Archive for Networks

Mar/20/12//Gibrán Rivera//Featured, Networks

Let’s Learn to Swarm

 

“From honeybee swarms we’ve learned that groups can reliably make good decisions in a timely matter as long as they seek diversity of knowledge. By studying termite mounds we’ve seen how even small contributions to a shared project can create something useful. Finally, flocks of starlings have shown us how, without direction from a single leader, members of a group can coordinate their behavior with amazing precision simply by paying attention to their nearest neighbor.”

-       Peter Miller, The Smart Swarm

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Feb/15/12//Curtis Ogden//Networks

20 Questions – Network Style

Social network between the participants of

|Photo by Hans Poldoja|

Last week I was privileged to attend a gathering of practitioners from across sectors to discuss the successes and challenges of working in networked ways.  The Northern New England Network Community of Practice met in Portsmouth, NH for a full day of conversations facilitated by members of Maine Network Partners.  Throughout the day many critical questions were raised about and stemming from net work.  No one pretended to necessarily have all of the answers to these, or to imagine that what works in one case will necessarily work in another.  Nonetheless, we look forward to exploring any patterns that do show up across experiences in our respective network efforts, whether we are talking small or large scale, local or regional, within a sector or across sectors . . . Read the rest of this entry »

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Jan/25/12//Curtis Ogden//Featured, Networks

Growing Leadership

bridge

Photo from xinem

Picking up from Gibran’s post yesterday and continuing in the vein of follow-up to our LLC webinar on collective leadership, I want to respond to some of the questions we did not have a chance to answer or answer fully from participants, including requests for examples of collective leadership in action and inquiries about blocks and how to work through or overcome them. Read the rest of this entry »

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Jan/13/12//Curtis Ogden//IISC:Outside, Networks

If You Till It, They Will Come

On the cusp of the Martin Luther King Jr. day of remembrance and celebration, IISC is gearing up to lead a webinar on the day after the Monday holiday focused on a very relevant topic – collective leadership. Much is being made of the Occupy Movement and its potential for showing us a new way to lead (we would call it leader-full, not leader-less). Prior to this important civic groundswell, many have been looking at how to create the conditions for emergent and collaborative leadership to move us in more just and life-affirming directions.  Given the complexity of the issues we face and the diversity of perspectives in our various systems, it has been recognized that we cannot rely on individual, expert, or command-and-control leadership to move us forward. We must unleash more robust and adaptive collective intelligence. If this conversation interests you, come join Gibran Rivera and me as we explore stories of and practices for creating the conditions to unleash leader-full momentum that embodies and leads to the social change we seek. More information about this free opportunity can be found here.

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Dec/14/11//Curtis Ogden//Featured, Networks

Network Thinking

Last week, I had the opportunity to work with a cross-sectoral group of emerging and established leaders from around southern Maine through the Institute for Civic Leadership, an initiative IISC had a hand in establishing some 18 years ago.  For the past six years I’ve offered three days of collaborative capacity building entitled “Facilitative Leadership and Teams” to each successive cohort, and it’s been interesting to see how the offering has evolved over time.  Throughout there has been an interest in looking at how to leverage what is now an incredible base of 500 + individuals who have been through this leadership program.  And so this year we dived formally into network building strategies. Read the rest of this entry »

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