Embrace the seeming paradox!

Let's face it: your problems are like spoiled brats, just too willing to misbehave. And they can easily afford to be ill-tempered, irrational, incoherent, inconsistent. However, you cannot. Not as an individual, not as a leader, not as an organisation. For you must uphold some level of coherence and consistency to maintain your credibility (and I would add: your self-esteem). How can you achieve that goal if your problems obviously don't play fair?

Reading the map – East or West?

The Cynefin framework is a sense-making model that can serve as a map to give you some orientation in challenging situations of decision-making or problem-solving. Recently, I took a closer look at how you could read this map and why it is prudent to avoid the Southern domains. Today, I'll investigate the main differences between the Eastern and the Western domains and how those will affect your chances of success.

Reading the map – Keep to the North!

Over the past few weeks, I introduced you to a sense-making model developed by Dave Snowden. His Cynefin framework can serve as a map to give you some orientation in challenging situations of decision-making or problem-solving. Today, let's take a closer look at how you can read this map, and why it's advisable to avoid the South.

The Nature of Economies – What Jane Jacobs tells us about innovation

In 'The Nature of Economies', Jane Jacobs provides a view on a number of important aspects that often go unrecognised. Starting from her insights on an economy's main processes, the control mechanisms at work, and the fitness of an economy, we can take a comprehensive look at innovation targets, i.e., the types of problems our society needs to solve.

What’s an economy – According to Jane Jacobs

Lots has been said and written about the economy and how it works, most if it in the specific terminology of economics. It took somebody with a very broad spectrum of interests, insights and ideas to develop a more natural narrative, somebody like the journalist, author, and activist Jane Jacobs. In "The Nature of Economies", she offers a conceptual description of economies that is entirely based on the very same natural principles that govern chemistry, mechanics, and biology, and a fresh perspective on how economies thrive or fail. This post is a tribute to her work.