Visioning as the estuary of action

December 7, 2011 By

This is an estuary.  It is the place where a river goes to die.  Everything the river has ever been and everything it has carried within it, is deposited at it’s mouth where the flow slows down and the water merges with the ocean.  These are places of incredible calm and richness, but they lack the exciting flow of the torrents and waterfalls and cascades of the upper river system.

Yesterday I was speaking with a client who worried that an initiative we had begun together was heading towards the estuary of action – a long term visioning processes where lots of things are said and very little is done.  ”We’ve done that before,” she said.  Nobody likes that.  I wracked my brain to see where it was that I had led this group to believe that this is what we were doing.  We had done a World Cafe to check into some possibilities for the organization and we had done a short Open Space to initiatie some experimental actions.  We had learned a little about the organization from these two gatherings, and we were, at least in my mind, fully entered into a participatory action learning cycle, working with emergent ideas, within several well established constraints.  I was surprised to hear the fear spoken that what we were doing was “visioning.”

Then I realized that what we were dealing with was an entrained pattern.  People within this organization associated dialogue with visioning, and the results of dialogue with a mass of post-it notes and flip charts that never get typed up, and action that never comes of it.  Likewise, it turns out that the associated planning with a process that begins with a vision, and then costs out a plan and takes that plan to a decision making body which then rules on whether the project can proceed, by allocating resources.  Both of these views are old thinking, rigid patterns that lock participants in a linear view of action that looks like this:

 

 

The truth is that I had been viewing the process as an action learning cycle:





So now that we are a little clearer on this, there was a distinct relaxation among the group.  We are heading into some uncharted territory and it is too early to nail down concrete plans about what to do and likewise simply visioning doesn’t take us anywhere either.  Instead, we are harvesting some of the rich sense of community that exists, opening some space for a little leadership, inviting passion and responsibility and making small starts,  The small starts are confirming some of what we suspected about how the organization works, which is good news, because we are developing a pattern of action together that will help us all as we move forward to do bigger things with more extensive resource implications.  This is the proper role of vision and planning in emergent and participatory processes – gentle, developmental, reflective and active.

 

Filed Under: BC, Design, emergence, Flow, Improv, Leadership, Learning, Open Space, World Cafe Tagged With:

Think Occupy Wall St. is a phase? You don’t get it – CNN.com

October 5, 2011 By

Douglas Rushkoff has a useful article on the Occupy movement.  I am actually loath indulge in much analysis over what is happening in New York and now elsewhere, because the events defy analysis, especially from a traditional lens.  But in this article, Rushkoff points to some of the things that are happening and why they matter for organizing large social conversations on the pressing issues of our day.

To be fair, the reason why some mainstream news journalists and many of the audiences they serve see the Occupy Wall Street protests as incoherent is because the press and the public are themselves. It is difficult to comprehend a 21st century movement from the perspective of the 20th century politics, media, and economics in which we are still steeped.

Let’s be clear.  Many traditionalists and establishment people are pointing to the form of these protests and dismissing them.  It’s as if the protestors have a responsibility to come up with a list of demands in order to be taken seriously.  Or it’s as if they are not to be believed until they create a reductionist analysis of the problems.

After Copenhagen I had a clear idea that mainstream ways of organizing the conversation on the biggest issues of our time were outdated.  The conference model is a waste of time, money and talent.  Diplomacy is too constrained by 19th century notions of statehood to be useful.  What needs to happen is a sea change, a worldwide open space in which voices and questions can float freely, and actions can arise that address things in completely novel and emergent ways.  If the form of this movement is mind boggling, don’t ask the protesters to change for you.  You will never understand it unless you change your way of thinking about how we create solution.

via Think Occupy Wall St. is a phase? You don’t get it – CNN.com.

Filed Under: BC, Collaboration, Community, Conversation, emergence, Leadership, Open Space, Organization, Youth Tagged With:

Why culture matters

May 17, 2011 By
20110517-100657.jpg

Analyse this...!

Yesterday I had a chance to grab lunch with Dave Pollard in our local coffee shop on Bowen Island. One of the things we talked about was the supremacy of analysis in the world and why that is a problem when it comes to operating in complex domains.

I have been intentionally working a lot lately with Dave Snowdon et. al.’s Cynefin framework to support decision making in various domains. It is immensely helpful in making sense of the messy reality of context and exercises like anecdote circles and butterfly stamping are very powerful, portable and low tech processes.

Cynefin is also useful in that it warns us against a number of fatal category errors people make when trying to design solutions to problems. The most serious of these is remaining complacent in a simple context which has the effect of tipping the system to chaos. Nearly as infuriating and problematic to me is the applicability of analysis to complex domains.

Analysis has a dominant place in organizational and community life. It provides a sense of security that we can figure things out and operate in the space of the known. If we just analyse a situation enough we can identify all if the aspects if the problem and choose a solution. Of course in the complicated domain, where causes and effects can be known even though they are separated in time and space, analysis works beautifully. But in complex domains, characterized by emerged phenomenon, analysis tends to externalize and ignore that which it cannot account for with the result that solutions often remain dangerously blind to surprise and “black swan” events.

The Cyenfin framework advocates working with stories and social constructed meaning to sense and act in complex spaces. Where as analysis relies on objective data and meaning making models to create rules and tools, action in complex spaces uses stories and patterns to create principles and practices which help us to create small actions – probes in the system – that work in a nuanced way with emergence.

In this respect culture matters. The stories that are told and the practices thy are used to make sense of those stories is the method for acting in complex space. This distinction us helpful for me working with indigenous communities where program management may rely on analytical tools (and culture is stamped out in the process) but practices need to be grounded in culturally based responses. Using stories and social meaning making restores culture to its traditional role of helping groups of humans move together in complex domains while using analysis more appropriately.

Filed Under: Art of Harvesting, BC, Design, emergence, Facilitation, First Nations, Leadership, Stories Tagged With:

Walk Out Walk On…the hit single!

May 4, 2011 By

 

Hard on the heels of Deborah Frieze and Meg Wheatley’s new book Walk Out Walk On comes a commissioned single from my mates Tim Merry and Marc Durkee by the same name.  Tim and Marc have beenmaking poems and music for the past five years or so about the work we all do in the world.  THis is a great sounding track, and covers what it is we do in a beautiful and inspiring way.

Filed Under: BC, Collaboration, Community, emergence, Music Tagged With:

What it’s like to make change

May 2, 2011 By

Just off a call where we were discussing what it takes to shift paradigms in indigenous social development. We noted that we hear a lot from people that they are busy and challenged and they need clear paths forward otherwise they are wasting their time.

I have a response to that.

We don’t know what we are doing.  Everything we have been doing so far has resulted in what we have now.  The work of social change – paradigm shifting social innovation – is not easy, clear or efficient.  If you are up for it you will confront some of the the following, all of the time:

  • Confusion about what we are doing.
  • A temptation to blame others for where we are at.
  • Conflict with people that tell you you are wasting their time.
  • A feeling of being lost, overwhelmed or hopeless.
  • Fear that if you try something and it fails, you will be fired, excluded or removed.
  • Demands for accountability and reprimands if things don’t work out.
  • Worry that you are wasting your time and that things are not going according to plan.
  • A reluctance to pour yourself into something in case it fails.
  • A reticence to look at behaviours that are holding you back.

Social change is not easy.  Asking for it to be made easy is not fair.  Leadership in this field needs to be able to host all of these emotional states, and to help people hold each other through very trying times.  It is about resilience, the kind that is needed both when things fall apart AND when things take too long to come back together.

Everyone needs to be a leader here, everyone needs to recognize these states in themselves and hold others in compassion when they see them arising in others.  Working with the emergent unknown requires pacing, a big heart, and a stout challenge.  To create the experiments that help us forward we need to be gentle with judgment, but fiercely committed to harvesting and learning.  We need to cultivate nuance, discernment, advocacy and inquiry rather than jumping to conclusions and demanding rational analytical responses to every situation.

You up for that?

Filed Under: BC, Collaboration, Community, emergence, First Nations, Leadership Tagged With:

Resilient Japan

April 21, 2011 By

Hello friends,

Right now my work has taken me to Japan — in a big way.  We’ve launched a new website:  www.resilientjapan.org as host for this work and the commentary I am writing from there.  I will be bringing some of this over into Resilient Communities, because it is the same work.  But right now most of my writing is on this small new website.  Please come see what’s happening beneath the visible surface in Japan.

I’m working closely with Art of Hosting – Japan and KDI’s Future Centers — both described in earlier blogs from my work in Japan last year.

Blessings,  Bob

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Filed Under: Art of Hosting, asset-based, BC, Bob, emergence, Future Center, Japan, KDI, Resilience, Social Innovation, Strenght Based Tagged With:

One week in Japan

April 12, 2011 By

Mt. Fuji revealed itself today, for the first time since I’ve been in Kiyosato, a small town in the mountains a couple of hours south and west of Tokyo.  This silent sentinel is always on the rim, hosting Japan.  Often hidden by many layers of clouds, it is always there.  Sometimes just a glimmer… I love it when Fuji-san shows itself.  It helps me to quiet my spirit and simply be present.  Again and again, that is what many of you have said in these  days:  Stay present.  Be where you are.  Notice what calls your attention.  Act with respect, compassion and dignity.  Stay clear while staying unattached.  Be prepared to be surprised.  Stay connected.

Yesterday we met for a day to sense why might want to happen.  Let me give a little background.  The KEEP at Kiyosato (http://www.ackeep.org/) was started in the 1930s by an American named Paul Rusch who brought modern farming practices to Japan.  He helped people here transform their mountainside into a demonstration center for new ways to raise cattle.  Along the way he helped to build a hospital here, another in Tokyo and founded a University in Tokyo.  Quite a guy, to say the least.  His spirit is deeply present here, although he died in his early eighties more than 30 years ago.  There never was a grand plan for the KEEP, it simply evolved overtime, working with the people and possibilities present in this one small area in Japan.

Among other things, it is a lovely space now where groups come to meet and people arrive for quiet retreats.  Last year we held two major training events for Art of Hosting here.  While the Tohoku region where the disasters struck on 3/11 is some 250 miles to the north, the disasters struck here as well.  First, and most powerful, it shows up in the subtle field.  The deep connections which hold people together in Japan also mean that the grief in one part is felt throughout.  So there is a deep collective grieving here.  People say time and time again is that the future for all of Japan is different now.  Some things may stay the same, but everything needs to be re-imagined.  The new Japan that emerges will be grounded in traditional values and beliefs, they say, and the future is different now.  Secondly, on a more material level, everyone is affected as well.  Occupancy at the KEEP is down to 30%.  Most young people have lost their part-time jobs.  Rolling power black-outs have hit all of Japan, including here.  Quakes have happened here in the last month as well.  People know their lives have changed.  They’re not sure how.

The week after 3/11, Yamamoto-san, a wonderful deeply present man who has been here for many years, got in the KEEPs bus and drove to Fukushima, the area where the power plants are.  He had to do something.  Somehow he found his way to one shelter among many.  A sports complex, it has some of the best conditions around.  2000 people — mostly in their 60s and 70s — now live there.  Only a small portion of the total number displaced by the disasters.  Only a small portion and totally overwhelming as well.  He brought 43 people back to the KEEP to stay in better conditions for a while.  A small drop in the bucket, but it was what he could do.  43 people who could sleep in real beds, have real baths, eat real food.  43 people who could be warm even while they still shivered with their grief.  Yamamoto-san took this small step, not knowing what was next — but trusting this beginning.

So yesterday we met?  What is next.  What can this small place do that might make a difference?  A difference in the lives of people who live near here, those from Fukushima, those from other parts of Japan.  A difference in the lives of those who work here are have seen the future they know disappear.  It is easy to get overwhelmed.  I know I did when I first heard Yamamoto-san’s story.  2000 people living with almost no privacy in a sports complex; for four weeks each day the government has brought them rice balls to eat.  Four weeks in which life as they know it is gone — and nothing in sight.  What can make a difference?

Kato-san had just returned from Sendai, a region he has been many times before.  When he got off the train, he knew the difference.  Not just the broken buildings — but what was in the air.  It just felt different.  Subdued, almost glazed over.  He saw some young people and talked with them.  Wandering aimlessly in the rubble they wanted to know — what can we do?  He had no answers of course.  Almost overwhelmed by his own sense of grief and loss, he could only stand with theirs.  Devastation, devastation, overwhleming devastation made even more real by the many pockets where life looks like normal.  Stores destroyed.  Stores shuttered.  Stores opened.  Side-by-side.

We spent the morning just dwelling in our confusion.  Sharing impressions.  Letting the grief flow.  Bewildered.  2000 people.  What could the KEEP do.  And what about the people here, and elsewhere in Japan, with their own grief.  We went on a trip to visit to the Paul Rusch Museum here to see what inspiration it might provide.  Paul’s story is quite inspiring.  By the end of his life, his motto of “do your best, and make it first class” was well know here.  It reminds me of the principle “get a clear sense of direction and then find the minimum elegant next step,” something Berkana has learned from the World Cafe Community.

What’s the direction?  Where are the starting points?  What resources does the KEEP have and how can they be used?  What can be done to invite people into their wholeness?  What might make a difference.  Many of us started drawing concentric circles  KEEP in the middle, then Kiyosato, then Fukushima, then all of Japan, then all of the World.  It’s all connected.  AND, one of the things Paul Rusch did was he connected people.

By the end of the day, there was still no clarity.  What’s the stone to drop in the middle of the concentric circles so they become ripples, leading outward to a newness?  A sense was present that some of what the KEEP might do is around youth and youth leading.  A sense that this facility has a new purpose.  A wondering if it might be one of the Future Centers — places of innovation to discover the future — needed now in Japan.

This morning an idea began to crystalize.  Yamamoto-san leaves tomorrow for Fukushima for three days.  He goes to discover what they have — not what they need.  He goes to look for several youth who have dealt with their grief enough to be ready to stand with each other to discover a next step.  Contours of a possibility began to be visible.  We will host an 3 day event at the KEEP in the middle of May.  It will be for around 100 people.  Most of them will be youth.  The majority will come from Fukushima and they will come from three sources — youth living inside the sports complex shelter who are starting to come back to life, youth serving in the shelter, and youth from the “normal area” around the shelter.  They’ll be joined by 25 or so youth from the Kiyosato area and 25 or so from Tokyo.  Purposes envisioned for this gathering include:

  1. Be in our grief together.  Be in all the different griefs surfaced by these disasters.
  2. Enjoy and breathe in this beauty.
  3. Connecting youth of different ages with each other as well as with other generations.
  4. Begin to see  the resources we have and how to use them.  What strengths, what assets, what dreams, what skills, what muscles?
  5. Learn some about how to host dialogues that matter, which surface grief and joy and possibilities and actions.
  6. Begin to support each other in making the changes we need ourselves, while visible to and connected with each other.
  7. Sensing into what else is possible in each of our lives and in each of our regions.

Of course, this will emerge and shift and change.  It may be something entirely different when Yamamoto-san returns.  But I think the core will remain:  releasing grief while continuing to stand with it. Connecting with each other.  Regaining some measure of authority over our own lives.  Discovering the minimum elegant steps which will allow self-organizing to emerge everywhere, and especially in the Tohoku Region, in Fukushima, at this one shelter for 2000 people whose lives have shifted so dramatically.

Honored to be here in these conversations.  Providing a listening presence and occasionally being able to speak in stories and ideas from Berkana’s work around the world.

Blessings,

Bob

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Filed Under: asset-based, BC, Bob, emergence, Future Center, Japan, Resilience, Social Innovation Tagged With:

Stepping Into New Possibilities in Japan

March 28, 2011 By

In a week I’ll be headed back to my beloved Japan.  What will I find there?  Community.  Friends and family.  Colleagues. Grief.  Destruction. Possibility. Fear. Hope.  All those and more.  My heart quivers some.  I am almost overwhelmed by all the images and stories that have flooded in over the last two weeks since the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters.  And, I am going to be with my community, with my kindred.  I’m carrying with me learning from the web of The Berkana Institute as I explore questions of what is possible now that was not possible before with my many friends and colleagues.

Over the last two weeks much of my time has been focused on Japan.  Connecting and supporting people, being in many conversations via twitter, facebook, skype, e-mail and even telephone.  Some ideas have been coming into focus that I want to share.  These are written as I see them.  They are based on many conversations and they are still my formulation of what might be helpful.  They are part of my starting point as I go home to Japan.

I see four main domains of work:

Grief and Possibility in the Tohoku Region.  Much has been lost:  25,000 people dead or missing; 500,000 people without homes; businesses, schools  and infrastructure destroyed.

  • This grief must be hosted.  Spaces need to be created which support people in speaking of their grief and loss and disappointment.  A safe space of talking and of listening is needed now.
  • And Tohoku can be re-created, stronger and more resilient than it ever was before.  What is essential is that people in Tohoku are in charge of this re-creation – not government, not NGOs, not well intended forces from outside.  People in Tohoku must come together in new ways to direct this recreation.

A new effort called  Japan Dialog -  is beginning to address these needs and possibilities.

A Wide Field of Possibilities. People around Japan and around the world want to support the people in Tohoku.  Think of this as an eco-system with many parts.  Some have ideas and resources for different community engagement processes.  Others know how to work with the strengths and assets still present in the communities.  Some know of more energy efficient and durable building techniques.  Others know of better ways to grow food sustainably.  These ideas can either be another tsunami that washes over the area, or they can be a rich ecology of possibilities which can support in the rebuilding.  Work is needed which can call this eco-system together.

The work of  Instituto Elos and the Oasis Game from Brazil may provide important tools for working in this area as well as the ABCD approach (Asset Based Community Development).  I’ve assembled some resources for this approach on my Resources Page

A Bridge to the Future. A third domain of work is the work of connecting Tohoku with this wide field of possibilities.  Spaces and places are needed which support this connection between the people in Tohoku and these many possibilities.  This bridge must be wide, solid and flexible, supporting robust dialogue and design which supports people in creating new future possibilities.  The work that the Knowledge Dynamics Initiative at Fuji/Xerox has done to bring Future Centers into Japan will be a foundation for this bridge.

Possibilities

Bridge To Future

Tohoku Tomorrow

New Relationship To Energy. The earthquake came.  The tsunami came.  What stayed was the radiation.  Perhaps there is an opportunity for a new dialogue in Japan about how much energy is needed to live happy lives.  Japan might choose to learn how to live with less.  If that choice were made in Japan, it would be put into action immediately.  Japan might provide critical leadership for the rest of the world on this important issue.  This is a deep dialogue that needs to be hosted well in the coming months.  There are no easy answers – just very important questions.

Who might help?

In many ways Japan is a large country and a very small community.  Over the last year I have had the opportunity to work with many people and organizations who might be, I believe, the key players to work in these four domains.  I know there are many others as well.  Over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing stories from our work together.

And many, many more.  Japan is ripe for change.  Please visit some of my blogs here from November and December, 2010 to get a sense of the possibilities

And please come visit here from time to time.  I arrive in Japan on April 5th and will be there until the first of June.  I’ll be sharing stories and learning here from time to time.  Please also visit http://bit.ly/dMALkr for a story about Resilience in Japan from the latest Fieldnotes from ALIA — Authentic Leadership in Action.

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Filed Under: ABCD, Art of Hosting, asset-based, BC, Bob, communities of practice, emergence, Enspirited Leadership, Future Center, Intergenerational, Japan, KDI, Oasis Game, Resilience, Social Innovation, Strenght Based, systems of influence Tagged With:

Collaboration: Essential Ingredient for Resilience

March 23, 2011 By

A new insight emerged – as it usually does – in a conversation between friends.

Bob has been a long time sparring partner for me and so when I was reflecting on a year’s project of co-creating and activating a new collaboration model within our Hub, it was Bob I turned to for his usual provocative questions that tend to elicit a deepening of seeing patterns. It was a particular conversation with Bob that I invited my colleague Alycia of Instigation into that gave rise to an article titled Collaboration: The Courage to Step into a Meaningful Mess. You can read it here; it was just released in the last Berkana Institute newsletter.

However, beyond what we share in this article, I have some (fairly raw) thoughts on how collaboration is an essential ingredient for Resilient Communities, what this site is all about :-)  First of all, with a lot of work in multi-stakeholder situations, I have come to see the importance of relationship for systems change – many people believe that it is the policies & structures that will shift an unhealthy system into a better state, but not without healthy relationships. So, in the act of collaborating and building true relationship – not just superficially working together at the same roundtable – resilience-as-social-glue enters into the system. Something that helps people stay together through the work they need to do. Secondly, and building on that, collaboration builds social capital. By collaborating, we are investing into each other and into something that is joint. By collaborating, we are learning to work with each other as equals, and thus re-investing into our capacity to keep doing that more fluently. This in-builds resilience into a community, a community that wants to continue to be together. Thirdly, collaboration contributes to a transfer of skills and capacities between people working together, or at least an awareness of other skills and perspectives. The more opportunities for learning more, and making more available to each other, the more a collaboration of a few people around a shared goal has the potential to truly become a community over time based on shared experience. The more a community knows about itself and the multitude of talents within it that it can draw on, the more agile and resilient it is in the face of any challenges that might come its way… and/or to take a stand for co-creating the new…

Thanks Bob!

- Tatiana Glad, Engage! InterAct / Hub Amsterdam / Waterlution


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Filed Under: Art of Hosting, BC, Bob, Collaboration, emergence, Resilience, Social Innovation, the hub Tagged With:

From rules and tools to principles and practices

February 17, 2011 By

Still playing with the Cynefin framework and thinking about how it helps us to understand the processes for decision making and action in the domains of simple, complicated, complex, chaotic and disordered domains.

Today talking with clients and friends we were discussing the “spaces inbetween,” especially with respect to cultures.  In British Columbia, services are increasingly being separated between indigenous and non-indigenous service providers which isn’t a bad thing on the face of it, but the enterprise is being undertaken from a scarcity mindset.  in other words, resources are being moved from one part of the sector to the other in a zero sum approach leaving people resentful and frightened of the spaces in between, which is the space that clients live in.

One of the results of this fear of space is a collapsing of leadership into a certainty based mindset.  We look for the failsafe solutions and then implement, externalizing all that is unknown and unknowable.  Increasingly however, there is a growing appetite among some leaders for the potential of the space of “not-knowing.”  One can approach that space from the perspective of reductionist analysis, or one can embrace the possibility there.  Working with emergence is not always a secure thing however, as you never know what you are going to get in this space.  What is required there is principles and practices that help one to navigate and make good decisions in the complex, chaotic and disordered domains.  In the simple and complicated domains, where analysis is an excellent approach, rules and tools are very useful.  Previous experience, case studies and best practices are useful for simple problem solving.

Things become dangerous when we seek security in the rules and tools and try to apply them in the complex and chaotic and disordered domains.  Often people will come to learning events with me and ask for a definitive list of situations in which a particular methodology will work.  If I find myself saying “it depends” then I know I am dealing with that unknowable “space inbetween.”  In that case I point to principles and practices.  It sometimes leaves people frustrated, especially if they have come seeking rules and tools.

The goal here is to provide support for leaders who are prepared to enter the spaces of not-knowing and dwell there, sitting in the uncertainty and attentive to all the emotional difficulty that crops up.  It also means taking a disciplined approach to working with safe fail experiments that allow for emergence that then gives you some indications of what is useful and what is not.

In a world besotted with analysis, this is a tough sell, and yet increasingly I meet decision makers who suspect that something is up with the way they have been taught to reason out every situations.  Rules and tools are increasingly failing us as we become more aware of how difficult it is to manage in complex and chaotic domains.  Principles and practices are much more useful.

As to what those practices and principles are, well, it depends.  And that is an invitation to a jumping off point for diving in and learning together.

Filed Under: BC, Design, emergence, Leadership, Practice Tagged With:
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