Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds

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Over four months, I read and re-read it in fluid motions like the book expresses itself. Loved the intelligence here, and with the heart in the work. This sort of improvisational reading was so, very generative in my experience. The mind of this book is itself generative. Creative. Fluid. Detail rich. Rosalind Cardinal is Shaping Change’s founder and managing director. Growing up, Ros wanted to be a vet or a scientist, but her fascination with human behaviour and neuroscience led her to a career in organisational development.

A change to an employee’s role. Individuals derive a sense of purpose and fulfillment from the ability to use their strengths in the workplace day in and day out. When an employee’s role is set to change, however, and they must acquire new skills and gain familiarity with new responsibilities, it can be jarring. We learn to bond through gossip, venting, and destroying rather than cultivating solutions together." Emergent Strategy uses resilient biological systems to inspire strategies for social justice groups. The book is organized in an almost folkloric fashion, peppered with stories and innuendoes and reflections and other ideas how to grow healthy justice movements. I am reluctant to offer too heavy a critique against work that has such honest motivations and many good ideas.The majority of individuals aren’t keen on change. It can be challenging to adopt new processes, tools, work flows, responsibilities, behaviors, etc. If not managed effectively, employees can continue to struggle with change, which can impact morale and productivity, leading to a stagnant or negative working environment. Your game statistics are replaced by the statistics of the chosen creature, though you retain your alignment and Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores. You also retain all of your skill and saving throw proficiencies, in addition to gaining those of the creature. If the creature has the same proficiency as you and the bonus listed in its statistics is higher than yours, use the creature's bonus in place of yours. You can't use any legendary actions or lair actions of the new form.

An example of differential reinforcement in operation would be with children in a nursery environment; cooperative play and desirable behaviors are reinforced, while fighting behaviors are either punished or ignored. Brown is not at all afraid of hierarchy. Levels of expertise vary and there is nothing wrong in this vision with experts being experts. But it’s a passing thing. This work isn’t about creating stars or experts but facilitating positive evolution. So the old post-modern fear of hierarchy is not useful for this, but also, authoritarian structures are not useful either.

Emergent Strategy

You assume the form of a different creature for the duration. The new form can be of any creature with a challenge rating equal to your level or lower. The creature can't be a construct or an undead, and you must have seen the sort of creature at least once. You transform into an average example of that creature, one without any class levels or the Spellcasting trait. Has anyone used this spell in a game? It seems to me that the concentration requirement would make it almost useless. At the level that this spell would come available, the damage exchanged in combat and the number of hits the new form would take would end the spell in a round or less. Given that the spell costs an action, you may not even get to take a single turn with your new form and accomplish nothing more than burning a level 9 spell slot. Are DMs table ruling around the constitution saves required after taking a hit with an active concentration spells? Research has shown that a successful, balanced behavior modification plan focuses attention more on the rewarding of good behavior instead of solely punishing undesirable actions ​5​. When you transform, you choose whether your equipment falls to the ground, merges into the new form, or is worn by it. Worn equipment functions as normal. The GM determines whether it is practical for the new form to wear a piece of equipment, based on the creature's shape and size. Your equipment doesn't change shape or size to match the new form, and any equipment that the new form can't wear must either fall to the ground or merge into your new form. Equipment that merges has no effect in that state.

A change to an employee’s tools and tasks. There’s comfort in familiarity, and even if the tools an employee daily uses are out-of-date or not as efficient as they could be, changing them can be incredibly disruptive, as the employee now has to acquire expertise for an entirely new resource. The same applies to changes to an employee’s work content, such as adaptations to the tasks they regularly perform, their work cadence, or even their working calendar. For example, when a child is learning how to feed themselves, the parent may start the process by using the hand-over-hand technique, eventually moving their hand to their child’s wrist, facilitating them to feed themselves. Differential reinforcement Bring your team along and align on what it means to have a thriving work culture and transform your workplace into a hub of creativity, collaboration, and getting stuff done! You don't like math or science, but are fascinated by aspects of it like quantum physics and multiverses.

Rosalind Cardinal is the Managing Director of Shaping Change, a consultancy specialising in improving business outcomes by developing individuals, teams and organisations.