That Moment Before Starting: The Joys and Pitfalls of Team Check-ins
“For our check-in, I invite you to answer this question with a single sentence: ‘How do I feel about our objective?’” The first time I encountered the practice of the check-in was about twenty years ago, during seminars rooted in the US-UK tradition. At the time, it seemed unusual to me: in most seminars, participants […]
Learning psychological safety: training and gaming experiences
Over the past few weeks, we have been playing ReSet (for more information about the game, visit our website http://www.nexusconsultation.com and, in particular, the ReSet page) with many teams from different companies in a truly intensive manner, and each time we are surprised by the results and feedback we receive after people have played. Over […]
In teams as in chorus: singing with joy even when we make mistakes
«N’ayez pas peur de vous tromper, soyez à fond, prenez du plaisir… même si on se trompe l’important c’est d’être à fond ! Le public pardonne aux gens sympas, pas à ceux qui restent là paralysés sur scène.» ‘Don’t be afraid of making mistakes, give it all you’ve got, have fun… even if you make […]
Walking with systems: learning experience 1
The most brilliant concepts can be very simple and yet difficult to assimilate. That’s how I felt when I discovered the systems approach and the work of Donnella Meadows. Powerful but complex. It took me a long time and a lot of miles to understand. Every summer since 2021, I’ve gone walking alone in the […]
The unanswered mail case
What is a liberated company? That’s the question I’m asking myself after leaving the company I founded ten years ago. I began by reviewing the different approaches to the liberated company. I felt it was superfluous and boring. Then I thought about the highlights of this adventure, the emotions I’d felt. Because that’s what it’s […]
Permaculture Principle #8: Integrate, rather than segregate
Wholeness is one of the main attributes of Nature In Umberto Eco’s famous novel “The Name of the Rose”, William of Baskerville reflects on why they failed to understand early enough what was really going on in the abbey, and tells his young mentee (my own paraphrase): “We understood crucial things, young Adso, but remained […]
Permaculture Principle #5: Use and value renewable resources and services
In service of the Whole In Nature, a renewable resource is one that is made available again “soon” after use. Soon here is a totally subjective, human-centred concept: it is framed around human time and needs, and implies that it can be available again when our need for it re-emerges. And Nature is full of […]
Permaculture principle #4: Apply self-regulation and accept feedback
A powerful principle: simple in its workings, so difficult to fully engage with! The truth is, I have found this principle the toughest one to reflect on so far! Why might that be? Well, partly I think because I have been witnessing how growing positive feedbacks of climate change and biodiversity erosion seem to be […]
Permaculture principle #3: Obtain a yield
It is the whole system that yields, not just a series of parts On a Permaculture farm, plants, shrubs, trees, and animals are chosen and organised so that each of them will provide several beneficial inputs to other parts of the overall system (according to the famous permaculture design principle: 1 element = several functions; […]
Permaculture principle #2: Capture and store energy
Increasing the potency of biological fields Permaculture suggests that reliance on cheap oil has shifted our systems’ capacity for resilience and self-reliance. We need to reclaim and implement our capacity to harness, store and circulate energy, and use it with a much higher degree of efficiency than we have accepted so far, under the illusion […]
