Thoughts from Our Associates
May 17, 2021
Complexity Shock, Finding Patterns, and Adapting
by Laura Kennett and Eleanor Finger Introduction What a year! Full of disruption and adaptation, over and over again. If this sounds like a pattern, then you are correct. Although life is full of patterns, the emergence of COVID-19 has given us an excellent opportunity to hone our pattern recognition skills. Large-scale, sustained and rapidly spreading global “shocks” like the pandemic trigger a
May 11, 2021
Part 1: Pursuing Responsible Analytics
by Nick Kalogirou Analytics and strategy help us navigate the fog of war, but don’t necessarily make us responsible or wise. The ascendance of analytics and its importance in strategy today is truly remarkable. One only needs to admire the seemingly simple act of a Google search to marvel at how analytics is affecting our ability to adapt and learn.
January 16, 2021
Recommended Reading: 2020 Book List
The Human Venture publishes a list of books annually. The list of books includes those that were either drawn on in 2020 to support our on-going explorations and programming or were acquired in recognition that they filled a gap and could be useful in the future. The Human Venture community has read all of the books on this list and
January 1, 2021
2020 Solstice Message
by Jason Low It’s amazing to think that Ken has been with the Human Venture community for 20 years now. With that in mind, he wanted to share something that happened around this last Remembrance Day 2020 that overlaps with the solstice season. As usual, Ken had a book that he was going to recommend during one of the bi-weekly
November 6, 2020
Network Governance as an Empowerment Tool
by Blythe Butler and Sami Berger One of the functions of pioneer leadership is to build others’ capacity to understand and act in their contexts in more adaptive ways. This means helping others see “what to do and how to do it in a given situation” (Human Venture map 12.3). Even though we work with a lot of different groups,
July 6, 2020
Part 2: People in Converging Crises
George Floyd protest in Grand Army Plaza June 7, 2020. Image: Rhododendrites, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons by Laura Kennett I wrote Part 1 of this article, Systems in Converging Crisis, in the spring, when I listed an array of crises that are intensifying around us, including: Now we have entered summer in the northern hemisphere and this list is
July 1, 2020
Learnings From Parenting: Racism
by Lindsay Mitchell “I hate black people.” – Four-year-old white girl. These are words you never wish to hear spoken at all, let alone to hear them coming from your own daughter. But they did. I remember we were driving in the car. I don’t remember where we were driving to or from, only that we were together in the
May 1, 2020
Part 1: Systems in Converging Crises
by Laura Kennett We are not only in the midst of a global pandemic; we are also experiencing a convergence of several global crises that are shedding light on glaring weaknesses in our systems, including: Global climate change, Global oil market collapse, Global fracturing of truth in social media, and Global rise in right-wing movements. What kind of a cluster f&#%
April 30, 2020
An Opportunity for Civilizational Change
Image: Jason Wong, Unsplash by Elizabeth Dozois “There seems little doubt that we are currently in the midst of one of the great critical transitions of the human journey, and yet it is not at all clear where we will end up once our current system resolves into a newly stable state.” (Jeremy Lent1) “Never let a good crisis go
April 23, 2020
Deep Voices
A view from Kim’s window, as she reflected on the pandemic, west of Calgary, March 2020. Kim was inspired to write this poem after an Alumni Community Call, reflecting on the voices we pay attention to in order to understand current events and possible paths forward. by Kim Rowe It is quieter now. Listen. Do you hear the deep voices?