This is an ugly story, though personally I think it is rather beautiful… Greetings. I’m an asshole (spelled arse-hole in England). I’m not speaking figuratively. I’m speaking literally. How am I managing to talk to you? Out of my ass? Certainly not. There is no ass for me to talk out of – just the…
Plundering Language in the Name of Performance
Do we really redeem language from safe mediocrity when we allow superlatives to flow like water, rather than wine. We have created the language equivalent of a European wine lake, devalued or even unvalued, only fit to be washed down the sink hole of hyperbole. If just about everything is “awesome” then a real sense…
Square Hedz on Change 3
One of my cartoons… (Cartoon by Paul Levy, drawing by Jakki Talmadge) Visit the Change Management Zone
There’s a Stranger Who Wants To Meet You
There’s a stranger who wants to meet you. And that stranger is you. There’s a belief that, after you die, a part of you survives and continues in a new state of consciousness, transcending the three dimensions of the physical world. That part of you is the “stranger”, and if you don’t get to know…
The Danger of Master Plans
One of the dangers I’ve seen time and again in local government and the public sector at large (I’ve worked as a facilitator, trainer and consultant on and off in there for many years) is that the models of management in place are often based on discredited models from the private sector. In recent dialogue…
How do you identify a bad facilitator before you hire them? Tips for worried clients
Here’s my take on a big question here that often is at the heart of the facilitator-client relationship. How do you weed out poor facilitators at the early conversation stage? There is a danger of a conflict of interest existing in change facilitation, especially if the facilitator badly needs the work. In entering into a…
WATCH: Four Modes of Working During Covid19 and Beyond
Paul Levy, author of book Digital Inferno, and senior lecturer at Brighton Business School shares a fourfold model for working during the Covid19 pandemic and beyond.
WATCH: Different Ways of Working: Now and in the Future
Paul Levy explores four different but connected ways of working.
WATCH: Going Back to Work During and After the Covid-19 Pandemic
During the Covid-19 pandemic, many people have got used to working from home. Paul Levy considers the challenges of going back to work and continuing to work from home.
WATCH: Why do we collude with each other?
Why do we collude with each other? Do we settle for mediocrity because we fear the discomfort of being truly honest ? And does it affect our ability to be creative and innovative?
WATCH: Raising your thinking 6 – The power and importance of listening and silence
When we slow down, listen properly, value silence and let what we hear and think about “sink in”, we raise the quality of out thinking, and there are many resulting benefits.
WATCH: Raising your thinking 5 – Noticing and Acknowledging
I’m in a supermarket cafe ! I’m practising Noticing and Acknowledging – a process of reducing the impact of noise distraction on the quality of your thinking. Both are a form of powerful and gentle inquiry into the world around you.
WATCH: Raising your thinking 4 – Levels of Thinking and Thinking about Thinking
This talk is all about thinking about thinking. There are different levels of thinking. A useful model by Edgar Schein can help us to think more consciously about out and thinking processes.
WATCH: Raising your thinking 3 Initiating Your Own thinking
A broad look at what happens when we neglect our own thinking, and how important it is to be the initiator of our thinking. What happens when most of our daily experience is determined and influenced by the thinking of others and not met with our own active thinking?
WATCH: Raising Your Thinking 2: When our thinking becomes a slave
What happens when our thinking becomes a tool for other people and even corporations? What happens when you are the initiator of your own thinking? This short talk explores how we can let our thinking wither and also how we can recover it and become more free in doing so.
WATCH: Raising your thinking 1
In the first of a series of short reflections, author Paul Levy looks at how to reduce distraction and raise the quality of our thinking. Distraction can be a significant degrader of the quality of our thinking if it takes the form of ongoing distraction, from moment to moment. Digital distraction is a major example….
WATCH: The Abuse of Advocacy
What happens when we create cultures that value telling over listening, that prioritise adocacy over inquiry? In this short video, I look at how obsessive telling can become a kind of abuse
WATCH: Your Startup May Need to Start Up Twice, Or Even More!
A successful startup business rarely begins with one big burst of a launch. I suggest there will be several early journeys in the voyage to longer term success.
WATCH: Stepping into Inconvenient Variety
This was my new year reflection for 2020. What are the consequences of living in a binary world, a life of either-or, of one or zero? Life has a quality where the spaces in between the ones and zeros may contain the telling content…
A One to One Radical Shake Up
A One to One Radical Shake Up is the opportunity to make some revolutionary changes in your life. It’s a coaching process based on conversation. These conversations create a dialogue that represents a deep dive into your life so far – where you’ve come from, where you are in the present, and where you are…
The Christmas Chain
She was a new parent at the school. Even though this was the last day of their first term, she felt like a newbie. Lisa had settled in well at her class, though she still felt as if there were some things they weren’t doing right at home. She’d never baked in her life before,…
The Christmas Chain
She was a new parent at the school. Even though this was the last day of their first term, she felt like a newbie. Lisa had settled in well at her class, though she still felt as if there were some things they weren’t doing right at home. She’d never baked in her life before,…
Teaching Online During the Covid-19 Pandemic
What times in are living through! When we went into lockdown here in the UK back in March 2020, I quickly penned a paper for sharing with the universities I do some work with. I am a part-time senior lecturer at the University of Brighton’s Business School as well as an associate at Warwick Business…
Protected: Leading in a Digital Age: Secret Space
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
The Rise of Horizontal Trust
When hierarchies break down or fail us, horizontal trust tends to emerge. A hierarchy is a vertical form of organisation. Armies are hierarchies. Many religious systems are hierarchies. Families are hierarchies. In vertical hierarchies, power increases at highly levels. Often (but not always), accountability also is higher the higher up you go. In a bank,…
This is the age when the old become young
It’s become a bit of a cliche to say that children are growing up more and more quickly. Our education system is engaged in an ideological battle between the idea that we should allow children to stay children for as long as possible, and the idea that we need to get them ready for adult…
Conversify – Meet the Conversifiers
Paul Levy Paul has been conversifying meetings, events and conferences for over 20 years. He facilitates and helps to design conversations all over the world, in the private, public and voluntary sectors. He’s worked with organisations as small as one and as large as hundreds of thousands. Paul is an experienced facilitator of Open Space…
Enter the world of change and transformation
You’ve reached the Gateway Page to help you navigate this web site. Watch and listen to videos and podcasts from Paul Levy and CATS3000. Read some of Paul Levy’s articles and essays. Find inspiration in our quotes realm. Read Paul’s poems Read the short stories. .
Open Space Audio
Audiocasts Audiocast 1 – Why Whatever Happened Might Have Happened Differently – A controversial look at the Open Space principle: Whatever happened is the only thing that could have happened, and why it isn’t true. Listen to Why Whatever Happened Might Have Happened Differently Audiocast 2 – One Less thing to do. Harrison Owen suggests…
Paul Levy 