Category: People
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Generous listening
In generous listening you don’t even listen in order to understand why the other person feels the way they do. It doesn’t matter. What matters is what’s true for this person, and you simply receive it and respect it. And in that safe interaction something can happen which is larger than before. And that’s all…
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Ralph Stacey on rule-following
Ralph Stacey writes that we have to think of global organizational order as continually emerging in myriad local interactions,1 and that it is highly simplistic to think of human beings as rule-following beings.2 In our acting, we may take account of rules but can hardly be said to blindly follow them.3 The essential and distinctive…
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Principles for making organizations work
John Gottman writes about what successful relationships look like and how to strengthen them in The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work together with Nan Silver. Below is a summary of Bob Marshall’s adaptation of these principles to organizations: Enhancing “Love Maps”. Flourishing organizations are familiar with their peoples’ worlds and needs. Nurture Fondness And…
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People evolve their own responses
A mechanical system simply acts according to its instructions. But a living system, with its internal intelligence and complex feedback organisation, reacts to the meaning it finds in the information. The system selects the messages to which it listens and then evolves its own response.1 Human beings are a prime example of living systems with…
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The Tyranny of Structurelessness
Jo Freeman’s essay on The Tyranny of Structurelessness is about the tyranny of ”elites”, where an ”elite” is defined as ”a small group of people who have power over a larger group of which they are part”. The problem with these ”elites” is that they don’t have ”direct responsibility to that larger group, and often…
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Närhet ger bäst vila för våra hjärnor
Agneta Lagercrantz skriver i SvD 2015-09-15 att närhet ger bäst vila för våra hjärnor. Tillsammans med våra allra närmaste sjunker nämligen stresspåslagen i hjärnan helt. Mänsklig gemenskap signalerar till hjärnan att den kan vila. Social närhet påverkar våra känslor, och våra känslor påverkar hjärnans aktiviteter. Till exempel beror kollektiv intelligens, förmågan till problemlösning i grupp,…
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Dee Hock on control
Life is not about control. It’s not about getting. It’s not about having. It’s not about knowing. It’s not even about being. Life is eternal, perpetual becoming, or it is nothing. Becoming is not a thing to be known, commanded, or controlled. It is a magnificent, mysterious odyssey to be experienced.1 … I have long…
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What if control is inappropriate?
My conclusion after having read Brian Robertson’s new book on Holacracy and Gerard Endenburg’s first book on Sociocracy is that neither Holacracy nor Sociocracy replace Command & Control (C&C). Both use C&C within limits. This triggered feedback from Holacracy people that the Lead Link Role doesn’t manage day-to-day work and doesn’t manage others, but that…
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Soul of Business
The causes of much of what happens in our lives lie far deeper than we imagine. The Soul Biographies by Nic Askew look beneath the surface of our lives, work and society at an unusual depth. And in doing so, the films open our eyes wide to what people and organizations might become. Film Collection…
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Managing without soul
Henry Mintzberg writes about the epidemic of managing without soul … “Managing without soul has become an epidemic in society: managers who specialize in killing cultures, at the expense of human engagement.” “I’ve been in the business of studying organizations for so long that I can often walk into a place and sense soul, or…