Generative Dialogue: the 4 fields of conversation
Better known for his “U Theory”, Otto Scharmer has also worked extensively on Dialogue, together with his MIT colleague Bill Isaacs. In his pre “U Theory” days, he developed a very useful matrix to map out the various conversational fields that we could find ourselves in. For him, there are 4 such fields: Field #1: […]
Organisational Purpose: Starting with Why
Purpose is a powerful way of motivating people for action; of clarifying the ultimate goal your organisation is setting for itself, the primary “Why” that won’t change even if you might pivot several times on your “What“, and perhaps your “How“. In this short video, we bring together several approaches to Purpose-lead organisations, in order […]
“Manterrupting’ – do we really still need to talk about it?
Manterrupting is a phenomenon that has been described and publicised for many years now. It has been explored, ridiculed, caricatured, dissected and analysed for many years. Just by searching for the hashtag on social networks, hundreds of examples, researches, articles illustrating it come up… so why talk about it again? Marianne is a young executive […]
The link between risk aversion and the inner critic: self-sabotage in transformative decisions
Emma is an executive in a multinational company. She is 40 years old and her career path is built on a continuous series of successes, brilliant results, a very fast progression, until she was promoted to her last position, as marketing director of one of the company’s business units, a few months ago, crowning a […]
Regenerating Democracy
Last week I was in Rome, facilitating a General Chapter for a male religious congregation. Democracy: insights from religious congregations Religious congregations are a very interesting type of organisation. In many ways – and despite all the fantasies and projections we might have about them being very hierarchical and authoritarian – congregations are one […]
Decision-making process : Nexus’ iterative model
Decision-making is not an instantaneous event, something that occurs only at the actual moment that the decision is being made. Rather, it sits within a process that includes the build-up to the decision, the decision itself, and then the impact of the decision itself. That process can be extremely quick (minutes, or even seconds), or […]
Practical use of the model
The model, or Operating System is quite simple to use. In our experience we have found it is best implemented through a process modelled on the 3 phases of Otto Scharmer’s U-theory: First phase – Sensing This phase involves exploring past and present activities through the prism of this model, identifying what you […]
Principle #5: Increase your interactions with people
Principle #5: Increase your interactions with people, organisations, experiences that are life-giving in your environment. Life, following principle #4, has begun to blossom, and from an individual and/or collective point of view you have moved from the prevalence of control, to trust in the process. Now is the time to connect with those people, organisations, […]
Cycle 2 Structuring the emerging-life process
Principle #4: Encourage life where it is pushing to emerge. If the previous principles were organised around the dying process, the following set of principles is instead organised around the idea of vitality, fertility and blossoming. After the first cycle, in which one has freed oneself from mental models, prejudices, stereotypes, cynicism and resistance to […]
Principle #3: Reduce attacks on life
The previous two principles focused on what must die; on the other hand, there are also situations that are potentially life-giving, but where the life that wants to emerge risks being thwarted by various forms of attacks. These attacks can take the form of resistance to change, cynicism, power games, desires for control, turf wars, […]
