Capturing experiences from South America, East Asia & the Middle East

As many of you know, over the last few months we’ve been collecting interviews from around the world for a short film we’re making on expressive change. Although we are in the process of wrapping up the crowd-sourcing phase of the project, we are keeping the door open for interviews from South America, East Asia, and the Middle East in hopes that [. . .]

In practice

If you are looking for ways to introduce the concept and practice of expressive change into your organization, check out these “conversation deepeners”. They are the first in a collection of self-guided learning materials that we’re developing. They are designed for a small group of people within the same organization to do together and can be done in any order.

The experience of school

Critics of modern schooling like John Taylor Gatto and Ivan Illich have recognized that the fundamental curriculum that schools teach us is school itself. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately since moving to South Africa, where school reform has become a nation-wide calling. The initiatives that feel most promising to me are the ones that are digging under the layers a bit- looking at ways of transforming […]

Seeking beta-testers

Over the past several months, we’ve started to see our vision for a self-guided curriculum on expressive change come to life. A number of people have volunteered to beta-test the sessions we’ve developed so far, and the testimonials have been so encouraging that we’ve decided to expand our pool of beta-testers to […]

The form trap

Check out this talk that Warren gave at Tedx Cape Town on an idea we feel is worth spreading!

The biggest challenge the world is facing is not how to create change but how to sustain change, and if we want to sustain change we are mostly paying attention to the wrong things, particularly inside our social purpose organizations and social movements…

Ending the year on an exciting note

You might have noticed that we’ve been a little less talkative at Organization Unbound lately. It’s not because we’re scared speechless that the world is about to end, but because we’ve been hard at work on a new project: A self-guided curriculum to deepen and spread the practice of expressive change.

The frenzy

I find myself returning so often to these words of Thomas Merton that I figured it would be worth dedicating a blog post to them: “There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist fighting for peace by non-violent methods most easily succumbs […]

Gestalt at the South African Treasury Department

I’m stumbling along, trying my best to remain in the single file line the path has forced us to form. We crest the hillside, overlooking a quiet river freckled with boulders and dragonflies. I overhear Jonathan and Kirsten chatting in front of me. They are introducing themselves, having only just met on this day hike organized through the Cape Town Hiking Group. I hear Kirsten say that she works for the National Treasury […]

Nothing left to fight against

In this short reflection titled “Nothing to Fight Against”, Zenkei Blanche Hartman, a political activist-turned-Zen monk, describes the turmoil she felt when she confronted the disconnect between her deepest values and her experience of activism. It is a good reminder that organizational incoherence is not simply an abstraction about social change. It often manifests itself […]

What if an art gallery was itself a work of art?

“Is it possible that creativity in arts organisations not be limited to the gallery space?”

Anne Bertrand has been flirting with this question for as many years as I have known her. When we first met almost a decade ago, she was asking it from a place of frustration. She had spent several years working for an artist-run organization and was feeling quite disheartened as a result. How can it be, she would say to me in exasperation, that […]