Thoughts from Our Associates

Articles

Featured image for “Complexity Shock, Finding Patterns, and Adapting”
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
Featured image for “Part 1: Pursuing Responsible Analytics”
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.
Featured image for “Recommended Reading: 2020 Book List”
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
Featured image for “2020 Solstice Message”
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
Featured image for “Network Governance as an Empowerment Tool”
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,
Featured image for “Part 2: People in Converging Crises”
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
Featured image for “Learnings From Parenting: Racism”
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
Featured image for “Part 1: Systems in Converging Crises”
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&#%
Featured image for “An Opportunity for Civilizational Change”
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
Featured image for “Deep Voices”
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?