Yearly Archives: 2010

The study of complexity has typically found a home within specific disciplines, such as science, philosophy, cognitive science, anthropology and to a lesser extent evolutionary psychology. This landscape intrigues me as you will rarely find a psychologist among a group of complexity thinkers and practitioners. You'll find natural scientists and philosophers in the main. I think this is because the role of psychology in understanding complexity has not received much attention. Complexity is firmly an issue of psychology as well [...]

We often find that people use the word "complexity" in a range of settings. Most often it is used by your average person on the street to describe a situation or technology that escapes their understanding. And so, in this colloquial use you will hear people lament and say things like, "What can we do? It's so complex." A great analogy thatPaul Cilliers, the elder statesman of complexity in South Africa, uses is of his mother's struggle with bank ATMs. [...]

Something interesting happens when you ask someone to share an experience (narrative) AND then ask them to tell you what that story means. Often you'll find that the interpretive layer that a storyteller will construct about their story covers more than what the story itself addresses. The danger of taking a story at face value is emphasized because of this dynamic. Try and visualise what happens here ... Someone tells a story of an experience that they, or someone they [...]

The Water Research Commission have been a long standing client of ours. Typically investing in technical water research, the WRC have been venturing out more into social science research and our narrative methodology has been a nice fit in that strategy. Our main project with the WRC is investigating the dynamics of stakeholder engagement. The study site is down in George, where we have a Masters student (Aner Vlok) assisting us. We recently ran a series of knowledge dissemination workshops [...]

Regrettably, Prof Snowden has had to postpone his visit to South Africa.  When new dates have been scheduled, we will post another notification. Our Complex Approach to Monitoring and Evaluation workshop will continue, Prof Snowden will join us via video conference.

When presenting, one has to be certain you are okay with receiving questions when you tell the audience you would like the presentation to be a two-way conversation. This was the case for me today. I was speaking to the Cape Town chapter of the SA Organisational Development Network, focussing on our approach to Narrative Change Management. What should have been a 60 minute talk turned out to be a 2.5 hour discussion. A large focus of my presentation was a [...]

Prof Dave Snowden's annual visit to South Africa will happen in August this year.  He will be in SA from around the 12th to the 25th of August, mostly lecturing at the University of Pretoria. He does have limited time available between lectures, so if anyone would like to book some of his time for meetings or to present a workshop, please let us know. We will be conducting a one day workshop on Complex Approaches to Impact Measurement where [...]