Mike Stopforth

Sonja Blignaut of Dialogue Africa and the Center for Complexity Studies here in SA has been kind enough to let me know that one of the smartest, most intriguing thinkers I have ever had the pleasure of meeting is on his way back to SA. Dave Snowden (of Cognitive Edge) will be facilitating a foundational training from the 18th - 20th July for practitioners wanting to adopt complexity thinking and practice in organizations and on projects. I attended the self-same accreditation programme last year and although I found my relatively small brain horrendously stretched it was an enriching and inspiring learning experience. If you facilitate, problem solve or strategise this could fundamentally impact the way you work forever.

Dave’s creds from his site:

Dave Snowden is a major figure in the movement towards integration of humanistic approaches to knowledge management and sensemaking. He is generally held to be one of the leading practitioners and thinkers in the field of a naturalising (science based) approached to decision theory and sensemaking. Well known for his work on the role of narrative and complexity theory in sense-making, he is an entertaining speaker and a formidable realist, and one of the few thought leaders who can bring together the academic and practitioner perspectives into a single, comprehensible purview. His original degree is in Philosophy from the University of Lancaster and he also has an MBA from Middlesex University.

Dave’s last course had a major impact on my thinking around organisational and cultural dynamics, connectivity, sharing, networking and more.

By the way, Dave’s blog is a challenging but profound regular read. I can highly recommend it. For more info, please email sonja at dialogueafrica dot coza.