Welcome to the on-demand library and digital resource center for the Plexus Institute
The Power of Social Networks: Creating, Mapping, Analyzing and Leveraging Your Organization’s Networks
June Holley
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Networks can help us innovate and solve problems, make complex systems work more effectively, speed learning and help people work together more effectively.
We call such networks Smart Networks and people who nurture them Network Weavers.
Join June Holley, one of the pioneers in the field of social network mapping for an exploration of how this cutting edge domain is creating new possibilities for working with the networks in our organizations and communities.
The understanding of Smart Networks draws on new insights of complexity science, revealing how living systems self-organize, evolve and adapt as a result of emergent and nonlinear dynamical processes. Smart Networks are self-organizing networks. People in Smart Networks identify an opportunity then bring together others who can help turn that opportunity into a collaborative experiment or opportunity. Whether the project succeeds or fails, the collaborators share what they have learned with others in the network. In this way, a healthy community emerges. The Smart Network Approach incorporates the concept of emergence. Outcomes in Smart Networks are not predictable. The transformations they encourage emerge from the creative activities of ongoing collaborations.
Participatory Action Research: Organizational Studies that Don't Just Sit on the Shelf
Nancy Dixon
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Participatory Action Research is a way to conduct an organizational study that has a very different outcome, that is, change starts to happen while the study is still being conducted. By the time the study is completed there is already a buzz in the organization about the issues and people are trying out changes. Participatory Action Research is, at its heart, a conversational process, not an impersonal survey, nor an experimental design with “subjects;” rather it is a conversation between organizational members. That conversation takes place between interviewer and interviewee, between members of the interview team, and between organizational members in the conversations set up to discuss the findings. All of the conversations are a part of the change. In the end all change is a result of organizational conversation – the only question is who is invited into the conversation. Participatory Action Research is a methodology to focus the organization on conversations that matter and invite into the conversation those whose work will change.
Liberating Structures: New Patterns of Interaction for Organizations
Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless
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Like Internet entrepreneurs and political strategists, organizational leaders can unleash decentralized, self-organized action to get results better-than-expected-or-imagined.
Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless will share their experience introducing a large array of self-organizing change methods — which they call Liberating Structures (LS) — to organizations looking for new ways for people to work together. LS generate novel patterns of interactions that can transform leaders and stimulate innovation and productivity organization-wide.
Liberating Structures [LS] are twenty-five (and growing) easy-to-learn, adaptable methods that make it quick and simple for groups of people of any size to radically change how they interact and work together, and thus how they address issues, solve problems and develop opportunities. These methods are easy to learn, spread quickly peer-to-peer, and require minimal coaching. Liberating Structures have received the same positive response in a wide range of cultural environments in Latin America, Europe and the US. Some of the methods will be very familiar to many practitioners - such as Open Space and Appreciative Interviews. Others, like Positive Deviance and TRIZ, may be new to you.
Leveraging Collective Knowledge for Extraordinary Performance: The Work - Thru
Rod Collins
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In this thought provoking webcast, Rod Collins outlines the workings of another example of liberating structures:
the Work-Thru. Beginning in the mid-1990’s, this proven application became the cornerstone for an innovative management discipline that leveraged the incredible power of collective knowledge and self-organization to achieve unprecedented business results in the nation’s largest health insurance business alliance.
The Work-Thru story is a compelling example of how the organizing principles of complex adaptive systems can be practically applied to the challenges of leading human organizations. Learn how Work-Thrus quickly integrate the best ideas from a wide diversity of opinions and create a speedy consensus that focuses a whole organization on the most important goals and skillfully uses per-to-peer collaboration to achieve extraordinary performance.
Design Thinking for Innovation
Jane Rainwater
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Join Jane Rainwater in an indepth exploration of Design Thinking. They’ll talk about the relationship between Design Thinking and the Complexity Framework and how design thinking applies to the work of organization change.
In a recent article of the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Tim Brown and Jocelyn Wyatt explain, “Designers have traditionally focused on enhancing the look and functionality of products. Recently, they have begun using design tools to tackle more complex problems, such as finding ways to provide low-cost health care throughout the world. Businesses were first to embrace this new approach – called Design Thinking – now nonprofits are beginning to adopt it too.”
Design thinking is linked to an improved future. Unlike critical thinking, which is a process of analysis and is associated with the 'breaking down' of ideas, design thinking is a creative process based around the 'building up' of ideas. There are no judgments in design thinking. Wild ideas are welcome, since these often lead to the most creative solutions. Everyone is a designer, and design thinking is a way to apply design methodologies to any of life's situations.
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