National eXtension Initiative

In William Issacs book on the “Dialogue and the art of thinking together” he introduces the Four-Player System originally developed by David Kantor. This is a very important technique for supporting real collaborative thinking in teams.

In any productive group thinking dialogue all four of the following roles should be in play:

The roles do not all need to be in play at the same time but need to have been played before the thinking concludes.

Probably not with 50 billion e-mails dispatched every day wordwide but the signal to noise ratio is getting pretty bad with The Times, July 15, reporting in ONLINE, ON THE PHONE, ON THE UP that 88% of them are junk. It is really evident when I am using my smartphone, all the junk mail appears on that device.

The Times also reports

• 1% of all emails are virus-infected
• 50 billion e-mails are dispatched every day worldwide – 4 fold growth since 2001
• 32 is the average number of e-mail messages received per person per day
• 37 is the average number of texts a user sends per month – double compared to 2001
• 8 is now the average age at which a child gets a mobile phone in Britain
• 1 million children aged under 10 in Britain — one in three — own a phone

These statistics underscore the growth of instant messaging over email as the new communication channel as people and groups rediscover their messaging.