To strengthen an economic system means agents in system must explore, test boundaries. Not the consultants nor the policy makers. The entrepreneurs. - Shawn Cunningham

A video on the three dimensions of the facilitators' role

The video describes the three principal dimensions of the facilitator´s job.

Check out the website to find out! http://english.iifac.org/

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Alternatively, watch the video here from IIFACWEB and published on 1 Apr 2013

How are MBTI frameworks used to understand behaviour and manage teams?

The source material on cognitive learning styles can be found here on Wikipedia

MBTI for cognitive learning styles

Each is not a polar opposite, but a gradual continuum.

• Extraversion to Introversion

The extraverted types learn best by talking and interacting with others. By interacting with the physical world, extraverts can process and make sense of new information. The introverted types prefer quiet reflection and privacy. Information processing occurs for introverts as they explore ideas and concepts internally.

• Sensing/Intuition

The second continuum reflects what a person focuses their attentions on. Sensing types enjoy a learning environment in which the material is presented in a detailed and sequential manner. Sensing types often attend to what is occurring in the present, and can move to the abstract after they have established a concrete experience. Intuitive types prefer a learning atmosphere in which an emphasis is placed on meaning and associations. Insight is valued higher than careful observation, and pattern recognition occurs naturally for Intuitive types.

• Thinking/Feeling

The third continuum reflects the person’s decision preferences. Thinking types desire objective truth and logical principles and are natural at deductive reasoning. Feeling types place an emphasis on issues and causes that can be personalized while they consider other people's motives.

• Judging/Perceiving

The fourth continuum reflects how the person regards complexity. Judging types will thrive when information is organized and structured, and they will be motivated to complete assignments in order to gain closure. Perceiving types will flourish in a flexible learning environment in which they are stimulated by new and exciting ideas. Judging types like to be on time, while perceiving types may be late and/or procrastinate.

"Tell me and I will forget, show me and I might remember, involve me and I will understand." - Confucius

What are some useful indicators of systemic change?

What is systemic change?

1. A measurement  of the change in the rules that govern the system and that affect how actors/agents behave and function. From an economic perspective, this means going beyond the conception of people as 'rational individuals' and incorporating a better understanding of social constraints that lock us in to our patterns of consumption. 
2. The relationship between certain types of 'resilience finance' and the ability to confront shocks and disasters at individual level, household level, business level, industry level and across social networks and political positions 
3. A measurement of 'subjective resilience' at household level to better understand the ability to "anticipate, buffer and adapt to disturbance and change"
4. Developed by looking at synergies between the development, business and economics fields of study to better frame measurements of systemic change. Bringing together traditional nonprofit measurements around poverty and impact with typical business and social enterprise measurements of efficiency and effectiveness with typical economic measurements, such as tax revenues, job creation, labour income, for deeper systemic measurement, such as increase in business-to-business services, change in investment patterns towards long-term customer relationships and emergence of new market-based products and services that respond to pro-poor needs. 
5. A recalibration of the equilibrium. Moving systems from unjust to just, marginalisation to inclusion, structural disadvantages to systemic advantages (gender), traders to value creators, short-term transactions to long-term relationships and incremental shifts [in markets] to transformations and revolutions, 

What does a market system specialist like me do?

Economic Development

• Develop retail networks in developing countries to get products and services in the hands of low-income marginalised consumers
• Help aid programmes do more systemic social welfare through systemic safety net programmes
• Improve the enabling environment for MSMEs and the informal sector  

Social Business and CSR

• Look at supply chain interventions that go beyond the value chain approach and take more of a systemic perspective that actually deliver benefits to poor farmers 
• Identify different areas where CSR can be better programmed by way of a market systems approach
• Integrate the private sector into market systems approaches that have historically focused on socialist mechanisms (large State, community associations, NGOs)
• Work with system actors to identify areas where market systems development will make a difference

Behaviour Change

• Train practitioners on behaviour change and behaviour change methodologies to help projects deliver systemic solutions 
• Design behaviour change tools to improve the adoption and commitment of poor people to long terms savings and investments practices

"We need to reach that happy stage of our development when differences and diversity are not seen as sources of division and distrust, but of strength and inspiration" - Josefa Iloilo

The Guest House by Rumi

The Guest House by Rumi

This being human is a guest house. 
Every morning a new arrival. 

A joy, a depression, a meanness, 
some momentary awareness comes 
as an unexpected visitor. 

Welcome and entertain them all! 
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows, 
who violently sweep your house 
empty of its furniture, 
still, treat each guest honourably. 
He may be clearing you out 
for some new delight. 

The dark thought, the shame, the malice, 
meet them at the door laughing, 
and invite them in. 

Be grateful for whoever comes, 
because each has been sent 
as a guide from beyond.

"Do not look where you fell, but where you slipped." - African Proverb

"Without a sense of urgency, desire loses its value." - Jim Rohn

Forgiveness is not true compassion - Krishnamurti

Forgiveness is not true compassion
What is it to be compassionate? Please find out for yourself, feel it out, whether a mind that is hurt, that can be hurt, can ever forgive. Can a mind that is capable of being hurt, ever forgive? And can such a mind which is capable of being hurt, which is cultivating virtue, which is conscious of generosity, can such a mind be compassionate? Compassion, as love, is something which is not of the mind. The mind is not conscious of itself as being compassionate, as loving. But the moment you forgive consciously, the mind is strengthening its own center in its own hurt. So the mind which consciously forgives can never forgive; it does not know forgiveness; it forgives in order not to be further hurt.
So it is very important to find out why the mind actually remembers, stores away. Because the mind is everlastingly seeking to aggrandize itself, to become big, to be something When the mind is willing not to be anything, to be nothing, completely nothing, then in that state there is compassion. In that state there is neither forgiveness nor the state of hurt; but to understand that, one has to understand the conscious development of the 'me'.
So, as long as there is the conscious cultivation of any particular influence, any particular virtue, there can be no love, there can be no compassion, because love and compassion are not the result of conscious effort.

J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

"At first dreams seem impossible, then improbable, then inevitable." - Christopher Reeve

“Do not let another day go by where your dedication to other people’s opinions is greater than your dedication to your own emotions!” - Steve Maraboli

The systems for welfare and safety net programmes

How are welfare and social safety net systems set up?

Broadly speaking and quite simply, welfare and benefits help people through poverty as well as respond and be resilient to unexpected external shocks, such as macroeconomic downturn and job loss, sickness and injury, and other disabilities. Welfare also helps people grow their financial and asset base and are used to supplement incomes that are considered below living wage. Welfare can also help pay for supplementary services to people overcome poverty, respond to shocks and/or grow their asset base, such as childcare or energy subsidies.

Conversely, tax systems are used to generate income in order to redistribute to welfare recipients. Tax can be applied to incomes (and conversely tax can be reduced on low incomes and personal allowance thresholds). Tax can be applied to goods and services deemed harmful to other people and the environment such as cigarettes. Tax incentives (or tax-free activities) can be applied to goods and services deemed beneficial to other people and the environment such as solar panels for household roofs.

Welfare budget - The welfare budget is formed through amount raised in taxes and more precisely, the proportion of tax income allocated to the welfare system. Who decides this proportion? How does this money get allocated? Does the amount reflect the needs of the benefit claimants within the system? According to Open Democracy: "Benefit levels in Britain reflect political decisions on the amount governments in Britain have been prepared to spend, not the total of claimants’ needs."

Welfare eligibility criteria - There are several different categories of eligibility criteria to be able to clam welfare, such as time in work, dependents, length of residency. There are also different categories of benefit types from job seeker support, to housing to sickness to occupational injury. The specific criteria will differ in different countries. Above all, claiming benefits is not an easy task for local claimants or those from elsewhere classified as migrants or immigrants. And certain welfare opportunities are not included in the benefits system because they are public goods (from clean air to access to a universal healthcare system that treats personal injury and illness especially those that are communicable, contigious and treatable) (BBC News)

Multi-territorial welfare system - Across integrated trade and economic zones (where integration includes policies and regulations as well as social networks, culture and learning), such as the European Union (EU), it was found that migrants from wealthier countries (like the UK) have the power to claim benefits from across the water, in other equally wealthy or even less wealthy countries. At times, the number of Britons claiming welfare in the EU can be larger than 'EU migrants to the UK claiming welfare in the UK' (IB Times and the Guardian)

Changes to the welfare system - Changes to the amount in the welfare system (taxation) and who gets them (welfare recipients) are brought about by those operating within the system itself. The Government may seem to have decision-making power but what analysis do they do to make decisions and who does the research? In some cases, the EU can put pressure on member states to make welfare system changes (Social Europe)

Factors that affect the ability of a welfare system to work

• A restriction in money inflows are more of a burden than the increase in the number of welfare recipients
• 
  

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https://www.opendemocracy.net/can-europe-make-it/charlotte-rachael-proudman/welfare-benefits-are-calculated-by-political-objective
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25134521
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/britons-claiming-benefits-across-eu-outnumber-immigrants-getting-welfare-uk-1484091
http://www.socialeurope.eu/2015/02/welfare-union/