Otto Laske Interdevelopmental Institute (IDM)

Creating Collaborative Intelligence

Otto Laske Interdevelopmental Institute (IDM)

Creating Collaborative Intelligence

Articles Guests

The Day After — From Connection Crisis to Collaborative Intelligence

By Leave a Comment

Consultants who have absorbed the Constructive Developmental Framework (CDF) are used to developing a big picture view of society, addressing in their thinking issues of societal importance. One of these professionals is my colleague Jan De Visch who has worked with CDF for more than a decade. Jan’s focus has recently been what he chose to call ‘collaborative intelligence’ in organizations, a topic that for him is an managerial, epistemological, as well as ethical one.

As his co-author of a book on Practices of Dynamic Collaboration (that appears at the end of May 2020 at Springer), I am gratified to post his recent thoughts about what the current health crisis could trigger when viewed in positive, transformational terms. Choosing the example of a Belgian company having to shut down its operations, Jan reflects on the changes that he witnessed  in how employees re-assessed the work they do, and on the new capabilities people showed in the pursuit of doing what they decided was an ethical imperative.

The new book is a sequel to our 2018 book entitled Dynamic Collaboration which can be found at www.connecttransform.be, together with a ‘Playbook’ which is a compilation of its main insights.

The day after – JDV 4-2020

New Book by Jan De Visch and Otto Laske: Practices of Dynamic Collaboration

By 1 Comment

In this new book to be published by Springer in the Spring of 2020, the authors deepen insights shared in ‘Dynamic Collaboration’ (2018) focusing on the adult-developmental foundations of 5 crucial organizational practices. A brief outline of the structure and content of the new book is posted below, together with pertinent contact information.

The central topic of the book is how by strengthening the quality of team dialogue at three different developmental levels — continuous improvement, value stream management, and business model transformation — companies can increase their agility and integrate artificial intelligence methods into their functioning. In the concluding chapter, the hypothesis is advanced that to become ‘humane’, organizations need to be ‘deliberately developmental’ throughout to begin with. This entails that they need to resolve the Taylorism-inspired worker/IT dichotomy they have been living with and acting up since 1900.

The book is in 7 chapters, each of them outlined in its content below.

Parties interested in the book may contact the authors as indicated in the pdf below.

High-level summary of Springer ‘Practices’ rev3 OL

How to Obtain Writings by Otto Laske

By Leave a Comment

Otto Laske’s contributions to social-science, process consultation, and the teaching of & mentoring in developmental thinking and listening extend from 1999 to the present day. Many of his articles, keynotes, and teaching materials in English and German, as well as translations into Spanish and Italian, have recently been posted on this website under individual BLOGS as downloadable pdfs. They are organized in the form of thematic collections. These writings are 10 or more years ahead of our time. Licensing of his work is available; so far, it has been adopted in Malaysia.

The prominent topics in Laske’s writings are:

1. Complex, dialectical, thinking as the peak of adult cognitive development, and its relevance in society today.

2. Pedagogy of dialectical thinking (methodology of learning complex dialog), exercised, taught and certified at the Interdevelopmental Institute, IDM, since 2000.

3. Theory and practice of evidence-based developmental coaching; its missed chances caused by neglecting adult cognitive development in individuals and teams by all those who boarded the social-emotional triumphalism train in the 1990s.

4. Team Coaching framed by Laske’s social-emotional team typology (2005) and based on dialectical thought form tools, for unlocking team members’ internal dialog (the basis of external team dialog as well as of team self-organization).

5. Theory and practice of linking the social-emotional (Kegan), cognitive (Basseches; Bhaskar), and psychological (H. Murray) dimensions of an adult’s profile highlighted by CDF, the Constructive-Developmental Framework.

6. German writings (original and translated, including by IDM guests).

Philosophical Orientation of Laske’s Writings

The treatment of these topics in Laske’s writings bears the imprint of German Idealism (especially of Hegel’s and Goethe’s epistemology). It derives from his studies with M. Horkheimer, Th. W. Adorno, and B. Liebrucks in the Frankfurt School (1956-66). How these topics are treated has strongly been shaped by integrating the tenets of R. Bhaskar’s Ontological Critical Realism into how dialectical thinking is taught. This holds especially for Bhaskar’s work on MELD versus ARA (1993), that is, on the inevitable fallacies of logical thinking. In the practice of CDF at IDM, Bhaskar’s work on dialectic — monological though it is — grounds mentoring in complex thinking in real-time dialog. [It is this grounding that is missing in ‘integral’ thinking no less than in in today’s reductive interpretation of ‘vertical development’ as purely social-emotional in nature.]

On a philosophical level, Laske deals with la condition humaine in the 21st century which in CDF is addressed by way of synthesizing three dimensions of adult development (ED, CD, NP), and focusing on effects of their intrinsic relationship. Where these dimensions are not distinguished, their intrinsic relationship naturally cannot be made the topic of research, which leads to the stark impoverishment of the developmental sciences we witness today.

***

Availability of Laske’s Writings

Laske’s books are available via Amazon (old editions) and by purchase from this website (new editions). Below, you’ll find some pointers to how to obtain them. Translations of his work exist in German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese.

Laske’s writings about the Constructive-Developmental Framework (CDF) derive from his 1999 dissertation entitled Transformative effects of coaching on executives’ professional agenda with Robert Kegan (Proquest order # 9930438). Articles and slide sets aside, these writings comprise 3 books: 1 on social-emotional, and 2 on cognitive development and dialectic.

  • The early editions of these writings are in book form and found at Amazon; the newer editions, in pdf form, can be purchased on this website, at https://interdevelopmentals.org/?page_id=1974. For pdf purchases from this website allow 24 hours for delivery by email.
  • The social-emotional volume exists in 5 languages:
    • English (2005; 2nd edition 2011), Measuring Hidden Dimensions: The Art and Science of Fully Engaging Adults, Amazon; 3rd edition (2017) in pdf form, )
    • German (1st edition 2010, Humanpotenziale erkennen, wecken, und messen: Amazon; pdf at https://interdevelopmentals.org/?page_id=1974)
    • French (1st edition 2012; A la decouverte du potentiel humain, Amazon; 2nd edition: pdf at https://interdevelopmentals.org/?page_id=1974)
    • Spanish (1st edition 2015; Reconocer, despertar y medir el potencial humano; 2nd edition: pdf  at https://interdevelopmentals.org/?page_id=1974).
    • Japanese, 心の隠された領域の測定成人以降の心の発達理論と測定手法 (2nd edition 2015, pdf, https://interdevelopmentals.org/?page_id=1974).
  • The cognitive volume, Measuring Hidden Dimensions of Human Systems: Foundations of Requisite Organization, is available only in English, in two editions:
    • 1st edition 2008 (Amazon).
    • 2nd edition 2017 (Alan Snow, ed.), comprising 2 parts: Measuring Hidden Dimensions of Human Systems and the Dialectical Thought Form Manual (DTFM) which can be purchased separately or together at https://interdevelopmentals.org/?page_id=1974.
  • Dialectical thinking for integral leaders: A Primer (2015; Integral Publishers) is available at Amazon. The book shows why teams composed of members with significantly different levels of cognitive development cannot self-organize, and what to do about it.

***

Most Recent Application of CDF (2018)

IDM consultation turned to work with teams in 2015. This work combines the social-emotional and cognitive dimensions of vertical development, with a focus on their intrinsic interrelationship (which is missed by focusing on one of them). IDM team coaching facilitates the balance of what Kegan-Lahey refer to as ‘Job 1’ and ‘Job 2’. This balance is most needed in non-hierarchical organizational environments which bereave contributors of internalized schemes of role- and self-identity.

The application of CDF to strengthening self-organization and collaborative intelligence in teams is described in Jan De Visch & Otto Laske’s new book entitled Dynamic collaboration: Strengthening self-organization and collaborative intelligence in teams (June 2018). This book synthesizes the social-emotional, cognitive, and psychological dimensions of CDF, bringing them to bear on a single topic, that of teams moving toward self-organization.

The book extends its purview to the societal space of collective intelligence based on its findings about, and its application of developmental and dialogical interventions to, teams. It urges the development of dialogically savvy apps by using tools of semantic intelligence. An introduction to the book, to appear in June of 2018, is found at https://interdevelopmentals.org/?p=5135. Materials useful for understanding the developmental approach followed in the book are found at https://interdevelopmentals.org/?p=5680.

The foremost practitioner of CDF in organizational work with senior managers today is Jan De Visch, Mechelen, Belgium. For his pertinent publications see http://connecttransform.be/.

 

Approfondire la conoscenza di sé e del cliente

By Leave a Comment

The first workshop on CDF, the Constructive Developmental Framework, was held in Rome in 2011, carried out in collaboration with the Italian Society for Coaching Psychology (Ida Sirolli organizer).

In the texts below, Italian readers find teaching materials and commentary for learning CDF. Translations are by Marco Di Monte and Dr. Alessandro Rossi, both students of the Interdevelopmental Institute (IDM).

So far, attempts to bring knowledge of CDF into Italian organizations have failed despite a good understanding of humanistic approaches in Italy (manifest, e.g., in Marco Minghetti’s work).

 

Forme di Pensiero Dialettico (Sirolli 2011)

Sirolli’s translation of CDF slides for the Rome seminar is too large for upload.

 

Italian Wikipedia Articel on CDF (Di Monte 2012)

 

L’Interdevelopmental Institute (Di Monte 2012)

 

Introduzzione a CDF (Di Monte 2014)

 

Nuove Strutture di Pensiero (Rossi 2016)

 

Como Sviluppare Nuove Strutture di Pensiero (Rossi 2016)

 

A Methodology for Creating a Developmentally Aware Society (Laske 2016)

This text was written by Otto Laske as part of preparations for the seminar ‘sviluppare nuove strutture di pensiero’ (2016).

 

Human Developmental Processes as Key to Creating Impactful Leadership

By Leave a Comment

Copyright 2016 by Graham Boyd & Otto Laske

In this article, the authors put forth a new approach to distributed leadership based on research in adult development and the pedagogical thought of Vygotsky, originator of the notion of zones of proximal development. The article attempts to re-totalize the issues neglected, or fragmented, by theories of holacracy and other models of shared leadership, in order to arrive at a deeper understanding of contemporary attempts to redesign organizational work in the direction of “organizations without managerial hierarchies”. In so doing, the authors leave behind present notions of “individual coaching”, “team coaching”, “managerial hierarchy”, and “organizational behavior”, among others, focusing squarely on contributors’ frame of reference (FoR; world view) that determines how they put their capabilities to work collaboratively and what their needs for developmental support are. The article’s essential argument is summarized in Tables 2a and 2b, one for each dimension of adult development.

The authors come to the conclusion that for holacracy and similar models to succeed, much more attention must be paid to the fact that unconventional organization designs challenge contributors’ self-identity and psychological well-being. They also show that a one-sided focus on tasks and competences (Task House) is counter-productive in that it neglects the crucial dimensions of how contributors make sense of the organizational environment (Organization House) and how they work to safeguard their adult-developmental goals (Self House). The articles makes a first attempt to spell out what are the deliberately developmental processes (Kegan-Lahey 2016) that must be put to work to evolve contributors’ “size of person” along with their shifting “size of role” in holacratic circles.

The article here posted is in its original form before it was streamlined for readers unfamiliar with developmental research. Palmgrave Chapter on Shared Leadership

A Developmental Agenda of Concrete Utopianism: Culture Transformation in the Anthropocene

By Leave a Comment

This text by Otto Laske and Alessandro Rossi describes the use of the Constructive Developmental Framework as a culture transformation instrument. Pragmatic implementations of CDF are geared to strengthening dialectical thinking in groups, teams, committees, and coalitions, whether commercial, academic, political, or educational, with an eye on increasing collaborative intelligence. The focus of such work is placed intoplaying “dialectical thought games” in real time, targeting a real-world problem.

The authors think that innovation has to become commensurate with the challenges now arising from the human ability to transform nature (anthropocene). Accordingly, their call to action is focused on dialectical cognition, not psychology or social-emotional development. The main topics are:

  1. The need for a new concept of human being and of work
  2. Handling complexity in the anthropocene is not “business as usual”
  3. Moving from systems thinking to transformational (dialectical) thinking has become a societal necessity
  4. Human development needs social support in the zone of proximal development
  5. Innovation requires collaborative intelligence and maturity in teams

A Developmental Agenda EN