Mapping Organizational Ecosystems: Introduction

This is an excerpt (part 1) from an essay I'm working on to describe developing perspectives and practices for mapping organizational ecosystems. I recently facilitated 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 … Continue reading Mapping Organizational Ecosystems: Introduction →

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 →

COVID-19 Lessons for Leaders

The still slowly unfolding catastrophe of COVID-19 and the failures from some world leaders to adequately respond to early weak signals demonstrate a few crucial truths that any leader, facilitator, and innovator ought to understand: We are prone to thinking linearly, especially without a rudimentary understanding of complexity. Emergent phenomena within complex systems often scale … Continue reading COVID-19 Lessons for Leaders →