Tag Archives: sensemaking

Sensemaking and portfolios – two important concepts when facing wicked and complex problems

In 2013, Richard Hummelbrunner and Harry Jones asked: “How can policy makers, managers and practitioners best plan in the face of complexity?”

Seven years later the search for answers to that question continues through different initiatives and programmes. For example, the Doing Development Differently Manifesto was published at the end of 2014. Matt Andrews and his colleagues at the Building State Capability program launched a successful online course on Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation and published a book in 2017. David Booth has written extensively about the adaptive and iterative approach of the Coalitions For Change programme of The Asia Foundation in The Philippines.

Arnaldo Pellini

So, where are we in this discussion? What are the challenges around transitioning ideas from complexity into projects and programmes? To answer these questions I have reached out to Arnaldo Pellini, founder of Capability, to hear about his experiences working with development initiatives and discuss some of the open questions we are yet to answer.

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Five reasons why using narrative is important for understanding social change

In this post I want to share the five reason I have found so far why using narrative is central to understanding and engaging in social change. In an earlier article, I described different types of narrative and different types of working with stories.

Narratives are central in how we humans organise our society. Gossiping about others allows us to exchange reliable information about who can be trusted, who’s behaviour is acceptable and who is behaving in a ‘bad’ way. Talking about metaphors, legends and myths gives us a common framework of meaning. Weaving life-lessons into stories that get repeated again and again helps us to learn how to behave and become accepted members of a society.

The intention of this post is for me to bring some weeks of reading on narrative together, it is not yet the final word. What’s in here will no doubt further develop and I would appreciate your comments and thoughts – and links to further sources.

So, after this disclaimer, here the five reasons I have come up with. Continue reading