An earlier post, Your Reasoning Repertoire, introduced a Minimum Working Set of nine valid reasoning styles. That set was designed to give nonprofit leaders and boards a practical starting point. This post expands the view to the full repertoire of 21 valid reasoning styles. A board may have substantial expertise and goodwill, yet still lack… Continue reading Expanding Your Reasoning Repertoire
Tag: governance
Empathic Windows: Calibrating Empathic Receptivity, Involvement, and Agency
Previous posts in this series on the ‘ecology of judgment‘ have characterised Lucid Empathy as the disciplined capacity to keep human consequence visible while regulating the force of empathic concern through evidence, role clarity, fairness, proportionality, systemic awareness, temporal perspective, and accountability. In empathy practice, it calibrates engagement; in deliberative reasoning, it calibrates judgment. This… Continue reading Empathic Windows: Calibrating Empathic Receptivity, Involvement, and Agency
Enabling and Supporting Reasoning
The first post in this extended series on the ‘Ecology of Judgment*’, Your Reasoning Repertoire, identified nine valid reasoning styles within the minimum working set normally required for effective deliberation. This post now turns to the enabling capacities, infrastructure, and scaffolds that support the use of those reasoning styles – acknowledging that effective reasoning does… Continue reading Enabling and Supporting Reasoning
Empathy at the Core
Lucid EmpathyIn my previous post, Your Reasoning Repertoire, I described Lucid Empathy as an essential balancing capacity whenever deliberation has human consequences. It appeared at the centre of the ring of 21 valid reasoning styles because it performs a distinctive role: it helps boards and leaders reason with people in view. This post expands on… Continue reading Empathy at the Core
Stuck on Repeat? How ‘Loop Thinking’ Can Save Your Strategy
To understand where we are going, we must first look at where we have been. Loops are everywhere it seems. They appear in idiomatic speech, as in ‘close the loop‘, ‘keep me in the loop‘, ‘I’m out of the loop‘, ‘let’s loop back around on this‘, ‘they were thrown for a loop‘. (Jargon bingo cards… Continue reading Stuck on Repeat? How ‘Loop Thinking’ Can Save Your Strategy
Decision Doors
Every nonprofit — whether a charity, professional association, or community group — faces a constant flow of choices. Some are big and irreversible, others small and routine. But all of them involve ‘decision doors’: a threshold between what we know and what’s next. The Decision Doors framework helps us pause at that threshold. Instead of… Continue reading Decision Doors
Watch your words; they become your thoughts
The Power of Words in Organisational Life Before NLP there was Lao Tzu. His admonition to “watch your thoughts, for they become your words” forms part of a ’cause and effect’ chain which helps us to think about how present actions, and the thoughts behind them, lead to longer-term consequences. While the truth of this… Continue reading Watch your words; they become your thoughts
Moral Accounting and Reporting
For many nonprofit organisations, 30 June marks the end of their financial year. Consequently, thoughts now turn to finalising the trial balance, engaging with the auditors, and preparing annual reports. End-of-year is when we close the books, take stock, and reset. It’s also the best time to capture lessons from ethical challenges, identify emerging risks… Continue reading Moral Accounting and Reporting
The Dimensionality of Thought and Ethical Leadership – Part 2 (Praxis)
Praxis and reflective practice “Praxis is the process by which a theory, lesson, or skill is enacted, embodied, realised, applied, or put into practice. “Praxis” may also refer to the act of engaging, applying, exercising, realising, or practising ideas” (Wikipedia). As its title suggests, this post therefore seeks to assist nonprofit leaders to reflectively apply… Continue reading The Dimensionality of Thought and Ethical Leadership – Part 2 (Praxis)
The Dimensionality of Thought and Ethical Leadership – Part 1 (Theory)
How often have you witnessed a ‘debate’ in which various of the participants are on different wavelengths? One sees the issues as ‘black and white’, while another sees many ‘shades of gray’, and yet another sees layers of complexity in full colour. Even when directors share a common ‘moral lens’ though, their stakeholders don’t. Dealing… Continue reading The Dimensionality of Thought and Ethical Leadership – Part 1 (Theory)