The more power you give a single individual in the face of complexity and uncertainty, the more likely it is that bad decisions will get made.— James Surowiecki
Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.— Laurence J. Peter
There is often more to be learned from risk than from research. Risk is almost always faster, and sometimes cheaper.— Kay Scorah
If people did not sometimes do silly things, nothing intelligent would ever get done.— Ludwig Wittgenstein
The most profit oriented companies are not the most profitable.— John Kay
At the very best, a mind enclosed in language is in prison.— Simone Weil
How to invite more genuinely democratic politics and processes in local communities?— John Forester
The most abundant, least expensive, and most constantly abused resource in the world is human ingenuity.— Dee Hock
If you want to learn, you should learn to make mistakes, and make them fast.— Rainer Werner Maria Fassbinder
Vision is one of the least understood—yet most important—concepts for building great organisations.— Jim Collins
When there is no vision, the people perish.— Proverbs 29:18
The things we fear most in organisations - fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances—are the primary sources of creativity.— Meg Wheatley
What happens when order emerges spontaneously? Or systems self-organise? Patterns emerge and we can recognise those patterns... what are the pre-conditions?— Anon
To function in the command and control paradigm of management often means to collude in systematic denial of the complex and ill-structured dynamics of wicked problems, a phenomenon dubbed 'skilled incompetence'.— Chris Argyris
The real voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes, but in seeing with new eyes.— Marcel Proust
A paradigm shift occurs when a question is asked inside the current paradigm that can only be answered from outside it.— Marilee Goldberg
My interest is in the future, as I’m going to be spending the rest of my life there.— Charles Kettering
I would not give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.— Oliver Wendell Holmes
The visual approach has a special power for seeing patterns and solving problems.— Thomas West
Some men see things as they are and ask, "Why?" I dream things that never were and ask, "Why not?"— George Bernard Shaw
The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.— Albert Einstein
Enough words have been exchanged; now at last let me see some deeds!— Goethe
"...a terrific step-on from broad based, resource-hungry efforts to engage
community, and will improve how government and others in authority listen
and respond. It avoids being captured by the vested interests, professional
lobbyists and advocates, and allows the voice of the quiet majority in the
middle to be heard."
- Margaret Dixon
Community engagement is a key requirement for planning quality services. Organisations are increasingly required to work across boundaries - team or departmental silos, agencies, sectors. Using an Appreciative Inquiry we create a shared vision together that is:
Bringing together very diverse teams, organizations, and even whole communities in tight time frames we discover a shared vision that had remained hidden - even to those people themselves!
Simon d'Orsogna is a trainer, facilitator and strategist on the design of change programs. He consults widely in public sector organisations and facilitates strategic forums, workshops, community events and conferences.
0418 321 254