Intimate Innovation

How do you plan in an emergent context without denying what you know about the context? In relational & leadership terms, you could

• consider the governing metaphors which frame and limit assumptions about planning and power 
• tackle causes not symptoms
• avoid concentrating on what happens ‘above the surface’ at the expense of what is happening ‘below the surface’
• attend to the journey, not the destination; expect different, not better

…and transactionally, you could manage the discourse about the plan as much as the action-planning, by:

• taking periodic soundings, rather than pretend that things can be kept on track
• noticing differing points of view, being close enough to colleagues and partners to ‘get’ their real point of view
• accepting that you ‘have no right to be wrong’; that when you act you have act ‘as if’ you know what you are doing
• stressing ‘sense making’ as a process
• keeping narrative visible, and audible, and unresolved
• recognising that your actions as a planner make a difference to emergence in this particular situation