Tag: Jan De Visch

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 article, the author proposes structural, rather than behavioral or emotional, measures of team connectivity and introduces the notion of "cognitive" or "structural" systems constellations. These measures are derived from DTF, his Dialectical Thought Framework, a methodology rooted in cognitive developmental research since 1975. In contrast to the contemporary team literature, and in a follow up of an article co-authored with Graham Boyd on Distributed Leadership found in a book forthcoming at Palmgrave Publishers, UK, (#aboutBook), the author focuses on measuring team connectivity based on a team's cognitive behavior graph in real time. The author teaches DTF to both individuals, especially as coaches, and teams, in hands-on workshops in English and German, and with the help of a translator also in Spanish and Italian. TF Constellations 2 Read More...

You are invited to join a webinar held on 16 November 2015 18:00 - 19:00 GMT The Speaker is Jan De Visch, a graduate of the Interdevelopmental Institute and the Managing Director of Connect and Transform, also Executive Professor Human Capital Enterpreneurial MBA, Flanders Business School (at the Catholic Univertisty of Leuven) DESCRIPTION OF THE WEBINAR The potential of circular economy projects remains unlocked in many organisations. Although many organisations have started interdisciplinary collaborations, their networks' capacities remain under-utilised. This is not due to lack of 'intelligence' of people and neither their communication skills or ability to use systems methodologies. So there are other barriers to achieve emerging collaboration and more integrative decision making for circular economy or other complex projects. This session will investigate these. Beyond Systems Thinking articulates how you can start pondering about how to think versus what to think. By focusing on classes of thought forms it becomes clear that different levels of systemic thinking exist. They can be characterized by differences in fluidity of thinking. The diversity in fluidity of thinking in teams determines whether or not they will succeed in rethinking their perspectives and come to a more holistic decision making, addressing systemic, circular... Read More...

Dear IDM Friend, May I invite you to attend the International Workshop on Rewiring Team Dynamics: Building Collective Intelligence  in Mechelen (Belgium) from June 17th - June 19th . The way we work is changing. So is the nature of teamwork at all levels in the organization changing. The age of ‘command & control’ in teamwork is shifting towards a ‘collaborate & communicate’ approach. We all know that innovation and creativity mainly takes place in a collaborative context. Nevertheless teamwork remains for a lot of organizations a confounding mystery. Diversity is rarely used in the most effective way. Most of the team’s potential remains unlocked. Otto Laske and myself have developed an approach that reveals the principles by which we can unlock the potential of colleagues, that can release the creative potential of your organization. Building upon the Constructive Developmental Framework we have developed a set of tools both practical yet deep in wisdom. The Workshop ‘Rewiring Team Dynamics’ helps you practice ways by which to create collective intelligence and reveals the learnable art of thinking productively together. The workshop is based on a system of thought forms that help team members unravel their own resources for thinking in a... Read More...

One of the new IDM initiatives is a 'Rewiring Team Dynamics' workshop which will be organized as a three day seminar in April 2015, near Brussels/Belgium. The key question is: How can we create groups that can learn from mistakes faster, more efficiently, and more consistently than competitors do?' The background of this question is the simple observation that a lot of groups systematically under-perform. They do not make good decisions and they do not solve complex problems in a collaborative way. Traditional Team Building Traditional team building interventions, which are mainly behaviorally focused, do not seem to work when team members are highly developed (especially when they are knowledge workers). The top interventions advised from a behavioral point of view are: foster constructive debate in meetings push back when consensus forms to quickly use devil's advocate thinking look for competing explanations to challenge your observations get some distance, step away, and then try again in order to recognize and interpret complex data use visual graphs or flowcharts to juxtapose the larger picture with the individual puzzle pieces reframe situations and always examine several more options use impromptu meetings when time is limited to generate more options, including unconventional choices... Read More...

J. De Visch's Leadership-- Mind(s) Creating Value J. De Visch's Leadership-- Mind(s) Creating Value Jan DeVisch continues to plow the depth of dialectical thinking to restructure and refine corporate conversations. This writer is excellently prepared for the task, since his professional career has long been focused on issues of global concern both for and regarding large organizations. Read More...