Following up on the Cynefin and Sense-Making course...
by Tony Quinlan on Dec 9, 2014 11:13:06 AM
Last week saw the last Cynefin and Sense-Making (CSM) courses of the year, Dave and I sharing the presenting/facilitating duties. A full room of different backgrounds and nationalities, which kept everything interesting - lessons and applications getting swapped across sectors and cou …
Using SenseMaker® - engaging stakeholders in the results
by Tony Quinlan on Jun 13, 2014 2:20:35 PM
After a good six years of SenseMaker® projects, one of the consistent things has been the difficulty in feeding back results to stakeholders in ways that help them make better decisions. (I'm not a fan of big reports - partly because I think they tend to make great doorstops and bin-f …
The evolution of practice - SenseMaker® in Development
by Tony Quinlan on May 13, 2014 11:24:00 AM
I’ve been working with SenseMaker® now in development projects for a few years and I was recently reflecting on how far we’ve come in what we do. Lots of lessons - often learned the hard way in the early stages, but never disastrously. It’s time to share some of those lessons, for any …
Design of Understanding 2014
by Tony Quinlan on Jan 27, 2014 11:26:50 AM
Last Friday was the 2014 Design of Understanding day - a packed room at St Brides Library off Fleet Street, organised by the redoubtable Max Gadney of After the flood. He and I had come across each other in a hotel bar in Kigali, Rwanda when we were both working the GirlHub Rwanda off …
Let the scales fall...
by Tony Quinlan on Jan 27, 2011 4:49:48 PM
The other week I had one of those fun weeks where the situations and people are so different from one day to the next, I was at risk of getting whiplash. On the one hand, I was lucky enough to join Anne McMurray and a group of people running interesting SenseMaker projects in Northern …
Get the story straight - Storytelling in Communications 1
by Tony Quinlan on Oct 26, 2010 5:00:58 PM
The opening gambit of more than one past client project has been "help us get our story straight". Sometimes it's just that - the general story - sometimes it's something specific: "help us get our customer story straight", "our story on leadership". It's an interesting starting point …
No sweat - the myth that getting hold of stories is difficult
by Tony Quinlan on Oct 13, 2010 6:02:26 PM
There is a moment of great relief that comes in every client's experience - the moment when the stories start to come in. And then the delight that not only are they coming in, but they're coming in volume!
Where's the pilot?
by Tony Quinlan on Oct 12, 2010 2:53:49 PM
When did you last try something new? Or test a brilliant new insight? What have you done differently in your job recently?
The Merger - Baby steps
by Tony Quinlan on Oct 6, 2010 2:22:10 PM
Part of my time this year is being spent as an adviser to two organisations that are merging. It makes an interesting example of a merger process. All relevant posts on the process are collected under the Merger tag.
Reflections on The Future, Backwards
by Tony Quinlan on Sep 3, 2010 7:13:01 PM
Wednesday's session of The Future, Backwards was great. I played uber-facilitator, racing between the 8 separate groups, while Anne, Dick, Sally and Meg worked with two groups each more closely. That seemed to work pretty well - I walked miles, helped steer and got to see 4 distinctly …