I’ve now returned from a very enjoyable trip to Amsterdam, Berlin and Leipzig. I gave a talk at the Pakhuis de Zwijger, sponsored by Karen den Hertog of Public Health Amsterdam, and Wilma Waterlander of the University Medical Centre. It was a very slick operation, and the recording can be found here. Marco Derksen wrote a lovely short article summarising the talk.

I gave a similar talk in Berlin, which was not recorded. And, also in Berlin, I ran a workshop on Organisation: the shape of things to come. This was a very interesting exploration of people’s experiences as to how structure can limit the ability of organisations to adapt and evolve. My sponsors Resense 360 wrote a short summary.

A couple of things really stood out for me:

purpose – how organisations have many purposes, some espoused, some more hidden, and many contradictory. For example, satisfying the needs of funders as opposed to the needs of beneficiaries, or the tension between desiring not to ‘rock the boat’ too much due to concerns for work security against being bold and effective in driving for outcomes in the wider world.
power – how personal agendas for retaining positional power can make it difficult for the organisation to adapt to changing needs, and au contraire, how a new leader can sometimes open things up and create a whole new set of possibilities
core processes. This was an interesting one to try and explore – what are the essential activities in the organisation that lead to outcomes and outputs and what activities are either supportive or somewhat redundant? And are these core activities streamlined, or do they fragment and compete? This is a topic that participants found hard to work with and I’d like to explore it further.

I’m planning to convene a small group to explore all this, as it got quite a lot of traction on LinkedIn. And we may also set up an online ‘course’. Please get in touch if you are interested.

Then last weekend I was a speaker at the Mystics and Scientists conference held by the Scientific and Medical network. This gave me an opportunity to explore the ‘cracks’ where the light gets in, to quote Leonard Cohen. I spoke about quantum physics and the space for mystery; the focus, in processual views including process complexity, on the local and contextual as opposed to transcendence and Unity; and the call to ‘seed the future with good ingredients’. I’ll add in the link to the talk when it is available. In similar vein, here is a recently published article which makes explicit some of the influences that led me into the reconnection between science and the mystical, the connection that was severed by Newton’s work in the seventeenth century.

Here is a recording of an interview with Sharon Varney, author of Leadership in Complexity and Change. This is part of a series of interviews with those working in this field of complexity and you may enjoy others too.

Also… The Dao of Complexity has been shortlisted for a Business Book Award in the ‘smart thinking’ category – which sounds rather nice and beats the alternative (the dim thinking category!).

You’ll find other recordings here.

Future events

There will be a conference – Complexity and the Social World – November 27^th (note change of date) in London, sponsored by the Institute of Physics. More information to follow. It will be a free event and we’ll be asking for paper submissions in due course and also plan to have some invited speakers.
I’m speaking at ‘the complexity lounge’ on May 7^th.
I’m speaking at the annual conference for the Centre for Alternative Technology August 16/17^th.