Networks, Complexity, and Relatedness

Networks, Complexity, and Relatedness
Inquiry and learning into social networks, organizational network analysis, and the relationships among people and systems in complex organizations and networks.

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Thursday, December 16, 2004

Doug Engelbart Beyond the Mouse

Business Week's A Man, A Mouse, A Mission has an interview with Doug Engelbart. It's always great to see him get the acknowledgment for his great work, but not just on the mouse.

I had the privilege to attend one of his Bootstrap Seminars in the early 1990s. These were intimate two-day sessions at Stanford that Doug hosted to build a network of people engaged in "C" activities. To quote from the Bootstrap Institute:

"Referring to an organization's principal work as an A-activity and to ordinary efforts at process improvement as a B-activity, he denotes bootstrapping as a C-activity, which is an improving of the improvement process. His paper Toward High-Performance Organizations: A Strategic Role for Groupware argues that highest payoff comes from engaging in that C-activity."

I was reminded of this framework last Saturday while working with the Cynefin team for North America. (Web site in progress.) We are working to expose Dave Snowden's cynefin methodology to a wider audience and build the network. This includes a training course that could lead to certification (February 15-17; please email me if you are interested). As we reviewed the content for the training and discussed among ourselves the distinctions in the cynefin framework of complex, hidden order, and visible order, I was reminded of the Bootstrap Institute. C-level activities come from the complex web of relationships and ideas among the innovators and those who work to bring new ideas into practice. Early adopters in the practitioner space develop methodologies by working with real-world clients, share and develop the learnings, and over time transfer these to the operational business processes in an organization.

Models are wonderful, especially when they recur in new forms in new times.

Doug, as always and in most things that he has tackled, was ahead of his time as well.

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