... of the following:

• Cow
• Chicken
• Grass

Which one did you choose? It seems obvious that Grass is the one that should be eliminated, doesn't it? Well, it all depends on which part of the world you are from. With this exercise, the trend is that people from a western, anglo-saxon background will eliminite grass. Folk from an eastern and African background will eliminate the chicken because the cow has a relationship with the grass. This is a very useful exercise to use when getting a group to see the role of worldviews in their contexts.

I've often wondered why I don't pledge allegiance to one particular theoretical framework, set of practices, or tools when engaging with people and organisation's. I've wondered if it is because I'm a child of post-modernism. This is probably true, but Dave has just mentioned the concept of bounded diversity as a guiding philosophy behind building the Cognitive Edge stable of methods. This helps me understand my approach.

The idea is that there is no universal method or tool that can applied in practice, but that each philosophy, tool or practice has its own application within the boundaries of a particular context.

I like this. Context is very important in deciding what tool or technique to use.

Example ...

3M was renowned for its innovation and some time back took on 6 Sigma as a process engineering for cost effectiveness. The end result was that it thwarted its culture of innovation. Instead of throwing out 6 Sigma as useless too, the new CEO created some boundaries and took it our of product development and research divisions. He knew it was a useful tool, but only in specific context.

You can listen to a great BusinessWeek podcast on this very example.

This is the first time I'm blogging during a conference - I'll see if I can pay attention and write coherently at the same time. Instead of providing a chronological account of my time with Dave Snowden (founder of Cognitive Edge) over the next few days at Sonja's Dialogue conference in the Cognitive Edge Accreditation course.

I did the very same course roughly 18 months ago (after I had just read a couple of Dave's articles). It blew my hair back and am thankful I took some fairly rigorous notes. We're only 40mins into the day, but I can already see how Dave has improved in communicating the philosophy and background to his complex adaptive systems influences behind sense-making (making sense of the world so that we can act in it).

I do wonder though if I feel this way because I have journeyed with this thinking over the last year or so?

*He looks around the room*

Nope, people seem to be grasping this better than I did last year. Well done Dave!

Onto my next thought ...