A learning lab for experienced practitioners

How do we think about what we do?

The practitioner's predicament

People in senior positions, in any walk of life, have to solve problems.

But they also have to cope with complex predicaments.

The Oxford Praxis Lab is based on some observations about those predicaments:

1. We are entangled in complex, intersecting systems (teams, departments, organisations, industries, sectors, families, ecosystems etc).
2. No-one can predict how this messy world will change (at any level of scale).
3. Nor can we anticipate how these changes will affect our organisations and our work.
4. Moreover, we are, ourselves, part of these nested systems.
5. We adopt models, maps and metaphors that shape what we know and how we think.
6. And internalise them so well, we forget there are other options.
7. We form assumptions, values and beliefs that underpin (and reinforce) what we see — and themselves disappear from sight.
8. Thus experience (and success) narrow us. Our view is always partial - both incomplete and subjective.
9. No amount of information, analysis or theory can resolve this.
10. So we have to look at ourselves and our own ways of thinking.

A response not an answer