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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... Read More...

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 Read More...

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... Read More...

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).   Read More...

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... Read More...

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