Winter solstice summary

Last year’s Twelvetide series, which used science fiction/fantasy as a theme, concluded with a list of all the authors I had missed out on in the main series.  I also thought about this year focusing on adult books I read as a child or television programmes we watched together as a family. There were only three channels and one television set, so everything had to be negotiated!  In the first post in the series, I summarised my posts during the year, a tradition I will continue today, but rather than incorporating it in the post on the 25th of December in the first Twelvetide Post, I’ve decided to publish it at or around the Winter Solstice, a more appropriate year-end for a celt than the end of December and I will probably make that a tradition.  

I started the year with a post on Knotty Problems, which looked at some ways you would begin to manage change in a complex system.  After that, I updated the uncertainty matrices, the oldest of the various frameworks I had created.  A three-part series on Patterns and Pragmatism started with the proposition that qualities and behaviours are always emergent properties and talked about being as becoming, the non-static nature of sense-making in human systems.  The second post (which also marked my first use of AI to create an illustration) covered abduction (including a full definition)  and anomalies and concluded with some initial ideas on how we should act differently.

Another series followed on the nature and limitations of AI, which played with alternatives to the word intelligence, followed. Algorithmic Induction set the scene and included the argument that if AI improved consultancy productivity, that was more of a negative comment on consultancy than a positive comment about AI. Anthropomorphising Idiot savants was the second and addressed the social context of using AI.  Still, in January (the most productive of the year I posted a three-part series on Patterns of Change and Conflict, which summarised pre and post-Christmas blogs and introduced, in the second post, the idea of pluralistic ignorance and also the natural decision groups in humans from theoretical biology: dyads, task groups, demes and macrodemes.   That referenced work from the 2021 Twelvetide series will be critical to new work in 2025 on distributed decision-making:  it takes time for methods and concepts to evolve.  The final post looked at material, which is now a key element in our QuickSense initiative on AI  (there is still time to secure 2024 pricing).   A highly productive January (which also included a report on a project in Liverpool, which I highly commend to people,  concluded with a post on Models & Mesmerism on the differences between frameworks and models and attacked the fad cycle of consultancy and then finally, the first of a two-part series on Acumen Incited which developed themes of empathy,  proximity and narrative.  

Aside from part two of the Acument series, February saw five posts.  I started, in Hiraeth, manure and spade work,  to look at the role of narrative, in part stimulated by reading Rob Sheffield’s Book Pieces of Us, and that post was one of my more personal ones as it was a tribute to my father on the 20th Aniversary of his death. The following post, exploring the Welsh word clapiog, looked at granularity in sense-making, path dependency, and curiosity.  It also criticised the Inner Development goals; a theme I picked up in my most recent December post Enlightenment by command.  From there, I moved on to the role of obliquity and liminality in narrative work and, consequently, some reflections on how we initiate change.  The narrative theme continued in Differences that Make a Difference, which focused on who interprets an experience or story, where meaning resides, and the need to see patterns in multiple anecdotes rather than a single facilitated story.  That logically led to the final post, in what was a narrative-focused month when I examined The problem of curation, which focused on the dangers of expert management of narrative work and the value of oral history with a side reference to Byung-Chui Han.

That annual update of methods and frameworks in the St David’s Series:

1. The first listed seven frameworks and provided some historical links and links to prior updates.
2. The second covered AIMS and ASHEN
3. The third updated Estuarine Mappin, or more specifically, Affordance Mapping
4. The fourth introduced principles of intervention, but that was replaced in September by the PAGODA acronym 
5. The fifth covered the 3As of Affordance, Assemblage and Agency and had many other links. Estuarine may become a more general title to cover all three, but I am still considering that.

I didn’t finish that series until towards the end of April, and I am still debating if acronyms are frameworks, so there may be some corrections and updates on St David’s Day 2025

I did post on a significant HEXI initiative with Nigel Thurlow and Scrum,org, following a webinar in April, which will lead to a series of initiatives in quarter one of next year – including a substantial software announcement.  It is all taking longer than I hoped, but we don’t have the resources of a large software or consultancy firm.   May went by without a post, and in June, I first summarised all the various posts on SideCasting, opening with a poem by Yates before giving a first outing to the Risk Matrix (which will next manifest as a strategy matrix, still working on that) and a report on the Knowledge Summit in Dublin.  I gave a joint keynote with my daughter and warned of some of the dangers of AI, which are summarised in that post.  The Irish theme continued with a reflection on Barber Shops, triggered by a visit to one in Newcastle (County Down).

In July, I started a series with a general theme of patterning

1. Patterns and patterning covered social patterns, semiotics and visualisation.
2. Patterning curiosity looked at serendipity as discovery and the need for a catholic taste in reading, including some book recommendations.
3. Patterns as, and via actants was an emotional post on the role of places
4. Patterns of narrative concluded the series after a break of a couple of weeks, attacked the idea that you can engineer a new narrative, and argued for an understanding of narrative as an enacted and complex dance of meaning over time,

Narrative was also the subject of an August post on Narrative, numbers and narcissism, which started with a reflection on the Don Camillo stories and was written in a state of righteous anger.    Other than the previously referenced post on PAGODA in September, I hit a fallow period before updating how the word Chaos is used in Cynefin early in December.  A two-part series on Regularities and reduction opening had elements of an attack blog post but also talked about the role of science and the value reductionism in context.   The second part talked about the simple fact that breaking things down is not reductionist; assuming that the whole can be determined from the nature of the parts is reductionist in the negative sense if the system is complex but not if it is ordered.  I also looked at the role of regularities in managing for emergence, which will be a broader theme of work in the coming year.

On a partially personal note, I also introduced the themes of our 21st anniversary as an organisation next year,  with some end-of-year offers thrown in for good measure.

Other bloggers

 Anna has been the most proflic this year. Looking back at Covid reported on a sense-maker project, which was the 4th part. It has links back to 2023, and she also published part 5 in May.  There was a fascinating post on typologies in March that bears reading and re-reading.  She reported on a paper (with Beth) on the need to intervene in the Environment in June.    Beth was also active with posts on algorithms and AI and Enhanced Decision Making, including Estuarine. Mapping. Rhiannon reflected on World Migratory Bird Day in October, Ellie on International Women’s Day in March and Jules on Wooden Buildings and their role in Heritage.

The banner picture is cropped from an original by Philip Mackie, and the opening photo is by Amr Taha™, both on Unsplash.