John Wenger
John Wenger
John Wenger is one of the Directors of Quantum Shift. He has a background in education, counselling and management of commercial and not-for-profit organisations. He brings a passion and understanding of learning and human behaviour to his current work in organisational learning and development. He has a particular interest in uncovering solutions which get people to be less stuck and more creative in their workplaces.
What the world needs now…
…is love sweet love. As Burt Bacharach and Hal David said, that’s the only thing that there’s just too little of. I shall resist reminding...
The insight illusion
Paris street art. Photo by John Wenger, 2014. Confucius is quoted as saying, “When you meet someone better than yourself, turn your thoughts to becoming...
Collaboration is not “soft”
I am occasionally left a little baffled by some of the stuff I read about digital social tools. In a lot of what I read and hear,...
What does it take for us to work as a team?
Copernicus has been name-checked in a fair few articles I’ve read lately. Good thing too. Working with a client a couple years ago, we...
Counter-acting the Stockholm Syndrome
Stockholm Syndrome is a psychological phenomenon in which hostages display empathy and sympathy for their captors, often developing positive feelings towards them and defending...
How can we create new patterns of inter-relating at work?
I have been interested in the furore that has followed Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer banning workers from working from home. I've also read...
Eliminate targets
"Systems thinkers know a number of counter-intuitive truths." John Seddon One of these counter-intuitive truths is that "when you manage costs, your costs go...
Manage the system, not silos
I've heard that if you cut a hologram into pieces, each piece contains all the information of the whole. I've never tried it,...
Do we really need performance management?
Individual performance management is rubbish. Not only that, it's patronising and disabling. I've said it before. When people aren't performing, it's...
I am the Walrus
Know how you have an experience and some song lyrics pop into your head that seem to have been written especially for it? ...
A Matter of Life and Death
from "The Ruins of Detroit" by Marchand and Meffre Why would the whole of the Universe be a complex, self-organising and interdependent system, and a...
How do we get to WE?
There is something in the air. Call it my natural human tendency to find patterns in things, but two recent conversations with two...
Leadership is an inside job
So the world didn't end on December 21, surprise, surprise. Here we are in 2013, all systems still intact. I have heard...
The Power of We
Interesting what can spark an idea and create insight. Staring at the full moon the other night, I found myself marvelling, yet again,...
It’s not a behavioural problem: it’s the system
Don't ask a systems thinker for advice on managing performance or staff engagement. They will probably say something pretty fruity and you'll wind...
The certainty of uncertainty
Sometimes you read something that really strikes a chord. I recently saw this quote from Kurt Vonnegut: "We have to continually be...
What is systems thinking? (Part III)
Part III (Going Further) In Part II of this article, I suggested that if we remain wedded to a mis-placed set of thoughts and beliefs...
What is systems thinking? (Part II)
I reckon that we cannot truly appreciate Georges Seurat's painting "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte" by examining the individual...
What is systems thinking? (Part I)
Part one (A Way In) There are two fish tanks, sitting side by side. The fish in tank #1 glances over and notices tank...
Beyond empathy
As a sociatrist, I'm passionate about people in business developing greater ability to stand in each others' shoes. It's one of the cornerstones...