practice. One such idea that I've seen wreak havoc on corporate culture is the so-called Forced Ranking performance assessment process (or as Jack Welch termed it "Rank & Yank"). In virtually every company […]

Stories can change our brain chemistry

Change, Narrative, Neuroscience

"Stories are powerful because they transport us into other people’s worlds, but in doing that, they change the way our brains work and potentially change our brain chemistry; and that’s what it means to be a social creature." - Paul Zak I find the research described in this short video by neuroeconomics pioneer Paul Zak, author […]

A great story needn't be long

Meaning and purpose, Narrative

People often think that a story has to be long and follow a particular structure in order to have impact or be memorable. This belief often inhibits us from sharing our stories, but it is simply not true. Sometimes, the best stories are really short little anecdotes. I came across this one in a recent […]

Complexity, Modeling & Natural Resource Management

Complexity and adaptive leadership

With the publication of our article on Complexity, Modeling & Natural Resource Management in the Ecology & Society journal, a process that started in 2011 has finally been concluded. As mentioned in a previous post, I was one of two complexity practitioners who co-authored two academic papers with some of the leading academic thinkers in […]

Don't allow others (or yourself) to should on you!

Boundaries, General musings, Meaning and purpose

I've been reflecting on how often we allow other people's (and society in general's) 'shoulds' to influence our choices and even our identity. Now I have to say up-front, some 'shoulds' are legitimate, for example, everyone should respect life and not go around murdering other people, and it's probably best not to cheat on your […]

The restorative power of meaning

Engagement, Healthy organizations, Meaning and purpose

In an article in the Time magazine (26 June ed), Joe Klein writes poignantly about how regaining a sense of purpose through public service is helping US military veterans and returning troops to find their way again. Some of these men and women suffer from severe PTSD, others are simply struggling to cope with the […]

Fostering complexity thinking

Complexity and adaptive leadership

I am really excited that after a long and pretty tedious process two peer reviewed articles I co-authored with a bunch of heavy-weight academics have finally been published. Both articles form part of a special feature on Applied Research for Enhancing Human Well-Being and Environmental Stewardship: Using Complexity Thinking in Southern Africa. The academic publication process […]

The tyranny of the moment

Boundaries, Complexity and adaptive leadership, Healthy organizations, Meaning and purpose, Narrative

Warning! This post doesn't contain 7 steps or 12 ideas, nor is it the ideal 600-800 word length ... "The greatest tragedy in using speed as the answer to complexity and the complexities of work-life, is that very soon we cannot recognize anything that is not traveling at the same velocity as we are. We […]

Are we slaves to speed?

Meaning and purpose

An Excerpt from Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity by David Whyte David Whyte describes his book as, "a midnight conversation" on the union of work and soul, yearning and satisfaction. I love this reflection on speed and how it can keep us from the deepest parts of ourselves "Speed in work has […]

Has management become a dirty word?

Leadership, Teams

I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine yesterday about the perspective that "everyone is a leader" and what that says about management. The debate around the difference between management and leadership is certainly not a new one, and it seems that everyone has a different definition for each of these concepts. It […]

Metaphors shape our language

Metaphor, Narrative

More and more academic research is being done on metaphors - they are no longer considered a "rhetorical flourish" found in literary texts. Rather, linguists have shown that metaphor is a pervasive phenomenon in everyday language, a major force in the development of new word meanings, and the source of at least some grammatical […]

Leadership is about climate control, not command and control

Complexity and adaptive leadership, Healthy organizations, Leadership, Metaphor

In a new TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson (embedded below) he focuses on prevailing education systems and how they stifle learning and creativity. He eloquently makes the case that education is not a mechanistic endeavor that is about conformity and compliance, but an inherently human and organic process that is about valuing diversity […]

Work and meaning

Engagement, Healthy organizations, Meaning and purpose

In The Upside of Irrationality, Dan Ariely reflects on work and meaning. Can human beings find satisfaction and be engaged in work that pays well, but offers no meaning? He defines two "types" of meaning: "m"eaning - a feeling of being challenged by our work, and completing it to our own satisfaction vs "M"eaning - a hope […]

A great metaphor for teamwork from Steve Jobs

Metaphor, Narrative, Teams

In the same "lost" Steve Jobs interview I blogged about last week, he shares this anecdote as a metaphor for team work. "When I was a young kid there was a widowed man who lived up the street. He was in his eighties. He’s a little scary looking. And I got to know him a […]

Why it's not a bad idea to become a better storyteller

Narrative, Neuroscience

When I think about my favorite teachers and speakers I can't think of one that doesn't use stories to make their subject "come alive". I think most people feel this way, and this has spawned countless 'become a better storyteller' workshops. While I'm not a big fan of many of these interventions (although there are […]

A monster that devours itself: a capitalist's parable?

General musings, Leadership, Meaning and purpose

Erisychton (Er-is-ya-thon), according to Ovid's tales from Greek mythology was a wealthy timber merchant and Thessalian King. He was a greedy man who thought only about profit. To him, nothing was sacred. The goddess Demeter had a sacred grove with a special tree beloved by the gods. Prayers of the faithful were tied to the […]

7 Lessons on innovation from the "lost" Steve Jobs interview

Complexity and adaptive leadership, Innovation

I may a bit behind the rest of the world, but I only recently came across this video of an interview done with Steve Jobs by Bob Cringely as part of the 1996 PBS documentary Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires. The footage was presumed lost for several years, but recently a […]

Courage

Engagement, General musings, Healthy organizations, Leadership, Strengths

“The original definition of ‘courage’ . . . is from the Latin word ‘cor,’ meaning ‘heart.’ And the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart. And so these folks had, very simply, the courage to be imperfect. They had the compassion to be kind to themselves first, and then to others, because, as it turns out, we can’t […]

One article: 3 powerful metaphor applications

Leadership, Metaphor, Narrative

Author and Time senior editor Jeffrey Kluger has certainly mastered the use of metaphor in his writing. In a recent article published on Time.com he reflects on the reasons why human beings risk their lives to help others and how, in the wake of the horrific Boston bombings, good and evil once again stand in stark contrast […]

If you think your people are motivated by money, you are wrong!

Engagement, Healthy organizations, Leadership, Meaning and purpose

What really motivates us in life and work? Most companies and leaders seem to believe that money is the main thing that motivates people to give their best. Research is proving that assumption to be incorrect. In a recent HBR post, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic cites several research studies that proved that there is a very low […]

Boundaries: 9 practices to help you find your NO!

Boundaries, Leadership, Strengths

In my work as a coach and consultant, an issue that I frequently encounter is an inability to set and maintain healthy boundaries. One manifestation of this is over-burdened people living out-of-control lives due to an inability to say no. It's not really surprising, seeing as most of us were raised in a culture […]

Have you got your SCARF on?

Change, Healthy organizations, Leadership

Why is change so hard? It's the one constant in life - we all know that change is inevitable. We grow older with each passing second, we observe the changing seasons ... and then there is technology: the moment you buy your new gadget there's already a bigger and faster one in the pipeline. Yet […]

We get the culture we deserve

Complexity and adaptive leadership, Healthy organizations, Leadership

Culture is the lifeblood of an organization. People often think that a culture can be designed or engineered, and this is true to an extent, but in reality culture is an emergent property of the people, policies and practices within an organisation. A human system and it's culture co-evolves; whether in a company, a family, […]

Why another blog?

Engagement, General musings

Although I've been actively blogging on www.narrativelab.co.za for several years, I've never felt the need for a personal blog. Now that I have decided to spread my wings and explore the world beyond TNL, I find that I have quite a bit to say. I've been a business consultant now for for more than 12 […]