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In the dark days before Christmas your current moderators (Colston, Uly and Tony) met to discuss options for going forward in New Intermediaries in 2004. One option before us after a challenging year with one founder (Fiona) leaving, another (Tony) all but resigning, and with many upset or dissatisfied at what was happening, was to put NI out of its misery.
Before taking such action we undertook a thorough review and as we did so we noticed the more gentle, positive energy in NI in recent weeks. We reflected on what NI has achieved and what NI does best and noticed a renewed excitement starting to arise between the 3 of us. We became clear on a basis on which we were prepared to continue to serve the community in the coming period...
Email from the co-moderators.
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Jeremy Keeley facilitated while Georgina Woudstra provided content expertise as we experimented with the use of a new channel - the telephone conference. Here's an account of what happened. Report of teleforum.
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Twelve of us met at Kings College for a momentous two hours in which we digested the implications of Fiona Coffey's decision to leave (Fiona was one of our founders) and we faced the question do we close NI, dribble away to incontinence or go for "renewal". We chose the latter.
In the months leading up to this meeting the purpose of the stocktake and the issues for NI came to a head. Read the "before email".
Following the meeting the early moves towards renewal are emerging. Read the "after email".
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Tony Page and Julia Williams held a dry-run of their "Facilitating The Inner Voice" Workshop with 13 participants to prepare and fine-tune the workshop for University of Surrey.
Click here to read about it.
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Nick Heap, Jo McHale and Richard Cooke organised a workshop at Kings College where we practised and developed our core skills in facilitating groups.
Interestingly we experienced directly one of the interesting and core tensions which hangs around the group when we facilitate: that one about holding to the agreed structure, or flexing things to reflect what is emerging. you get a good sense of this as well as what else happened on the day by reading the reflections posted by participants in the days that followed. Click here to read them.
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A practical workshop on the business impact theme organised by Uly to help those wanting to develop their web presence. Click here for an account.
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Ian Holder, Caroline Flexman and John Wilkes called a half-day completion event to gather the learning from the workshop and meeting on organisational shadow held earlier in the year. Read Ian's review of this work here.
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Once again we gathered to celebrate with bucks fizz, bacon sarnies and a full spread laid on by Fiona Coffey. The theme was distinctly fishy reflected in stickers we wore and a big wall chart naming all 120 of us in the NI shoal!
Caroline prepared a pass-the-parcel game which we played in a big circle, with sweets and forfeits each time a wrapper was removed. The game was rigged (of course!) giving Fiona the last wrapper to remove. Inside she found 3 candles for the 3 years of NI which were lit during the cutting of the cake. Happy Birthday NI!
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Social systems stagnate, said David Grey, in his introduction to a stimulating day which he co-facilitated with Fiona Coffey. Following a recent "troublesome" online dialogue about bullying this day had particular poignancy.
Fiona and David skilfully led us a a stimulating journey through the byways of this prickly topic. You really had to be there to get the full experience, but to get an indication have a peek at the postings that followed.
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For a full account of a wonderful workshop from Claire Shrader click here.
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Richard Cooke and Penny Hoffman-Becking set out to help the gathering of 16 NIers articulate, from their collective experience of business change, the process and rules for change.
One of the rules we kept coming back to was: good change plans always produce unintended consequences. For a fuller account read reflections from Penny and Richard. Also you'll find a link to typed up flipcharts from the day.
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Read about what has happened in the last 6 months ("the first 6 months of authentic life in NI") and what is taking shape in coming months.Use this to help you think about what you want to offer and receive in this community.
Here's a write-up of our meeting.
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9 intrepid souls ventured into the Surrey countryside making occasional reference to compass and map! Rickard Cooke and his co-facilitator Jeff took us on this hike to inhabit and explore the metaphor of "change as a journey".
Here's the invite giving details.
The day was much enjoyed by all. The wash-up discussion identified benefits to us each as individuals in terms of personal reflection and learning. We felt that for a project or management team this approach and metaphor might, apart from being enjoyable, be a powerful stimulus to develop the individual leadership styles of team members. Here's the revised flyer describing the journey product.
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Organised by Garth Spiers and Richard Cooke, hosted by Richard and Eve Cooke at Godalming, this sales and marketing event provided participants the opportunity to explore and develop their impact and effectiveness in the business-getting process.
Here's the invite giving details.
Click here to read Garth's reflections, Brian's stunning photos and some email responses.
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Colston Sanger summoned this gathering of many networks (OD, Tomorrow's Company, Deming and NI) in the premises of the Human Potential Research Group at Surrey. Aidan Ward led the session on the theme of Trust and Business Risk. Here's the flyer giving full details.
Click here to read Colston's concise report of the event.
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A workshop held at Friends Meeting House, Euston Road, led by Julian Burton and Tony Page exploring the proposition "Voice is central to change", using the visual dialogue method as illustrated on their project website.
The day began broad and loose with a conversation about change stimulated by a picture Julian had produced illustrating various current organisational change themes. The conversation developed during the workshop and culminted in pairs producing their own pictures and using them as stimulus to tell stories of their own change issues and challenges in their presence of colleagues.
Follow-up workshop(s) planned to develop more fully the theme of "voice and change" in the context of the visual dialogue method.
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An amazing demonstration of the method of Voice Dialogue by Esther Zahniser and her colleague Jen. Voice Dialogue and Esther were introduced to us by Andy Harmon. Esther and Jen conducted sessions with each of the seven participants, showing us parts of ourselves we do not usually acknowledge or fully include!
Click here to read some of our reflections and a detailed account of the day, also for more details of Esther's work.
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Full workshop as follow up to February Shadow Lunch
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Colston summoned us to his patch on the University of Surrey for a belated end of year stocktaking, and to make an NI plan for coming months. Amanda, Ian, Terri, Fiona, Richard and Tony, with Colston, listed recent events and each took one minute to give a personal account of their experience with NI over recent months.
What came out of this? First, what an impressive list of events since last summer's stocktake! Boundary crossing with AEEU, Problems and Patterns, Royal Mail Tomorrow;s Company Forum, Party, Xmas Stuffing Open Space, and Shadow Lunch. Also nice rhythm in the ether with both busy and quiet patches.
It's tough trying to give a full account of our discussions. We gave a good chunk of time to inquiry into our values, particularly a strange emerging resistance to embracing commercial/business themes in NI! This led to a new wizzy 3 circle venn diagram which is going up on the NI website as an antidote to splitting in future, bringing a legitimacy to our "business impact" agenda alongside "support" and "creativity", hopefully without turning us into vultures in suits!
We decided not to split the email into fast and short/slow and long.
We reflected on our stage of growth, emerging traditions and infrastructure. In short, anyone can hold an event, anytime and anywhere: no need to only hold events in SW London. No need to be confined to published schedule of events, although a new calendar is being published as many find it useful to book dates well in advance.
The last part was devoted to actually developing the draft calendar for the rest of 2002. We await confirmations from several of you who have volunteered to run events, including date and brief description... and then we went to lunch and Colston embarrassed Fiona by leading us in singing happy birthday to her in the middle of a crowded campus eatery!
Click here to read draft calendar of events.
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Twelve people attended the 2.00pm lunch at the Royal Fstival Hall where food was definitely in the shadow and discussion explicit! We shared our different ideas and
experiences of the shadow in organisational life.
Ian Holder posted a summary of the discussions. Click here to read it.A follow-up workshop is planned.
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We met in a glass sided room at Kings College near Waterloo Station. Thanks to Julian Burton, Karen Welch and Jean Marc Le Tissier http://www.idea-space.com who took charge of the day, giving us a sort of Open Space framework for putting up wants and offers and generally discovering how we wanted to spend the time.
Fiona offered an ice breaker and hey presto we were into it. Some butterflied around and others stayed put. Can't remember all the topics - one group doing body work, a travelling theatre group more "in our heads".
The Theatre group posted an account of their discussions. Click here to read it.
After lunch we did various more physical group games (breakthrough with ball passing, counting to 17 in the group, clapping in rhythm, undoing a group knot, firehose mindpower thingy....). The last hour was spent with 3 smaller groups making sense of the day in their own way - one reflectively chilling out, one changing the world and a pair (you'd have to ask them!).
Jean Marc posted photos of the workshop on his website. Click here here to see them.
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Twenty-five New Intermediaries, a mix of old and new, gathered for our third party in Fiona's house (launch party in 1999 plus 2 birthdays since then). The Hot Party Planning Team (Jeremy R, Uly, Julie and Fiona) had laid on food, birthday cake, name badges, masks, a soap box and megaphone, balloons, name badges, icebreaker (find your counterpart) game and digital camera to catch us all looking, well, in many cases unrecognisable!
Click here here to see the photos.
The Hot Team asked Tony to review the online story and come up with some stunning statistics and some special awards for outstanding contributions. Party goers added their own awards. Click here to see the names of the award winners and the stunning stats.
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Colston convened the largest ever NI meeting with some 30 or so people at Mount Pleasant Sorting Office in Farringdon Road, London. This meeting was boundary-crossing in the sense of bringing NIers into contact with people from The Centre for Tomorrow's Company, and the British Deming Society.
Chris Gamblin presented a Tomorrow's Company report and engaged us in small group work to identify the leadership, people, organisation and culture ingedients needed for sustainable success in the new economy.
Following the break Andy Harmon and Tony Page led a Forum Theatre session initiated by Roddy Maude-Roxby playing Frank the tea man and Alice Mallorie playing Miss Wilson the lady manager!
Thanks once again to Julian Burton for his stunning pictures demonstrating the power of visual dialogue.
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To read the programme for the event click here.
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To read feedback from those who attended click here.
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Colston and Jill Fairbairns co-hosted a day at Hampton Wick Cricket club. To read Andy Symon's entertaining account click here.
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Eight of us ventured to Esher Place, an AEEU Training Centre, for a further experiment in "boundary crossing", to meet 12 shop stewards, bringing us into contact with some of the people affected by the change programmes we introduce.
Apart from being brought face to face with the devastating social impacts of factory closures, we learned a good deal about the emerging role of the convenor, as a quasi manager/internal consultant/link person/relationship builder.... well, you could say New Intermediary!
The next step will be to bring the third voice (managers) into the conversation - then we'll have leaders, luddites and lackeys all in the same room! After that where? Maybe to the City and the venture capitalists.
To read some stunning soundbites and an account of a remarkable day, click here.
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Fiona hosted the mid year stocktake meeting, providing food and drink for nine of us who showed up.
After reviewing highs and lows we developed ideas together about what to do September onwards. To read all about it click here.
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Julie Bickerton and Tony Page offered a chance to find out more about the Gestalt approach, and engage together, further developing and extending the current interest around the theme of Change.
15 of us turned up and began to explore the Gestalt approach, experimenting with the
principles in the "here and now". In particular we learned how as Renewal people we can be perceived negatively by clients who are resisting change and 5 main ways that our contact with them gets interrupted.
We tried using non-violent communication, forum theatre, professional empathy to restore contact with people in Denial, and learned about the leadership/context we need for our best work.
To read all about it click here.
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Something larger scale than the normal day long events - a 3 day experimental workshop organised by Andy Harmon and Fiona Coffey to explore the use of Forum Theatre techniques in 'real life' organisational change issues.
Through a dynamic series of theatrical games and techniques, Andy showed us what live, in the moment, edge of the seat drama means, providing new insights into the many kinds of oppressions which exist in organisations. We learned a spect-actor method pioneering by theatre director and ex mayor of Rio, Augusto Boal, for reclaiming responsibility and bringing systemic change, in projects throughout the world from Calcutta to Sicily.
For the 10 participants this served to take the change debate from the cerebral into an altogether more visceral or limbic experience. There was much shouting and strange talk about what goes on below the Adam's apple, oh, sorry girls, collar bone!
To read all about it click here.
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After a lively online debate 12 people gathered on a sunny day. What for? James Souttar with Fiona and a few others had somehow hooked us into face to face discussion of "Is change possible? What can we change?" etc. Perhaps as baby boomers we were in a unique historical position, asking/exploring the questions that needed to be asked, on behalf of others (NI and beyond).
The tone was of honest scrutiny, calling ourselves to account on some level for the work that we do. Knowing that as individuals we are doing great things, advancing our art/practice but wondering about where our work meets today's paradigm of change management, and maybe getting tired of failing to explain, working out how to position our work, and wanting to articulate something here to support us going forward.
Anyway instead of "change", the paradigm and language that emerged offers an alternative and possibly better way to describe our work.This remains to be seen. And where does it lead us? Are we on the cusp of something?
To read all about it click here.
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Held at Tamesis sailing club by the river Thames at Teddington, Jo McHale, Pat Dannahy and Cinna the dog introduced us to a method for communicating when good communication really matters, such as in situations of conflict. 9 of us working together explored the NVC method using our own case material and identifed some connections between NVC, dialogue, appreciative inquiry, NLP and other methods.
Click here for an account of the day plus reflections from participants. |
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19 of us, the largest gathering yet, met at the function room behind The Lion in Hampton Wick after a last minute change from the cricket clubs due to foot and mouth precautions. Roddy Maude Roxby led us (in a day he had planned with Terri McNerney), in a series of activities from being cameras, to wearing full and half masks. Here is an account of the day by Terri and Tony plus reflections from several of those attending, with a link to Roddy's handouts (scanned by Uly Ma) here. |
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Nine of us met at Questors to explore Social Dreaming under Ed Rowland's guidance and to converse about new ways of visioning. Once again a wonderful, emergent discovery. As someone said afterwards "the conversation is the dream"! Click here to read an account of our session. |
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Eight of us met to develop a programme of events for 2001. We realised how far we have travelled in the last 12 months: this time last year we began with a blank sheet but today we had on the table an impressive list of offers including Gestalt, Social Dreaming, Masks, Forum Theatre, Dialogue with a Trades Union, plus the possibility of repeating popular sessions on Live Problem Page and Storytelling.
Colston noticed that the successful pattern is "pairs putting on sessions". At first Fiona and Tony led each session, then during the year more people came forward: The Harmons, John Wilkes, Malcolm Tulloch, Julie and Julian.
An interesting discussion took place about distributing leadership, finding the inherent structure, having a keeper of the values, enabling structures, the paradox of having goals and no goals, being middle class/privileged/born self-employed versus perhaps the reality of being born to be employed in a mine.
Remarkably a provisional programme of dates with volunteers/pairs leading monthly sessions for the first half of 2001 emerged from all this and has now been posted on the website! Click here to view it and don't forget to put the dates in your diary! |
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Julie Bickerton and Julian Burton chatting at the party decided to run this session together pooling Julie's Gestalt development approach with Julian's visual dialogue method. We met for 2 hours in the evening at The Club in County Hall by Westminster Bridge. We visioned in a visual way and deepened our understanding of what visioning process really is.
Click here to read Julie and Julian's reflections on the meeting. |
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Terrific first year breakfast celebrations with around 35 New Intermediaries, some brand new, others stalwarts. We shared out the jobs and indulged in bacon butties, bucks fizz, birthday cake (based on NI postcard design), speeches surrounded by "you are 1" balloons, wallchart train track of "a year in the life of New Intermediaries" , blown up cheeky descriptions of who's who and the buzz of merry conversation.
People posted answers to the question "What attracted you to New Intermediaries?". Click here to find out what they said. |
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So what's all this stuff about storytelling then? What's it got to do with facilitating organisational change? Would I ever DARE use it in any of my workshops?
Malcolm Tulloch and Tony Page offered us the chance to find out more and it turned out to be a fascinating and rewarding day.
Click here for Fiona Coffey's account of the day plus some stories that Steve, Theresa and Terri sent in afterwards, including a story of the storytelling day co-created over email by the 18th October group.
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Arriving at Hampton Wick Cricket Club in spite of the morning travel chaos after a bomb attack on the MI6 building, ten of us got down to the challenge of being agony aunts to one another!
The Live Problem Page process offered by Fiona Coffey and evolved within the group was a real success, giving live "in the moment" value to problem owners and quickly generating a warm rapport amongst us.
Due to be repeated with a new set of problems later in the year!
Click here to see a fuller account with reflections after the meeting.
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Five of us met on 23 June to take stock, review the fantastic amount of feedback received by Email and plan how to take New Intermediaries forward (click here to see stocktaking document used in our meeting).
We reviewed what had happened so far in terms of face to face meetings, other activities and the website. Philip Gibson contributed loads of ideas from his recent experience of growing an active online community of gardening enthusiasts and setting up a successful gardening website. Isobel Hunter brought her perspective from working on the inside of change in Plan International and reminded us about what was needed to make New Intermediaries relevant and worthwhile for internal change agents. Colston Sanger, who has participated in every step of the journey, challenged us (Tony and Fiona) to clarify the purpose and intention behind New Intermediaries and our role both now and in the future. Garth Spiers rang in to suggest new areas for exploration and how the community might offer mutual mentoring and support.
Click here to see the conclusions we reached and our plans for moving forwards from September.
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17 people, both insiders and ousiders, turned up to develop the dialogue we started in Feb to a new level, using a programme developed by John Wilkes, Fiona Coffey and Tony Page. The day was very much enjoyed and took us to some new places while also reminded us of some important good practices in our work together. Click here to see a fuller set of comments on what actually happened.
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RoffeyPark Management Centre has discovered the New Intermediaries, thanks initially to Michael Bryant Mole who came to our breakfast party last November. Wendy Hirsh, one of Roffey's research team interviewed Fiona Coffey and Tony Page last month and is writing up a New Intermediaries case example for their forthcoming report on new forms of organisation. They invited us to this fascinating research day in which people from Rolls Royce, BBC, Surrey County Council and AA Centrica shared their stories about their use of alliances and new forms of organisation. Lots of new thoughts and ideas from the day about how to continue to develop our community of practice.
Click here to see the draft case example produced by Roffey Park on New Interemdiaries.
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14 people turned up for a fun day of theatre games run by Andy and Anita Harmon, with their colleague Roddy Maude-Roxby. From the start the day was fast-paced, dynamic and buzzy. It held us "in the moment" and the time flew. Judging by the emails received by Andy afterwards people both had FUN...found the day VALUABLE... and serveral of us wanted to come back for MORE. Click here to see their comments and find out what actually happened.
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| Change Sponsor Research at Royal Armouries. Andy Harmon and Tony Page continued their Change Sponsor Research project with an interview with Guy Wilson, Master of the Royal Armouries. We met him for lunch in his cottage inside the walls of the Tower of London. It took us an hour to get past security! This is the third of ten interviews we have planned with Change Sponsors to find out what it is like to stand in their shoes. So far we have spoken to a director at Guinness, a partner at McKinsey. We have interviews planned with a director of the Prison Service, the former Chief Exec of the Arts Council,the managing partner at Price Waterhouse Coopers, a former director at NPI, CEO at NAAFI, a director at British Aerospace and possibly the head of The Industrial Society. Watch this space! |
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Well, remarkably it happened! Twelve of us gathered at Fiona's house: 5 "insiders" and 7 "outsiders"…and after taking some time over introductions (including a "creeping death" round that sort of happened without any of us really intending it to) we heard some stories about change experiences and we questioned the widespread use of the term "change". We raised some gritty questions about outsiders being "set-up" by insiders, about responsibility, remuneration…and much more. Many of us wanted more time. It felt like we were only just getting started, and it was time to eat lunch and go before we were able to get to act two, or a deeper level.
Click here to see the typed up conclusions we gathered on post-its and you will notice some wanted more structure, or different processes, and some wanted it left loose as it was…so you can't please everyone all the time and of course we can have more meetings, and try out different ways of working. |
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| Nine of us met at Richard's house near the river in Kingston. Apart from Julian, the rest of us from the December meeting turned up, and we were joined by Yvana Reeves and Anne Radford. The purpose of the meeting as to plan our March weekend retreat, but somehow we didn't get round to this, spending the first hour or so in a free flowing dialogue, then turning our attention to planning the 17 February "insiders-outsiders" meeting. We agreed that we were aiming for around 6 insiders and 6 outsiders, to draft an invitation so that we were all singing from the same hymn sheet and to hold the meeting at Fiona's house. |
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Eight of us met in Fiona's living room in Teddington. We picked up from the 17th Nov party and developed the basis of a plan for next year. Subsequent Emails, phone calls and letters contained various reflections on the meeting. Here are a few extracts to give you the flavour (to view reflections click here).
To view plan of events for 2000 click here).
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31 New Intermediaries attended breakfast party and used the conversational hooks to get to know one another (to view click here). From 8.30 onwards a series of phone calls signalled people coverging on Fiona's house in Teddington from miles around. The house was bedecked with flowers, balloons, thought bubbles and food picking up the red, yellow and blue colours of the website design. Brazilian dance music on the CD and people began arriving, indulging in buck's fizz, bacon sandwiches, smoked salmon and caviar. Keith, Fiona and Tony addressed the group explaining who are the New Intermediaries, and inviting people to a forthcoming conversational experiment. Lots of thoughts and ideas were recorded using postit-its and flipcharts (to view click here). Following the meeting was a flurry of Emails. Next meeting for those who can make it 9 Dec 10-12 at Fiona's house to plan next steps. |
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| Around 30 acceptances for 17 Nov breakfast gathering of New Intermediaries. Final arrangements in hand. List to be circulated to attendees shortly. |
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| Andy and Anita Harmon's articles on Danger Zone and Play posted in Knowledge Pool. |
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| Fiona Coffey and Tony Page invited to join Peter Garrett for 2 day dialogue workshop with inmates, warders and governors in HM Prison at Blakenhurst. |
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| Andy & Anita Harmon, husband and wife trainer team, agree to offer The Danger Zone of Selling (previously available only with Price Waterhouse), for New Intermediaries next year. Details to follow. |
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| 17 Nov event to be a breakfast party at Fiona Coffey's house to bring people together, celebrate the launch of the New Intermediaries Network and website. 9 Dec event to be on the theme "Why is change so difficult in the public sector?" |
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| IOD events postponed pending further discussion in the learning set. |
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| Updates to New Intermediaries website to include News, Forthcoming events, and to facilitate chat/messages between members. |
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| www.NewIntermediaries.co.uk registered as web address for New Intermediaries network. |
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| Annika Ratcliffe, Jeremy Keeley, Peter Edwards, Tina Bondy and Tony Page held one of their regular learning set meetings at OSI in High Holborn. Decided to run a round table event on 16 November at IOD to involve clients in the emerging New Intermediaries thinking. |
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| Fiona Coffey. Keith Jones and Tony Page met at Hampton Wick. Discussed Masters of the Universe TV series. Discovered a common interest in people, EQ, group dynamics, change, process consulting and decided to run a series of open informal discussions during the autumn with the broad theme "Co-creating the Universe"!
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