MG Taylor
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Matt Taylor, an architect by training and passion, and Gail Taylor, formerly a Kindergarten teacher, formed MG Taylor in the mid-1970s and have been helping catalyze "Group Genius" in groups ever since. They are partners in both life and work, they have spawned a network of at least a thousand "Value Web" members — people who have been trained in and who practice their philosophy — all over the world, and they have personally inspired and mentored many more, including me.
I have met, worked with, and learned from many members of the Value Web, which speaks to the scope of Gail and Matt's influence. I want to focus this page on things I learned directly from them, although I will occasionally mention others from their network. Sadly, I won't be able to do justice to the many, many great folks I have learned from in this short amount of space.
How I Met Gail and Matt
Center for Design Research.
KnoWhere Store in Palo Alto.
PlaNetwork.
Wikis. 7 Domains. Supporting The Value Web for the World Economic Forum.
Lessons Learned
Group Genius. Camel story.
Philosophy, not methodology. Importance of practice.
Contrast, however, between elders and practitioners. Lessons on scale.
Also, still stuck on how to apply principles to asynchronous. Fascinating the block.
Modeling Language.
Ship Product.
Stuart Kauffman
Matt's vision. Sketchbook.
Frank Lloyd Wright and professionalization.
Scan Focus Act. Shared understanding. What Phil Windley called the "butt sniffing stage."
Systemic approach to face-to-face meetings.
Design is more important than facilitation. Everyone is a facilitator. You are not facilitating the room by yourself.
Hide the agenda. Fancy restaurant approach.
Anyone can have a bad day. Saw Gail have one. Design a more resilient system.
Importance of Knowledge Workers (KreW). Mechanics of running a successful meeting. Hard freakin' work!
Knowledge capture / artifacts. Alicia Bramlett.
Backcasting. Can't get from here to there, but can get from there to here. Link to rubber band blog post.
Work big.
Glass Bead Game. Cardboard boxes.
Red Threads.
Yellow Threads.
Bigger groups easier to design than small groups. Have to let go of control, trust the makeup of the group. Link to collective intelligence blog post.
Business and IP. Impact of business adoption.
The Value Web.
Leaping the Abyss. Written by others!
First time I saw graphic recording in action. Was familiar with Bob Horn's work. Interesting to compare it with what I had learned from Jeff Conklin.
