Why Holons matter in Organisational Development: Stacey and Oshry
A colleague of mine recently sent me complexity theorist Ralph Stacey’s short video on the paradoxes of organisational life, and the importance of taking experience seriously. Some of Stacey’s ideas resonate with me so I posed a question to Barry Oshry about what he thought of Stacey’s notion of organisations as “complex social processes of relating between […]
Tim Stanyon
“I started my career fascinated by technology and how that could revolutionise business. I then became fascinated to explore why so many projects failed! The crucial “missing” was often the people. So I started to reconsider what was needed for success and herein began my journey of self-development for the sake of enabling me to […]
Ali Warner
“I started my working life in large organisations and appreciated the intelligence, complexity and creativity I found around me. However, after a number of years I began to feel that the full strengths and potential of many of the members of these systems – including my own – were not being used. I reconsidered what […]
Our future needs Systems Leadership
The recent General Election result in the UK highlights more than ever that we are living in a VUCA world; one that is characterised by Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. And these conditions are impacting on our social, economic and political systems. I can certainly relate to that from my vantage point of the world […]
Lessons from Winnie the Pooh on how to navigate our complex world
For the last 20 years my specialism has been to work in situations that are often conflicted (sometimes high levels of disagreement and blame), with significant issues of either unrealised potential or underperformance, complexity, and often a feeling of stuckness or hopelessness amongst those involved. VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) is a term growing in […]
Four practices for developing authentic leadership
There’s crisis of leadership in many modern organisations: Who are they serving? What is their essence? How should they operate? Can they really claim to be demonstrating authentic leadership? This week reveals the most shocking analysis of how a major ‘public service’, South Yorkshire police, not only systematically covered up, for 27 years, its culpability […]
Georgian song & leadership: More related than we think.
For those familiar with the work of Barry Oshry, the North American systems theorist who has dedicated his life to uncovering the limiting patterns that exist within organisations & their leaders, the words Top, Middle & Bottom may have a particular extra meaning or significance. But have you considered their relationship to UNESCO Cultural Heritage […]
John Watters
“I used to be more future-oriented: rigorous planning, talking of sustainable change, imagining that the changes, I and others, were involved in would endure. I now see that changes cannot be “built in”; we and the world are too complex. The quality of the future we want has to be present in the here […]
Julia Fell
“Before I began working in leadership development I thought it was about introducing leaders to theories and telling them to implement them. Working with leaders from all backgrounds led me to reconsider my assumptions. I realised that leaders who follow models slavishly will not achieve the followership they seek. Leadership starts with “know thyself”. […]
A Unique combination of Oshry Systemic Frameworks and Mindfulness
An opportunity to both practice mindfulness as well as to enter into an unusually powerful learning experience about our organisations’ dynamics (Oshry) is a rare experience – in fact it might well be unique. The ‘Resilient Leadership for Turbulent Times’ workshop that I attended last month certainly offered much to savour, for mind and for […]
The failure of the England football team is systemic
Whether you like football or not, it’s hard to witness the nation’s deflated spirit here in London after England went out of the World Cup in the first round. And the papers on Monday were speculating whether this means the end of the road for England manager Roy Hodgson. It reminds us of a similar […]
Putting the challenge into context
A colleague of mine was chatting about the Longitude Prize that was launched on the BBC last week. The competition is to commemorate 300 years since the first challenge was set (and consequently won by gruff Yorkshire clockmaker John Harrison with his stable marine chronometers) and the prize of £10 million will be awarded to […]
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