Tag: Shared Leadership

This Spring, the second editions of Laske's Measuring Hidden Dimensions: Foundations of Requisite Organization (2008) as well as its associated Manual of Dialectical Thought Forms (2008) appears under Publications on this site. Both publications can be downloaded for a nominal price at While the first text, referred to as MHD2, introduces crucial concepts for managing the digitization of business and grasp the challenges posed by new, non-hierarchical organization designs, the Manual is a much needed set of tools for "meta-thinking". Meta-thinking, or "thinking about thinking", is not a philosophical past-time but rather a way of thinking critically and complexly. Using Meta-thinking, what is said, the content of a communication, can be reflected upon, critiqued, and elaborated in terms of the quality and complexity of thinking that gave rise it. Imagine you work with a real or virtual team and are focusing on enhancing collaborative intelligence: what better tool could you possibly wish for? For instilling meta-thinking in individuals or teams, it is helpful to know where DTFM comes from. This is spelled out in some detail in the 2017 Acknowledgements recently written by Otto Laske who speaks to the history and relevance of this priceless tool for "agile" and "hyper-"... 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...

In this article, I highlight the resources of the Constructive Developmental Framework (CDF) for finding and retaining organizational talent and designing a work environment that supports shared leadership. CDF as a Talent Finder and Work Design Methodology Read More...