I’m sharing work this week on ‘disorientation and being lost’ in learning – part of a broader pattern of work around the ‘Unreconciled Self’ and ‘Imperfect Leadership’ – so as a word of warning, expect this writing to be convoluted… or possibly adrift! I’m playing with new ideas. To say that leadership is systemic is tautologic. At least until we question our understanding of where the boundaries of the system lie. In my work on the Social Age, i would argue that the context of our Organisations has shifted, and much of that shift has permeated the boundaries of our Organisations, to the exte ..read more

Tomorrow i’m sharing new work on ‘Disorientation and Imperfection’ here in Sweden. It’s very early stage writing and thinking, considering how we may wish to build systems that can hold greater ambiguity, and a capability to ‘get lost’, to move things ‘out of focus’, and to embrace imperfection. I have to say it’s been a really challenging day, trying to find a narrative through this. So challenging that, at times, i’ve considered retreating to safety. There will be around a hundred people in the session tomorrow, and of course i do not wish to fail, so my sense is that i will need to share t ..read more

Whilst we experience the landscape around us as a fixed feature, that is only because our perspective is so brief. In truth, the landscape is a fluid system, a product of deposition and erosion, at the mercy of geological forces, meteorological events, and of course human influence (both intentional and as a by product of our actions). Geological processes give us mountains, and the weather erodes those mountains into sand. And humans? They dig up the sand to make buildings, changing the environment to suit their needs. In this sense, whilst seismic activity and coastal dynamics are blind, hu ..read more

Steering an Organisation is a tricky thing: partly because the boundaries of the system are more elusive than we may imagine, and partly because there is no steering wheel or joystick in sight. Add to this that it’s not always clear who the Captain is (despite various people wandering around with badges and hats on, saying that they are in charge). And it may not be clear where the engine is. Or, indeed, how it works. Organisations exist in two dimensions: the ‘Structural’ and the ‘Social’. The Structural aspects are those most clearly visible: the physical assets, codified knowledge, formal ..read more

Part of learning is the creation of ‘meaning’, building out our understanding of the world around us, and evolving that understanding through addition, fracture, and sharing. Sometimes we learn something new that invalidates the old, and sometimes it simply layers on top of it. We can view this process in various ways: as one of disturbance, of exploration, of change. But it’s not simply a solo cognitive activity. Learning can be social, collaborative, co-created, and highly dynamic: not simply what ‘i’ think, but influenced by what ‘we’ think too. Indeed there is a certain elasticity around ..read more

I was talking yesterday with my friend Rhian about statues. Or, rather, she was talking and i was listening, with a group. The statue in question was the one of Edward Colston, a slave trader from Bristol. He was such a luminary of the city that not only was there a society named after him, but also a selection of roads, a concert hall and school. If you go to Bristol today you can see him down by the harbour, staring out over the river. Or rather, you can’t, because Rhian bought the rope used to pull him down, and others in the crowd dragged the statue to the river and rolled it right in. Th ..read more

My favourite terrarium shop has closed down. It’s not that much of a surprise, because i’m not sure how many people really buy a large glass jar containing it’s own sealed ecosystem whilst on a day trip to London (especially not when they cost hundreds of pounds and don’t fit easily into a backpack), but nonetheless, the owners were always enthusiastic and welcoming to idle passers by like myself. Closed systems are fascinating to us, perhaps because they appeal to our innate need to control context, or maybe because they allow us to demonstrate our nurturing self as we decide whether to crac ..read more

If someone asks me what my favourite album is, i’ll probably choose something carefully. I won’t want to go for anything too mainstream, lest i appear unimaginative, but equally i don’t want to choose something so utterly obscure that i have to provide three minutes of context about how i discovered them whilst on a surf trip to Portugal, playing the back room of the third most popular bar. I want it to be different enough to make me interesting, but not so different that i sound like i’m trying too hard. And it can’t be the same thing my brother chooses, because that would never fly. And it s ..read more

I revisited work today around Imperfect Leadership: the notion that leadership may be inherently imperfect, and that what matters is our dialogue with our own practice and context. Sharing some fragments of thought around this idea: That our binary notions of success and failure, of perfect and imperfect, may lack the necessary nuance to develop our practice: and that our overlays of judgement may limit our effectiveness as much as they keep us safe. Notions of convergence and divergence, which come up in Social Learning, may be relevant: that formal systems are good at convergence around one ..read more

Tomorrow i am stepping out of my comfort zone and delivering a short session to a group of Head Teachers and School Principles on Generative AI. It’s been a while since i was summoned to the head teachers office… but this time i’m hoping to avoid detention. I thought that i’d base it around three ideas: ‘Creativity’, ‘Comfort’ and ‘Truth’, which offer the chance to consider what Generative AI may give us and cost us. There are some common narratives flowing through our education systems: that Generative AI is ‘cheating’, that it’s ‘biased’ and ‘unfair’, that it does not hold ‘truth’, that it ..read more