Convolife

Episode 19 - No Such Thing as a Bad Idea.

conversationslife@gmail.com (David) — Sun, 27 May 2018 19:04:00 +1000

The only bad idea is one that is implemented without scrutiny.

"But it's my idea! How dare you criticise it!"

Heard that before? Then you'll be interested in what David and Dave have to say about how we generate and assess ideas.

Listen Here

Episode 18 - The Danger of the CEO's Shower

conversationslife@gmail.com (David) — Mon, 21 May 2018 07:57:00 +1000

"The CEO's shower is the most dangerous place in this company."

Dave C actually said that in a meeting of very senior staff at the company he was working at. It certainly got people's attention.

The problem was, whenever the CEO had a bright idea (in the shower or elsewhere) he'd share it with someone who heard "This is a well thought out proposal with my support, please make it so." Whether it was the intention of the CEO or not, this culture was at odds with an emerging design culture that was trying to be discipled, rather than reactive, in developing new products and services for customers.

Listen here.

Find the podcast on itunes here.

Episode 17 - Leadership and Identity

conversationslife@gmail.com (David) — Mon, 16 Apr 2018 14:36:00 +1000

In this episode, David Jones is in conversation with Lisa Kelly from Adelaide in South Australia.

They talk about leadership, passion and identity.

Resources.

Lead with Wisdom by Mark Strom

Listen here.

Episode 16 - Survivors of Trauma

conversationslife@gmail.com (David) — Sun, 8 Apr 2018 19:18:00 +1000

In this episode, Dave Cornford talks with Barb Shearer-Jones on the issue of caring for survivors of trauma and abuse.

Barb is the former Chair of Adults Surviving Child Abuse (ASCA) , and brings a practical perspective to this challenging and sensitive issue.

Resources

Mandatory Reporting
This page examines legal provisions requiring specified people to report suspected abuse and neglect to government child protection services in Australia.1

Blue Knot Foundation - 1300 657 380
Counselling and support for survivors

Bravehearts Inc - 1800 272 831
Counselling and support for survivors, child protection advocacy

Care Leavers Australasia Network - 1800 008 774
Support and advocacy for Forgotten Australians

Child Migrants Trust - 1800 040 509
Social work services for Former Child Migrants, including counselling and support for family reunions

Child Wise - 1800 991 099
Trauma informed telephone and online counselling for childhood abuse. Training and organisational capacity building on child abuse prevention

Children and Young People with Disability Australia - 1800 222 660/03 9417 1025
National peak body for children and young people with disability. Provides information and systemic representation

Healing Foundation - There is no phone number to contact the Healing Council. Please contact using their website.
Service to help build the capacity of Indigenous organisations and support the development of the Link Up network

In Good Faith Foundation - 03 9326 1190
Independent advocacy, case work, referral and support to aid recovery for victims, their families and communities responding to clergy, religious and lay abuse.

On the Line Australia Inc - 1300 78 99 78
National telephone and online support, information and referral service for men with family and relationship concerns

People with Disability Australia - 1800 422 015/TTY: 1800 422 016
National telephone line to provide information and referrals to people with disabilities

Rape and Domestic Violence Services Australia - 1800 211 028
24/7 telephone and online crisis counselling service for anyone in Australia who has experienced or is at risk of sexual assault

Tzedek - 1300 893 335
Advocacy, referrals and support services to people who have experienced religious/clergy abuse, with a focus on the Jewish community

Listen here.

Episode 15 - What is Vision?

conversationslife@gmail.com (David) — Mon, 26 Mar 2018 08:45:00 +1100

In this Episode, we explore Vision, Mission, Purpose and a few other buzzwords besides. What are they, when do they help, and when do you even need them?

Listen here

Find the podcast on itunes here.

Episode 14 - Interview with Stephen McAlpine

conversationslife@gmail.com (David) — Sun, 18 Mar 2018 10:59:00 +1100

Stephen McAlpine is a church planter, blogger and writer from Perth, Western Australia.

In this interview with Dave Cornford, Stephen talks particularly about the importance of

- understanding context
- the liturgy of life as well as the "thick" liturgy of worship
- leadership

in church planting.

This conversation with a seasoned practitioner is sure to inspire you!

Links:

Stephen's blog.
Desiring the Kingdom - Jamie Smith

Listen here:

Find the podcast on itunes here.

Episode 13 - Making with Words

conversationslife@gmail.com (David) — Mon, 12 Mar 2018 06:06:00 +1100

More About Making with Words

Listen Here
Find the podcast on itunes here.

Episode 12 - Perspectives on the Future

conversationslife@gmail.com (David) — Sun, 4 Mar 2018 19:42:00 +1100

In this episode we tackle some big questions about the future.

What is it?
How do we think about it?
How do I get a job as a "futurist"?
As leaders for change, how do we orient ourselves towards it?

And if you're wondering why the image for this post is a piece of repaired pottery, you'll need to listen to the episode.

Kintsugi, Centuries Old Japanese Method of Repairing Pottery with Gold

Translated to “golden joinery,” Kintsugi (or Kintsukuroi, which means “golden repair”) is the centuries-old Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with a special lacquer dusted with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. Beautiful seams of gold glint in the cracks of ceramic ware, giving a unique appearance to the piece.

https://mymodernmet.com/kintsugi-kintsukuroi/

“As you imagine the consequences of peripheral trends in the future, go beyond the first-degree impact. For example, consider the driverless cars that Google, BMW, and others are working on. Obviously cars without drivers could change driving patterns, which could affect auto manufacturers. Presumably they will crash less frequently, which could enable dramatically different designs that are much lighter weight, affecting material companies. Lighter cars will get much better mileage, affecting gas companies. If cars don’t crash, why would we need auto insurance, at least in its current form? And what about local governments that earn revenue from handing out speeding tickets? Or urban planners that allocate prime real estate to parking lots? Finally, consider employment implications. One million people in the U.S. work as truck drivers. What happens when they are displaced by robots?” Read more here.

Famous Quotes about the Future

'The Bomb will never go off; I speak as an expert in explosives."

- - Admiral William Leahy , US Atomic Bomb Project

"There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom."-- Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." -- Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." -- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year." -- The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957

"But what is it good for?" -- Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." -- Bill Gates, 1981

This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us" -- Western Union internal memo, 1876.

"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"-- David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the 1920s.

"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible" -- A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

"I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper" -- Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in "Gone With The Wind."

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out" -- Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible" -- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this" - - Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads .

"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy" -- Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.

"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value" -- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre , France .

"Everything that can be invented has been invented"-- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, US Office of Patents, 1899.

"The super computer is technologically impossible.It would take all of the water that flows over Niagara Falls to cool the heat generated by the number of vacuum tubes required." -- Professor of Electrical Engineering, New York University

"I don't know what use any one could find for a machine that would make copies of documents. It certainly couldn't be a feasible business by itself." -- the head of IBM, refusing to back the idea, forcing the inventor to found Xerox.

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." -- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

Listen here.
Find the podcast on itunes here.

New Year Update

conversationslife@gmail.com (David) — Mon, 26 Feb 2018 14:29:00 +1100

After a longer than expected hiatus over the summer, ConvoLIFE will be back with a new episode released each Monday in March. There's more about the future, making with words, vision and an interview with a church planter. Check your podcast feed next week!

Episode 11 - Interview with Dr Grant Bickerton

conversationslife@gmail.com (David) — Sat, 25 Nov 2017 13:39:00 +1100

Dr Grant Bickerton is a counselling psychologist who also has 15 years experience as a missionary in Australia and overseas. Grant’s research expertise concerns the psychological and spiritual variables that reduce work stress and promote well-being among Christian missionaries. He conducts psychological assessments for missionary candidates and personal counselling therapy. He is also familiar in the Middle Eastern and South East Asian culture.

Join Dr Grant Bickerton in conversation about building resilience and longevity in ministry.

Quotes

Coming Soon

References

Heart and soul: The pressure and privilege of ministry
You can read an overview of Grant Bickerton’s research, Wellbeing in Ministry, by visiting http://www.missionsinterlink.org.au/wp-content/uploads/Well-Being-in-Ministry-Study-overiew-and-results1.pdf

Listen here

Episode 10 - The Whiteboard as Holy Instrument of Conversation

conversationslife@gmail.com (David) — Mon, 13 Nov 2017 08:53:00 +1100

Our whiteboard for Episode 6.

David and Dave talk about the particular characteristics of a whiteboard make it a vital tool for conversations that hope to lead to innovation.

Quotes

Stone tablets are for recording things that don't change.

Early over-legitimization of ideas by PowerPoint is completely disastrous in innovation.

Text on pieces of paper travels well through space, not time. Whereas rocks travel well through time but not space.

The medium that we choose to record our messages has a lot to do with how they function in our societies. Things written on papyrus or on a little piece of clay were really basic to trading in the ancient world -you could take them with you as a promissory note.

Jesus leant over and drew in the sand. I have no idea what he wrote or sketched but the interesting thing is the symbolic impermanence (despite this being the finger of God), and giving time to somebody else.

These are all suitable ways for God to choose to speak. So there's nothing kind of divine about any particular instrument, but there might certainly be something that's very “set apart” as right for an instrument that might evoke the word “holy”.

The key thing about a white board is it's a work in progress. You have something that you write, can be rubbed out, and rewritten; a word changed in in the blink of an eye. And that tells us that the cement is wet.

Another important word is “flow”. And it's a flow that you can get with whiteboards that you can't get with Flip charts, and you certainly can't get with taking minutes.

You've got that visual memory of where you are in the conversation: “that idea was when Joe was talking, and we were up in the top right hand corner of that board…” - and you flip back through your photos and there it is.

A whiteboard (or maybe a flip chart) does offer you away of honouring and recording an input: “In this corner we're putting the stuff for later”. The person who's leading the conversation has a mechanism of derailing the side track rather than derailing the main conversation.

Putting it up there demonstrated that the person had been heard. It's a very respectful way of proceeding when it's all so provisional. If it falls by the wayside - if it doesn't become a theme that develops further - so be it.

The whiteboard becomes like a third person in the room. It assumes an independence from the leader versus others or the recorder versus others.

The facilitators responsibility is to understand the unfolding conversation, not to become expert in the context or the subject matter.

When you make the shift to a white board people can be on their feet, and they're upright, and their heads are up and there's a totally different body-ness in the way we're dealing with information.

The opposite is to see what PowerPoint does to your conversation. No matter how much you want to say that the slides you produced are “just for people to have ideas, just to lead the conversation, just an offering” and so forth, the effect of PowerPoint is that people see it as a finished thing. The best feedback you'll get will be about the typo on page 4.

Listen here

Episode 9 - Overcoming Change Resistance

conversationslife@gmail.com (David) — Mon, 6 Nov 2017 05:40:00 +1100

When it comes to moving into the build space, the challenges of implementing change come to the fore - and potentially, the forces of resistance move into gear for some rear-guard action.

David and Dave discuss types of Change Resistance, and how to overcome them.

Quotes

"We can't end up in a place of mediocrity because we do change badly."

References

Hidden Figures (2016)

Listen Here.
Find the podcast on itunes here.

Episode 8 - Change Making

conversationslife@gmail.com (David) — Mon, 30 Oct 2017 20:49:00 +1100

How do we take our intent forward? Charting the way forward, idea generation, leaving your ego at the door, protoyping and more.

Quotes

The outcome of this first piece of work when we're going to make change is getting the scope and clarity and the intent shared.

If you're on the receiving end of an initiative which somebody else thought up, then this is the time you really need to drill into what it is they think they want you to do.

Pushing for clarity is not an accusation about anything having been sloppy or lazy. It's about the fact that now that you're looking at a specific context with a specific bunch of resources.

Clarifying the intent is the first stage of moving in to change making. The next stage is a discovery. We actually need to understand more about the specific context that we're going to change.

Make life easier for yourself by bringing some of that research back inside and start putting photos of successful initiatives up on the wall.

Start bringing some of that back and widening the “socialising “ - the awareness of what's going on. Don't spring it on people.

Make sure that dissenting voices are heard. There might be wisdom in them. There might not be. But hear them, because if they don’t surface at the stage of coming up with plans, they're going to surface when the brickwork starts.

Early brainstorming as done by marketing groups in the fifties and so forth was really disconnected from context. It really had nothing to do with what a customer might want or what a context of use might look like.

The main thing that matters when you're creating ideas is that they are actually grounded in a situation and actually forged out of the tension in what is here right now.

We don't want underdeveloped or bad ideas to go forward, and so
we assess, understand, unpack with rigour - out of faithfulness, not out of vindictiveness.

In Christian communities being nice means I won't criticize. And it condemns us to mediocrity. We're never allowed to say that something is strong and something is not. And the truth is that some things are strong and some are not.

Our next stage in change making is to actually build something to put in the world, to test out the ideas. This is the idea of prototyping. It's not piloting. Piloting is when you build the first version of what you expect to last forever.

Prototyping is where we build pieces of our solution to see whether they actually work.

This is the feature of prototypes vs pilots: We actually build pieces of a prototype to find out what breaks. We want to see if we can break things because we learn from that.

Even if it's a mock up on a piece of paper or a cardboard box that imitates some function, get people around it so they can actually pull forward the experience of what it will be like, and you'll save yourself a world of pain.

Something is a failure when you set out to do it and it grinds to a halt after six weeks because it's simply unsustainable. Prototyping is not a failure. It's a brilliant way of discovering and learning and making sure that things can be sustainable.

Make sure your prototype answers the question that you don't know the answer to.

References

Luke 14:25-33 ESV
25 Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them,26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. 27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.

28 For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? 29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, 30 saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’

31 Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? 32 And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.

33 So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

Listen here.

Episode 7 - Scope

conversationslife@gmail.com (David) — Mon, 23 Oct 2017 11:24:00 +1100

How do we coalesce towards sharing a purpose together that will shape the way we work together?

Quotes

Change is actually continuous, but our response to it is not always to do something. Sometimes it confirms us more in the way we are. It can make us more comfortable to hold things that are more predictable - like a marble rolling to the bottom of a basin.

On any given day we can imagine or see more things that we could throw ourselves at and change than can ever be addressed. So even at the very front end there is the question of choice, of prayerful consideration of what you're being called to do.

Crisis is a serious unravelling, and if we've left things until we're desperate, we're probably in that unravelling situation. And I don't think that's uncommon in this phase of history we're in because so many conversations of leadership have been caught flat footed by the pace of change.

Churches in particular are flat footed because of not seeing change as something that ought to be constantly engaged with, constantly processed as part of living. We've tended to see conservatism and static and sameness as desirable states. Perhaps they are for graveyards.

We see threats to stability as bad and to be guarded against. And we need to lead past that as a barrier because that's just going to lead to slow and painful irrelevance. That’s not a vibrant continuation of holding the Gospel story in in the community.

Construction of a burning platform is the lazy leadership because it's not about calling us into a future. It's about saying “I’ll wait ‘til everyone's got hot and then will they follow me into a new future and it will be easy.

It's not about burning platforms. It's about telling the truth about the context that we live in, and telling the truth about the wonders of the gospel and God’s offer into that context, and joining those two together – not artificially creating crises in order to activate people.

You need a lot of voices in this early stage of coming to grips with a need or a situation. You actually got to do a lot of listening, and to hold a space of openness to a variety of voices in order to actually understand what the system is.

In your early conversations try and have the “system in the room” by the people you have in the room. Have a representative from each of those parts of the operation that will be touched; those who will be required to supply; those who will be required to govern it; those will be required to monitor; those who will be impacted by it, who will be looking over your shoulder and perhaps be afraid of what you're doing.

Thomas Kuhn in his work on Scientific Revolutions had a major impact on our thinking about the history of science. And he made it really clear from his historical studies just how much innovation relies on communities of thought, on multiple people. The heroic individual was the exception not the rule.

The heroic individual is another paradigm that the church has bought. But if you want to be an effective agent of change it's one you better get out of your head, because understanding the system requires multiple voices. That brings a challenge not only for the leader in the church context but also the congregation .

Coalescing around a purpose is a very different thing to providing an answer.

There's a definition that came out of the Harvard Business Review article quite a few years ago that says that “the exercise of leadership is about realizing a future that wasn't going to happen anyway”. A future that wasn't going to happen anyway is one where we've actually had to really make some serious choices about difference, where we've really had to confront our assumptions and take new perspectives.

References

Potential activities during the scope phase:

Be curious
Take perspectives
Surface assumptions
Share reflections

Listen Here

Episode 6 - Stepping Into The Future.

conversationslife@gmail.com (David) — Fri, 20 Oct 2017 17:20:00 +1100

Dave and David looking for their DeLorean

Looking into the future can be daunting - but is unavoidable for the leader.

References

Romans 8:19 talks about the creation waiting with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. It provides an orientation towards the future of eager longing rather than that fearfulness that so often comes first to mind.

The foundation of confidence can be found in Malachi 3:6 which simply starts with “I the Lord do not change.” - God's faithful character underlying whatever it is that we encounter. Our God is like a great Greek unmoved mover – he has a great reliable constancy of character. He is not capricious.
He is not playing with us.

God has got purposes in mind and he is moving things to accomplish. And in that there is a constancy of loving faithfulness that we can count on and that's a really foundational resource that believers can respect when they're looking at questions of leadership, innovation and entrepreneurship: the resource of a faithful God leading us into the future.

Trumps Tweets distil the quintessence of volatility. One man's tweets. A hundred forty four characters at 2:00 a.m. in the morning can bring the world to perilous times around nuclear war.

I can lie in my own bed at some wee hours of the morning sleepless because I'm reading feed from a person on the other side of the world. You know it's all connected and it's fast and that is a key contributor to the complexity of what we face

Ambiguity: there are so many possible ways of interpreting the unfolding of the future, or the unfolding of the present into the future, or how many ways you can read the present and what it might possibly portend the future.

In this complex world, how do I lead in and feel any confidence that going down this route will be fruitful and life giving for the system that I'm working in, be that a church context or a business contex?

The future is the next assured piece of God's story of his unfolding purposes. Future is a lot like history because God has shown us who he is and how he works. Does that mean it's predictable. No. But it is nevertheless a place of safety and of confidence for those who travel along with God.

“Underneath are the everlasting arms. The eternal God is your refuge”. Not just hang onto it by your fingernails, but let Him be the centre and font from which we work.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer knew he had to keep proceeding as God's man in a mad situation. And he took great comfort from the fact that he knew that he could never act without sin and without grace being a necessary part of the way that he was accepted in in God.

Future Shock - Alvin Toffler (1970)

VUCA - volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity. That's a shorthand that is used routinely now in business literature about the nature of the change context that we face.

The story of GrooveShark and Spotify (Start Up Podcast from Gimlet Media)

Listen here

Episode 5 - Entrepreneurship

conversationslife@gmail.com (David) — Tue, 3 Oct 2017 17:03:00 +1100

Yes, please, sir, I want to be one!

But what does it mean to be an entrepreneur, and what does it take to be one? David and Dave explore this in the general sense and then as it does (or doesn't) apply to church planters in the episode.

Quotes:

An entrepreneur is someone who can recognise, grow skilled at and push along the conversations that make new meanings and new market places for those meanings.

[Unfortunately)] What is in the Build space of conversations comes to characterize what entrepreneurs are, followed by the rapid accretion of wealth.

If we're close to talking about that set of activities in an economy that create new value then we're close to talking about what drives economics and what is fundamental to the prosperity of a society.

Most attempts at a one line definition of entrepreneurship are fraught and very hard to distinguish from other activities in society.

A small business owner isn't necessarily an entrepreneur, but I can't understand how you could be a successful entrepreneur and not go through a small business phase.

I don't think that opening another coffee shop is actually a very helpful way of understanding the word entrepreneur.

If you Google your idea or look it up in iTunes and there's already six little apps that will do that thing then you're probably not an entrepreneur even though you're doing something digital.

Ideas were cheap, but cracking all of the problems and keeping going through the adversity from a business point of view, and persistence and flexibility and the vision to keep going was the thing that created the most value.

We're so close to talking about the economic machinery of nations with this capacity to create something new and bring it to the marketplace.

A definition that might help markets to know what to do with governments doesn't help you the entrepreneur to know what to do.

Our definition of entrepreneurship is actually going to help you do entrepreneuring - a way of naming it that's going to help you make something, because you need a toolkit that fits.

An entrepreneur is somebody who can create a new meaning and deliver it into the marketplace, and knows how to navigate all the conversations that make up that journey.

Distinct conversational competencies need to be strung together in order to make the journey from a twinkle in your eye about a new meaning and possibility through to where that's actually functioning in the user's world.

Paul's succeeded in making something new in the marketplace and bringing it to life.

Understanding these transitions as conversations that I can participate in or that I know how to hold means that being an entrepreneur is a place where you can image God in your creative potential.

References
Coming Soon

Listen here

Episode 4 - Faith

conversationslife@gmail.com (David) — Sat, 23 Sep 2017 14:04:00 +1000

So, how does faith in Jesus influence the leader or innovator? How does being a leader or innovator influence your faith?

Quotes:

Faith is a lived journey: We're very clear that whatever faith is it is not just a propositional system.

Faith is a relationship that we live into with Jesus and that unfolds, and we carry with us in the present and into the future.

it's complex: even the idea that is faith something that I hold. Or is it something that holds me. It's just so big.

When we talk about going upstream in our conversations it's way before the questions of what do we want. It's already there in the fabric of who we are.

I don't have a Buddhist faith or a Hindu faith. I have a Christian faith. It has content and identity and a particular relationship with Jesus that characterize that.

My faith is down that next level: Not in propositions about a supreme muffin but in the lived experience of walking with Jesus.

We're learning about God and our faith and the works of Jesus not through the window of systematized propositions but through the window of an unfolding Judeo Christian history.

In the history of systematic theology emphasis has always been on the propositional in the abstract - the emphasis now is very much fuelled by historical situation.

Spirituality is now quite comfortably used in in business and seen as a desirable part of the conversation or at least as an inescapable part of the conversation.

Spirituality is now seen as a given. There's more need than ever before for an expansive vocalization of the Christian message and the footprint that it can have in business.

At the front end of conversations we seem to be largely silent or silenced. And then in the detailed world we are driven into moralistic binaries.

Bunkering down and bolting the doors isn't an option: we can't be part of the transformation of the world if we are in a bunker.

It is a linguistic bunker: it's the conversations we don't know how to have and the language we don't know how to use that construct the boundaries of thought we can work on.

References

Ben Myers tweeted the whole Bible

Listen here.

Episode 3 - Innovation

conversationslife@gmail.com (David) — Fri, 15 Sep 2017 14:51:00 +1000

WARNING! Buzzword alert!

Yep, innovation is in danger of becoming a meaningless cliche - if only that meant we could avoid the need for it!

Alas, adapting to our changing mission contexts means something like "innovate or perish!" In this episode we try to grasp what it is and what it isn't.

Quotes

What is the relationship between the community of faith and the conversations of business and how much should we borrow from that world uncritically?

The need now is to address novel contexts with novel solutions. And that's where you start to see the need for a concept,t then an activity like innovation.

Innovation needs to be defined in terms of the user. It actually takes place in the user's world.

The systemic nature of innovation is another important feature - the way that it transforms the host environment.

I can't imagine how God's kids who are given the Spirit and made new creations can live in the world and not have an effect on its being different.

The next change will be different to the last change, because we're in a different place. But we're still about God's purposes is to bring justice and reconciliation to the world.

How do we know when innovation is occurring, rather than what is innovation - ask yourself that in the context of your faith community.

Listen here.

Notes:

Episode 2 - Leadership

conversationslife@gmail.com (David) — Fri, 8 Sep 2017 12:56:00 +1000

What's the "L" stand for?

We continue our foundation series in episode 2, discussing leadership, what's good, what's bad and what's the point?

We understand Leadership in terms of the conversations that we have, or the conversations that are distinctively taking place, when we reach for the L word.

Quotes:

Front end conversations are the really fuzzy ones - the ones where we peer over the edge and everything is without form and void, and we don't know what to do.

The first act of leadership is to actually name a situation - to come to a place where we know what it is that we want (lack or desire).

Spreadsheets are a brilliant tool but they're a brilliant tool after there's a hypothesis, after we know what it is you want to get done.

Leaders are people who we recognise as knowing how to handle ambiguity and navigate those spaces.

The world we're in is one of tremendous volatility and complexity and pace of change - we're constantly confronted with a new” front end” in the conversation we need to tackle.

We're constantly confronted with a new front end to the conversation - that's very much the reason why leadership has become a premium capability.

There's a lot about the way Christians have been enculturated about what constitutes truth that is not helpful. We equate it with black and white certainty, with being able to be told what to do.

What we value is conversations that have certainty and right answers and so forth. And we're not skilled or inclined to trust open conversations.

Many leaders that we've encountered as good leaders in business or in in general leadership are those who actually don't mind some openness in their conversation.

There's a deep interlock between the sociology of belief tending towards closure, versus seeing the world in new ways and being open to the contribution of others.

It is seriously to be mourned that we're not living in to the possibilities of being image of God and living into the possibilities of our safety in Christ.

Listen here.

Referenced reading

Edwin Judge’s points are covered in Piggin, Stuart Power and Religion in a Modern State: Desecularisation in Australian Politics. 21^st International Congress of Historical Sciences Amsterdam, 22-28 August, 2010

Jim Collins on leadership.

Episode 1 - Conversations

conversationslife@gmail.com (David) — Mon, 4 Sep 2017 18:06:00 +1000

So, what's ConvoLIFE all about?

In the first series of the podcast, our hosts will unpack each of the foundational dimensions of their thinking in this arena - conversations, leadership, innovation, faith and entrepreneurship.

In Episode 1, David and Dave explain what they mean by "conversations", and why it's important.

We understand Leadership in terms of the conversations that we have, or the conversations that are distinctively taking place, when we reach for the L word.

Quotes:

The Apostle Paul was an advocate of change, who was doing change, and he was doing that because history is going places.

Of course we have to move to action. But to do that in ways that cut off the upstream conversations or devalue them is a pattern of life we've got into that is not serving us well.

The moment we start talking about change and facing towards the future we end up with concepts of innovation. And how do you do that well? Well, it takes place in conversation.

The Spirit hovered over the face of the deep and everything was without form and void: this wasn't rework or warming something over.

We would do well as believers to wonder about the resources that we have - our safety in relating to the King of the world, that we can bring to really ambiguous and dark spaces.

We can go to those places where there is novelty with resources that others don't have so readily at hand, and we can start completely new conversations.

Entrepreneurs take new messages all the way to the marketplace; faith is a transformative framework for those conversations - our heritage as sons and daughters of us speaking God.

Listen here

Notes:

Philip Edgcumbe Hughes True Image: Christ as the Origin and Destiny of Man https://www.amazon.com/True-Image-Christ-Origin-Destiny/dp/0802803148

I (DJ) was informed that it was George Bush (the elder), at the end of his 100 days as new President of the United States, who declared proudly: “I am a practical man. I don’t deal in airy abstractions”. I have not been able to verify that quote.

After the forest fire....

conversationslife@gmail.com (David) — Sun, 23 Jul 2017 14:02:00 +1000

While catching up on my podcast listening recently, I came across an episode of Exponent (a podcast about tech and society) where the hosts talked about the importance of local news and the challenges of the changing media landscape. It's worth a listen, using the analogy that the forest fire of change has been through and now we're looking for the new shoots.

Some key points from the podcast that are worthy of further thought:

When facing major change, organisations will end up in a different place if they focus on "taking things out" of the old model rather than starting from scratch;
The "taking things out" approach will tend to protect the things that used to matter, but no longer do.
Propping up an existing model that will not last will only delay something better emerging.
Change is painful (but not changing leads to doom).

Propping up an existing model that will not last will only delay something better emerging.

We'll pick up some of these themes later, but for now, check out Exponent #114 - The Job of Local News. Listen here.

What we mean by Entrepreneurship?

conversationslife@gmail.com (David) — Fri, 14 Jul 2017 20:24:00 +1000

Our view of entrepreneurship has been shaped by a definition David developed in teaching “Creativity & Entrepreneurship” to Bachelor of Business classes:

Entrepreneuring is the ability to install a new meaning in the marketplace.

This is the key to rare capability of an entrepreneur. It is an “end to end” capacity. And it is a conversational capacity from end to end.

Making new meaning is a conversational process –even if it has a large chunk of that special form of conversation with ourselves called “thinking”.
Conveying our idea to others is a conversational process.
Recruiting others to invest in the development of our idea – investing their money or even a chunk of their lives – is a conversational process – and one that takes a lot of conversations to sustain!
Getting our idea into production, distribution or use is a conversational process

Few indeed can walk that talk from end to end. The sheer complexity and range of types of conversations mean that many fall at one of these hurdles. And someone who has an idea but can’t get it out is not an entrepreneur. Nor is someone who can peddle an old idea, but brings no new meaning, an entrepreneur.

What do we mean by Faith?

conversationslife@gmail.com (David) — Fri, 14 Jul 2017 20:24:00 +1000

That’s a strange question. Because we presume you are not asking about the intrapsychic or sociological phenomenon in humans that goes by that title. We presume you’re asking rather in what order in whom do we put our faith?
The answer is both profoundly simple:

“But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God…” John1:12 (ESV)

and as endlessly complicated and hair splitting as you could want any conversation in the universe to be (Google “Christianity” and get 122,000,000 results in 0.90 seconds) .

So I guess were not going to try and answer that in the abstract. You’ll have to discover who we are in a sense even as we do so ourselves.

"We say that we ‘conduct’ a conversation, but the more genuine a conversation is, the less its conduct lies within the will of either partner. Thus, a genuine conversation is never the one that we wanted to conduct. Rather, it is generally more correct to say that we fall into conversation, or even that we become involved in it. The way one word follows another, with the conversation taking its own twists and reaching its own conclusion, may well be conducted in some way, but the partners conversing are far less the leaders of it than the led. No one knows in advance what will ‘come out’ of a conversation. Understanding or its failure is like an event that happens to us. Thus we can say that something was a good conversation or something was ill-fated. All this shows that a conversation has a spirit of its own,…that it allows something to ‘emerge’ which henceforth exists." Hans Georg Gadamer

We will bring to these conversations all that we are – for better or for worse. And you will to be the judges of which bits are which! Is it to our credit or not that we have more than 60 years of active, heartfelt involvement in Australian Christian communities? Or that we wouldn’t mind saying the apostles creed one more time, though we wouldn’t mind finding another way of telling the Truth timelessly, either. Perhaps its on the down side that we can’t help being other than two older guys who have lived their lives immersed in white male privilege. (We seriously hope that doesn’t leak out. If it does, we want you to call us out and help us change – and forgive us).

But all those things go in to our relationship with Jesus (for better and for worse), and all will be present in our conversations with you.

What do we mean by Leadership?

conversationslife@gmail.com (David) — Fri, 14 Jul 2017 20:08:00 +1000

Hmmm. Leadership. So much easier to talk about when we were all managers! Because then we knew that what we wanted to be was leaders, but we were just managers.

Our way into this one actually comes through an understanding of conversation, and some of the ways we hold the word “conversation” – that is, that we give it more weight than just chat, or just what happens after the first few beers.
Mark Strom, the author of Lead with Wisdom (Wiley, 2013), found a pithy way of making a key distinction about organisational talk. He writes:

“Communication is sharing created meaning. Conversation is creating shared meaning… At a certain level communication and conversation are synonyms. Yet the distinction is not just playing with words. The bigger picture is our assumptions about knowing and meaning. Communication — sharing created meaning — suggests there already exists some knowledge that others need to know. We need to communicate: clearly, concisely, and relevantly.… Communication tends to assume that knowledge and meaning are things to be discovered and passed on. Conversation — creating new meaning — suggests that the meaning or message is not yet fixed. This kind of unscripted interaction can be a doorway to new meaning and new knowledge. Conversation tends to assume that knowledge and meaning take shape through interaction. Conversations highlight how meaning is tied to relationship.”

Mark then makes this connection:

“Conversation is a leader’s work. Conversation is to leading as communication is to managing.”

We are happy with that as a distinction to illustrate leadership, and as a definition to be going on with.

What do we mean by "Conversations"?

conversationslife@gmail.com (David) — Fri, 14 Jul 2017 10:22:00 +1000

At one level you’ll find us using the word “conversation” like everyone else – a word that we unreflectively mix in with words like “talk”, “chat” or even “interaction”. We don’t actually have that many words in our lexical stock for an action that is amazingly general and yet powerful, all pervasive and yet transformative. But at times you will find us using the word “conversation” to mean something more focussed. And that is that we are specifically interested in how we can talk together to get things done when we are focused on an outcome.

It is our belief, our assertion, and our distinctive when we talk about conversation is that we're talking about the systems and structures of language that allow us to cooperate in purposeful human enterprises.

Take an example. In Euro Western culture (perhaps now more as an aspiration than as an achievable goal), an imaginable topic of outcome-focussed conversation could be about how we might build our own home. What typically happens in such a conversation? Well, it usually takes some time (it might be measured in years) and yet it is a single topic of conversation that converges on an outcome – a house that you and your partner can move into.

The conversation begins when you allow yourself to dream or speculate about what you would want. Do you want a house in the bush? Or a house at the beach? Or a house in the bush at the beach? Do you want a house that allows the kids to stay after they finished school? Or to come back with their kids? Or do you want a house that is for you in a stage of life that creates some boundaries – the kids can stay in town?

Eventually such conversations, perhaps supported by a scrapbook, certainly the occasional sticky note on the refrigerator, or the occasional drive down interesting looking roads where a vacant block might beckon – eventually such conversations become more or less settled on what you want.

The conversation now enters a new stage - the stage of drawing up plans, a serious stage, with serious choices - often guided by an architect. The architect will point out the grim realities of engineering on the steep block that you have chosen, the way it drives choices of materials, and of room size, and of orientation.

And again, eventually that conversation reaches a conclusion as well. Not only do we know what we want. Now we know how to get it. We have a design. We have made choices, especially trade-offs. We have come to terms with constraints. And we have found a way of expressing our voice in the design of something that will meet our desires.

So now we enter a third major phase in our conversation's of purpose. Now we have to build. And these conversations are very different again. Now we speak in terms of deadlines: “We want to be in by Christmas!” Now there are costs, and cost overruns, and schedules, and PC items, and fine-grained choices, and fixes. And don’t dare have the kind of conversation with the builder that you had with your partner 12 months before when you wondered out loud about changing from bricks to Hardiplank!

This sounds like a pretty ordinary (if increasingly inaccessible-in-reality) story. Yet it carries the DNA of something very powerful about how we coordinate together in all kinds of purposeful conversations, from planning a picnic to running a church. You’ll find that pattern turns up in a lot of our conversations about conversation.