It was my privilege to be a member of the first DMan cohort—20 years ago-- where we were all pioneers of a sort--students and faculty learning together. For Ralph and his colleagues, I imagine the experience was something like first-time parents having to develop their parenting skills on the fly, but with a bunch of unruly adolescent children-- and with occasional visits from curious university faculty wondering what we all were up to.

Those of us who first became acquainted with Ralph’s work in his Stacey Matrix days also had the privilege of witnessing—and perhaps making a small contribution to-- the evolution of his thought from a more or less conventional approach to complexity-in-organizations to his unique and radical theory of complex responsive processes of relating. From my perspective, Ralph’s reframing essentially mathematical concepts as social processes, in the domain of the social sciences and philosophy, was the crucial shift that made complexity insights more accessible, useful, and relevant to what organizational leaders actually do. For me, certainly, this domain shift also opened a whole new world of thinkers beyond what the so-called business literature offered:    George Herbert Mead and the American Pragmatists, Norbert Elias, Brian Goodwin, John Shotter, and many others.

In a world of constant scolding by “the experts” for questioning consensus views, it’s essential to remember that innovation and progress come from the open minded, the curious and the risk takers-- the outsiders, not the establishment. Ralph surely was one such original thinker.

On a personal level, it was a great pleasure to know Ralph.  As many have noted, Ralph’s skill as a storyteller made him a compelling teacher, but his raconteurial skills carried over into his social life where he could be very funny and entertaining. I still recall with a smile his stories about dealing with the Pooh Bah’s at the Tavistock Institute and learning to play the bagpipes as a schoolboy.

I pursued the DMan toward the end of my career, but the experience was nevertheless stimulating and transformational. It was an opportunity to engage with challenging ideas and people who were much smarter than me at a time when it might have been easier to coast, to be carried along by the habits and prejudices accumulated over many years. Ralph, his colleagues and students have created a still growing body of important work, but in my case, Ralph proved that one still can teach an old dog new tricks, and for me, that’s legacy enough.