2010

• 2010-12-17

  Story games

  This post is about story games, in three ways. First, it is an announcement to my readership that, due to the lamentable fact that I am apparently incapable of making any utterance less than five pages long, I will be switching to biweekly posts for the foreseeable future. I just can’t keep up this level Read more

• 2010-12-10

  The healing cleaver

  Yesterday I posted about the issue of context in story listening, and how I try to preserve context and worry that I fail. Today I listened to two doctors tell stories about how listening to their patients tell their stories helps them work together to find solutions to problems. (This was on a teleconference from Read more

• 2010-12-09

  Severed stories and those who sever them

  One of my favorite moments in my work is when I’m sitting with a body of stories and their accompanying interpretations. This is a position I have been in many times now and have come to love, over and above writing or programming or almost anything else I do. Sitting with the stories, abiding with Read more

• 2010-11-21

  Lost in a book

  Here is a strange little story related to the post I wrote about two weeks ago in relation to reading novels on e-book readers. Having finished reading Little Dorrit and having slurped up both movie versions (each best in its own way), and having gone through the customary refractory period (for respect and reflection), I Read more

• 2010-11-12

  What to expect: topics

  Yes finally it’s a blog post related to the book. Does anyone remember that I said I was setting aside October to finish the rewriting of Working with Stories? Well, folks, October laughed. So many tasks came up unbidden that I was barely able to spend a few days on the book. But I did Read more

• 2010-11-04

  E-books, narrative context and the future of reading

  Here is today’s set of desultory thoughts, this time about where technology and narrative come together in e-books. The end of the line, or, a unique opportunity About two years ago I found that the time had come to read the works of Anton Chekhov. (Oh God, she’s on about literature again — No! It’s Read more

• 2010-10-28

  Selection and development

  I was looking at the blog Aid on the Edge of Chaos and followed a link to Owen Barder’s wonderful presentation titled “What can development policy learn from evolution?” I enjoyed the clear, thought-provoking presentation so much I wrote a comment to the post. However, the comment turned out to be much too long for Read more

• 2010-10-22

  Depth and breadth in organizational narrative

  Last night I finished reading The Pillars of the Earth, a historical novel by Ken Follett about the middle ages. I wanted to read the novel because I enjoyed the miniseries, which I fell into watching on Netflix purely by chance (all right! it was because I saw Matthew MacFadyen and Rufus Sewell in it). Read more

• 2010-10-14

  Life without … what?

  Recently I’ve come across three random tidbits that struck me as strangely connected. They are all narrowings of self-definition, of what it means to be a human being. Humanity = electricity My son and I have been enjoying some episodes of a television series called Life After People. The series examines what would happen to Read more

• 2010-10-08

  WEIRD research on WEIRD people

  To start, you might want to look at the interesting article by James Surowiecki in this week’s New Yorker on procrastination. Which brings me to my resolution: I am going to try to finish the rewrite of Working with Stories this month. My favorite part from Surowiecki’s article is this part: Instead [of fighting with Read more

• 2010-10-01

  It takes all kinds, even on the internet

  I’ve been enjoying the fascinating spectacle going on lately with everybody talking about social media, spurred by Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker essay on social media and activism. Here’s my perspective on it. Lowering the bar (Warning: this is the “that’s just what I said” part of this post — can’t remove it — tried.) Gladwell Read more

• 2010-09-23

  Motivation through the ages

  While rewriting Working with Stories I’ve been making the rounds through some old projects and visiting some of my favorite patterns. One particular pattern has come up in so many projects — ten? fifteen? — that I think it might be of interest to others. It has to do with generations, organizations, and motivation. This Read more

• 2010-09-16

  George Williams

  I was saddened today to hear that George Williams had recently passed away. George was one of my advisors at Stony Brook and a big influence on me. When I say I’m a slow thinker and proud of it, I always think of George. I used to sit with him in his office, pose questions, Read more

• 2010-09-15

  Uncanny 2.0

  I’ve been thinking all week about the uncanny framework I wrote about last week (it seems to want to be called that). I have to say, this has been a slippery beast to fight/dance/play with! I keep being reminded of Jacob wrestling with the angel, and of holding onto greased pigs, and of fish slipping Read more

• 2010-09-09

  Deeper confluence: Explanation in the uncanny world

  I’d like to introduce yet another new framework for sensemaking in this post, one I’ve been pondering for a while. This morning I woke up and said to myself, “It’s time.” So here we go. EDIT: The framework described in this post has been superseded by an even better, shinier framework described in the next Read more

• 2010-09-04

  Complexity/chaos stories: Butterflies, keystones and climbers

  This blog post has been revised and published as the paper “Are We Ready for Complexity?” in the Journal on Policy and Complex Systems, Spring 2018 issue. You can also read this PDF version of the published paper. (It fixes an editing error that bothered me.) If you want to read the original, unimproved version Read more

• 2010-08-26

  Steal these ideas

  This blog post has been moved to (and revised for) The Working with Stories Miscellany. You can find it as the section called “Supporting online story sharing” in Chapter 6, “More on Conversational and Community Story Sharing.” Read more

• 2010-08-12

  What stories are for

  Here is the state of things at the moment. The first in a series of blog posts on “limiting misconceptions about complexity in organizations and communities” has begun to peek out and explore its surroundings, but I don’t have the time this week to help it get on its feet. Several smaller, weaker siblings, some Read more

• 2010-08-05

  What to expect when you’re expecting stories

  After the detour into sensemaking represented by the last few posts, while still “growing” a few posts on complexity and all that business, I’m ready to get back to seriously finishing the rewrite of Working with Stories. (If you didn’t know this, reader, much of what’s up on this blog, under the Practice and Observations Read more

• 2010-07-29

  Groupthink, groupfence, groupsense

  Here is a rambling series of mental peregrinations, a set of musings that you might find muse-worthy as well, about thinking and creating individually and in groups. I often find that things I think I’m unique in thinking about turn out to be on the minds of lots of other people too, so see if Read more