Fragments: Dual Leadership The new Social Leadership work is building out quite nicely, and I’m finding a more unified language across whole swathes of my work. I find myself describing it in two contexts: evolution of existing leadership roles, and the emergence of an entirely new layer of…

Human: Impact I’m writing in the tropical glasshouse at Hortus, Leiden. When they last renovated the structure, the roof was raised, and a classroom space constructed, and that’s where I’m sat right now. I’m not sure I’m supposed to sit and work here, but such is the nature of work in the context…

What does it mean to be Human in the 21st Century? The adaptation of our Organisations - as well as our broader societies - will take place at the intersection of social context, formal structure, and technology. Social context is multi layered, often conflicted, constantly in motion, and…

Enclosure: #WorkingOutLoud on Ecosystems Throughout this year I’m writing a book with River about ‘Ecosystems’ - it’s an exploration of that which is fixed and fluid, within ourselves and our landscapes, and more broadly about our interdependence and language of belonging. Today I’ve been mainly…

The Things That Act Upon Each Other Things act upon each other. Imagine ‘Time’. For most of us, it’s something immutable, quantised, finite, and usually in short supply. But the existence of unified time is only a relatively recent phenomena: only when the railways were built and required a…

Get Back On The Hook Understanding AI as a technology is an excuse that lets Organisations off the hook: they are able to rationalise it as procurement, deployment, training, and resource. Instead, we should recognise it for what it really is: a social context, augmentation, or even alteration of…

Unreconciled: Belonging What does it mean to ‘belong’? Can you belong in endless places? How does ‘belonging’ work, when ‘place’ has ceased to be geographic, and when even our identities have become something more fluid and diffused? My new book, ‘Unreconciled: being human in the 21st Century’ is…

The Wrong Boots: Adaptation and Familiarity I clearly remember hiking the South West Coastal Path in my mid twenties, mainly for the injury I picked up to a tendon. It was nothing dramatic: no stumble or fall. Just the very deliberate choice to wear the wrong boots. The Coastal Path is beautiful,…

A Sense of Place: Sharing ‘Unreconciled: being human in the 21st Century’ As Sae and I count down towards the publication of ‘Unreconciled: being human in the 21st Century’, I’m sharing some extracts from the book, alongside some notes and reflections on how the work came about (you can sign up…

Beyond Skills: A Pioneer Map of Capability Does the language of ‘Skills’ still serve us well? In this early stage #WorkingOutLoud, I lay out a position that says ‘yes’, but within a much more narrowly defined context. It takes the position that we now have the instrumentation and social context to…

A Love of Disorientation and Imperfection One of my favourite programmes to guide is around my work on ‘Disorientation and Imperfection as Lenses for Leadership’. I like it because it forgives the nature of my practice, and because it’s genuinely liberating for some people. The premise is that we…

Fragments: Completion I have a great many things on the go right now, some of which, like the ‘Sketches of the Future Organisation’ work, is being pulled into practice before I’ve even finished writing it. I’ve always tried to segment my work into parallel spaces. At the bottom is the everyday…

Moving Beyond the Skills Conversation I’m pleased with the new body of work, ‘Sketches of the Future Organisation’, which will be published as a Guidebook later in the summer. This work explores a broad pattern of change and the potential expressions of Organisational Design that may emerge in our…

The Unreconciled Self: Metamorphosis As I start the countdown to the publication of ‘Unreconciled: being human in the 21st Century’, I’m sharing a series of extracts from this new book. This section, ‘Metamorphosis’ comes at the end of a chapter in which Sae and I explored the context of the…

‘Granularity’ in my Practice I’m walking down parallel paths right now: one path is the ‘Ecosystems’ book that I’m writing with my seven year old son - very gentle, reflective work on the fixed and the fluid, and our interconnection - and the other path is my work on ‘Sketches of the Future…

A Journey Through ‘Unreconciled: Being Human in the 21st Century’ My new book is published in June, and I could not be more excited to share it out into the world. Co-authored with Dr Sae Schatz, my long term collaborator and co-author of ‘Engines of Engagement: a curious book about Generative…

WorkingOutLoud on a Skills Array I am not normally one to talk about ‘Skills’, but circumstance is forcing this upon me, as I cannot complete the new ‘Sketches of the Future Organisation’ Guidebook without addressing certain aspects of this. Typically I prefer to focus on collective capability,…

WorkingOutLoud on ‘The Forest, with River’ – An Ecosystems Book I am walking my way through this year with River, my son. We are exploring the New Forest: it’s a journey through the fixed and the fluid, an journey through the landscape, and our relationship. Today I am sharing writing from April.…

WorkingOutLoud on the Value Architecture I’ve had some great feedback from Mark on the first draft of the new Guidebook, ‘Sketches of the Future Organisation: Human, AI, and the Space Between’. This new work forms a series of ten sketches that show alternative manifestations of structure, power,…

WorkingOutLoud on Sketches of the Future Organisation I’m just back from two weeks of focussed writing, creating a full draft of the new Guidebook, ‘Sketches of the Future Organisation: Human, AI, and the Space Between’. It’s the first time in a while that I’ve had such a block of dedicated time,…

Unreconciled: Being Human in the 21st Century My next book, ‘Unreconciled: Being Human in the 21st Century’, will be published in June. I received the proof copy last week, and immediately called Sae so that we could ‘unbox’ it together over Zoom: it’s a great feeling to see this work arrive in…

#WorkingOutLoud on the Citadel, the Cultivated, and the Wilderness The Future Organisation exists in three spaces: the Citadel, the Cultivated, and the Wilderness. Today I’ve completed the full manuscript (first draft) for a new Social Age Guidebook, ‘Sketches of the Future Organisation: Human,…

#WorkingOutLoud on the Socially Dynamic Organisation Continuing to share extracts from the new Guidebook, ‘Sketches of the Future Organisation: Human, AI, and the Spaces in Between’, which is a focussed two week writing project. I am nearly complete on the first draft, hopefully tonight. Then a…

#WorkingOutLoud on the Syntechnic Organisation I’m fully focussed this week on the Guidebook: ‘Sketches of the Future Organisation: Human, AI, and the Spaces in Between’. Last week I shared a few fragments of writing, and today I’m sharing one of the five ‘decision authority’ sketches. I’ll share…

Sketches of the Future Organisation: Human, AI, and the Spaces in Between I am #WorkingOutLoud for two weeks with a pure focus on a new body of work that sketches our illustrations of the future organisation. One of the sections in the book looks at the new Value Architecture work, and I’m sharing…

#WorkingOutLoud on Decision Authority in the Human/AI Organisation I’ve been working today to describe five expressions of Organisational Design that vary decision authority and governance conditions: it’s a continua from the almost fully human, to the virtually automated. This is early stage…

Sketches of Organisational Design I’m running through a series of sketches around Organisational Design Principles for the Socially Dynamic Organisation: these are all expressions of Post-Industrial structure, and each, in their own way, plays with aspects of boundary, permeability, configuration,…

#WorkingOutLoud on Organisational Design Ultimately our decision on the structure of the Post-Industrial Organisation may be less a matter of what we can imagine, and more a matter of what it will cost. Not simply in terms of money, but also the parallel currencies of trust, belonging, identity,…

The Meta-Tribal Organisation Continuing yesterdays conversation about alternative framings of Organisational Design, the ‘Meta-Tribal’ Organisation is an experiment in minimum viable coherence. It considers the primary structure of Organisation to be tacit, tribal, social, not structurally…

The Intertidal Organisation I find myself caught up between parallel strands of evolution. Documenting not one, but multiple concurrent prototypes of the Socially Dynamic Organisation, each founded upon a different configuration, and principles. I’m letting this work run wild, as it is carrying…

Strategic AI: People First? Our desire to keep people at the centre of our Organisations is noble, understandable, but ultimately not borne out by history or experience. It’s a recurrent theme in my conversations about Strategic AI, and certainly a self belief expressed across a number of the…

Social Leadership: The Modern Context What it means to be a leader has changed, in structure, location, and mechanism. We inhabit the remnants of the Industrial Organisation, within societies whose design remains rooted in feudal notions of power and effect, whilst seeking to adapt to constant…

Familiar Yet Different Adaptation to a hybrid human plus GenAI world will involve adaptation within existing systems, but also the re-imagination of those systems. Those who get stuck in the first framing will end up efficient, optimised, but failing, as context moves further away from their…

Shared Space Somewhere between the ‘Public’ and the ‘Private’ lies the ‘Commons’. Shared space, controlled within both legal and social contexts, open yet contested. This is the space of connection and convening, of protest and marketplace, of shared identity and imposed power. Our modern urban…

Health and Social Care: Evolutions Yesterday I had the pleasure of walking around Yeovil with a friend, exploring the traces, shadows and signs of change, and talking about the challenges facing the National Health System in the UK as it seeks to adapt to new medicines, new technologies, new…

Creativity in the Age of AI Organisations often hold ‘creativity’ in a special box: either one that is opened on special occasion, or one which is carefully hidden away in the back of a cupboard, and quietly dismissed. It’s as though we hold the idea of creativity in tension with ideas of…

Social Leadership: Choices I find myself wandering around a little, somewhat daunted by the idea of the new Social Leadership book, but also aware that I committed to get started this month. The reason for my hesitancy is unclear: over the last couple of years I’ve written quite a few primary…

#WorkingOutLoud#WorkingOutLoudon ‘Ecosystems’ Through this year I’m writing about ‘The Organisation as Ecosystem’, the backbone being an exploration of the New Forest, wrapped around a more philosophical exploration of twelve aspects of organisational ecosystems. Very early stage #WorkingOutLoud: it will make…

Human Plus AI: Core Tensions of the Anthropotechnic The narrative enquiry I recently ran across around forty Organisations illustrated broad insight around the patterns of adaptation required for an anthropotechnic future (humans plus AI), but also a clear articulation of structural constraint. In…

WorkingOutLoud on the Organisation as Ecosystem I’m sharing some of the new writing, on the ‘Organisation as Ecosystem’. I’ve worked on this through January and early February, and now, six weeks in, I am pulling together what is a first chapter of the book (or what may become a book). The…

Generative Inquiry into Design Principles for the Future Learning Organisation #1 I’ve been working with a community of around twenty learning leaders, from complex organisations, using the new Learning Constellation framework to consider three things: [1] where capability sits (between the…

Tensions I’ve been flat out today, writing up a research report from the Strategic Workforce Planning community event two weeks ago: I had around seventy leaders, from over forty organisations, exploring the question of ‘how we unlock the value of a human and AI future’. I used a series of five…

The Learning Constellation I’ve been working flat out on the structure of an event I’m running this week for senior learning leaders: it’s called the ‘Learning Constellation’, and really it’s a scaffolded structure through which to consider central themes of transformation. I’m using a lot of…

Social Leadership: Holistic Perspective It’s almost time for me to pick up the Social Leadership work again. The second edition of the Social Leadership Handbook was published in 2017, and since then my own work has considerably broadened the landscape, and my understanding of Social Leadership…

Context & Evolution of Learning in the Modern Org The context of learning within our modern Organisations has shifted dramatically, in a relatively short space of time. The change has occurred at both the broadest level - the question of ‘what learning is’ for an Organisation - down to the most…

Value Architecture and the Social Contract Today I’m facilitating a large group event, with people from over forty different organisations, on Strategic Workforce Planing and future Organisational Design. It’s based around a series of deliberate provocations, and I’m using two in the group work.…

Organisation as Ecosystem: Seasons Through this year I am building out a body of new writing on ‘The Organisation as Ecosystem’. The backbone is a series of walks in the New Forest, the National Park on the south coast of the UK. I am walking it, with River, through the seasons, and much of the…

Recording ‘Unreconciled: Being Human in the 21st Century’ I spent today recording the audiobook for ‘Unreconciled’ or, more accurately, recording half of the audiobook. The day went well, with my voice holding up (mainly due to Arthur brewing me endless mugs of ginger, honey, and lemon), and it…

Safety and Shelter: Research Kickoff In our shifting cultural context, some people feel that they have lost something: aspects of their identity, safety, or support. The new ‘Safety and Shelter’ research project, and accompanying free programme, explore this, by collecting stories of identity and…

WorkingOutLoud on Organisation as Ecosystem We can see the world in clear detail, with out own eyes. But that’s not the only way to see it. We can craft, borrow, and share other lenses. Different ways of looking can help us to find different ways of understanding.  Back in 2019 I first started…