Critical Thinking and Business ReDesign Day 1

Clay? Giant Drawing Tablets that I will have to bring to class all the time?

I have some obvious reservations with this class, which have a basis in frustrations I find in rhetoric speak. I was reminded by a classmate that this is a REdesign course and is suppose to get people to think differently than the traditional business model. At the same time I feel the language is not different, it has its home in privilege Caucasian Northern California. The idea where now that they made their money and having their farms they can tell us how it is all wrong and we shouldn't pursue the same path they did.

I want to be more open minded than where I am at now but it is frusterating.

I do appreciate how it opens my mind up to my classmates. I find it fascinating that I now know more about my 20 cohorts in one day than I do my coworkers at a company I worked with for over a year.

Okay to go over what we did. I couldn't take class notes much, due to me trying to find some groundation

Goethe - Handness within Phenomenological Observation. The purpose of this exercise is to find new ways of introduction besides just a name and occupation. We took clay, went outside and collected pieces from nature to create who we were in the past, present, future. In retrospect this was a great way to get to know the important parts of my classmates. I know who has kids who are dear to them, I know who has totally shifted careers, and who is still trying to find their careers. I placed my clumps in the order of: dotcom kid, union activist, HR woman. This overall helped me to really understand a majority of my classmates.

Intro to SenseMaking Framework of Dave Snowden, systems game
This I found intriguing, a way to deal with problems/ issues by categorizing them as Simple, Complex, Complicated, and Chaotic.
Ways to Explain
Simple - Known Cause and Effect, know your way out: Sense, Act, Respond
Complicated - unknown cause: Sense, Analyze it, Respond
Complex - there is no solution, place in probes to find what works i.e. Climate Change
Probe, Sense, Respond
Chaotic - No pattern at all, create a path: Act, Sense, Respond

This practice I think really assist us when we are dealing with huge global issues like climate change and trying to assert the solutions to businesses. Great line from class, "When you got a problem, work out where it begins."

Systems Game : Our class split into two groups with two lead people and the rest of the two groups ran around in odd ways on the lawn and the two leads had to figure out what the group was doing. Recess Business School Style

The discussion then went towards Transformative experiences and we were to take one event in our life that changed us forever and create a graph showing the events. Within that we were also to come up with our Near Gifts and True Gifts. This one rung true for me because I placed my "maturity" factor in the column of Near Gifts.

Then we found our Trio partners, and talked.