Topic: self-organizing
Our bookmarks on this topic are also at pinboard.in/u:unison/t:self-organizing/
Giving up the “one leader in a room” mindset
Tuesday, December 18, 2012 · Topics: leadership-development, leadership-styles, self-organizing
From Roger Schwarz: As the name implies, when you operate from the “one leader in a room” mindset, you believe there can be only one leader in the room – or on the team – at a time: the formal team leader. If the formal leader is you, you alone are responsible for all of the team’s leadership tasks, including identifying the team’s direction and key goals, leading team meetings, and managing challenging work relationships among team members.
When you operate in this mode, you feel like you and your team members are in the same boat. Yet you alone are the boat’s designer, captain, and navigator, while the rest of the crew shows up to row. At some point on the journey you wonder, “Why aren’t they doing more?” · Go to Giving up the “one leader in a room” mindset →
Participatory culture
Monday, March 12, 2012 · Topics: customer-created, self-organizing, social-media-strategy
From Doug Borwick at Engaging Matters: David Dombrosky describes “communities of interest” as new modes of social organization that can bring people together who are separated geographically. “Through a variety of means (e.g., profiles, comments, discussion forums, groups, and wikis) geographically dispersed individuals with shared passions grew able to identify each other and converse in real-time as well as asynchronously. In these new communities, participants would share resources and ideas and engage in mutual mentoring.” The option of forming community that is not place-based, while perhaps not totally new (there have long been pen pals), is far easier today and presents the potential for becoming more and more important. · Go to Participatory culture →
Authority-based culture
Monday, March 12, 2012 · Topics: command-and-control, customer-created, leadership-styles, self-organizing
From Doug Borwick at Engaging Matters: Art has been an authority-based industry. Experts decide what cultural experiences to provide. The public’s job (when the public has had a job) has been to appreciate them. While, as I have often remarked, this is not true of the whole history of the arts in all cultures, it is true of the European-rooted art forms that are the focus of much of the not-for-profit arts industry in the U.S. With the rise of “participatory culture” built upon online communication tools, people are no longer content to passively accept what experts offer them. They have an expectation of input. This is not a trend that will fade. · Go to Authority-based culture →
Meg Wheatley: Update to “Leadership and the New Science”
Friday, March 2, 2012 · Topics: chaos, command-and-control, complexity, leadership, org-learning, self-organizing
From Cris Wildermuth: Listen as Meg Wheatley discusses what happened since she published Leadership and the New Science. The role of “walk outs walk ons” in creating change, the type of leader who is really needed in today’s world, the dangers of “hope.” · Go to Meg Wheatley: Update to “Leadership and the New Science” →
Radical management: Mastering the art of continuous innovation
Wednesday, January 12, 2011 · Topics: command-and-control, creativity, innovation, self-organizing
From Stephen Denning at ChangeThis: “Radical management focuses the entire organization on the goal of constantly increasing the value of what the organization offers to its clients. Once a firm commits to this goal, traditional command-and-control bureaucracy ceases to be a viable organizational option. Instead the firm will, like Southwest Airlines or Starbucks, naturally gravitate towards some variation of self-organizing teams as the default management model for organizing work. That’s because it is only through mobilizing the full energy and ingenuity of the workforce that the firm can generate the continuous value innovation needed to delight clients. Not surprisingly, those doing the work find more satisfaction as members of such productive teams.” · Go to Radical management: Mastering the art of continuous innovation →
When scientists sin by Michael Shermer
Thursday, June 24, 2010 · Topics: deception, research, science, self-correcting, self-organizing
From Scientific American: Fraud, deception and lies in research reveal how science is (mostly) self-correcting. In his 1974 commencement speech at the California Institute of Technology, Nobel laureate physicist Richard P. Feynman articulated the foundation of scientific integrity: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool…. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.” · Go to When scientists sin by Michael Shermer →
Music and leadership (part 4)
Saturday, June 12, 2010 · Topics: leadership, music, self-organizing
From Luc Galoppin: Luc’s visit to the B’Rock rehearsal was another immersion into music as a metaphor of leadership. Like last time he was scouting learning methods in this exclusive and (until now) closed setting. A bizar experience — that’s why it is called BizzArts. The way the B’Rock ensemble is organized is a great source of inspiration for anyone with a knack for management and leadership. B’Rock is a ‘democratic’ orchestra. And this has far reaching consequences on how each of B’Rock’s projects are organized. · Go to Music and leadership (part 4) →
Bas Reus’ quest on self-organization and online collaborative spaces
Sunday, September 13, 2009 · Topics: collaboration, self-organizing
Why do people collaborate? To achieve goals (or to generate whatever type of output) and then quit? No, people collaborate in order to keep collaborating. Time is being invested to be able to invest more time together. Of course, the quality of the time spent on collaborating and the quality of temporary output will influence the probability that collaboration will continue in this formation in a positive way. If people like each other and like the process of collaboration together, people are likely to continue to organize themselves together. That makes collaboration an important purpose of collaboration. · Go to Bas Reus’ quest on self-organization and online collaborative spaces →
