Cognitive Edge: Comments

Comment on "Foresight & crowd sourcing - an opportunity"

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 03:05:30 +0100

Hi Dave

Agreed with Harold - great to be able to see the mechanisms of Sensemaker in action in an open context. Looking forward to the reports.

- Patrick Lambe

Comment on "Foresight & crowd sourcing - an opportunity"

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:54:00 +0100

What a splendid way to engage the world with CE stuff.

One remark: I have the feeling that the opposing negatives questions are not up to CE standards as they go from - to + instead of - to - or + to +.

- Harold van Garderen

Comment on "Information ecologies"

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:35:56 +0100

@Federico,

Do you refer to the Jonathan Gosling who is also involved in CoachingOurselves? That would be a nice coincidence... I have just started to look into whether there could be a CoachingOurselves learning topic on the Cynefin model. Could be very handy I think, and good thinking stuff for managers...

Best, Mireille

- Mireille Jansma

Comment on "Henley: The unconscious at work"

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:07:54 +0100

I really enjoy your perspective. I work with David Emerald, author and coach, who has designed an escape from the Drama Triangle. His book is called The Power of TED* (*The Empowerment Dynamic) immediately made a difference for me. I encourage you to visit his website at www.powerofted.com or go directly to his library of articles at (http://www.powerofted.com/library.html), or especially the article on “Upgrading Our Operating System” (http://www.powerofted.com/assets/pdfs/Upgrade-Article-DEmerald-logo.pdf). Let me know what you think. - kathy

- Kathy

Comment on "Information ecologies"

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:45:15 +0100

Dave,

I am just beginning my PhD research on leadership and emergence. I am working in some cases, one of them is the recent earthquake in Chile ( 27 of March). I just got acquaintance of your work and I think that some of the resources could be of great interest in my field research. I also would like to invite you, on behalf of Jonathan Gosling, Director of the Centre for Leadership Studies to show and exchange with our group of researchers in Leadership and Organisation your recent work.

My best regards,

FPV

- Federico Puga

Comment on "Obfuscation, power and corruption"

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:00:09 +0100

For me, this comes under "the unfairness of life." The challenge respectfully staying with a principle or idea while watching others who can use either for personal gain grab and run with it as quickly as possible claiming, as has been stated in the post, to be the true believers, the guardians, of the idea. This leads to the clubiness and exclusion of others as has been mentioned.
Violent behavior is violent behavior. Staying with what one believes while in the presence of that type of behavior is the challenge. In fact, being able to do that is a good definition of "success."

- Gary Monti

Comment on "Obfuscation, power and corruption"

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:54:19 +0100

Hi - Good post. I find there are hybrids that are even more annoying and infuriating.

IMO and experience it is too difficult and exhausting to divine origins and motives. Rather, makes more sense to validate with authentic conversation. It is the fastest way to beat down the charlatans.

A great example at the moment are legions of dilettantes that 1.) affix, prefix 'social' to everything; 2.) use circa 1980s TQM metrics to interpret their new ‘social-’ crap. Revolting.

All these reprobates are 'CFAs' according to 'Gaping Void' --

http://bit.ly/9cmPiT

Note to self and all: Don't be a ‘social’ CFA.

- John T Maloney

Comment on "Purity and danger"

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 23:47:14 +0100

Dave,

Something which is loved has to be preserved but it must also evolve. What a beautiful quote. I expected the pragmatic argument and didn't figure you for such a sentimental type.

I've been surprised by some of the things I have read about plagiarism lately in a major professional journal; recently an editorial about the situation in journals and conferences where authors have been found to plagiarize from their own earlier work. That doesn’t comport with what I remember from college. The specific circumstances I’ve forgotten, but the confusion certainly has remained.

What we preserve is from our memory, but our memories grow stale unless we are immersed in the stream of evolution. Entropy is important, whether we consider it part of evolution or something different. In many cases entropy is decay or devolution and I find as I get older, that pain arises as cherished memories are dashed. It seems to me that our love, and our pain, perseveres unless we develop rituals – including reflection, thinking, inquiry, tolerance – that allow them both to change.

In an earlier age folks may have simply ascribed the awareness of pain and an ability to handle it as maturity. I am not familiar with Mary Douglas’s work; now I will have to try and find it. I’m not familiar with John Doone either; I’ll pass on that one if you don’t mind.

Regards, tony

- tony joyce

Comment on "Purity and danger"

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:44:40 +0100

Can't quite put my finger on it, but it seems to me that at the purity end of things the focus is on the actions (3 strikes and you're out, for example). But in responding to complexity phenomena the focus needs to be on the interactions from which things emerge.

- Ivan Webb

Comment on "Henley: Collective Intelligence v stupidity"

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 18:37:34 +0100

Thanks for your reviews of the conference lectures!! They are great: you both capture content (which is wonderful for me as I am not attending), and evaluate & reflect.

Concerning the generation thing: I find it really amazing how long bad ideas keep lingering, even when just some simple logical thinking blows them apart.

As to more empirical approaches: the blog 'Net Gen Skeptic' has some posts on current research from a.o. Canada, Germany and Spain, falsifying the net gen hypothesis (yes, I do use some terms tongue in cheek here, guess which). Here's the URL: www.netgenskeptic.com.

Thanks again!

- Mireille Jansma

Comment on "For St Davids Day"

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:37:44 +0100

As always, Dave, you put beautiful words together with your obvious passion for the land, people and history of your native Wales.

Having recently (end of October) moved back to Toronto, my birthplace, I have had the joy of place, and of being "home", reawakened. I am trying to instil that in my son as well. Perhaps, when he's older, he'll allow it to weave its magic on his soul too - he does already have the love of history.

- Bruce Stewart

Comment on "Narrative as mediator"

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 07:37:12 +0100

Its not fair to have to wake up to someone talking about a book buying moratorium, an idea from the dark side. What are floors for? Have you not got a wall that can be knocked down and replaced with back to back bookshelves?

On the line, you will find that Max uses this form a lot. Strategies of trying to shift up the vertical for examples, always involve a shift in the horizontal. Economists have a name for them which I forget.

- Dave Snowden

Comment on "Narrative as mediator"

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 03:21:07 +0100

Dave - I'm not necessarily seeing a 4x4. I'm seeing a (2D) landscape on which a line (1D) has been drawn. If we're talking about a 2D landscape then why do we only have a line here? Presumably there are other lines possible across this landscape? If we're just talking about a 2-step transformation (which can go in either direction) then this diagram is a weird way of representing it.

MB's books are on my "to get" list but I actually have no shelf space at home at the moment - so have had to institute a book-buying moritorium.

- Matt Moore

Comment on "Avoiding reality in favour of a vision"

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 10:40:17 +0100

Lots of people use Mead Chris (Hari T for example). My point was that Griffin has a sense of proportion about its use, and is not as doctrinaire in rejection of systems thinking. Some of the developments of Mead's ideas give insight into the development of global themes, but we should also draw on Douglas's work and many others. Its not just about conversation.

My point on systems thinking is separate from this. I think the Stacy school mistakenly reject systems dynamics, rather than bounding its applicability. There are many aspects of an organisation where the level of constraint allows external design.

- Dave Snowden

Comment on "Avoiding reality in favour of a vision"

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 10:33:36 +0100

Dave,
I'm not sure that you and I have been reading the same Griffin book, because he takes up Mead extensively.

So why the obsession with Mead? Actually, it's not just Stacey who thinks Mead is cool - so do Jurgen Habermas and Pierre Bourdieu. The reason they all do is because in Mead you have the beginnings of an explanation as to how the global emerges from the local in human interaction. Taking the analogy from complex adaptive systems theory, local agents interacting with other local agents create global patterns which shape the local interactions. In Mead's terms, conversations of gesture and response with another also involve generalised tendencies to take the attitude of the other to oneself. This, then supports a focus on conversations in organisations and begins to explain how global themes of organising arise.

From reading your posts I'm afraid I am not clear about what your own theory would be about how the global arises from the local, except that you appear to be critical of a 'polemic' against systems theory. To put forward the idea of a system implies a system designer: this presumably is you, or the manager.

A radical understanding of complexity theory would put forward the idea that there is nowhere for the systems designer, or manager, to stand which is somehow outside 'the system'. Otherwise things are complex, but not quite complex enough.
Cheers,
Chris

- Chris Mowles

Comment on "Henley: Collective Intelligence v stupidity"

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 08:30:16 +0100

A heroic post, and much appreciated. (Off to have lunch with Raj today.)

- David Tebbutt

Comment on "Henley: The final session"

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 22:01:06 +0100

Your contribution certainly fit the title of the programme. Provocation delivered in the inimitable Snowden style, and definitely the future today.
Enjoy the champers!

- Jane McKenzie

Comment on "Henley: Leif & Hans Rosling on the future"

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 08:53:24 +0100

Dave,

Slide 16 is new & interesting. Have seen earlier versions, but this one seems more mature.

Do you realize that effectively you are constructing a inplementation form for system IV and system V in VSM-terms?

- Harold van Garderen

Comment on "Henley: On indiginous identity stories"

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:58:31 +0100

This aligns well with my observations in Ireland last year. Perhaps the only stories that weren't about Viking or English conquests were those that pondered what neolithic life must have been like.

- John Bordeaux

Comment on "Henley: Seeking the Unknown Unknowns"

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 11:49:12 +0100

As I can't be at the conference, I'm very grateful for your blog posts. Very interesting to hear about Sveiby's change of perspective - will definitely read the book. Keep on posting (and encourage the others to do so - or Tweet - too )!

- Cheryl Cooper