Jun 11
We are defined by our stories, which continually form us and make us vital and give us hope. Stories teach and preserve traditions and practices and policies and values. I don’t know many people who prefer a manual to a myth.
– Max DePree, from Leading without Power
Jun 2
The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa.
– Werner Heisenberg, The Uncertainty Relations, 1927
Stories we tell – two
Uncertainty as opportunity
The unexpected snowman
May 29
We no longer obtain most of our stories from each other. We watch them on screens or listen with earphones. … Films and television teach us that a few people are central to the plot and the rest are marginal. … We would like to be main characters but we have learned that the important stories are happening to other people.
– David Loy, from The World is Made of Stories
May 28
You get older, and you realize there are no answers, just stories. And how we love them.
– Garrison Keillor
Idea for reflection – 31
My teacher got rid of my imagination
Stories that resonate
This past week I spent much of my writing time working on a new article for the Kansas EMS Chronicle column that I write. After writing on the blog for a couple of months, I found it challenging to put together a full-length article for a print publication. I kept asking myself, “How has blogging changed the way you write?”
Sitting on the porch this afternoon, I was readying say everything by Scott Rosenberg. Near the end of the book he suggests that blogs are fragments of ideas, conversations, and information. The on-line world is full of fragments, some linked together, some standing alone.
In reflecting on fragments, I thought of archaeologists who piece together pot shards and of researchers who discover fragments of ancient manuscripts. Every fragment is part of a whole and has a story to tell. Each blog post is only a fragment of what I’m thinking about regarding organizations and the development dynamic the fuels their growth. And, yes, it has changed the way I write.
So, why blog? The posts are fragments my reflections on the conversations that are going on in organizaitons formally and informally. They are fragments of the ideas in the world of people who care about how organizations can function at their best. In the end, the blog allows me to share my reflections on the pieces of thoughts and ideas that I hope will be a small, but useful contribution – a part of the resources for organization development.
Friesen Group 