Dave,

Well done on taking this next step in evolving your offering.

Just a question on the in house programs (as I am considering running one).

Will participants receive the accreditation and access to the wiki etc..?

Thanks

Cory

Love the new format for the training, as someone who did the course in 2005, I can see how this new approach will be very beneficial to those who come to this for the first time, especially in-house applicants.

I already publicise a link from my OFQT website http://ofqt.com/learning-tools/roma.html to your CE site and so will just make a small adjustment which will mean that the link now goes to this training information.

Józefa

I like this way of approaching things. We'd be happy to help out with methods-oriented accreditation courses in Singapore if you need extra bodies.

I am for more practicing the techniques, but just a thought: you sometimes use the analogy of chefs and recipe books. Are you sure you will not be creating recipe book readers when we need chefs?

....whom am I to apply a bit of ritual dissent?

Hi Dave

At one level this makes sense and i can see what you are doing.

Does this indicate a move toward the mass market for CAS theory and related work. Or is it simple commmercial pragmatism.?

I must confess to a tinge of sadness, as i think the theory comes before the methods.

Well done on finding a reference that justifies your action:)

Good luck with the new courses

Jonathan Carter's question is a good one! I understand that the CE-work becomes too much to handle, but I have some doubts about both moment of and argument to change - the - course. I attended the three day accreditation course last April (2008) in London, and especially the so called theoretical stuff was an eye-opener for me. Just practising Sensemaker wouldn't have done much for me, without this way more richer background wich took 2,5 days out of three. In September I attended another day in Amsterdam about Sensemaker alone, but I would never have gone were it not for the 'theoretical' lectures in London.

Also, I don't think that people now broadly understand the Cynefin model. I think that especially now, due to the financial crisis (hurray weak signal detection), there is a huge audience willing to learn something new. And this 'something new' is not the use of tools. It is a way of looking (understanding about simple, complex, complicated, chaotic - or however you dub these domains) which enables understanding and choice, albeit in a new way (like understanding ambiguity, lack of control and safe-fail).

I may be wrong, but my feeling is that people need 'theory' (I mean stuff that enables them to understand things, including why at times they can't understand things) now even more than say some time before. So this would not be the best moment to change priority from creating understanding to teach tools.

This is very exciting! Following up on my colleague Melinda Weekes' experience with you at our offices in Cambridge, MA in December, our delivery staff at the Interaction Institute are eager to immerse ourselves in complex facilitation, leadership, and decision-making. We perceive that there is tremendous resonance with and an important furthering of our core practice of Facilitative Leadership and our consulting work with multi-stakeholder collaborative initiatives in the social sectors. Melinda and I will be meeting with Mary Boone in CT in February. Very exciting!

Thanks for all the comments and keep them coming! Just to clarify a couple of things.

1. we will still teach the base theory (CAS, pattern based intelligence) on the accreditation course. Just not in the same depth to free up more time for methods and practical applications.
2. for people like Mireille (and myself) who prefer deep theory before they do the methods, then its fine to do the one day theory course first and then move on to accreditation. However the feedback from the more recent courses supports the market life cycle point I made in the blog. More people are interested, and the theory first preference tends to be early stage market life style

Hope that helps and I will be blogging more about the new training/seminars over the next week or so.

this ok - but it will be the same as is happening in south african universities - you just know that if someone got their degree in social sciences in the 90's they have got a decent degree and set of skills, whereas if someone graduated this millenium you need to do a few tests to establish their skill levels.

I have had the luxury of being able to really get to grips with CAS since the course and think once you do that (understand the theory) the power of the methods, especially the importance of their simplicity, becomes so much clearer.