Author: Shaun Coffey

Shaun Coffey is interested in future making and institutional building. He is an agricultural scientist who tries to integrate fragmented and sector-specific technical and scientific knowledge to address the wicked problems that characterise the real world.
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Reflection in Action: Reflection on Action. What is it that we do when we do what we do?

What is it that we do when we do what we do?

Donald Schon introduced many of us to the power of reflection in The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. He drew on earlier work by John Dewey to demonstrate how you could draw insights from experience through reflective practice. What is it? Why is it useful?

Schon defines reflective practice as the practice by which professionals become aware of their implicit knowledge base and learn from their experience. He uses three terms:

  • knowing in action
  • reflection in action
  • reflection on action
Continue reading “Reflection in Action: Reflection on Action. What is it that we do when we do what we do?”
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Places of Realised Potential

People with a commitment to potential see potential not merely as self-fulfillment but as expressing stewardship and servanthood. Is where you work a place where potential can be realised? 


A place of realised potential:

  • Opens itself to change, to contrary opinion, to the mystery of potential, to involvement, to unsettling ideas.
  • Offers people the opportunity to learn and grow.
  • Offers the gift of challenging work. 
  •  Sheds its obsolete baggage.
  •  Encourages people to decide what needs to be measured and then helps them to do the work.
  • Heals people with trust and with caring and with forgiveness.
  • Is a social environment – people in places of realised potential know that organisations are social environments.
  •  Celebrates.

Source : Max De Pree (1997)  Leading without power. Finding hope in serving community.  Jossey-Bass  ISBN-13: 978-0787910631

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You “never arrive”; you spend your life mastering disciplines

“To practice a discipline is to be a lifelong learner.  You “never arrive”; you spend your life mastering disciplines. You can never say, “we are a learning organisation,” any more than you can say “I am an enlightened person.”  The more you learn, the more acutely aware you become of your ignorance.  Thus, a corporation cannot be “excellent” in the sense of having arrived at a permanent excellence; it is always in the state of practicing the disciplines of learning, of becoming better or worse.”  Peter Senge 1990 The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization Doubleday Business. p.11

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Seeking to be Creative? Listen with spirit

Wisdom, insight, change and action come not from better thinking, testing and strategising, but from letting go, receiving and listening.  

Group creativity appears to exhibit a common spirit revealing itself. The vehicle for receiving this insight or connecting with spirit, is a quality of detached, selfless openness. It is like emptying oneself or creating a vessel for receiving and containing spirit.  

Source:  Levine L (1994) Listening with spirit and the art of team dialogue. Journal of organisational change management. 7(1):61-73