December 9, 2011 will mark the ninth anniversary of Blue Oxen Associates, and it will also mark our last day of operation. I’m shutting down the company, and I’d like to explain why. Chris Dent and I founded this company on two simple premises. First, the world needed to get better at collaboration. This was [...]
A few weeks ago, I was at a strategy meeting at Rebecca Petzel’s house in San Francisco, where I spotted this beautiful “chore wheel.” Rebecca lives in a big house with several housemates, and in order to make sure the house stays clean, they divvy up and rotate the responsibilities, using this wheel to keep [...]
In 2006, I was invited to give the keynote at WikiSym in Odense, Denmark. Since I was going to be in town, Thomas Madsen-Mygdal generously organized a blogger dinner for me in Copenhagen, which gave me the chance to meet many local entrepreneurs and changemakers. One of the many, many highlights for me was meeting [...]
I’ve been watching two former clients struggle with inclusive leadership from afar, and I’m preparing to re-engage with one of them. This stuff is really hard, and it takes intense commitment and constant practice to shift. The difficulties stem from two problems: An overly simplistic mental model of what it means to be inclusive or [...]
I drove up to beautiful Gualala, California up in Mendocino yesterday to visit my friend and advisor, Gail Taylor. As we walked along a trail where the Gualala River meets the Pacific Ocean, I took a moment to capture some of our conversation on video: For much more of Gail’s story and wisdom, listen to [...]
I’ve been interested in networks for a very long time, and over the past few years, I have been drawn into various communities that explicitly self-identify around the term. One of those groups is the Network of Network Funders, which was initiated several years ago by the Packard Foundation and which has since evolved into [...]
Last November, my friend, Steven Walling, tweeted something that was both innocuous and extraordinary. He said: Steven is engaged with a global community of amazing people who are creating something incredibly important and unprecedented. He’s making connections and learning things in ways that were not previously possible. But his involvement is at the expense of [...]
I was overwhelmed by the participation and response to my webinar on Strategic Planning for Networks, hosted by the Leadership Learning Community last Tuesday. Patti Anklam posted a nice summary on her blog, and my slides are available on Slideshare: Over 100 people participated, and there were a number of thoughtful questions I didn’t have [...]
Diana Scearce facilitates the Knight Foundation scenario discussion on network-centric practices. The title of this blog post is tongue-in-cheek. Last Friday, I co-facilitated a workshop on network-centric practices for the Knight Foundation with Diana Scearce of Monitor Institute. I finished my part in the morning, and stuck around to watch Diana work her magic in [...]
This is the second essay of my four-part series on Wikimedia strategy. My first essay, published last week, introduced the movement and discussed some of its impending challenges. Last June, just as the Wikimedia strategic planning process was wrapping up, my friend and long-time Wikipedian, Phoebe Ayers, expressed strong concern over the Wikimedia Foundation’s planned [...]
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