1. Moving the thinking back upstream … or, how to be clever without being too clever
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3. Sometimes we walk right past the basics …. What are the things at the river’s source that will help drive better outcomes?
4. “ Organisations and communities are made of conversations, the virtual neurons that tie everything together.” It is the quality of the conversation that determines the success of the community.
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6. We get intelligent people into the room but our meetings and time are dominated by strong personalities, rambling discussions and strongly held views. “Many brains make light work.” But how can we help them get them aligned to do so ? A show of hands please: Anyone who has sat in an unproductive meeting of late? Anyone who feels their organisation’s meetings all add value?
7. A more constructive and creative approach to thinking during meetings, discussions & conversations. Parallel thinking allows a group to consider an issue or an idea without the intervention of dispute or argument. This framework allows people to use their collective intelligence to approach an issue from the same perspective and allows the collective analysis of information, benefits, risks, & underlying potential of a concept or idea. There is a growing perception that traditional analysis and judgement are insufficient to deal with a constantly changing world. Our traditional thinking habits lack design and creative energy.
INTRO What do you tell advanced practitioners - many of whom are probably better operators that you and more learned in many respects? Simply put a number of ideas and practices on display Primary analogy will be that of a river – if we move our thinking back up stream we will improves outcomes downstream i.e. “if we improve the quality of our thinking the quality of the actions that follow should correspondingly improve” Interesting to hear Mark make reference to Kurt Vonnegut ………..