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Keith E Rice's Integrated SocioPsychology Blog & Pages

Aligning, integrating and applying the behavioural sciences

‘regeneration’

The Gernia Variation

Updated: 28 April 2016 For her MeshWORK projects in rural South Africa, Gernia Van Niekerk has developed a more action-oriented version of 4Q/8L It is conceived as a follow-on to mapping via the original Don Beck (2000b, 2002b) adapted from Ken Wilber’s All Quadrants/All Levels concept original (1996) . It is sometimes known as The Gernia Variation. This works by:- Structuring needs according to the 6 vMEMES of the Gravesian 1st Tier (Q-1) Auditing the resources available and surveying the organisations and institutions that must be aligned to cooperate and participate (Q-3) Identifying ways and means – ie: projects – to drive the development programme (Q-4) Auditing the skills required to run and sustain the projects and the utlisation of existing technology at each level (Q-2) By bringing in Skills & Knowledge, Gernia links 4Q/8L to all of the neurological levels. Click here to view a report on Gernia’s ‘Rosedale MeshWORK’ – using her version of 4Q/8L.

Humber MeshWORKS

  A Tribute to a World-renowned Web Site Updated: 15 October 2017 1988-1996    1997   1998     1999     2000     2001    2002      2003     2004     2005     2006     2007     2008     2009     2010     2011     2012     2013     2014      2015     2016     2017     2018      2019     2020    2021-2023 21st Century Group     HemsMESH     Humber MeshWORKS     Humberside MESH Network Humber MeshWORKS was a site I ran for just over 3 years in the early noughties. It was concerned with promoting the MeshWORK application of the Gravesian approach and its Spiral Dynamics ‘build’ and Neurological Levels into the Humber sub-region of the United Kingdom to improve the design of social and economic regeneration strategies. To enhance business leaders’ and business advisers’ understanding of organisational growth issues, the site also promoted Adizes’ LifeCycle. The original impetus to do something came from a chance meeting with Angela Ogilvie at a barbecue in Beverley in the East Riding of Yorkshire in the Summer of 2000. I had only recently moved into the area; and Angela was then Head of Year 9 at St Mary’s College in Hull. We discussed Hull, the major city in the sub-region, being in a near-continuous pattern of occupying bottom of the… Read More

21st Century Group

Tribute to a ‘World-beating’ Business Network written with input from Ian Lavan Updated: 12 December 2007 1988-1996    1997   1998     1999     2000     2001    2002      2003     2004     2005     2006     2007     2008     2009     2010     2011     2012     2013     2014      2015     2016     2017     2018      2019     2020    2021-2023 21st Century Group     HemsMESH     Humber MeshWORKS     Humberside MESH Network The 21st Century Group (1997-2001) was a pioneering network of SMEs (small-medium-sized enterprises) which attracted national – and even international – attention. When I joined Business Link Wakefield & District in January 1997, part of my remit was to establish a network of manufacturing and engineering SMEs. Previous attempts to establish such a network had been abandoned, usually within 6 months, in face of massive indifference from local businesses. In general, local response to training and consultancy initiatives promoted through the Business Link, Wakefield College, Mid-Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce & Enterprise and other institutions was decidedly poor. (If more than a handful of business people turned up to an event, it was considered an unequivocal success!) Yet annual surveys by Wakefield Training & Enterprise Council had revealed repeatedly a lack of innovation, competitiveness and ‘best practice’ amongst businesses in… Read More

HemsMESH

A Tribute to a Pioneering MeshWORK Project written with input from Christopher Cooke inspired by an original report by Matthew Kalman Updated: 8 October 2017 1988-1996    1997   1998     1999     2000     2001    2002      2003     2004     2005     2006     2007     2008     2009     2010     2011     2012     2013     2014      2015     2016     2017     2018      2019     2020    2021-2023 21st Century Group     HemsMESH     Humber MeshWORKS     Humberside MESH Network ‘HemsMESH’ was the first major Gravesian-oriented project in the UK. Technically, it was a ‘pilot’ – which meant in reality things were being tried out as the project went along – which also meant that it was an awesome learning experience for all involved! There was never any official ‘follow-on – but the project was far from a failure as all the key figures in the project went onto to further work with the principles involved. Indeed, for many years afterwards Christopher ‘Cookie’ Cooke, the project leader, carried out work with both individuals and agencies that were involved in it. It also brought to a climax a remarkable 3 years which had seen Wakefield Training & Enterprise Council and Business Link Wakefield & District, 2 organisations rooted in BLUE bureaucracy, not… Read More

North Lincolnshire CIT

Investing in the Team…to invest in the Community! written with Jenny Gavin-Allen Updated: 1 October 2004 In early 2002 David Burnby was doing some extended work as a freelance facilitator and consultant with North Lincolnshire Council’s Community Investment Team. In conversation with Team Manager Jenny Gavin-Allen, he talked several times about a Psychology course he had undertaken training in the previous Summer, An Introduction to Spiral Dynamics & Related Models of Neuro-Linguistic Programming. For David, in part at least, the course was something of a life-changing experience. Both challenged by the models presented in the workshop programme and emboldened by the understanding they gave him, he subsequently quit his lucrative position as Director of Common Purpose in Hull to fulfil his frustrated ambition of working as an independent operator. Listening to him so talk enthusiastically about the models and their applicability to community regeneration issues, Jenny was intrigued. David then let on that his enthusiasm for the course was so great he had decided to promote and stage the next programme – the third to be delivered in Hull – under his own name – thus allowing me, as course facilitator, to concentrate purely on delivery. Naturally David invited Jenny to… Read More

Margaret Thatcher: Saviour or Devil?

The responses to Margaret Thatcher’s death a fortnight ago (8 April), both at home and abroad, serve to remind us only too well what a divisive figure she was. As several tributes have been titled – eg: Ian Dunt at politics.co.uk – she was indeed ‘The Woman who changed Britain’. If you were one of those who saw the need unequivocally for those changes or indeed benefitted from them, then she may be a hero to you. My late father, Ted Rice, thought no less than that she had saved Britain. I once said to him: “You think the sun shines out of her arse!” – and he agreed totally. If you were one of those who lost out badly or were just deeply offended at the wholesale destruction of traditional working class communities as the result of her policies, then you may well view her as, to all intents and purposes, some spawn of the devil. My distant friend Chris Maguire would sometimes wear a t-shirt emblazoned with “I still hate Thatcher!” It wouldn’t surprise me entirely if Chris didn’t end up at one of those parties celebrating her death. As for the reports – eg: BBC News (2013a) – of… Read More

‘Britishness’ at the Regent’s College Summit

Down in a basement meeting room of the Holiday Inn Oxford Circus…that’s where the Centre for Human Emergence – UK (CHE-UK) was born on the afternoon of Friday 26 July 2009. Spiral Dynamics co-developer Don Beck, Jon Freeman (author of ‘God’s Ecology and the Dawkins Challenge’), Rachel Castagne, Lynne Sedgemore CBE,  Ian MacDonald of the Integral Life Centre,  the veteran activist and author Rosemary Wilkie and myself harmonising an intent – creating a spirit, if you will.  That intent is to build MeshWORK alliances to design natural solutions to local problems in the context of a globalised world. The next 2 days, Saturday 27th – Sunday 28th, saw CHE-UK host its first event, ‘A Regent’s Summit on the Future of the UK’ at Regent’s College. Don, Rachel and Jon led the event and old HemsMESH colleague Christopher ‘Cookie’ Cooke flew in from Switzerland to lend his talents to a task-and-feedback session on the Sunday.  About 50 people joined us to get a feel for what the real issues are confronting the UK and what we might do about them. The general consensus was that in the UK a lot of the positive influence of the BLUE vMEME has been diminished by… Read More

The Thatcherite Project is ended. Whither Britain?

As Gordon Brown sits in 10 Downing Street and contemplates the terrible drubbing the small turn-out of disillusioned voters inflicted on Labour in Thursday’s local elections – 273 Labour seats lost – while hoping desperately that yesterday’s emergency reshuffle of his Cabinet will at least temporarily stall the intra-Labour campaign to oust him and that Sunday’s European election results will not be as bad as predicted, there is one crumb of comfort for him in all this…. The Thatcherite project, which, with his roots in traditional Socialism, he must have hated, is at an end. Margaret Thatcher’s philosophy of the pursuit of individual wealth in an unregulated market, with few or no social responsibilities, was an ethos driven by the ORANGE vMEME. And, for quite a time, that philosophy seemed vindicated. After being the ‘sick man of Europe’ in the 1970s, Britain once again become an economic powerhouse and a country of standing on the world stage, with Thatcher seen clearly to exert influence on those ‘leaders of the free world’, Ronald Reagan and the first George Bush. Thatcherism reached its Capitalist zenith in 1989 with the collapse of European Communism and even China starting to crawl towards a sort of… Read More

Are the Tories sitting on an Election Winner?

The received wisdom of the political pundits is that 2005 will be an election year. It doesn’t need to be, of course. Constitutionally Tony Blair can go on to May 2006; but prime ministers often like to put themselves to the vote after 4 years – especially if they think they are ahead of the Opposition and/or they think things are likely to get worse. The Labour Government looks tired and no longer so sure of itself – particularly in terms of  policies. (For example, House of Lords reform is bogged down and the fox hunting ban is a mess.) Blair is unpopular with much of his own party and much of the country – tainted by his unremitting support for the American war on/in Iraq. The media continue to speculate on just how sour relations are between Blair and Chancellor Gordon Brown. And the Prime Minister’s unequivocal public support for Home Secretary David Blunkett right upto the morning of his forced resignation has once again brought into question his judgement. With the Government seeming to stumble from one poor/unpopular decision to another, you would think Blair would want to hang on as long as possible in the hope of things somehow improving. That to go to the… Read More

A Tale of 2 Councils…and the Real Challenge facing Simone Butterworth and Jim Brooks

The county of North Lincolnshire and my home town of Hull are virtually neighbours. Just 5 miles of the A63 through the East Riding of Yorkshire and a mile or so of the Humber Bridge separate them. North Lincolnshire Council has been awarded Beacon Council status. Following a damning Audit Commission report, Kingston Upon Hull City Council is under serious threat of some form of central government intervention unless, by December 2002, it can show demonstrable progress against its remedial Action Plan. Why such different scenarios for two local authorities geographically so close? Systemic thinking? Nothing symbolises the differences between the two councils more than the critical field of Education. For it is its strategies in Education that have seen North Lincolnshire achieving Beacon status in two consecutive years. (Although the Beacon award was specifically for Education, to achieve the award, the Council per se has to be perceived as a high-performing local authority.) By comparison Hull has been bottom of the GCSE league tables for 4 years out of the past 5; the year it wasn’t bottom, it was next to bottom. There are those in Hull who look enviously at the semi-affluent farming communities around Scunthorpe. They proclaim that, if… Read More