Ideas
Ideas about patterns, growth and becoming
People, organizations and living systems develop patterns. Some help us adapt, connect and succeed. Some continue to run after their usefulness has passed. Most do both, depending on what the world is asking of us now. I write to follow those patterns: where they come from, how they shape us, why they become difficult to see and what may allow something different to emerge. The inquiry often begins near my consulting work—leadership, organizational life, development and change—but it does not end there. It also wanders into transition, neuroplasticity, nature, family, walking and other places where the same questions appear in different forms. Not every piece ends with three lessons for leaders. Some questions need room to gestate before we decide what they mean—or what to do about them.
Featured writing
The Brain Is Not Finished With Us
A story about Mouse, jazz, stroke and neuroplasticity—and the possibility that we can develop the inner capacity to meet a more complex world without becoming smaller inside it. Read the articleChasing Our Tails
We depend on patterns. They help us make sense of experience, conserve energy, protect ourselves, and act without having to reconsider the world from scratch every morning. They can also narrow what we see and keep producing results we no longer want. Chasing Our Tails is a developing series about the loops people and systems create, the intelligence that may once have lived inside them and what it takes for a familiar pattern to loosen. The series follows questions such as:- How do useful responses become limiting patterns?
- Why are those patterns often easier to see in others than in ourselves?
- What happens when trying harder strengthens the loop?
- What must be released before something different can emerge?
- What conditions allow people and systems to become capable of a different response?
