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Every time you learn a new word you learn a new precision in your thinking... |
Key words and terms
Needless misunderstanding, ambiguity and conflict can occur when language and key terms are used without checking that their meaning is understood and shared. Failure to confirm meaning of the words that are important in our work together can seriously limit our ability to create and communicate ideas, reasoning and our intentions, which are the foundation of our creating and working together.
We can save a lot of time, sharpen our reasoning abilities, and communicate with each other more effectively if we watch for disagreements about the meaning of words and try to resolve them whenever we can. This glossary is provided to clarify the meaning attributed to key terms used in this SI&I website.
We welcome your suggestions for additions to this list.
Bad behaviour can taint the useful meaning of words like Leadership, Democracy, Power, Winning, Development. At the end of the Glossary are terms whose socially accepted meaning could usefully be re-defined.
Needless misunderstanding, ambiguity and conflict can occur when language and key terms are used without checking that their meaning is understood and shared. Failure to confirm meaning of the words that are important in our work together can seriously limit our ability to create and communicate ideas, reasoning and our intentions, which are the foundation of our creating and working together.
We can save a lot of time, sharpen our reasoning abilities, and communicate with each other more effectively if we watch for disagreements about the meaning of words and try to resolve them whenever we can. This glossary is provided to clarify the meaning attributed to key terms used in this SI&I website.
We welcome your suggestions for additions to this list.
Bad behaviour can taint the useful meaning of words like Leadership, Democracy, Power, Winning, Development. At the end of the Glossary are terms whose socially accepted meaning could usefully be re-defined.
Actions
Specific steps to achieve a goal or objective.
Active Listening
Active listening is a way of listening and responding to another person that improves mutual understanding. Often when people talk to each other, they don’t listen attentively. They are often distracted, half listening, half thinking about something else. Not listening to respond, but listening to understand and remember. Short TED talk on listening better - Julian Treasure: 5 ways to listen better
Assertiveness
Assertiveness means expressing your point of view in a way that is clear and direct, while still respecting others. Communicating in an assertive manner can help you to minimise conflict, to control anger, to have your needs better met, and to have more positive relationships with friends, family and others. For good information go to WAHealth resources.
Agency
Agency describes the human capacity to choose among options, mobilise energy and take deliberate action based on personal considerations and plans. in this understanding, the individual is seen as engaging in a proactive relationship with his or her world: people are able to take initiatives and to take life in their own hands. individuals can act out their own intentions, which are based on active interaction with the social and material environment and not only governed by outside impulses or ‘destiny’.
Belief
Confidence that a particular model is an accurate description of reality, based upon what you know. It's a bit like the betting odds on a particular outcome. Our description of gravity appears to be pretty good, so it might be odds-on favourite that an apple will fall from a branch to the ground.
Belief can be seen as premature knowledge based on insufficient observation and/or insufficient processing. A mistake is acting on premature knowledge based on insufficient observation and/or insufficient processing. Confucius thought that a lie is having full knowledge, and deliberately misrepresenting that knowledge.
Capacity vs. Capability vs. Competency
Ability, capability, and capacity are synonyms in many of their uses. All are frequently used to refer to one’s power to perform an action. Capacity carries a sense of volume or quantity. Capacity is often considered to be inborn, whilst ability is learned. Capability tends to refer to extremes: to have the capability to write a 10 page essay by tomorrow. One can either do it or not do it. Ability is more of a continuum. I might have the ability to write a novel, but I wouldn't say I have the capability. In general usage the terms are used interchangeably. Capacity also includes external factors. A person might have the skills and knowledge to perform but without necessary resources and support they cannot be successful.
Capability can also be defined as mastery over a range of tasks or functions acquired through experience (professional and personal) and training (formal and informal). The term ‘capability’ is differentiated from ‘competency’ which is seen as an ability to undertake a range of tasks or functions. In this sense capability can be seen as a meta-competency that integrates the relevant competencies, experience and knowledge into a coherent set of behaviours.
Community of Practice vs Network
Consider communities and networks as two aspects of social structures in which learning takes place. The network aspect refers to the set of relationships, personal interactions, and connections among participants who have personal reasons to connect. A network can be viewed as a set of nodes and links with affordances for learning, such as information flows, helpful linkages, joint problem solving, and knowledge creation. The community aspect refers to the development of a shared identity around a topic or set of challenges. It represents a collective intention – however tacit and distributed – to steward a domain of knowledge and to sustain learning about it.
Consensus decision making
is a creative and dynamic way of reaching agreement between all members of a group. Instead of simply voting for an item and having the majority of the group getting their way, a group using consensus is committed to finding solutions that everyone actively supports, or at least can live with
Continuous Improvement and Innovation (CI&I)
A shared process that enables individuals, teams, businesses, networks, projects and organisations to focus their thinking and action to achieve improvements and innovations regularly and frequently.
Critical Success Factors
Those few things (3-6) that must go well to ensure success / key jobs that must be done exceedingly well to be successful (from Daniel 1961). In any organization certain factors will be critical to the success of an initiative, in the sense that, if objectives associated with the factors are not achieved, the initiative will fail – perhaps catastrophically so. Consider the corollary: Critical Failure Factors - conditions which, when present, ensure failure. CSFs are the few areas where things must go right for the initiative or organisation to flourish. If results in these areas are not adequate, results will be less than desired. These areas need constant and careful attention from management. CSFs relate strongly to mission and strategic goals of an initiative. Whereas mission and goals focus on the aims and what is to be achieved, CSFs focus on the most important areas to get to the very heart of both what is to be achieve and how you will achieve it. History.
Critical Thinking
"Critical thinking is a desire to seek, patience to doubt, fondness to meditate, slowness to assert, readiness to consider, carefulness to dispose and set in order; and hatred for every kind of imposture" - Francis Bacon (1605)
Design
Design is a process that leads to an outcome. For example, before building a house we design it by developing a blueprint that provides a level of detailed thinking that considers how all the parts work together to achieve an outcome. This is distinct from planning which is merely the allocation of time and resources.
Document
Any self-contained unit of information independent of its instantiation in physical or digital form.
Dunbar's Number
Anthropologist Robin Dunbar suggests that the average person can only maintain about 150 primary, I-care-you-care relationships. The simple reason for this is that we reach certain cognitive limits, and because there is simply not enough time for more without diffusing the quality of all relationships. Obviously, the number is fuzzy, because with changes in culture come changes in relationships, and because relationships themselves are difficult to define precisely because they are not quantifiable. But if we assume 150 as a hypothetical constant, variable across some range, then the range itself is a valid premise for a few conclusions. For implications read...
Emotion
Refers to a feeling and the distinctive thoughts associated with it, along with the psychological and biological states that, all together, predispose a person to act (Goleman, 1995). For a leader, the challenge is to help herself, and group members, identify their emotions and the source, and express them in a way that contributes to - rather than detracts from - group effectiveness.
Emotional Intelligence
The ability to be aware of and manage your emotions, to use your emotions in motivating yourself to achieve goals, to have empathy for others, and to effectively deal with emotions in your relationships with others. If a group does not deal with emotion productively, it negatively affects the group's performance, the ability to work together in the future, and the individual's personal and professional development. A leader can help a group shift from being afraid of dealing with their emotions to helping them use emotion to improve the quality of their work and their relationship. Goleman, 1995. Slaovey and Mayer, 1990.
Empirical
Relying on or derived from observation or experiment. Verifiable or provable by means of observation or experiment. Sometime of or being a philosophy emphasising practical experience and observation as part of scientific theory.
Epistomology
The theory of knowledge, especially with regard to its methods, validity, and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion.
Focus
A specific area, with boundaries on which to concentrate attention, thinking, feelings and action to meet a specific need, opportunity or solve a problem for a clear SMARTT outcome goal.
Focus is your ability to centre your attention and energy on a specific task, object, or activity, for a sustained length of time. It allows you to shut out distractions, so that you can work persistently to achieve a desired state or goal.
Fractal
Fractal is a term invented by Benoit Mandelbrot to describe complex patterns which also have an element of repetition. An example is a cauliflower or broccoli, where a stem taken from the main vegetable will itself look like a miniature main vegetable. The key lesson is that underneath complexity SIMPLE RULES ARE OPERATING. The critical issues for leaders facing complexity is to identify and understand the underlying simple rules. These will differ depending on context. But they will be there.
Goal
The clear short; medium and/or long-term clear SMARTT outcome goal/s towards which resources and effort are directed. Broad and measurable, goals when achieved support the accomplishment of the mission.
Grassroots Innovation
Grassroots innovations are networks of activists and organisations generating novel bottom–up solutions for sustainable development; solutions that respond to the local situation and the interests and values of the communities involved (Seyfang and Smith, 2007; p.585). Grassroots innovations differ from technology or market innovations in a sense that they usually have motives for creating social good rather than pure monetary profits (Seyfang and Smith, 2007). This in turn can give an opportunity to the development of new social experiments that would not have been developed or implemented in a purely profit-driven context (Verheul and Vergragt, 1995).
Heuristics
In psychology, heuristics are simple, efficient rules which people often use to form judgments and make decisions. They are mental shortcuts that usually involve focusing on one aspect of a complex problem and ignoring others.
Hypothesis
Either a suggested explanation for an observable phenomenon, or a reasoned prediction of a possible causal correlation among multiple phenomena. In scientific reasoning, a hypothesis is constructed before any applicable research has been done. A theory, on the other hand, is supported by evidence: it's a principle formed as an attempt to explain things that have already been substantiated by data. theories often integrate and generalize many hypotheses. For example, the theory of natural selection broadly applies to all populations with some form of ... A hypothesis is a proposed explanation for something that can actually be tested. But "if you just ask anyone what a hypothesis is, they just immediately say 'educated guess'.
Improvement vs. Innovation
Improvements are enhanced practices, processes, systems, products or services, whereas innovations are new practices, processes, systems, products or services. Both must add real value.
Information
Anything we can study or anything that informs. A collection of notions, rather than a single coherent concept. (Geoff Nunberg: Farewell to the Information Age)
Infrastructure
The means through which an organisation makes available resources to support people in their work. Just as in building a house a contractor must develop mechanisms to get the right building materials and bring them to site, builders of learning organisations must develop and improve infrastructural mechanisms so that people have the resources they need: time, management support, money, information, ready contact with colleagues, and more.
Innovation
New practices, processes, systems, products or services that add value. Compare with 'improvement'.
Intent
A thing that an individual, team, project or business aims to achieve.
Leadership
The art and process of influencing people to strive together, willingly, to achieve shared goals.
Leadership is not just for people in positions of power. Everyone leads every day. It starts with the leading the self, leading family and friends and, if developed, then leading/influencing the world. It is not the domain of super-heroes. It is the responsibility of everyone.
Mechanisms
The means (includes systems, processes, practices and tools) by which something is achieved.
Methodology
A system of methods and mechanisms used in a set and sequence, to achieve specific goals.
Methods
A means or manner of procedure, system, process, practice and mechanisms to achieve specific goals
Mission
The purpose of an organisation. A mission describes what an organisation does, who it does it for and the benefits provided. A mission is not a time-bound objective.
Momentum
The force, quality, motion, impetus and velocity for the goal
Need
A present and compelling reason for doing anything. An important or urgent personal, project, business, community or industry requirement, that must be addressed in order to achieve specific goals.
Network
A purposeful, value-adding partnership based on reciprocal transactions between partners that facilitate the exchange of experience and knowledge between members of the network. See also Communities of Practice.
Objectives
Specific, quantifiable, lower-level targets that indicate the accomplishment of a goal.
Operations
A set and sequence of actions and tools/mechanisms to achieve specific goals.
Opportunity
A set of alternatives, options, prospects or ideas for advancement or greater success in achieving a goal.
Organise
To create capabilities by intentionally imposing order and structure.
Organising system
An intentionally arranged collection of resources and the interactions they support.
Partnership
Partnership is a dynamic, interdependent relationship between individuals or groups, usually involving close cooperating that is characterised by understood, mutual and specified intentions, purposes, roles, rights and responsibilities.
Personal Efficacy
People's beliefs in their capability to exercise control over their own functioning and over environmental events (Bandura 1997). Efficacy beliefs are the foundation of human agency. Unless people believe that they ca produce desired results by their actions, they have little incentive to act or to persevere in the face of difficulties. Self Efficacy Beliefs regulate human functioning through their impact on cognitive, motivational, emotional, and choice processes. They determine whether people think pessimistically or optimistically, or in self-enhancing or self-debilitating ways. They play a central role in the self-regulation of motivation through goal challenges and outcome-expectations. People will only act on goals if they believe they can succeed. On the basis of efficacy beliefs people choose what challenges to undertake, how much effort to make, how long to persevere in the face of obstacles or failures, and whether 'failures' are motivating or demoralising. Therefore, efficacy beliefs shape the course of people's lives by influencing the activities and environments people choose to enter. By choosing environments, people can influence what they become.
Personal Mastery
"People with a high level of personal mastery are able to consistently realize the results that matter most deeply to them" and they "live in a continual learning mode. They never ‘arrive’. Sometimes, language, such as the term ‘personal mastery’ creates a misleading sense of definiteness, of black and white. But personal mastery is not something you possess. It is a process. It is a lifelong discipline. People with a high level of personal mastery are acutely aware of their ignorance, their incompetence, their growth areas. And they are deeply self-confident. Paradoxical? Only for those who do not see the ‘journey is the reward’." (Senge 1990: 142)
Perspicuous
An adjective describing language that is clear and easy to understand. When you give a presentation, you should speak in a perspicuous manner so that everyone will be able to follow you. Someone who is perspicuous speaks in a way that makes the meaning absolutely clear. I love this word. When used it seems to deliver the opposite of its meaning.
Project
A piece of planned work or activity that is completed over a period of time and intended to achieve a particular aim.
Purpose
A clear and compelling statement about where we are going to guide us to do our best possible work. A direction, but not necessarily a destination, to allow for adjustment as a clearer understanding of reality emerges through the work. Continually check the purpose statement is still valid and true and adjust to changing need and learning as you go. Extrinsic purpose is something determined by a human, as opposed to teleology, the philosophical doctrine that final causes, design, and purpose exist in nature.
Practices
A set and sequence of key actions and tools/mechanisms to achieve specific goals.
Principles
Accepted rules about how people or things function and behave. They provide guidelines for the taking of action and the implementation of systems and processes. The principles one follows are based on the assumptions we make about how the world operates and also embrace core values. They reflect long-term intentions but are not necessarily permanent.
"As to methods there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Process
A set and sequence of specified steps, mechanisms and actions for achieving a specific result.
Productivity
The ratio of outputs divided by inputs. Improving productivity means more immediate outputs can be delivered with fewer inputs, one way of realising increased value for money.
Promiscuous
Lacking discrimination, an un-selective, confused or casual approach; using something without consideration of its best meaning or purpose. For example, the promiscuous use of theories or terms inappropriately, for purposes or in places so that their meaning becomes confused and the power of their effect becomes diluted.
Scenarios
A tool for ordering one's perceptions about alternative future environments in which one's decisions might play out. Scenarios encourage the exploration of multiple "futures" and the perceptive development of decisions or strategies that will serve the uncertain future well. (Schwarz 1996, van der Heijden 1996). Plausible, coherent stories about the future aimed at making sense of uncertain issues, and clarifying strategic options for decision-makers. Scenarios provide a non-threatening environment for exploring multiple perspectives, creating a shared language and leading to understanding and trust.
Solipsism
The philosophical idea that only one's mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind.
Strategy
Strategic Planning is the process of defining an organisation's plans for achieving its mission. A strategy is directional in nature; although descriptions and analysis of the present situation are included, a strategic plan does not merely endorse the status quo, it directs change of some kind (Cassidy 2006).
A systematic, long term plan or course of action designed to achieve specific outcomes, and to deal with uncertain future circumstances which could impact on the achievement of the outcomes. "In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things." - Miyamoto Musashi, samurai warrior. "Industry executives and analysts often mistakenly talk about strategy as if it were some kind of chess match. But in chess, you have just two opponents, each with identical resources, and with luck playing a minimal role. The real world is much more like a poker game, with multiple players trying to make the best of whatever hand fortune has dealt them." —David Moschella 1999.
Sustainable Improvement and Innovation (SI&I)
A system model that is designed to achieve and sustain successes, improvements and innovations.
System
A group of interacting, interrelated parts which form a complex and unified whole, and that operate together for a common purpose.
Systems Thinking Frames issues, clarifies interdependencies and causalities between system elements and leads to the identification of important intervention points for stakeholders to enact change. See Systems Thinking for Leadership page.
Tactics
A set and sequence of key actions and methods/mechanisms to achieve specific goals.
Team
A small number of people, committed to work together for a common goal with individual skills, roles and responsibilities.
Techniques
A set and sequence of key items to achieve specific goals.
Technology
Development and application of tools, machines, materials and processes that help to address needs and problems. A technology consists of two essential components: a ‘hardware’ aspect, consisting of the tools, materials and mechanisms that embody the technology, and a ‘software’ aspect, consisting of the information base or process in which the tool is embedded so that it can be more easily integrated and applied in a management system.
Theory
In science, a theory is a tested, well-substantiated, unifying explanation for a set of verified, proven factors. As opposed to 'hypothesis'. A scientific theory is an explanation of some aspect of the natural world that has been substantiated through repeated experiments or testing. For more on the mis-use of scientific words read...
Tool
Any instrument designed for a specific purpose that makes achieving a goal more effective and/or easier. A tool is neither an input or an output. It is usually not consumed during the process. Marshall McLuhan famously said "We shape our tools. And then our tools shape us." McLuhan was referring to the fact that our social practices co-evolve with our use of new tools and the refinements we make to existing tools. It is a good warning to be careful and purposeful in our selection and use of tools.
Values
Are a measure of the ultimate worth of a thing or an action. They can represent principles, standards, or rules of conduct derived from one’s worldview.
Vision
An ideal an entity intends to pursue. A vision links the entity to the future and is a source of inspiration. It can be broader than the entity's capabilities. description of what you want to exist in the mid-term or long-term future if your goals are successfully achieved.
World View
Worldviews are sets of basic beliefs, images, and values that make up a way of looking at and making sense of the world around us. They shape how we interpret and interact with our environment and other people. A set of assumptions about reality.
Fractal is a term invented by Benoit Mandelbrot to describe complex patterns which also have an element of repetition. An example is a cauliflower or broccoli, where a stem taken from the main vegetable will itself look like a miniature main vegetable.
Claiming back the positive power of terms
Developer
Say 'developer' and many people would describe a member of the 'white-shoe brigade', building Spanish villas on exploitable land around the world; turning communities into a carbon copies of somewhere else. However, the beautiful word 'developer' originates from 'de-vellum'. A vellum is a seed coat that can hold the seed in stasis until conditions are right for its growth. To de-vellum is to remove the husk that prevents the natural qualities of a seed expressing itself and becoming the unique being its DNA has planned for it. A developer has the responsibility to provide the conditions for the seed to be what it is best designed for. Like a gardener, the developer removes obstacles, waters and nourishes the organism so it can grow strong and fruitful. The gardener does not try to make a cabbage a rose, nor a rose a cabbage.
Education
Often seen as the act of transferring one set of ideas to another, the root of the word comes from 'educe' to draw out. So it can be more usefully seen, like development, as the act of drawing out the inherent knowledge and potential of another person.
Leadership
It is time to turn the perception of leading as being done by someone in a position of authority to being something we all do everyday. The more leadership done, the better quality leadership we have, the greater our chance of dealing with some of the great challenges coming at us this century. It is important that we all develop our leadership skills, starting by leading ourselves first.
Power
Power has come to be seen negatively as 'power over'. However, in science, power means 'work done' or 'energy converted'. We can see power as our ability to convert our energy expended into worthwhile outcomes, a very useful concept indeed.
Theory
The word “theory” has a considerably different meaning in normal conversation than in a scientific context. In daily non-scientific discourse the connotation for “theory” is that of a belief or a passing thought and not comparable to what you learn in a science class. Before something is accepted as a scientific theory, it must be an idea that is peer reviewed, tested by multiple independent methods, have repeatable and consistent results observed, and be intensely scrutinised by some of the brightest minds in the field. This is where scientific theory and a simple belief are wildly different. A person can hold to certain beliefs her whole life and never test them, but science only survives and is useful if it is tested again and again. While any person is free keep an unsubstantiated belief that makes them feel good; to stubbornly hang onto it whether or not it is objectively true, in science if an idea or hypothesis is shown to be false, science rejects it. It is either revised or completely thrown away and not revisited. In leadership, we may form hypotheses based on our own limited experience of life. Our hypotheses can be tested through repeated personal experiment or against the perspectives of others. Using a rigorous process, such as Action Learning, can help us move closer to the practices of science can give us greater confidence in the usefulness of assumptions, beliefs and hypotheses on which we base our thinking and plans. The more reliable our assumptions and beliefs, the closer they are to 'truth', the more likely our plans will yield the results we want.
Win
Some think that to win, others must lose. However, if we think win-win, we can negotiate and strategise to achieve the needs of all players, more of the time.