This is a post in my series on organizing ”between and beyond.” Other posts are here. This is a retrospective of what has happened during the week. The purpose is to reflect on the work itself. Here is my previous retrospective. Here is my next retrospective.
What has happened? What needs to be done?
It has been an intense week involving deep personal work with coaching support from Skye Hirst. Skye and I have also discussed our working together with the aim to explore “Living Process“. I think that our conversations are going to be the core of our working together. We need to use what we know and come to the “sense of our conversations” together. There are ‘jewels’ in Norm Hirst’s papers, but I need to understand where Norm came from, and how he got there.
The exploration of “Living Process” is in itself a living process. I’ve setup a wiki which allows us to write collaboratively if we’d like. Setting up the wiki and its initial structure has been great fun! I have used a candle as a metaphor for the living process.1 A living process requires energy (a sense of purpose), inflow (a sense of direction), inner life (a sense of coherence and wholeness), outflow (harvesting, discernment), and feedback (learning) to stay alive. So does Skye’s and my exploration.
I’ve finished my re-reading of EarthDance: Living Systems in Evolution by Elisabet Sahtouris. I read it the first time in April 2013. It’s such a great book that I definitely will take the time to write a thorough book review. Here are, for example, the principles of healthy living systems which Elisabet Sahtouris has identified. And here is Sahtouris distinction between operating as mechanism vs. organism. I would probably have used notions like coherence instead of coordination. And I would also have emphasized that there are no ‘parts’ (it’s a mechanistic notion) in organisms and living living systems, but overall I like the book very much!
I have started to read Process and Reality by Alfred North Whitehead (recommended by Skye Hirst), and A Key to Whiteheads’s Process and Reality by Donald W. Sherburne (recommended by Simon Robinson).
There are several books which I have received but haven’t had time to read yet:
- The Tree of Knowledge by Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela (recommended by Jeff Loeb).
- Good Business: Leadership, Flow and the Making of Meaning by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly.
- Management of the Absurd: Paradoxes in Leadership by Richard Farson.
- Connectography: Mapping the Global Network Revolution by Parag Khanna.
- Roads to Agreement by Stuart Chase.
- Human Rights Horizons: The Pursuit Of Justice In A Globalizing World by Richard A. Falk
- Quantum Change: When Epiphanies and Sudden Insights Transform Ordinary Lives by William R. Miller and Janet C’de Baca.
- Ronald A. Heifetz book Leadership Without Easy Answers by Ronald A. Heifetz.
- The Art of Leading Collectively: Co-Creating a Sustainable, Socially Just Future by Petra Kuenkel (I’ve promised Petra Kuenkel to write a book review).
- A Force More Powerful: A Century of Non-violent Conflict by Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall.
What was good? What can be improved?
I really appreciate the coaching support from Skye Hirst. I’m also very glad and enthusiastic about our working together.
I’m very impressed by the wiki’s functionality and openness. The possibilities to quickly search through and edit pages are great. And I’ve really enjoyed the working with the evolving text.
I’m not sure how I will find the time to read all books. I need to become more efficient in capturing the essence of the books. However, I do love reading!
Notes:
1 This is an adaption of an idea which originally comes from Lasse Ramquist and Mats Eriksson. See Ramquist & Eriksson, Manöverbarhet: VU-processen—en ledningsmodell för strategisk fokusering, medarbetarengagemang och konkurrens på livets villkor (Ekerlids Förlag, 2000).
Related posts:
Organizing in between and beyond posts
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