What Type of Thinker Are You?

On an anonymous blog, obviously from the Philippines, somebody posted a nice little personality test: What Type of Thinker Are You? Are you a Realist, a Builder or a Dreamer? With all due respect for the shortcomings of psychometrics, I foud this one quit entertaining. The results did not surprise me much - I am a builder at the upper margin towards a dreamer. These are the author's recommendations for me:

• Borrow from the extremes of your
  complimentary styles. Force yourself to
  think in a free-spirited dreamer mind set,
  then flip it around and refine using
  realist skills.


• Seek out conflict. Instead of seeing the
  good in everything, take a position. Play
  devil’s advocate for both extremes at the
  same time.

The test, which has been developed by Doug Hall (of whom I have never heared before) does not take more than five minutes. It's fun. So, take a break.

Mastering whole system change methods – a unique training event held in South Africa

For the first time ever a short course on mastering whole system change was offered to change practitioners by Steven Cady in association with ChangeAbility Training on 26 and 27 July 2007 in Johannesburg, South Africa. More...

Storytelling with Postcards

PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail-in their secrets anonymously on homemade postcards. Wonderful art work and deep insight into persons you don't know. It is funny, it is sad, it is heartbraking and much more. Unfortunately, they delete older posts every Sunday and replace them with new ones - obviously to encourage you visiting their site frequently or buying one of their books. You want to know a secret? You can see lots of older cards on Flickr, or in a better quality on lemon.vox.com. PostSecret is one of the most successful blogs, ranking 9 in technorati. There page view counter is currently at around 90 million. More...

Power, Politics and the Change Prevention Squad

When change is on the agenda, organisational power will be shifting. There will be winners and there will be losers. If you have failed to factor in these power shifts in your change programme, you will have to be reactive to the problems posed by the losers. From our experience of working with senior change leaders, these problems can be many and varied. They can be overt but more often covert campaigns begin to swing into action as powerful people attempt to protect their position, which could be diametrically opposed to the agreed (allegedly) change agenda. More...

More on Shift Happens - the Original

Sometimes I recognize painfully that I terribly lag behind. Thanks to Armin Karge who wrote a comment on yesterday's posting, now I know that there is an updated version of Shift Happens, now I know who is the author, and now know I know that more than 5 million people have seen the video clip. More...

A Video on Global Change

I have started to explore the vast resource base for videos on Change Management that is available on YouTube. Just enter the words change management and start to explore. I liked, for example the video of a power presentation called "Shift Happens" (please read twice, I was mislead myself). It is great and funny tour de force through present and future globalization, the increasing economic and cultural power of China and India, and the future of technology.

The YouTube name of the video is Sullivanbio. Take 8 minutes time to look at it.

PS: (25/07/07): There is an update to this post, please read.

Value Creation in the Blogosphere

I have been writing about the Blogosphere in this Blog. This media keeps fascinating me, and I spend some considerable time exploring other (now that I have a a private German blog as well, but that is another story). By now, you should have understood that amon the 70 million or so existing blogs, there is a lot of crap but there are also people who are very successful. More...

More on Otto Scharmer’s Theory U (Part I)

This time, I am reading slowly. It is not because the new book of Otto Scharmer is hard too read, the opposite is true. It is very fascinating because one can see the practical applications of this new theory emerge. It’s just that I am too much distracted. I have just mastered 80 pages! More...

Whole Systems Change with Steven Cady in Johannesburg

Steven Cady is a scholar practitioner committed to using cutting-edge approaches that inspire system-wide change in organisations, and he is actively pursuing research and practice that unleash passion at the individual and organisational levels. Steven is a Graduate Faculty member at Bowling Green State University, Ohio where he is director of the Institute for Organizational Effectiveness and has served as the director of the Master of Organization Development Program. He has also served as the chief editor for the Organization Development Journal. Steven publishes, teaches, and consults on topics of organisational behaviour and psychology, change management, and organisation development. His clients include Daimler Chrysler, Dana Corporation, Diocese of NW Ohio (Toledo), and The Tavistock Group. More...

Engineers Without Fears

I discovered the Blog of Matt Moore from Sydney: Engineers Without Fears, with a lot of interesting and funny insights on Change Management and communication. In particular, I liked Matt's metaphors on consultants:

As an exercise, please suggest ways in which a consultant is like the
following:

• Papaya (full of seeds? good mixed with other fruit? red
  flesh?)
• Janitor (cleans up other people's messes? often found in a small
  room?)
• Electric blanket (comforting? dangerous if shorted out?)
• Imam
• Dose of aspirin
• Belly dancer

Worldwide OpenSpace-Online® Real-Time Conference on Open Space Technology

This report reaches us from Gabriela Ender, the Creator and CEO of OpenSpace-Online®:

A large international group of Open Space Technology (OST = face-to-face Open Space) Practitioners from around the globe look back to a fantastic worldwide real-time Internet community gathering. Together with Harrison Owen (discoverer of OST) and other international co-inviters, Gabriela Ender (inventor and CEO of OpenSpace-Online®) had invited to a 4hour Worldwide OpenSpace-Online Real-Time Internet Conference on Open Space Technology (OST) with the title: "OST: What have we learned and where can it lead us next?" On June 30th/July 1st, 2007 almost 100 OST colleagues and friends from 25 countries joined this unique worldwide event. All participants at the same time and all from a different location, region, country and continent. Some attended from a sofa, a summer cottage or even from a dock on a lake. More...

Otto Scharmer's New Book: Theory U

We have been waiting for this book for years. It took Otto Scharmer 10 years to complete it. It is out now. I haven't been able to read it yet - just started with Peter Senge's foreword, and Otto's acknowledgements. Expect a review in a few days. Meanwhile, you might be eager to get a copy.