This is an excerpt from an essay I'm working on to describe developing perspectives and practices for mapping an organizational ecosystem. I recently ran a workshop with Agitare, the Defense Entrepreneurs Forum, and the Federal Innovation Network to explore how we view, create, and use maps of our massive, interconnected community, and how co-created and inter-subjective approaches … Continue reading Mapping Organizational Ecosystems: Predetermined vs Relational Roles
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Innovation, Design, and the Adjacent-Possible
This is a simple depiction of this concept called the adjacent-possible. I'm going to use this visualization to describe a few thoughts about innovation strategy and practices that I hope you will find useful. The concept of the adjacent possible originated from Stuart Kauffman, who used it to describe evolutionary potential in biology. For any … Continue reading Innovation, Design, and the Adjacent-Possible
Leadership in Complexity – Conversation, Values, Democracy, Slippery Slopes, and Genuine Evil
https://youtu.be/4S0K7MAT_KA Text: I posted something in an Air Force Facebook group the other day that went something like this: I think more of our mid-tier leaders -- officers and NCOs -- need to be enabled, educated, and empowered to engage in the difficult task of rooting out, tamping down, and expelling extremist, sectarian ideologies among … Continue reading Leadership in Complexity – Conversation, Values, Democracy, Slippery Slopes, and Genuine Evil
2020-A Shared Illusion
I’ve been spending a bit of time on what I intended to be a retrospective post about the year 2020... but struggling. Perhaps that is appropriate, as 2020 was characterized by nothing if not struggle. Perhaps I should consider this piece on different types of alignment to be my official retrospective post, which explores some … Continue reading 2020-A Shared Illusion
Alignment: Artifacts and Rituals
Allow me to be transparent in a way that might make all of us uncomfortable. Over the course of the year that I worked at my last unit, I felt quite unaligned to their strategy and culture. I struggled to pin down who, what, and why we were, consistently coming up short. I was (very generously) handed a job that … Continue reading Alignment: Artifacts and Rituals
My White Privilege
When I was a kid, we used to go out after curfew and run from the local cops as a fun game. We would dodge their spotlights and run through private property to stay out of sight. Not for a second did we fear for our lives. If we got caught drinking or one of … Continue reading My White Privilege
The Logic
There's a very real kind of logic to the type of agitation we're seeing in the riots in cities across the United States right now, and I see constant reminders that many of my fellow white Americans haven't had the opportunity to learn to understand it. Many lack the capacity to feel empathy for the … Continue reading The Logic
