A special invitation just went out to key political and policy influencers from government, non-profit, academia, and think-tanks for a May 13th workshop entitled: From Polarized to Optimized. We only had space for 30 people -- so if you didn't get an invitation and are experiencing FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), Fear not! We’re exploring ways to [...]
(Portions of the text below is taken from an article by William Benet, PhD, Suzanne Rackl, MM, CFRE, CFRM and Cliff Kayser, MSHR, MSOD, PCC) In 2017, the Institute for Polarities of Democracy was established as a Washington, DC-based nonprofit organization to promote and advance the Polarity Thinking theory of Dr. Barry Johnson and the Polarities of Democracy [...]
I love and highly recommend Richard Rohr and his work at the Center for Action and Contemplation (https://cac.org/). He lives and talks polarities and is a frequent visitor to my gratitude journal. In a recent post, he talked about the polarity of Action AND Contemplation -- and about “and”!: "The most important word in our [...]
Umm. OK. Check this out… A new book, titled “Empirical Paradox, Complexity Thinking and Generating New Kinds of Knowledge” by Dr. Bruce West, a senior scientist at the Army Research Office, uses mathematical modeling to address why thinking in terms of either/or outcomes means the inevitability of another world war. (JULY 23, 2019 by U.S. Army [...]
Many writers now say we’re in code blue, and we need a blueprint to revive American Democracy. In his Washington Post August 4th review of two books Carlos Lazoda highlights how in the weeks after Donald Trump’s inauguration, the muse of the death-of-democracy bookshelf began expanding – and not focused exclusively on Trump. He says, “The [...]
In 1967, C. West Churchman highlighted some key factors of unsolvable challenges. He referred to them as “Wicked Problems,” which are: 1) Unsolvable by rational analysis, 2) Systems issues, and 3) Require collective engagement for learning the way to solutions. Another important voice in the solvability discernment arena is Ron Heifetz, who made the clear [...]
As awareness of polarities increases, so does the awareness of multarities. The question about multiple poles comes up frequently in our PACT (Polarity Approach for Continuity and Transformation) Foundations and Professional Applications Certification training. Often, it’s from people who have deep subject matter expertise in a particular area. When they learn about polarities seeing the [...]
I realized I’d actually said the Yogi Berra quote “it’s déjà vu all over again” out loud after reading an article by E.J. Dionne Jr. -- and there was nobody else in the room… Quick backstory: Awhile back my failure to keep track of my keys resulted in the installation of a key holder, together [...]
After reading Bob Anderson's book, "Scaling Leadership: Building Organizational Capability and Capacity to Create Outcomes that Matter Most" I've been thinking a lot about...well, that. I took one of my favorite quotes by Confucius (see original below) and my favorite quote from Lao Tzu (the people said, "we did it ourselves"). Hence, mashup. Lot's of good [...]