Seeing Into Systems
For all of us, our first work with new systems can seem daunting. Our existing networks and knowledge may be helpful but insufficient in this new domain. We must work out what to do, who
Author: Heart of the Art
Heart of the Art was launched by John Atkinson and Emma Loftus in 2014, We've grown into more than we ever could imagine. A place to explore what it means to really make meaningful change, in a world that is messy, complex, and beautifully human.
Systems Leadership – Feeling Systems
At its best, systems leadership seems to exhibit an almost magical sense of the possible. Where people are locked in apparently intractable complexity, systems leadership seems to open up a new way through the mess.
Characteristics of Systems Leadership
The reality is that leadership through large, complex and politically contested issues can be very tough on the people involved. It challenges our perception as to what is for the best, and how best to
Resilience
‘Resilient’ was the first word mentioned when we explored recently how you might need to be in order to work effectively with change through the lens of living systems. You can see why. Being repeatedly
Changing thinking changes doing
So what would happen if we changed the way we thought about this. What would happen if we stopped thinking about what we might better prescribe as the route to change? What if we thought
Caught in our stories
If you want a new strategy, you need a new story. So it’s worth pausing, taking time to uncover how you really came to be here. We rarely separate fact from fiction in our own
‘Last Winter’
To undertake such a journey is to soak into a world of deep awareness. Conscious thought and sub-conscious intuition interchanged with each other, uninterrupted by others interjections. Alone, in the arctic wilderness I exclaimed aloud
The 3D World
If we are to work with this most fundamental property of a living system then we learn about it through a process of intuition not deduction. So we can disrupt systems as experiments, but the
How the Organisation Subverts its Subversives
Just as a virus is constantly adapting as the immune system tries to defeat it, the change movement must learn to evolve. Being wedded to the form that lead to early success is a sure
The Myth of The Learning Organisation
It would be easy to conclude that The Learning Organisation is a fantasy. Global financing and market pressures will never allow such a concept to really happen. Shareholders will always take the short term return,
Understanding Identity
Every time we change our business or political structures, we provoke questions about our identity. Who really are we? What matters to us? How must we now connect? Here John Atkinson explores issues of identity
The Local Corporation
If the global business is to find a sustainable balance it must attend to the local as well as the global. This is to see unique local cultures as the source of growth, not discrepancies
Inside Total Place
The most basic of the connections was at the very local level, as people who worked with particular families or individuals made new relationships or refocused existing ones. We also connected places who were running
Systems Leadership or Emperors In New Clothes?
(By John Atkinson) Type 'what is leadership?' into google and you get 461 million responses. Do the same for ‘what is systems leadership?’ and you get 460 million. This suggests that there isn’t much clarity
Taylorism and Meaning
John Atkinson is a co-curator of Heart of the Art Frederick Winslow Taylor was a much misunderstood man. He is now famous for 'Scientific Management' and is credited as the father of modern management consulting.