Elevating Human‑Centered Design Flawlessly
Human‑Centered Design (HCD) is not new, but it’s experiencing a resurgence in popularity as organizations look for ways to shape how they build products, services, and workplaces that genuinely serve human needs in the AI era. And for those exploring HCD, you might want to consider Peter Block’s Flawless…
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Moving from Inspiration to InspirACTION
You’re inspired. There’s a feeling, a spark, or a shift in perspective. It’s often emotional, intuitive, and imaginative. Inspiration gives you energy or clarity, but in and of itself, it doesn’t necessarily create change. We often stop at inspiration – great ideas, renewed hope, vivid envisioning – but…
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The Internal Consultant’s Dilemma
If you’re a consultant inside an organization, you have some unique consulting challenges. One of them is navigating effective work agreements across departments and even within your own. While we want everyone to be on the same page, it’s not uncommon to see work not go as planned.
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Avoiding Assumptions as a Flawless Consultant
By Amanda Cole Sometimes, avoiding assumptions is best. A swirl of leaves circles our feet as my two sons and I walk down the sidewalk near our house on a beautiful, crisp fall day. My four- and two-year-old boys’ legs have carried them an extra-long way, so I know we’re…
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Departing Leadership: Welcoming Connectors
We live in a moment with low levels of trust in government and the institutions that serve society. There are rising concerns about safety, accessible health care, livelihood, higher and lower education, the land and environment. This indicates that our existing structures for supporting the common good, democracy, and…
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How Flawless Consulting gave me confidence to be useful rather than helpful
By Amanda Cole “Let’s try something different this time around,” we thought. My husband and I packed our two kids up and headed to the airport for my upcoming work trip to lead sales onboarding training for Quest Diagnostics. I usually left on my own, but we thought we’d get…
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Choosing the Path of Most Resistance
You’ve likely heard the saying, “I’ll take the path of least resistance.” For those who want to avoid conflict, it often appears to be the best way forward. In consulting however, choosing the path of least resistance is often the one that will lead your project to…
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Departing a Culture of Control Where PeopleAre Objects and Order Reigns Supreme: Making the Ordinary Significant
By Peter Block The ways we get things done, the ways in which we organize effort, even towards the commons, are increasingly disturbing. Whether in our governance structures, the private sector indexes, the style of philanthropy, or wherever you spend your days, all are subject to patterns of…
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Connection is the Content
When we think about learning, most of us focus on the material in front of us. We expect information, models, or frameworks to be at the center. That’s how most of us were taught: the content is the point, and connection is secondary. But in practice, the opposite is true.
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Tattoos of the Mind
Transformation can be thought of in different ways. A shift in story, in narrative, in worldview, in science, in consciousness. It means that something in our life and world and community is profoundly changing. For each period of change it is useful to find artifacts that…
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