We unfortunately have to postpone the next Cognitive Edge accreditation training course that was planned for early November 2011. At this time, another date hasn't been decided upon, but it will probably be in the first quarter of 2012. If you need to familiarise yourself with the Cognitive Edge methods or thinking urgently, please don't hesitate to contact us to discuss potential coaching options in the the interim.
We are pleased to announce that TNL in partnership with the University of Stellenbosch Business School will be hosting Steve Bealing, CEO of Cognitive Edge from 8-10 March 2011 for the first ever Cognitive Edge accreditation training course to be held in Cape Town, South Africa. Detailed brochures are available here: - 2 day Cognitive Edge accreditation course - 1 day Sensemaker course Bookings made before the end of 2010 will receive 10% discount off the full course rates, so make sure you book your [...]
One of the most enjoyable parts to many of our workshops is watching the reaction of people who fail to see a very obvious gorilla in a video clip because we told them to focus on counting basket balls being passed between two teams of players. I'm not going to link to the video, because more and more people have already seen it and it spoils our fun! A recent post on Jonah Lehrer's Frontal Cortexexplains this phenomenon in a very [...]
This is fascinating! One of the first things I remember hearing Dave Snowden speak about is how people make decisions. According to cognitive science we only have a very small percentage of what's in our visual range in sharp focus at any given time. We see through a series of spot observations and fill in the rest based on past experience. This often leads us to physically not see things that don't fit our expectations or patterns. I remember when [...]
I will be guest blogging on www.cognitive-edge.com for the next two weeks, so feel free to follow my "musings" there. I'll be discussing some of our current and forthcoming opportunities here in South Africa. Remember also to catch Dave Snowden @ the CSIR on the 19th of August where he'll be talking about "Making KM strategic to your organisation".
Spotting the trends and patterns in a handful of anecdotes is not a difficult task. Cognitively, it is within our grasp as humans. However, raise the number of anecdotes beyond that and it becomes more of a mental stretch and you require the assistance of another "intelligence". It is for this reason that we utilise the SenseMaker suite of software when running projects that gather hundreds of stories. Now, imagine you could collect all the stories published on the web, [...]
What do you get when you pull together a former meteorologist, anenigmatic maven and a former narrative therapist? Answer:The Narrative Lab and pretty informative breakfast conversation oncomplexity in the business landscape. In an amazingly short amount of time we managed to showcase our keynote on complexity (The New Simplicity), listen to a customised podcast from Prof. Dave Snowden on the Cynefin framework, hear how our methods are applied in practice and to talk briefly about the SenseMaker software we use when working with mass narrative capture. Thanks to all our friends, partners, potential [...]
Dave Snowden, founder of Cognitive Edgeco-authored (with Mary Boone) the front pagearticle of the latest edition of the Harvard Business Review. For those of us who've been involved in Dave's complexity and narrative work over the years, this is a key milestone - indicative of how our way of thinking is starting to make in-roads into mainstream thinking. To quote Tom Stewart (HBR Editor), "Most leaders are told that it is important to be (or appear to be) decisive. Fair enough — but how is one [...]
One of the phrases Dave Snowden uses to describe Cognitive Edge and the use of complexity theory in organisations is 'the new simplicity'. During our course last week, I reflected on this with some of the participants. It's interesting how often we 'over-complicate' things. We over-analyse problems and come up with such complicated solutions, that we're often doomed to failure before we even start! Ironically, the opposite is also true - often we just don't think things through. How many times have [...]
