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:

Unleashing Leadership and Inspiring Innovation and Creativity in Japan

April 28, 2010 By

Once again I am awake in the middle of the Japanese night.  Head and heart buzzing from yesterday’s work.  I was invited to join KDI — Knowledge Management Initiative in Tokyo for a afternoon workshop with participants in their new Future Center.  KDI was started 10 years ago to work with knowledge creation and realationships to knowledge, building in part on the inspiring work of Dr. Ikugjiiro Nonaka .  There approach is one which places emphasis on “individual vitality” and the  “dynamic field,” or ba.

Crazy bunch, with titles like “Wild Knowledge Architect, “Ba Conductor,” and “Sexy Works Stylist,” they work together in an almost completely flexible workspace in the middle of Roppongi, the international district of Tokyo.  What caught my attention most is where they’re headed.  They’ve been looking at the Future Center idea currently being developed in more than 30 locations in Europe.  See The Reality of European Future Centres.  Last week I wrote about a deep resonance between the work being done by GreenHouse Project and Kufunda Learning Village in Southern Africa and the work of St. Luke’s Health Initiatives.  Guess what?  The resonance continues.

Future Centers, at least as envisoned by Dr. Takahiko Nomura, KDI founder, are incredibly similar to leadership learning centers in the Berkana Exchange.  The core work of Future Centers is to surface the knowledge, wisdom and leadership already present in organizations and to create conditions which all it to be used by all for maximum creativity and innovation.  AND, the same four core competencies we surfaced last month at St. Luke’s Health Initiatives show up as core in Future Centers:

  • connect and convene
  • peer learning
  • source of research and information
  • strengths based approach

So we spent the afternoon with about 35 people from a dozen or so Japanese companies who are thinking about embracing the Future Center concept, each creating a Future Center inside their company as well as a trans-local network which links these Future Centers as a community of Practice.

I think it is going to happen.  These folks are going to step forward and start using all forms of conversational leadership to invite innovation forward.  AND, like elsewhere in the world they’re not doing it because it is the next groovy thing to do, they’re doing it because they know their survival depends on it.

I continue to be impressed with the level of receptivity in Japan for new ways of thinking about leadership, creativity and innovation.  It is not just thinking about it — it is a yearning to step into new practice fields with new partners.

One last note.  We talked about the community of practice work KDI has done over the last 10 years.  The conversation is incomplete, but part of what we talked about is how in their communities of practice perhaps the most important thing that’s happened is that people have learned they are not alone. Others have some of the same intentions and ideas they do.  We’ve always looked at Communities of Practice as places where knowledge is created.  That’s part of their function.  What may be more important is that they are places which people discover more about their own identity and step into their own leadership.

Beginning of a fascinating several weeks in my adopted homeland.

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Filed Under: BC, communities of practice, emergence, Enspirited Leadership, Future Center, Japan, KDI, Resilience, Social Innovation, Strenght Based Tagged With:

Tadaima!

January 31, 2010 By

That’s what is said in Japan when one returns home.  “I’m back, I’ve been out in the world and I am back.” 　ただいま.　And that is exactly how I felt this past weekend will leading a workshop in Japan.  This blog is both a bit about my personal journey and my amazing week in Japan.

My relationship with Japan began in 1970.  I “escaped” to Japan when the U.S. invaded Cambodia and the National Guard murdered four students at Kent State University.  I was finishing my Junior year at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, USA and was active in the student movement and the anti-war movement and on the fringes of the civil-rights, womens and environmental movements.  I left the U.S. with a combination of deep anger and deep grief that was characteristic of those times.

About the only thing I knew about Japan was that it was near China.  But once again my guardian angels were on duty and pushed me where I needed to go.  I began my own spiritual journey in Japan in 1970.  The culture and my host family have been part of my life ever since.  I met the grandfather of my heart in Kyoto.  He was 71 and I was 21.  For forty years our families have been intertwined.  His son is the only grandfather my daughter, Annie has ever know and her time with her ogii-chama and obaa-chama are special.  Japan has always been a place of my heart and spirit and I’ve never been inclined to take my work there.  That all has shifted, dramatically.

Last November at the Pegasus Systems Thinking In Action I was amazed to see 25 or so people from Japan.  Normally there are just several.  I wondered:  “what’s happening?”  I discovered that a lot was happening.  Over the last couple of years there has been a tremendous opening, a search for new ways of being in life and in work in the world.  People are working with systems thinking, Presencing, World Cafe, Appreciative Inquiry and a host of other processes to see what else is possible.  They have not only embraced these methodologies, they have created a huge new opening for new ways of thinking and being.  And in Japan, when something begins, it moves quickly!

Conversations quickly evolved into an invitation to The Berkana Institute to put together an Art of Hosting.  My sense was that it would be important to precede this Art of Hosting with a design session which ended up evolving into a workshop which incorporated different elements of Art of Hosting and my own work on the Art of Change.  The two day workshop was followed by an evening of Dialogue Bar which was astounding in its own right.

I was amazed and deeply moved by the two events.

The weekend workshop  with 20 people in a workshop was a combination of Bob, Enspirited Leadership, Art of Hosting Sampler and Art of Change Sampler all rolled into one.  We met in circle and open space and world cafe.  We walked the “two loops” together.  We walked in silent pairs and in dialogue pairs.  We modeled with clay.  And the clay was so loved that it became a part of the rest of the world cafe sessions as well.  By Sunday morning the design and hosting team space was opened and we designed the second day together and much of the hosting was done  by the participants.

Monday night was “Dialogue Bar”.  More than 100 people from all walks of life and all ages came for what ended up being a 4 hour dialogue bar.  The atmosphere was incredible.  I spent 10 minutes speaking (and 10 being translated) to give glimpses of my life until 2000.  We began the first round of World Cafe with a question:  “what social innovation makes enough of a difference to make a difference?”  After 30 minutes, we did a brief harvest, and I spoke for another 20 (plus 20 for translation) about my journey of the last 10 years and about Enspirited Leadership.  Yuya, the organizer asked for my personal story as a weave and context for the World Cafe.  After I spoke a second time, we had two more rounds of cafe.

The response in both events was powerful.

How to explain it?  You know that Japanese know how to be silent with each other.  They know how to listen to each other with their whole bodies and to hear far beyond the words.  They know how to be respectful.  They know how to find questions.  AND, there is an expression in Japan:  “the nail that sticks up is pounded down.” Edward Hall speaks of Japan culture as being the most “high context” culture on the planet.  But what does this mean?  My friend Jeff in Kyoto, who has lived there now for 40 years (longer than any other living foreigner)  points out that even in Japan, high context is translated simply as “high context.”  What does it mean?  It means Japanese take in everything with their listening.  That is the cultural competence.  AND, the nail that sticks up is pounded down.

How does one continue to listen with one’s whole being AND, stick up, stand up, find courage and clarity to offer one’s leadership in a time of immense change?  This is the question that Japan is ready for and it has been cracking wide open for the last two years.  That is why there were 25 people from Japan at the Pegasus Systems Thinking In Action Conference this past November where there have been 4 or 5 in the past.

I’ll be back for some work in May and suspect I will be returning more frequently.  Since I first arrived in Japan in 1970, it has been a place of my heart and spirit.  In the early years, I wondered why I never tried to bring my work there.  Later, in this past decade, I realized it was my “upbringing” in Japan that allowed me to travel into and with other cultures.  Now, it seems that work around the world has left me with something special to offer in Japan and it feels wonderful!

It is a time of change, and I am interested in the parallels to the Meiji Restoration of 1868 when 250 years of rule by the Tokugawa Shogunate came to an end, rapidly.  I did my undergraduate comprehensive project on it 39 years ago.  What I saw happening then was that the underlying mythic structures of the culture were no longer sufficient to interpret daily experience and they were washed away in an almost bloodless revolution.  Extraordinarily different than the French Revolution or the later Russian Revolution.  I suspect a similar thing is beginning to happen now.

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Filed Under: BC, Bob, Enspirited Leadership, Japan, listening Tagged With: