Chris Corrigan: in our most creative moments, we feel invited into working together
The Systemic Insight podcast
In this episode of the Systemic Insight Podcast, Marcus talks with Chris Corrigan. Chris is a facilitator and an expert in complexity-sensitive facilitation techniques. He has been using similar methods and frameworks as Mesopartner, such as for example the Cynefin framework, developed by Prof. Dave Snowden. Chris describes himself as a process artist, a teacher and a facilitator of social technologies for face to face conversation in the service of emergence. His business is supporting invitation: the invitation to collaborate, to organise, to find one another and make a difference in our...
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Dr Toby Lowe #2: responding to Covid-19 with human learning systems
The Systemic Insight podcast
Marcus is welcoming back Dr Toby Lowe to the show! The Covid-19 crisis has hit the world and so many things have changed in the short time since we talked to Toby last. Particularly, ideas on complexity and systems thinking have suddenly gained a lot of traction as people realise that the world is indeed an uncertain place and the certainty that we imagined to be in, pre-crisis, was not to last forever. Marcus discusses with Toby how this plays out in the world of social interventions, which has many parallels with the world of international development, as we found out in the last episode....
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Dr Toby Lowe: why outcome-based performance management doesn’t work
The Systemic Insight podcast
In this episode, Marcus is talking to Dr Toby Lowe, Senior Lecturer in Public Leadership and Management at Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University. Toby describes his purpose as an academic as helping improve the funding, commissioning and performance management of social interventions (across the public, private and voluntary sectors). His research team has used complexity theory to create a critique of New Public Management approaches, particularly highlighting the problems created by attempts to use Outcome-Based Performance Management (e.g. Payment by Results) in complex...
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On Competitiveness
The Systemic Insight podcast
In this episode, Shawn and Marcus discuss the concept of competitiveness. The chat was inspired by some reading Marcus had been doing that condemned competition to be part of the driving force that makes our society so extractive and unequal. In particular, Marcus is using two quotes from Daniel Wahl’s book ‘Designing Regenerative Cultures’ to exemplify the argument. To contrast this viewpoint, Shawn and Marcus explore the positive aspects of competition and why competitiveness and in particular systemic competitiveness in the way it is used by Mesopartner and others still are and...
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An interview with Kristin O’ Planick about market systems resilience
The Systemic Insight podcast
In this Podcast, Marcus Jenal interviews Kristin O’Planick from USAID’s Bureau for Food Security about the agency’s recent work on market systems resilience. Kristin is part of a team that has been developing a new framework to capture market system resilience, which is currently going through early field testing. The framework builds on similar ideas as Mesopartner has been using on its work on resilience.
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An interview with Jeanne Downing
The Systemic Insight podcast
Jeanne Downing, Senior Enterprise Development Advisor, Office of Microenterprise Development, USAID talks about the discussions she and her colleagues have within USAID about the necessity of using a systemic approach in development. She mentions the need to switch away from linear approaches towards approaches that are better able to capture the complexities of real world phenomena, especially when taking into account the new focus on resilience, which puts a further layer of complexity on the work in market systems. With regard to Monitoring and Evaluation frameworks, Jeanne gives examples...
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An interview with Dave Snowden
The Systemic Insight podcast
In this episode, Marcus Jenal interviews Dave Snowden. The podcast explores the recognition that development takes place in a dynamic, complex system and the resulting consequences for monitoring and evaluation frameworks. Current monitoring and evaluation frameworks are built around predefined outcomes and based on assumptions of causal, linear, and attributable connections between a project's activities and changes at its outcome and impact levels. Based on complex systems research, these assumptions tend not to reflect the reality of complex systems, such as markets or communities. Dave...
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An interview with Shamim Bodhanya about the characteristics of complex adaptive systems
The Systemic Insight podcast
In this episode, Marcus interviews Dr Shamim Bodhanya. The podcast explores the origins of complex adaptive systems research and the application of its findings to development work. Bodhanya explains the characteristics of complex adaptive systems and their consequences in social systems such as the economy. He stresses the need to include multiple perspectives to develop a systemic view of markets and allow for solutions from within the system to involve rather than prescribe top-down solutions. In this sense, he points out, development project needs to be co-constructed by multiple...
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Systemic Insight Episode 1
The Systemic Insight podcast
In this first episode, Marcus and Shawn introduce the podcast series. Some of the key issues of economic development from a systems perspective are discussed. For more information on our work on managing economic complexity and change, visit . This podcast is brought to you by
info_outlineIn this episode, Marcus Jenal interviews Dave Snowden. The podcast explores the recognition that development takes place in a dynamic, complex system and the resulting consequences for monitoring and evaluation frameworks. Current monitoring and evaluation frameworks are built around predefined outcomes and based on assumptions of causal, linear, and attributable connections between a project's activities and changes at its outcome and impact levels.
Based on complex systems research, these assumptions tend not to reflect the reality of complex systems, such as markets or communities. Dave Snowden introduces emerging theories and tools that allow us to embrace complexity and manage development projects in a way that adapts to realities in complex systems. He discusses possible ways to design monitoring systems, and provides guidance on project design that is informed by scientific research in the field of complex systems.
This episode is part of the Systemic M&E series and was produced in partnership with the SEEP Network.
About Dave Snowden: Founder and Chief Scientific Officer, Cognitive Edge
Snowden was Director of the IBM Institute of Knowledge Management for Europe Middle East and Africa and subsequently founded their Cynefin Centre for Organisational Complexity. He is currently the Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Cognitive Edge, a research network that focuses on the development of the theory and practice of sense-making.
One of the founders of 'Organic Knowledge Management', he is an acknowledged expert on the management of tacit knowledge and has developed a series of pioneering methods including the use of anthropological techniques for knowledge disclosure through the ASHEN model, the use of stories as an advanced form of knowledge repository (based on six years of research into story telling cultures around the world) and the Cynefin "Just in Time" model of knowledge transfer between formal and informal communities. He regularly consults at board level on Knowledge Strategy with some of the Worlds largest companies as well as to Government and NGOs.
Snowden is an editor-in-chief of the journal, Emergence: Complexity and Organisation. Snowden has expertise in the further development of Story Techniques into advanced decision support, merger and acquisition and multi-cultural communication, and using Complexity Theory to link concepts from Learning and Knowledge Management. He has authored many articles on the subject and contributed commissioned chapters to two forthcoming books. Dave Snowden has an MBA from Middlesex University and a BA in Philosophy from Lancaster University. He is honorary fellow in knowledge management at the Universities of Surrey and Warwick and teaches on the MBA programmes at Warwick, Sophia Antipolis and Piacenza.
For more information on our work on managing economic complexity and change, visit www.systemic-insight.com.
This podcast is brought to you by mesopartner.com