... thoughts written down in January 2009

In January 2009, the Presencing Institute Community hardly had opened, I posted a comment on OttoScharmer's initial question on whether the new PI toolbox would be useful in daily work. With a recent experience around a possible future role that sort of was tailored for my person, becoming head of social media and boundary crossing, this old entry "called  me up" when opening the PI Community [given link here is outdated, therefore here the new on Presencing Institute, 2015-02-03] website:


"..People who know me better know about my passion to vision away to the "big ultimate" vision (not possible today;-)) and make them shaky. Even though it is difficult to keep the pace down (for me a real challenge, especially when I talk with people who are also as crazy visionaries;-)), boiling my thinking and talking down to easier achievable goals makes the other ones feel more comfortable. 


This leads often (not always) to new insights and thoughts on their side, which they then articulate.

The PI toolbox works fine (probably) when people have already some sense about the raw direction where to go (can be really broad). On the other hand, I always get ???s when mentioning the Theory U process, as it is for most people (at least the ones, I mostly talk to with engineering background) not concrete enough (they are used to numbers and predictable output).

A special framework reach out to these environments (especially middle-managers and employees) would be excellent. What are the thoughts and ideas on that?




Best regards


Ralf




PS.: For anybody interested in Theory U - like stories, have a look at Gordon MacKenzie's "Orbiting the Giant Hairball" - easy and fun to read:-)..."

Extrapreneurs & Intrapreneurs Orbiting the Firm

Intrapreneurs the "internal" entrepreneurs of an organization. They stay within the "safe" cocoon of the organization, nevertheless they often cross departmental boundaries to find the ways to solve current challenges.

GordonMacKenzie, author of "Orbiting the Giant Hairball" mentions a similar behavior, called "orbiting the hairball" meaning that even as you work as one of many in your organization you don't let you suck in by organizational culture rather stay in the meantime on your own vision/passion and coupled to the organization at same time.

WilliSchroll, futurist blogger, on Twitter what if a global enterprise with 400.000 employees would move to 100.000 and an extended crowd sourcing concept.

Interesting idea, and by far not out of sight if you think of 300.000 extrapreneurs spreading the seeds of IBM networks, knowledge around the globe without the "foot chain" of the corporation.

Would you allow your best folks to orbit outside the corporation? What is the trust level that would enable you to do that?

What you don't see is what you get

All too often in live we look for the tangible results overlooking that the beforehand creative process is on the one hand necessary to make it happen. On the other hand we can't really measure it.

What if we could make the left part of it visible to our boss, colleagues, customers?

Thanks to GordonMacKenzie and "Orbiting the Giant Hairball"