We Need to Let Go of the Bell Curve by Adrian Gore January 14, 2022

We Need to Let Go of the Bell Curve

Article: The Relational Work of Systems Change

The Relational Work of Systems Change

Webinar: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0uduCqqD8uE9Yqq-NeEihzWeUS2Cg_lSsFL

collective impact forum newsletter:

The Relational Work of Systems Change   By Katherine Milligan, Juanita Zerda, and John KaniaFor the next installment of Collective Impact: 10 Years Later, we are excited to share the article, “The Relational Work of Systems Change,” by Katherine Milligan, Juanita Zerda, and John Kania of Collective Change Lab. In it, we hear more about the qualities and practices that can support transformational change, including building deeper relationships and developing an emergent approach to collective impact.Read more in the Stanford Social Innovation Review.Read the ArticleMore to ExploreWebinar: Relational Work of Systems Change   Join the Collective Change Lab team and the collective impact leaders featured in the article, “The Relational Work of Systems Change,” for a free webinar to connect with a growing global community of practitioners experimenting with more relational and emergent approaches to transforming systems. Discover practices that bring people into deep, authentic relationship that you can integrate into your work and explore what it means to cultivate our capacities as leaders to embrace emergence. Date: Thursday, February 3, 2022 Time: 11 AM PST / 2 PM EST / 8 PM CET Cost: Free Host: Collective Change Lab (Contact for questions)Register for this webinar RegisterIllustrations by Hugo HerreraCollective Impact, 10 Years LaterCatch up on the most recent installments in a new Stanford Social Innovation Review series that takes a look at how the collective impact movement has evolved over the last decade and where the movement can grow from here.Centering Equity in Collective Impactby John Kania, Junious Williams, Paul Schmitz, Sheri Brady, Mark Kramer, and Jennifer Splansky JusterRead the article / Listen to a podcast   Embracing Collective Impact at United Wayby Ayeola Fortune, Jill Pereira, Bill Crim, and Regina GreerRead the interview / Listen to a podcast   How Field Catalysts Accelerate Collective Impactby Sylvia Cheuy, Mark Cabaj, and Liz WeaverHow Funders of Collective Impact Initiatives Can Build Trustby Victor Tavarez, John Harper, and Fay HanleybrownPower and Collective Impact in Australiaby Kerry Graham, Liz Skelton, and Mark Yettica PaulsonUsing Data to Disrupt Systemic Inequityby Jennifer BlatzData in Collective Impact: Focusing on What Mattersby Justin PiffCentering Racial Justice and Grassroots Ownership in Collective Impactby Kat Allen, Rachel Stoler, Keyedrya Jacobs, Ilana Gerjuoy, Sage Shea, and Leigh-Ellen Figueroa10 Dangers to Collective Impactby Paul SchmitzBringing an Anti-Racist Approach to Collective ImpactInterview with Dr. Zea Malawa and Miya CainRead the interview / Listen to a podcast   Reflecting on Collective Impact for Place-Based Social ChangeBy Melody Barnes, Jennifer Blatz, Geoffrey Canada, Rosanne Haggerty, and Erik StegmanRead the interview / Listen to a podcast   2022 Action Summit Speakers Priya Parker amd Rev. Dr. Starsky WilsonSave the Date to Gather Together this April 2022We hope you will save the date for this April 26-28, 2022, and join us for our next virtual Collective Impact Action Summit, where 1,000+ social changemakers from across sectors will come together to learn, explore, and share about how to better collaborate to create equitable systems change.We’re excited to announce two of our Action Summit keynote speakers:Priya Parker is presenting the opening keynote address. Priya Parker is a leading facilitator, strategic advisor, acclaimed author of The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters, and executive producer and host of the New York Times podcast, Together Apart.Presenting the closing keynote is Rev. Dr. Starsky Wilson, President and CEO of the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF), and a guiding voice in the social sector on centering childrens’ well-being, racial equity, and the imperative of leading together through challenging times.To be notified when registration opens in early 2022, sign up now for our Action Summit Registration Notification.  About the Collective Impact Forum  The Collective Impact Forum, an initiative of FSG and the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions, is a resource for people and organizations using the collective impact approach to address large-scale social and environmental problems. We aim to increase the effectiveness and adoption of collective impact by providing practitioners with access to the tools, training opportunities, and peer networks they need to be successful in their work. The Collective Impact Forum includes communities of practice, in-person convenings, and an online community and resource center. Learn more and join the community at collectiveimpactforum.org

Rethinking agency—The 2022 agenda for the systemscommunity

Rethinking agency—The 2022 agenda for the systems community

Community principle: Weaving from the inside out Healthy communities need a center of gravity with dense and trusted relationships. Otherwise they are hollow and unsustainable. Fabian Pfortmülle

Community principle: Weaving from the inside out | by Fabian Pfortmüller | Together Institute | Jan, 2022 | Medium

25 things I’ve learned about leadership and systems Oliver Standing Aug 19, 2021·3 min read As part of my system’s change Basecamp course with School of System Change at Forum for the Future I promised myself I’d capture in a journal insights about leadership and systems that struck me whilst staring out of the window rather then let them slip back into the depths of my mind!

25 things I’ve learned about leadership and systems | by Oliver Standing | Medium

THE FILM

RESOURCES

NFTs

CONTACT

FIND THE OTHERS

WATCH FILM

“There is a future of thriving that awaits us. It would be a shame to miss it.” –THE SAGE

“As a Game~B pioneer, you must do what is yours to do and bring together all of the necessary roles to sustain the principles of wholeness & regeneration.” –THE MATRIARCH

RESOURCES A JOURNEY TO GAME~B Author Jim Rutt speculates on the journey to Game~B. THE PAPER FIND

THE OTHERS Working Game~B discussion & project group on Mighty Networks. JOIN THE TRIBE

GAME~B WIKI A Game~B wiki generated by the community. GO TO WIKI

“In our race to master Game A, Nature’s stewardship was lost.” –THE MATRIARCH

“Nature creates humans, humans create technology and technology must be used to support the integrity of Nature.” –THE SAGE

COMING SOON NFTs from the film.

Game~B Film

Source

Sense-making from visualising the field of systems change — Illuminate Systems

Sense-making from visualising the field of systems change

Introduction

Illuminate is a collaborative network designed to connect people committed to cultivating the field and practice of systems change towards a just, equitable and regenerative future for all.

We know that to achieve systems change there needs to be a high level of collaboration and coordination, access to valuable frameworks, processes and tools and practitioners from a wide range of lineages. However this emerging field is fragmented, with few connections, and has a greater influence from people and practitioners from a white, western and academic culture. 

To tackle this, the Illuminate network set out to support the emergence of systems change practice by visualising the field with hopes to create stronger connections among people, organisations and resources, and to recognise the international field with equity at it’s core. As practitioners ourselves, we realised we needed to use our tools on ourselves to help us to see the wider whole. This project was initiated in 2020 with some initial questions like, as a small group of the larger whole building the field – who are the others? This project was led by the School of System Change, and designed by Eric Berlow – ecologist, complexity scientist and CEO of Vibrant Data Labs – a social impact data science group. We have identified 400 practitioners in the first iteration of the map. One year on we are writing about how we are sense-making and re-organising ourselves for the next stage. 

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Sense-making from visualising the field of systems change

Sense-making from visualising the field of systems change — Illuminate Systems

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Teach Systems Thinking

This page draws on materials developed at the 2010 Cutting Edge workshop on Complex Systemsand the 2012 InTeGrate workshops on Teaching the Methods of Geoscience andSystems, Society, Sustainability and the Geosciences.System thinking is an important skill for students as they grapple with the complex challenges that lie at the intersection of Earth systems and human interactions. Topics such as climate change, energy, population dynamics and resource use benefit from a systems-based approach. Additional reasons to incorporate systems thinking into your teaching include:

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Teach Systems Thinking

Teach Systems Thinking

Esther is starting a new practice:
What would change if we focussed on explicitly developing positive energy to create projects, as well as the projects creating the energy? Space for exploration and discussion on Thurs 20th Jan 4 – 4.45pm https://zoom.us/j/98794446200

BUILDING A NEW MODEL OF OWNERSHIP THROUGH SYSTEMIC LEADERSHIP BYTYL VAN TOORN.

Building a New Model of Ownership Through Systemic Leadership

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What is sensemaking? | Centre For Public Impact (CPI)

Last spring, our Executive Director, Adrian Brown, shared what we’ve been learning about reimagining government over the past few years and introduced CPI as a learning partner: an organization that helps others build their own capacity to learn.

This is how we believe that we can best help government organisations, by supporting them on their learning journeys and helping them to build the mindsets, culture, capabilities, and tools that will enable them to commit to a process of continuous experimentation and learning.

Within our definition, there are two complementary sets of practices that encourage different types of learning, and which form the core of our role as a learning partner. We’ve called these two sets of practices sensemaking and action-learning.

But what does playing the role of a learning partner actually look like in practice? And what do sensemaking and action-learning actually involve?

In the true spirit of being a learning partner, we are continually learning about what it means to be one, and we want to share that knowledge more widely so that others can benefit. However, we understand that some may be less familiar with the learning partner role, and concepts like sensemaking and action-learning.

As such, we’re embarking on a series of articles which will explore and share what it means to be a learning partner. We’ll be sharing what we have learned based on our own work with those in and around government, but we’ll also be looking to share the reflections from changemakers who are reimagining government in their own words. In this first piece of the series, we’re taking a closer look at sensemaking, what it is, and practical examples of it in action.

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January 13th, 2022 | Innovation • Delivery • Justice • Cities • Legitimacy • Technology What is sensemaking?

What is sensemaking? | Centre For Public Impact (CPI)

ASC Series:Cybernetics and the Gaia Hypothesis: A conversation with Bruce ClarkeJanuary 16, 2021 | 9:00 PDT, 12:00 EDT, 18:00 CEST

FREE REGISTRATION

Abstract

Born in 1919, trained in chemistry, biomedicine, and engineering, the British scientist James Lovelock, inventor of the Gaia hypothesis, began his professional career in the 1940s. His systems thinking was formed in the first wave of cybernetic concepts—homeostasis, self-organization, negative feedback, self-regulation—as these were closely allied to discourses of energy and entropy connecting thermodynamics via information theory to physical definitions of living systems. For Lovelock, Erwin Schrödinger’s What is Life? was instrumental in forming his conception of a living planet as operating far from thermodynamic equilibrium. Cybernetics, as drawn from the physiological concept of homeostasis, then filled in his initial conception of the Gaian system.

Lovelock’s foremost collaborator on the Gaia hypothesis, the American microbiologist and evolutionary thinker Lynn Margulis, born in 1938, one generation younger than Lovelock and starting her academic career in the 1960s, was trained in genetics and cellular systems rather than thermodynamics and classical cybernetics. However, she absorbed Lovelock’s lessons on these topics and then, stepping outside of the standard biology of her moment, she strongly endorsed Maturana and Varela’s concept of biological autopoiesis. By the 1980s she would meld Lovelock’s first-order Gaia concept to her own second-order formulation of “autopoietic Gaia.”

In this talk, literature and science scholar Bruce Clarke will draw from the scientific writings of Lovelock and Margulis as well as from his forthcoming edition of their correspondence to document and discuss their cultivation of the Gaia hypothesis as a dedicated application of cybernetic systems thinking.

Participants Bios

Bruce Clarke is Paul Whitfield Horn Distinguished Professor of Literature and Science in the Department of English at Texas Tech University. His research focuses on systems theory, narrative theory, and Gaia theory. His latest book is Gaian Systems: Lynn Margulis, Neocybernetics, and the End of the Anthropocene (Minnesota 2020); other books include Neocybernetics and Narrative (Minnesota 2014), Posthuman Metamorphosis: Narrative and Systems (Fordham 2008), and Energy Forms: Allegory and Science in the Era of Classical Thermodynamics (Michigan 2001). He was Baruch S. Blumberg/NASA Chair in Astrobiology at the Library of Congress in 2019. Co-edited with Sébastien Dutreil, his edition of Writing Gaia: The Scientific Correspondence of James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.

Michael Hohl is a designer, educator and researcher. As a Professor of Design Theory at Anhalt University of Applied Sciences Dessau, Germany, he likes making things, thinking about things, how we do them and how this changes us. He enjoys learning with BA, MA and PhD students, from first-year BAs to supervising and mentoring PhD research students from Art, Design and Architecture. He also conducts Research Training Seminars at the Royal College of Art London and other institutions. He organises and co-organises conferences, research seminars and guest lectures, co-edits publications and conferences – and is interested in turning these experiences into conversations.

Links:

https://www.gaian.systems

FREE REGISTRATION

Understanding Understanding: Essays on Cybernetics and Cognition

Heinz Von Foerster0 / 0 0 comments In these essays Heinz von Foerster discusses some of the fundamental principles that govern how we know the world and how we process the information from which we derive that knowledge. Included are path-breaking articles concerning the principles of computation in neural nets (1967), the definition of self-organizing systems (1960), the nature of cognition (1970), as well as recent expansions on these themes (e.g. “How recursive is communication,” 1993).

Working with Norbert Wiener, Warren McCullough, and others in the 1960s and 1970s, von Foerster was one of the founders of the science of cybernetics, which has had profound effects both on modern systems theory and on the philosophy of cognition. At the Biological Computer Laboratory at the University of Illinois he produced the first parallel computers and contributed to many other developments in the theory of computation and cognition.

Click to access Heinz_Von_Foerster-Ethics_and_Second-order_Cybernetics.pdf

Click to access foerster-2003.pdf

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Observing Systems | Heinz von Foerster | download

Observing Systems

Heinz von Foerster0 / 0 0 comments Considered as a whole, the work of Heinz von Foerster can be taken as a framework for the understanding of cognition. This framework is not so much a fully completed edifice, but rather a clearly shaped space, where the major building lines are established and its access clearly indicated.

Von Foerster’s framework has two fundamental principles. First, we are to understand by cognition the described behaviour or a particular class of systems: those which satisfy for their components a specific kind of internal coherence (or eigenbehaviour). Second, we are to understand our own knowledge as resulting from similar kinds of mechanisms. These two levels are inextricably connected: the study of mechanisms proper of first order systems (those we study), and the study of how second-order systems (those we are) are reflected in such descriptions. This mutually specifying pair, and all its details, constitutes the space where cognition is to be properly understood.