Ah, powerpoint... James told me about this at lunch today. Enjoy. ...

Chris Corrigan on living systems Rob and I did our latest Phoric podcast with Chris Corrigan, who was pretty awesome. Chris never fails to provoke and engage and his choice of videos was fascinating. The first features a guy who learnt how to move huge...

Facilitation workshop I'm planning a one-day workshop for facilitators on July 18th in London. As in the past, the format will be loosely structured and highly experiential. Details here. ...

Open Space Innovation Nice post from Jack Martin Leith on how he used Open Space as part of an innovation process. Seems nice and human to me....

The pitfalls of confidentiality Annette Clancy's recent post on the pitfalls of confidentiality in client relationships prompted her, Matt Moore and me to record a podcast chat about it this afternoon. Download the Podcast - 29m - MP3 (9 MB) Podcast RSS feed Annette...

Whose insight is it anyway? I'm continuing to enjoy Keith Sawyer's book, Group Genius (earlier post here). Mostly as an aide-memoire to myself, I wanted to log a few more of his ideas, conscious that I'm probably summarising and over-simplifying. He takes a look at...

Confidentiality Annette has a typically thought-provoking post about confidentiality in relationships. I recommend the whole thing though this observation particularly resonates.The second is that the stories that are revealed “in confidence” are perceived to contain the “truth” of the organisation –...

Organising... Roland Harwood at NESTA has a nice account of Clay Shirky's great talk at the RSA last week - Organising without Organisations. That talk, Roland's post and Euan's reflections on Clay's book have finally triggered my Amazonian instincts and I'm...

Lessons from a spatula Yesterday, I was told a delightful story about the paediatrician and analyst, Donald Winnicott. Winnicott was a pioneer in thinking about how mothers and babies relate and how that affects the child's development. He talks about a spatula game. He...

Podcast: Touch, organisations and Capt Mainwaring Is touch - physical and emotional - a taboo subject in organisations? Why are we so sensitive about it? What is about things "touchy-feely" that seem to make people, well, touchy? I recorded this podcast earlier today with Patrick Lambe...

Word of the day Paul Levy came up with a word in a comment to his post about "icebreakers". Some briefs might translate as "can you facilitate for these people to do what I want", in which case you need a facipulator, not a...

Brainstorms (Long slightly rambling post ahead) I've been enjoying Keith Sawyer's book, Group Genius. Keith's singing to the choir, of course, as he's big on things like improvisation. His central theme is looking at how ideas are generated in teams, rather...

Who is this guy? The good people at NESTA have posted a video of Co-Creation Rules. It's about 20 mins extracted from the 90 min workshop James and I hosted there last month. It's a strange experience watching myself on video. I'm left wondering:...

Coaching I've been doing more coaching work lately and I'd quite like some more. I also find it quite hard to descibe my approach and feel wary of some of the supposed coaching models I read about online. Most of the...

Touch Matt highlight's Patrick Lambe's post: Touch. Patrick is focussed on actual physical touch and the way it's pretty much excluded from conversations about change. It really is a giant elephant in the corner. I might add that the notion of...