Blogs
Enthusiast 🟢
[Book] Almost everyone have heard of paradigms, and even more uses the term in their daily interaction in describing change, still, proportionally few have ever read Thomas Kuhn’s book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. This is a must read for anyone who take themselves seriously in the art of making changes happen. Not necessarily because Kuhn is right, but more because it provides us as readers, thinkers and practitioners with a deeper understanding of how «normality» is a concept of continuous evolving shifts based upon challenging the taken for granted. (Kuhn, T. S. (1996). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (3 ed.). Chicago, US: The University of Chicago Press).
[Article] Systems Oriented Design is a branch of Systemic Design that is geared towards better coping with very complex issues from a designerly way. This article provide us with its roots and foundations related to systemic thinking and practice and design thinking and practice. Sevaldson, B. (2013) Systems Oriented Design: The emergence and development of a designerly approach to address complexity, in Reitan, J.B., Lloyd, P., Bohemia, E., Nielsen, L.M., Digranes, I., & Lutnæs, E. (eds.), DRS // Cumulus: Design Learning for Tomorrow, 14-17 May, Oslo, Norway. (https://doi.org/10.21606/learnxdesign.2013.133).
[Blog] Systemsorienteddesign.net is the go-to-place for more information on Systems Oriented Design (SOD). It offers an easy accessible oversight into SOD and provides a toolkit of how-to-do SOD as well as an overview of ongoing projects were SOD is applied. (https://systemsorienteddesign.net)
[Podcast] Many know Malcolm Gladwell from his books David and Goliat, Outliers, The Bomber Mafia to name a few. Here I want to give a shout out to his podcast The Revisionist History (https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history). The podcast is presented as Gladwell’s “journey through the overlooked and the misunderstood. Every episode re-examines something from the past — an event, a person, an idea, even a song — and asks whether we got it right the first time. Because sometimes the past deserves a second chance.» It is a true well of inspiration for all of us who grapple with challenging the taken for granted.
[Video] For those who are looking for hours of design fun, I warmly suggest the Netflix series Abstract: The Art of Design. So far they have published two seasons totaling 14 episodes. Every episode is dedicated to one designer. It brings you into their mind-field of becoming and doing design. For me it challenges my associative ability, bringing new ways of looking at something to the forefront of my reflexive self.
Engaged Learner 🟦
[Book] Affective Spaces is a short and crisp introduction to the relationship between architecture and the human being as a living body. At the core is a compelling story that helps us entangle the somewhat confusing relationships between concepts such as subject and object, subjectivity and objectivity, walls and spaces, motion and emotion to name a few. Even though the book is written in an academic way, it is still very practical and accessible for us without an architecture background (De Matteis, Federico (2021). Affective Spaces: Architecture and the Living Body, Routledge).
[Article] Can intuition be trained as a skill, if so how? In this article Jørgen W. Eriksen challenges our perception on intuition and its role in skillful practice. Rather than building on traditional rule-governed instrumental learning models Eriksen applies Dreyfus and Dreyfus phenomenological skill model to military training. For anyone interested in some deeper ideas of learning and framing this is a fairly easy and valuable read (Eriksen, J. W. (2010). Should Soldiers Think before They Shoot? Journal of Military Ethics, 9(3), 195-218. doi:10.1080/15027570.2010.510861).
[Blog] An important part of dealing with human change is how we facilitate the environment and conduct learning activities. Hence for anyone interested in change Pedagogy should be of true interest. The Cult of Pedagogy (https://www.cultofpedagogy.com) is a webpage/blog/podcast/vlog that introduces us to the craft of teaching.
[Podcast] The Art of Manliness (https://www.artofmanliness.com) is a podcast dedicated to getting men not only to read books but also implementing the wisdom of the books into their lives. “We seek to help men grow up well, reach their potential, become better friends, mentors, husbands, fathers, and citizens, and live a life of eudamonia — skill, flourishing, excellence, and virtue.” The host, Brett McKay, invites the authors for thoughtful conversation on their books. I have been fortunate enough to utilize many episodes of this podcast together with my colleagues and students in my work as a research and program director.
[Video] There is one TED Talk I keep revisiting every now and then. Manuel Lima’s A Visual History of Human Knowledge (https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=BQZKs75RMqM) provides a simple yet intriguing visualization of how our frame of reference influence our ability to grasp the complexity of reality. These 12 minutes have provided me with a lot of inspiration to find new frames, metaphors and narratives for nudging and challenging our taken for granted conceptualization.
Practitioner ♦
[Book] In Range, David Epstein challenges our belief in early specialization by bringing visibility to the value of broad experience for the benefit of entangling wicked problems. The book is engaging, thoughtful and seductive in a manner that makes you challenge your own perceptions on what constitutes skillful practice. It’s an easy read and there are no need for prior knowledge of the subject (Epstein, David (2019). Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, Riverhead Books).
It is hard to come up with something truly novel when you are a mid-career officer attending Staff-College. 15 years of military training, cultivation and assimilation leaves its mark. Still we expect our officers to apply the creative touch of brainstorming as a part of the Course of Action (CoA) development planning. Therese Heltberg and Kåre S. Dahl challenged their Danish Staff College students and wrote an article about their experiences. This is a very practical but insightful read for anyone dealing with implementing design in their teaching. (Heltberg, T., & Dahl, K. S. (2019). Course of Action Development – Brainstorm or Brickstorm? Scandinavian Journal of Military Studies, 2(1), 165-177. doi:10.31374/sjms.30). https://aodnetwork.ca/course-of-action-development-brainstorm-or-brickstorm/
[Blog] Here is a blogpost on the wonderful art of How to do GigaMapping (https://systemsorienteddesign.net/how-to-gigamap/). Its foundational assumption is that anyone regardless of prior knowledge or experience can do it! From personal experience – I contest to this!
[Podcast] Here is a great podcast on Design Theory and Methodology (https://www.dtm2019.org/podcasts) that was made for a design course at Delft University of Technology in Holland. I listened through the first season «back in 2020». For someone coming in from the outskirts into the military design community I found this podcast very enlightening and helped me move from the «furniture and cloths» understanding towards something more foundational like framing and doing.
Being a Philosopher of Sports interested in training, performance and culture, there is nothing that embodies the edge more than the Gamechangers – they who challenge sameness by difference and succeed to an extent that others follow their path, thus in the process constituting a new norm. It is easy to be seduced by the share embodiment of the performance of such athletes, yet a closer look behind the scene will sometimes bring visibility and clarity to the deeper layers of that which constitute the reality of these achievements. One such invigorating story, are the Norwegian Triatlon Team who have won almost all the major events they have participated in over the last 3-4 years. The ability to combine hard quantitative science and qualitative sense making with a curiosity for challenging what is seen as possible they keep on making one innovation after another in a broad range of fields. Here is a video that provides a quick glimpse into their cultural mindset of living on the edge as game changers: (YouTube: Winter testing lab with Olav Aleksander Bu, Kristian Blummenfelt and Gustav Iden (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTIQXE_vyC8)).