Yearly Archives: 2011

Peter Drucker is probably one of the greatest thinkers in management sciences over the last century.  I don't know if he ever explicitly wrote or spoke about complexity, but the man obviously "got it".  Consider what he wrote about "fact-based" decision making. "Most books on decision-making tell the reader: First find the facts. But executives who make effective decisions know that one does not start with facts. One starts with opinions...The understanding that underlies the right decision grows out of [...]

As Jamie entrenched himself in the community of Huntington, it became clear how big and complex the task ahead of him really was.  The divide between the knowledge he wanted to impart to the community, and the level they were at at that time, were miles apart.  How do you educate a community about healthy eating habits if first graders couldn't identify a tomato (they insisted it was a potato) and many others (adults and children) did not know how to [...]

The issue of humanity is recieving a lot of our attention. On the back of our thought piece on humanity, we've initiated a mini narrative survey on the issue of humanity in the workplace. We've gathered a considerable number of experiences of dehumanisation in the workplace through stories in our previous narrative capture projects, none of our projects have been specifically focused on humanity itself. We're keen to get a sense of the level of humanity in organisations currently, so we've [...]

The entire Narrative Lab team, including a few others, has just arrived home after facilitating a metaphor elicitation process in Cape Town for a power utility company. It was a first time for us on a few counts. Firstly, it was the first time we were running large group facilitation techniques with 400 people in each session. Secondly, it was a first working with so many people in just 45 minutes (there were four sessions), and thirdly, it was the [...]

As a fresh Information & Knowledge Management graduate entering the world of narratives and complexity, my understanding of conversations, or rather conversational leadership, within organizations was within a knowledge management framework. This is where managers would implement and encourage a communication channel between employees, both in various levels to set a knowledge-sharing platform, and benefit from collaborative intelligence. I had never assessed the value of a conversation on its own, but rather communication as a whole. I never went further [...]

I love Jamie Oliver - he's by far my favorite celebrity chef.  Every since I first saw him stuff a leg of lamb, I knew he was my 'culinary muse'.  Over the last few years, he's been on a mission to change the eating habits of various communities, including schools in the UK and US. In 2009, he decided to tackle Huntington, a city that had received the dubious honour of being named the unhealthiest city in the United States [...]