Category Archives: August-November 2013

10/26 – Evaluating Big Data Projects – Success and Failure Using an Integral Lens

Feature Articles / August-November 2013

Maureen Metcalf and James Brenza

Introduction

This paper will evaluate “Big Data” project implementations through an integral lens and a transformation implementation lens to identify key success factors driving successful projects and also identifying what is missing in failed projects.  We selected “Big Data” projects because of their complexity and our belief that successful implementation requires effective leadership, an awareness of and alignment with culture and a strong process based approach to implementation. Big data projects are becoming more common …

10/ 26 – The Tribal Lesson: A New Route to Effective Teamwork

Feature Articles / August-November 2013

Michael J McEwan

After a couple of decades building and leading high-performing teams, and finding it took between 2 and 7 months to develop this level of performance, I decided there has to be a quicker way of doing this. I wanted people to go straight from meeting each other into behaving as a high-performance team. Taking an idea from my experience as a competitive fencer, integrated with a technique learned on a leadership-training course, I designed a way of …

10/26 – Shift New Orleans and Tulane School of Social Work

Notes from the Field / August-November 2013

Dr. Don E. Beck

Julianna D. Padgett, Ph.D., LCSW, Assistant Dean of the School of Social Work at Tulane University led the organization of a presentation and a meetings/trainings between Don Beck, students and faculty with Dr. Laura Horn and Darrell Gooden participating in support. In total, 210 people attended. Additional trainings are scheduled for January with a possible SDi 1 in March after Mardi Gras.

We had a wonderful experience in New Orleans with “cultural beats from Bourbon Street.” …

10/13 – Transdisciplinary Reflections

Column / August-November 2013

History is not an outdated Operating System. Or, why those who ignore history are doomed to reinvent the wheel (and make me cranky).

Alfonso Montuori

A colleague and I were recently discussing texts for an upcoming course. Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein’s Sparks of genius: The thirteen thinking tools of the world’s most creative people came up, and excellent choice. My colleague replied glumly that she liked the book a lot, but students would inevitably get all riled up about having …

10/13 – Otto Scharmer: Theory U — Leading from the Future as It Emerges

Fresh Perspective / August-November 2013

Tudd Volckmann

Russ:  I have the pleasure of introducing Otto Scharmer, who is Senior Lecturer at MIT and founding chair of the Presencing Institute, he also is well known as an author of what I can only describe as a major work – Theory U. He is also co-authored the books Presence, with Peter Senge, Joe Jaworski and Betty Sue Flowers, and Leading from the Emerging Future, with Katrin Kaufer.

I find Otto’s work particularly fascinating because particularly in …

09/17 – Searching for an Integral Vision: Light Bearers, Freedom Fighters and Prisoners in Premodern, Modern and Postmodern Times

Feature Articles / August-November 2013

Gerard Bruitzman

God became man so that man might become God.
– Saint Athanasius, Saint Augustine, Saint Cyril of
Alexandria, Meister Eckhart, Jacob Boehme, and many
others (W Perry, 2008, p. 23)

You see yourself as the drop in the ocean, but you are also the ocean in the drop.
– Rumi (online)

I have lived for nearly sixty years now. I remember the Roman Catholic Church in my early childhood before the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), when the Holy …

09/17 – Marriage of Sense and Soul: Embodying Integral Leadership in the City 2.0

Feature Articles / August-November 2013

Brian McConnell

Abstract: Identified as a facet of psychosocial experience in something Ken Wilber has termed dissociation, this article looks at similarly related phenomenology as recounted by various others in apportioning its pathological effects across a broad swath of global consciousness.  Advocating contemplative practice as a mode for translating theory to application, the article also shows how urban practitioners are initiating communities (CoP) to localize socioeconomic innovation.

Introduction

Calling for an adoption of contemplative practice, Ken Wilber explains in …

09/17 – The 2013 Integral Theory Conference: Connecting The Integral Kosmopolitan

Notes from the Field / August-November 2013

Eric Reynolds

Introduction

Integral Theory, as I understand it, is a developmental framework for integrating all kinds of knowledge. It is a transdisciplinary space, a sort of memetic scaffolding where the complex, emergent reality that IS can be mapped, navigated, and ultimately consciously co-created by interested parties coming from a multitude of different perspectives. In other words, Integral Theory as proposed by Ken Wilber is not just a theory, but also an integration of living perspectives, which by definition needs …

09/17 – An Integral Catholic Leader: Father Anthony de Mello, SJ

Feature Articles / August-November 2013

Giorgio Piacenza Cabrera

Introduction     

Father Anthony de Mello SJ is considered one of the foremost mystical theologians of the late Twentieth Century. His simple and direct approach to life continues to untie all kinds of blockages preventing man’s acceptance of his spiritual nature, even decades after his unexpected death. De Mello’s radiated authenticity, love for all and his characteristic laughter tended to disarm any negative preconceived notions against his ideas. As far as my research goes, I’d say that most …

09/3 – Integral Design Leadership: An Ecological Gateway to 21st Century Co-Development

Column / August-November 2013

Lisa Norton

intdesignleadlogo

“Design creates culture. Culture shapes values. Values determine the future.”
– Robert L. Peters in Berman

Design thinking methods and approaches are gaining credibility in mainstream corporate, nonprofit and educational contexts.  But what exactly is design thinking and how can it serve integrally informed change work? As with any left quadrant form of expertise, design methods may appear idiosyncratic or ‘fuzzy’ until we find ways to translate efficacies into right-hand quadrant measures of real innovation.

Although over-hyped as …