We started the Melbourne Emergence Meetup three months ago as an experiment in developing a face to face community of practice. Our aim (apart from learning about complexity) is to discover how a community might form without online discussion forums. We meet monthly at 6pm at the Melbourne City Library. This group consists of about […]

When I joined Lotus in 1999 I was whisked off to Boston to attend pre-release training for a new software product code named ‘Raven’. Raven later became ‘Lotus Discovery Server’, and joined a new breed of products called ‘expertise-location software’. These systems trawled through an organisation’s documents and emails to create a directory of topics […]

Michael Jones asked the question on this site, “how one could train someone in Cynefin or certify that the training was successful.” Cynefin certification is gained through real projects and based on peer assessment and mentoring. Those who are certified by the Cynefin Centre will have their names posted, with their projects and techniques used, […]

I’m off to Sydney tomorrow to conduct the Cynefin certification training with Dave Snowden. This year we are running two streams: one for practitioners and the other for researchers. I’m looking forward to meeting everyone.

Eliciting stories from workers relies, in part, on asking good questions. But before people will provide their more personally significant stories they must feel comfortable and relaxed. A short ‘warm-up’ time is very conducive to genuine sharing. The ‘warm-up’ might occupy the first 10-15 minutes of a session. In most cases I begin by setting […]

“The universe is made of stories not atoms.” Muriel Rukeyser (1913-1980, poet) – The Speed of Darkness

HRMonthly have given me permission to make Tell it like it is available online. It was first published in HRMonthly, December 2004. HRMonthly is published for the Australian Human Resources Institute

Denham Grey draws attention to Etienne Wenger’s idea that communities of practice can form the centre piece of a knowledge strategy. And then makes the observation: What I found missing here is the community level practices to grow knowledge – think patterns, ontologies, distinctions, concept mapping, collaborative writing, knowledge mapping and beyond One of the […]

I heard the following anecdote the other day: ‘When I arrived I was told I should put every in writing as an email. This didn’t make sense to me and was contrary to how I normally worked, so I kept relying on conversations to get things done–at least until I was burnt the first time. […]

The December issue of HR Monthly has just published a version of my paper on how to use stories to size up a situation.