Town halls and webinars are efficient at spreading information but rarely build ownership. This article explores why big formats fall flat, using insights from behavioural science and group psychology. It also shows how to redesign gatherings, physical or virtual, so people co-create meaning, commit to action, and leave with a sense of shared ownership rather than passive compliance.
At the end of each week, leaders face a choice: carry the weight of unfinished tasks into Monday, or pause long enough to notice what truly mattered. A weekly leadership review is less about checking boxes and more about asking better questions, about wins and losses, pride and gratitude, and the priorities that will shape the week ahead
Stepping into a role leading leaders is one of the toughest transitions in management. This 60-day plan offers research-backed guidance on how to listen, build trust, create alignment, and empower your leadership team, setting a foundation for performance and culture that lasts well beyond the early weeks.
What do you do when one of your top performers is also the most toxic presence on your team? This article explores five leadership lenses that reveal the hidden costs, relational fractures, and cultural risks of tolerating toxicity, and offers practical moves to protect trust, balance results, and safeguard the future of your team
When a team member is often absent or quietly disengaged, leaders face a tough choice. Should they tighten policies or start with connection? This post explores how to balance compassion with accountability, using coaching stories, practical steps, and HR guidance to help leaders respond with confidence and fairness.
What if a colleague’s refusal to help is not the problem, but the signal? Discover three leadership lenses: culture, structure, and systems, that turn frustration into collaboration.
Organisational climate is the “everyday weather” of work that shapes whether change efforts succeed or fail. Unlike culture, climate can shift quickly and leaders play a decisive role in creating clarity, trust, fairness, and psychological safety. This article explores six facets and five levers leaders can use to build a true climate for change.
When jokes at work cross the line, leaders are often unsure whether to ignore it, enforce policy, or step in directly. This guide offers practical ways to address inappropriate humour, protect trust and build a respectful, inclusive team culture.
Defensiveness can derail feedback conversations. This article explores why people react defensively, what behavioural science reveals, and how leaders can respond. From practical models to self-awareness practices, discover strategies to turn defensiveness into growth, build psychological safety, and create a culture where feedback strengthens rather than divides.
When one person dominates meetings, valuable ideas are lost, engagement drops and frustration rises. This guide offers practical facilitation strategies to balance participation, engage quieter voices and create meetings that work for everyone.
Discover how workplace wellbeing drives sustainable organisational performance. Explore behavioural, systemic, and relational strategies to prevent burnout, boost engagement, and build resilient, human-centred workplaces.
A practical guide to reducing distraction at work by redesigning how teams focus. Through four pillars: connection, environment, system, psychology. it shows leaders how to protect attention, cut interruptions, and build shared commitment, with actionable tips, micro‑stories, and reflection questions for sustained team focus and performance.
Recurring performance issues in teams can frustrate leaders and lower standards. Learn how to handle recurring problems constructively through the Five Lenses of Performance, giving feedback that builds accountability, strengthens trust, and even works when you lead without formal authority.
Discover how to run a Future Search that gathers every key voice, explores the past, creates a shared vision, and commits to action in just three days.
An Appreciative Inquiry Summit brings the whole system together to imagine its best future and design strengths-based change. This guide explains how to run an AI Summit and turn large gatherings into spaces of shared vision and committed action.
Discover how to run an Open Space: a dynamic large-group facilitation method that hands the agenda to participants and sparks self-organising action. This practical guide explains the process, principles, hosting tips, and real-world examples so you can create events where energy, ownership, and collaboration thrive.
World Café is a powerful large-group facilitation method that helps organisations and communities surface collective insight and shared ownership through meaningful conversation. This step-by-step guide shows how to host a World Café, craft powerful questions and design conversations that lead to lasting change.
Flawless Consulting by Peter Block is a foundational work on building trust-based partnerships with clients. This practical summary highlights the key ideas, mindsets and behaviours that help consultants, facilitators and leaders create sustainable results through authentic partnership.
The book in 3 sentences Peter Block challenges the dominant “business perspective”, built on scarcity, consumption, and institutional control, and offers a new story: the common good perspective, where citizens reclaim agency through trust, local action, and relational care. He argues that real change happens when neighbours gather, share power, and co-create community well-being, rather than waiting for systems to fix [...]
The full title is "The Answer to How is YES: Acting on what matters." The book in 3 sentences Peter Block argues that our obsession with asking “how?” masks a deeper avoidance of personal responsibility and purpose. Instead of chasing solutions, we should begin by saying “yes” to what truly matters and commit to it without waiting for permission or certainty. [...]
Stewardship by Peter Block is a foundational work on shifting leadership from control to service. This practical summary highlights the ideas that support trust-based partnership, shared accountability and long-term responsibility in organisations.
A practical summary of Peter Block’s Community: The Structure of Belonging, highlighting the key ideas that help leaders, facilitators and community builders create genuine belonging, trust and shared ownership.
The book in 3 sentences The Empowered Manager is a practical guide for managers who want to lead with integrity, not control. It shows how managers can choose partnership over hierarchy, service over self-interest, and accountability over compliance. By making these personal shifts, managers can foster trust, ownership, and meaningful change, regardless of the system they work in. Who should read [...]
Link to Medium post: https://benzweibelson.medium.com/the-semiotic-square-and-systemic-logic-a-technique-for-multiple-futures-206b996cf30f
Save for later" The picture is used by a Complexity advocate to conjecture that complex systems cannot be managed. This is not correct, as many of the claims made by self-proclaimed complexity experts. I've seen this scene of flocking birds first hand. It... — Read on herdingcats.typepad.com/my_weblog/2020/03/a-compendium-of-managing-compelx-systyems.html
PDF of “Managing complexity (and chaos) in times of crisis" guide from Dave Snowden.
Short description of a sense-making canvas
Holding for reading... — Read on systemschangeeducation.com/portfolio-item/welcome/
Link to the free self assessment to support reflection on career
A video on the Circles of Influence Visual from HumanSystems.co
The Dawn of System Leadership — Read on ssir.org/articles/entry/the_dawn_of_system_leadership
A hub of resources related to Design Thinking
Held to read the complete series later,,, This is the fourth in my series of Playing to Win Practitioner Insights (PTW/PI). The first was The Role of Management Systems in Strategy, the second was Is the Opposite of Your Choice Stupid on its… — Read on roger-78069.medium.com/strategy-is-what-you-do-not-what-you-say-a6e483840557
Saving for later. The ideas don't seem radical, but certainly not common practice https://medium.com/@drsaraschung/radical-listening-to-improve-understanding-of-system-dynamics-f1bacee8c875
complexity map castellani map of complexity science, complexity theory, complexity science, complexity, brian castellani, durham sociology complexity — Read on www.art-sciencefactory.com/complexity-map_feb09.html
A pretty long read, so Savin for later..The pandemic is an unprecedented opportunity – seeing human society as a complex system opens a better future for us all — Read on aeon.co/essays/complex-systems-science-allows-us-to-see-new-paths-forward
A simple sketch note on key ideas from Peter Block's Flawless Consulting "Discovery process"
Link to Mark's ebooks... — Read on markburgess.org/treatise.html
Resources related to conference proceedings RSD8 2019
Full article in pdf: www.cecan.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2019-03/PSM Workshop method.pdf
Russell Ackoff's talk presented at the Systems Thinking in Action conference - November, 1993. In this fascinating lecture, Ackoff states that we're in the e... — Read on www.youtube.com/watch
Used to its full potential, sensemaking and the Cynefin framework are powerful and effective approaches to informing action in complex, dynamic, and uncertain situations. Tony Quinlan and I led a workshop session at XP2020 where we introduced a practical, effective approach based on our work applying complexity techniques in large global technology organisations. Read on kenpower.ie/2020/06/11/sensemaking-in-organizations-creating-a-practical-process-that-leverages-cynefin-and-sensemaking/
A 64 page .pdf exploring what is systemic design that provides tools and techniques to apply it
Article to read later: Chaos Theory says that organizations are "complex adaptive systems" and that through this lens, we can build emergent, adaptive and resilient organizations. Read on here think-boundless.com/chaos-theory/
My very brief thoughts on what makes a canvas
Notes written as I listened to Teresa Pool on "Get off your Coaching Couch!"
Notes written as I listened to Judith Duhl on "Conscious Competence to Unconscious Competence: The leap into mastery"
Notes written as I listened to Ihab Badawi on "Coaching Wholeness: Creating Deeper & Sustainable Impact"
Notes written as I listened to Cherie Silas on "Introduction to systems coaching: What is it and how is it different than coaching individuals"
