Society is the still face

December 22, 2010 By

Back in November, I worked with my mate Teresa Posakony on a two day gathering the object of which was to work to apply brain science to policy questions on the prevention of adverse childhood experiences.  On the first day I facilitated an Open Space event that brought together reserachers and brain scientists to discuss their findings and on the second day, we had panelists and Teresa ran a half day cafe to look at the implications of the research for policy making.  I composed a poem at the end of the day.

As a part of the experience, we were shown a powerful video of the still face experiment, a test to see how infants respond when their care givers break the connection with them.  It is very very powerful.  Here it is:

Later in the day one of the panelists, Jennifer Rodriguez, referred to this video by saying that collectively, “society is the still face” when it comes to our children and youth.

That was the hook I needed for the poem, which was also informed by the words I saw and heard during the cafe.  I read the poem and got a generous standing ovation.

Today I got an email from our clients which was sent by the researcher you see in the video, Dr. Ed. Tronick.  Dr. Tronick was responding to our client, who sent him the poem and the recording of me reading it:

I really am quite moved by the poem and your comment about how much impact it has.  When I began this work in my lab I had no idea that it might one day be so useful in getting children and families what they so desperately need.  I love the poem – I will get it up in my office somewhere, especially what it brings together and the rhythm of it.  Please tell Chris how much I appreciate it.  It is just amazing.  And more important than the SF or the poem is the work you and everyone at the conference are doing.

It is not enough to do work in the world without adding as much beauty as we can.  The power resides in the songs, the poems, the images that we use to capture our collective experiences and to throw a light on how important they are to us as human beings.

Enjoy the harvest.

Filed Under: Art of Harvesting, BC, Community, Facilitation, Improv, Poetry, World Cafe Tagged With:

Society is the still face

December 22, 2010 By

Back in November, I worked with my mate Teresa Posakony on a two day gathering the object of which was to work to apply brain science to policy questions on the prevention of adverse childhood experiences.  On the first day I facilitated an Open Space event that brought together reserachers and brain scientists to discuss their findings and on the second day, we had panelists and Teresa ran a half day cafe to look at the implications of the research for policy making.  I composed a poem at the end of the day.

As a part of the experience, we were shown a powerful video of the still face experiment, a test to see how infants respond when their care givers break the connection with them.  It is very very powerful.  Here it is:

Later in the day one of the panelists, Jennifer Rodriguez, referred to this video by saying that collectively, “society is the still face” when it comes to our children and youth.

That was the hook I needed for the poem, which was also informed by the words I saw and heard during the cafe.  I read the poem and got a generous standing ovation.

Today I got an email from our clients which was sent by the researcher you see in the video, Dr. Ed. Tronick.  Dr. Tronick was responding to our client, who sent him the poem and the recording of me reading it:

I really am quite moved by the poem and your comment about how much impact it has.  When I began this work in my lab I had no idea that it might one day be so useful in getting children and families what they so desperately need.  I love the poem – I will get it up in my office somewhere, especially what it brings together and the rhythm of it.  Please tell Chris how much I appreciate it.  It is just amazing.  And more important than the SF or the poem is the work you and everyone at the conference are doing.

It is not enough to do work in the world without adding as much beauty as we can.  The power resides in the songs, the poems, the images that we use to capture our collective experiences and to throw a light on how important they are to us as human beings.

Enjoy the harvest.

Filed Under: Art of Harvesting, BC, Community, Facilitation, Improv, Poetry, World Cafe Tagged With:

Tools for White Guys who are Working for Social Change (and other people socialized in a society based on domination)

December 15, 2010 By

1. Practice noticing who’s in the room at meetings – how many men, how many women, how many white people, how many people of color, is it majority heterosexual, are there out queers, what are people’s class backgrounds. Don’t assume to know people, but also work at being more aware.

2a. Count how many times you speak and keep track of how long you speak.

2b. Count how many times other people speak and keep track of how long they speak.

3. Be conscious of how often you are actively listening to what other people are saying as opposed to just waiting your turn and/or thinking about what you’ll say next.

4. Practice going to meetings focused on listening and learning; go to some meetings and do not speak at all.

5a. Count how many times you put ideas out to the group.

5b. Count how many times you support other people’s ideas for the group.

6. Practice supporting people by asking them to expand on ideas and get more in-depth, before you decide to support the idea or not.

7a. Think about whose work and contribution to the group gets recognized.

7b. Practice recognizing more people for the work they do and try to do it more often.

8. Practice asking more people what they think about meetings, ideas, actions, strategy and vision. White guys tend to talk amongst themselves and develop strong bonds that manifest in organizing. This creates an internal organizing culture that is alienating for most people. Developing respect and solidarity across race, class, gender and sexuality is complex and difficult, but absolutely critical – and liberating.

9. Be aware of how often you ask people to do something as opposed to asking other people “what needs to be done”.

10. Think about and struggle with the saying, “you will be needed in the movement when you realize that you are not needed in the movement”.

11. Struggle with and work with the model of group leadership that says that the responsibility of leaders is to help develop more leaders, and think about what this means to you.

12. Remember that social change is a process, and that our individual transformation and individual liberation is intimately interconnected with social transformation and social liberation. Life is profoundly complex and there are many contradictions. Remember that the path we travel is guided by love, dignity and respect – even when it is bumpy and difficult to navigate.

13. This list is not limited to white guys, nor is it intended to reduce all white guys into one category. This list is intended to disrupt patterns of domination which hurt our movement and hurt each other. White guys have a lot of work to do, but it is the kind of work that makes life worth living.

14. Day-to-day patterns of domination are the glue that maintain systems of domination. The struggle against capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, heterosexism and the state, is also the struggle towards collective liberation.

15. No one is free until all of us are free.

From the Colours of Resistance webpage

via RANT Collective : Tools for White Guys who are Working for Social Change (and other people socialized in a society based on domination).

Filed Under: BC, Being, Collaboration, Community, Facilitation, Leadership, Practice Tagged With:

Insights on shifting systems

September 27, 2010 By

Running an Art of Hosting workshop this week for employees of the City of Edmonton.  We are about 30 people all together looking at the art of hosting participatory process, convening and leading in complex environments where certainty is an artifact of the past.

Naturally because these people work for a municipal government, the conversations we are having tend to be about systems.  We are working at the level of what it takes a system to shift itself as well as what it takes of an individual to lead when the answers are unclear.

For me, lots of good insights are coming up.  A few that cracked in a cafe conversation this morning included these three:

  1. The fundamental question facing governments is not why or what or who, but HOW.  How can we deliver services differently?  How do we change to include more public voice in our work without losing our mandate?  How do we cope with the scale of change, chaos, interconnection and complexity that is upon us?  These questions are powerful because they invite a fundamental shift in how things are done – the same question is being asked of the Aboriginal child welfare system at the moment in British Columbia, which is looking to create a new system from the ground up.  Shifting foundations requires the convening of diversity and integrating diverse worldviews and ideas.
  2. New systems cannot be born with old systems without power struggle. As old ways of dong things die, new ways of doing things arise to take their place.  But there isn’t a linear progression between the death of one system and the birth of the new: the new arises within the old.  Transformation happens when the new system uses the old to get things done and then stands up to hold work when the old system dies.  While old systems are dying, they cling to the outdated ways of doing things, and as long as old systems continue to control the resources and positions of power and privilege, transformation takes place within a struggle between the new and the old.  Ignoring power is naive.
  3. A fundamental leadership capacity is the ability to connect people. This is especially true of people who long for something new but who are disconnected and working alone in the ambiguity and messy confusion of not knowing the answer.

Its just clear to me now that holding a new conversation in a different way with the same people is not itself enough for transformation to occur.  That alone is not innovation.  The answers to our most perplexing problems come from levels of knowing that are outside of our current level.  The answers for a city may come from global voices or may come from the voices of families.  Our work in the child welfare system was about bringing the wisdom of how families traditionally organized to create a new framework for child welfare policy and practice, and that work continues.  Without a strategic framework for action, for transforming process itself, mere reorganization is not enough.

Filed Under: BC, CoHo, Collaboration, Community, Conversation, emergence, Facilitation, Leadership, Organization Tagged With:

Recent thinking on participatory engagement

September 21, 2010 By

I recently wrote a white paper for a First Nations organization on participatory community engagement.  The paper outlines several models, principles and processes that I am mcurrently working with as I help groups design and implement longer term community engagement processes.

Here is the most recent version of the paper for your reading, in .pdf format. The paper talks about mental models and comes from a perspective of decolonization.  I’d love to have your thoughts in the comments so I can refine it further.

Filed Under: BC, Collaboration, Community, Design, Facilitation Tagged With:

What it takes to change an operating system

September 14, 2010 By

Meetings reflect the basic operating system of a group of people.  In organizations where power dynamics are heavily at play you will see lots of meetings chaired by those with the power.  In flat organizations, circles and open space events are probably more the norm.  Communities meet in all kinds of different ways, but essentially a meeting is a good way to make the operating system visible.

A great deal of the work I do involves helping organizations and communities shift to more participatory meeting processes.  It isn’t always easy, and today I had one of those days when the stars didn’t quite align in a way that created the magic.  I needed to return to a default setting for the group, because they weren’t prepared for such a massive shift in how they were meeting.  To have gone on would have been to alienate them and prevent real work from getting done.  So we had to shift on the fly, change our hosting styles and reconfigure the room and the process architecture to enable people to be comfortable enough to dig into difficult content.  It is a tough call and a fine line to walk but flexibility, curiosity and willingness to learn will help you as a facilitator stay present to the group’s needs, which is after all, of primary importance.

So what if you want to change that operating system?  What if you want to tinker with the DNA of a meeting process?  What does it take?

In my experience it takes a lot of work up front and not just in the planning phase.  You also have to change the WAY you do planning.  If you are trying to move from a top-down, command and control meeting style to something more participatory, here are a number of factors to pay attention to:

1. Create a core team that learns together. This is a basic tenet of any systems change initiative.  A core team stewards the change and creates the shift.  In doing so they also embody the change, which means that they have to be reflective of the whole in their composition and willing to learn together about new ways of working.  Successful core teams in my experience spend equal time learning, building relationships and working together.  They are made up of a variety of people with a variety of experiences and interests and the very best teams contain people who are willing to stretch, perhaps host part of the meeting in a way they have never done so before.  The core team become the designers, champions and leaders of the change, reflected in the way they approach the shift.  They don’t simply hire a facilitator and give orders: they host.  They have a stake in the outcomes, and they believe in change.

2. The invitation is a process. I’ve written about this before and it is crucial: invitation is not a thing that you send out over email – it is a process.  It includes conversations with key potential participants, it is an iterative process of learning, refining, communicating and listening.  It involves writing something, creating web presences, making phone calls, taking people out for coffee.  If you haven’t gone out for lunch with at least one potential participant as a part of your invitation process, you aren’t doing it right!  Short changing invitation will result in poor preparation for participants and perhaps even a rude surprise when they arrive and see that you have changed everything.  Too much change all at once to the unprepared can be shocking.

3. Participants have to want it. Successful shifts in meeting culture come in part from participants who show up because there is compelling work to do AND because there is a promise of a new way of working.  If people show up just to do the compelling work, they aren’t going to want you to monkey with their meeting process too much.  Creating that frame of mind in participants is a time consuming process but it pays huge dividends in shifting a culture of meeting.  This is a key plank in the invitation platform and shouldn’t be dismissed.

4. If you don’t get it right the first time, don’t fight it. Learn from mistakes.  If you get a world cafe set up and the group rebels, take a stand for the work, not the process.  The worst kind of facilitators are those who let their attachment to process stand in the way of good work getting done.  Instead of forcing yourself on people who “just don’t get it” get out of the way and help them do the work that they are hungry to do.

Systemic change does just happen because you have a good theory and some smart ideas.  It happens because you have sensed the timing and offered the right things at the right time.  I’m not saying that we should shortchange people either and simply offer them comfortable options, not by any means.  But a system’s tolerance for challenge is a sensitive thing and walking the edge comes with high stakes.  Learning how to do this is a lifelong skill.

Filed Under: Art of Hosting, BC, Facilitation, Organization Tagged With:

An invitation to go over the waterfall

August 23, 2010 By

Harrison Owen periodically restates his invitation to the world to not only join in Open Space but to go as far as you can in Open Space and see where it takes you.  I feel like my work of late has been about this in many ways, and Harrison’s recent post to the OSLIST came at just the right time for me.  Here is what he says:

A long time ago a good friend, Ralph Copleman, was to be found in the middle of a large circle of peers dressed in a flowing cape and repeating the words, “Everything is moving, Everything is moving.” Odd to say the least and some doubted Ralph’s sanity. Some still do, but that image has stuck in my febrile brain ever since – and as time has passed it occurs to me that Ralph had it precisely right: This is an energetic cosmos. The problem arises when we (and that includes all of us some of the time) desperately want everything to stop and stand still. So desperately in fact that we have created a mental image of our environment exclusively populated by static things which include everything from mountains to super nova along with the oddments of our life like professions, chairs, relationships, organizational structures, corporations, countries and empires. Unfortunately this mental image is a radical illusion, one might say delusion. Ralph is right. Everything is moving and what we perceive as stable structures are but the momentary, slice in time, freeze-frame constructs of our imagination.

Heresy? Psychobabble? Advanced esoteric insight? – None of the above, I think. As a matter of fact, Ralph’s observation is nothing but a short (poetic?) version of the (now) standard scientific understanding of the nature of the cosmos. Starting with the Big Bang it is all flowing energy, albeit now clumped in momentary configurations – but still flowing energy for all of that. Scratch any rock hard enough and its essential nature comes through – a whirring bunch of quarks and neutrons doing the cosmic dance. Doubtless my physicist friends would take issue with my phrasing – but not, I think, with the core message. Everything is moving.

So what does all this have to do with the price of eggs? Or for that matter – Open Space and our role as facilitators and consultants? A lot, I believe.

Starting with Open Space which is many things to different people. For some it is a Large Group Intervention. Others might see it as an aberrant phenomenon peculiar to a cultish few. For myself Open Space is a trial ride in the flow of life which has a lot of similarities to my boat.

My boat is smallish in size (32 feet) but definitely larger than the average punt. She is very seaworthy and shares a common heritage with the local Lobster Boats here in Maine. We have many visitors, most of whom have never been on a boat such as the Ethelyn Rose. When you walk on board, things look sort of familiar. Chairs for sitting, a comfortable nook for dining, and even an oriental rug on the floor – excuse me, sole. If you look further there are the standard amenities such as a shower and commode, all sequestered in their separate quarters. Even a complete landlubber will feel more or less at home.

But the moment we leave the dock the world changes – apparent stability yields to constant motion. Everything is moving even if it seems to be staying in the same place! In the harbor motion is minimal, but the moment we clear the breakwater marking the harbor entrance the experience can be radically different. Sea swells from the open Atlantic Ocean take us up and down in distances measured in yards, and should we have a good cross wind the surface chop adds an interesting side to side motion. The Ethelyn Rose is right at home, but some of our visitors have a different impression. And navigating in these conditions is a definite learning experience. Even a simple walk through the main cabin can be a challenge. Hand holds that you had carefully plotted at the start of your journey suddenly changed position relative to you as you made your way. What was up is now down and who knows what is happening in between. Interesting, and as they say, It ain’t Kansas.

Most people meet the challenge and after a few educational bumps to various parts of their anatomy they learn not to fight reality. No matter what you may have thought you were going to do, the only useful option is to go with the flow. And the next level of learning is that when you do that well (flow) you can actually arrive where you need to be. Wonderful! Sounds a lot like Open Space.

We start in the static stability of a circle. This may seem strange to some, but there is a place for everybody and everybody finds a place. A familiar and enduring structure for sure. Then it happens. The circle crumbles in bits and pieces as people come to center, announcing their passions – only to be briefly restored as they return to their seats. However the restoration is but momentary. Shortly everybody leaves their seats to join a chaotic gaggle at the wall. So much for static structure, and it goes downhill from there.

Ebbing and flowing, groups form and reform all without benefit of the standard constraints essential for orderly organizational life—or so we might have thought. Pre-arranged agenda (sometimes called Mission, Goals, Objectives) is nonexistent. The Schedule might be posted but never followed – things start when they start. Assigned participation is nowhere to be found, and yet the right people show up. And to make things even worse, the air is filled with buzzing and flutters as Bees and Butterflies do their thing. Madness! To be sure there may be a few people who are utterly flummoxed as the hand holds they may have expected (see above under “Ethelyn Rose at Sea”) disappear . . . or reappear in unexpected places. Their condition is not helped, for should they ask what to do the answer is likely to come back as a question – What would they care to do?

A trifling few will lose heart and head for the shore – perceived stability. But the vast majority, as we have seen over the years and around the globe, will be totally captivated by the moment, and a smaller group will experience that moment as total exhilaration. They are doing what their prior life experience taught them could not be done – seriously and intentionally going with the flow. And rather than being rank hedonism, the experience proves to be massively productive and fulfilling. Doing well and good – and feeling great. A hard to beat combination.

And then we come to Monday Morning. Back to reality, as they say. But is it? The truth, I believe is rather different. They have experienced reality and come to the edge of shedding illusion/delusion. In the words of friend Ralph, “Everything is moving” – and this is now a fact of life to be savored and enjoyed. No longer a terrifying unknown, it is to be affirmed and embraced. Not without a few “white knuckle” moments to be sure – but infinitely better than hanging onto the (illusory) rock of stability.

So what about us – those privileged folks who have accepted the honor of opening space in people’s lives? Short answer: Invite our guests over the edge. Please note I did not say, Push them over the edge.

Crafting this invitation is always a matter of personal style and must come from the heart. The invitation I have in mind never appears on a piece of paper (or the electronic equivalent). It arrives in our personhood – who we are and how we present ourselves, which is to say, from the heart. Not to be confused with a gushy valentine or formulaic presentation, the invitation manifests in our simple presence, revealing our own acceptance and joy in the moving flow of life. Without words we express the swimmer’s call: Come on in, the water is fine! Of course you have to be in the water for that call to have any credibility.

It is perhaps easier to say how NOT to create this invitation. First off, it is not a matter of rational argument and presentation of facts. Most people already know the facts at some level, and I think the case could be made that it was “rational argument” that has gotten us into the bind we experience. Given the “fact” of a moving, changing world which can be very uncomfortable, it is quite “rational” to define that world in terms of controllable static chunks that may be contained, or better, bent to our specifications. This has led us to such wonderful things as “Flood Control” which works until such time as Mother Nature and Old Man River decide to take a different course. It turns out that The River is not a static, definable thing but part of a vast ever changing system. Effective Flood Control would require close management of the Planet’s atmosphere to say nothing of the cosmos beyond. Good luck!

Also under the heading of “NOT to be included” are well intentioned efforts to sugar coat the pill, as it were. Which is to say that we might propose certain limitations that will restrict the possibility of change in Open Space. Some of us have called these “givens” but so far as I can tell the only given is change itself. And to suggest otherwise is not so much to violate the “Spirit of Open Space” but rather the essence of the cosmos itself. Ralph had it right: Everything is moving. In this context, Open Space Technology is a minimal consideration.

I am by no means suggesting that our invitation look like the back panel of some medication listing every possible adverce reaction, if in fact unexpected change is such an adverce reaction. And truth to tell I find the appearance of unexpected change in the midst of an Open Space to be one of its (OS’s) most delightful consequences. I also think that it is important to note the OS is not the engine of change. It simply provides the space for change to show up and the cosmos (or whatever) takes care of all the heavy lifting.

For me an invitation to Open Space is an opportunity to include friends and strangers in the deepest experience of (my) life. It has little to do with selling a product, doing a process, excersizing some sort of professional competence – although there are doubtless elements of all of that. Fundamentally it is my invitation to experience life at its fullest in which chanagability is not the enemy to be suppressed but rather the rich tapestry of an evolving future. I don’t make it, I can’t predict it – but I can participate both as a sojourner and a co-creator. Stuart Kauffman speaks of being “At Home in the Universe.” That is my elemental experience, and I am always looking for playmates.

Filed Under: Art of Hosting, BC, Collaboration, Community, Facilitation, Leadership, Open Space, Organization Tagged With:

Studying what makes recovery possible

June 28, 2010 By

A key part of supporting community resilience lies in accentuating what is working in communities, giving it attention and putting to use.  Today my friend Jerry Nagel wrote from Minnesota to ask for advice about what to do with some of the communities who have been devastated by tornadoes in the last week.  My reply:

Might be useful to go through an appreciative process of studying what happened to get people back on their feet.  What aspect about our community made it possible to look after those who lost their homes?  What stories of response do we need to harvest and celebrate and what do those tell us about our community?  Where did those values come from and how as a community can we support the continued development and practice of those values as we rebuild?  I would keep the questions quite grounded on people’s personal experiences and not do too much abstract reflection while the need and hurt is still very close to the surface.  The point of appreciative inquiry at this point is to surface the stories of life in the community and harvesting them so that the community knows its intangible assets better.
I have done similar inquiries in communities that have been hit by tragedies like suicides and chronic drug use or violence.  It helps a lot with the healing and it harvests what’s working to put all of that to use.
Communities do this anyway.  With the perspective of time, everyone will tell the stories of how we came together and what worked and how we survived it.  For those that arrive in the community from this time on, they will always be “outsiders” to some extent for not having gone through the experience with others.
Filed Under: Appreciative Inquiry, Art of Hosting, BC, Facilitation Tagged With:

Beyond Sustainability

June 19, 2010 By

On my way to Hawai’i, the big island to co-host a gathering called Beyond Sustainability: Creating a Community of Leadership based on a Platform of Reverance. This gathering has been several years in the making, and over the last two years I have been deeply involved in the design of the work, finding myself stopping and starting as we find the best way to bring high powered people together to connect existing work, explore indigenous worldviews and creating some coherent results that may positively affect the values that underlie consumer society.

It is a hugely audacious reach that we are trying for with this gathering.  A tipping of time and talent and ways of seeing that is intended to create a series of “start lines” towards new directions.  If we are successful in doing anything, the results will be quietly influential over a period of years.  We need a long view of time and a humble view of reach and we need to also play the balance of love and power that exists in the world to find the openings that will carry the seed of this work.

It has been a long slog getting to this point and the dynamics and energies of raising funds, navigating difference and balancing aspirations have given us some deep insight into what it takes to talk about values shift let alone engage in it.

Tim Merry,Luana Busby-Neff and I will be holding space all week for this, and I’ll try to blog about our experiences as we go, but I suspect my energy won’t be focused in a harvesting direction all the time.  Lots of space to hold at many levels, and in many ways, this is one of the most significant facilitation challenges I have ever undertaken.  Glad to be working it with good friends who can collectively hold all that may come up.

I feel Kiluea in my bones now, 30 minutes from departing from Vancouver to fly there.  Reverance is kicking up in my soul and I am humbled beyond belief to be in the work.

Bless us and wish us luck.

Filed Under: Art of Hosting, Being, Collaboration, Facilitation, First Nations

Meg Wheatley’s 12 principles for supporting healthy community

May 25, 2010 By

I’m a sucker for principles, because principles help us to design and do what is needed and help us to avoid bringing pre-packaged ideas and one-size-fits-all solutions to every problem.  And of course, I’m a sucker for my friend Meg Wheatley. Today, in our Art of Hosting workshop in central Illinois, Tenneson Woolf and Teresa Posakony brought some of Meg’s recent thinking on these principles to a group of 60 community developers working in education, child and family services, and restorative justice.  We’re excited to be working nwith these principles in the work we’re doing with Berkana Institute.  Here’s what I heard:

1. People support what they create. Where are you NOT co-creating?  Even the most participatory process always have an edge of focused control or design.  Sometimes that is wise, but more often than not we design, host and harvest without consciousness.  Are we engaging with everyone who has a stake in this issue?

2. People act most responsibly when they care. Passion and responsibility is how work gets done.  We know this from Open Space – as Peggy Holman is fond of saying, invite people to take responsibility for what they love.  What is it you can’t NOT do?  Sometime during this week I have heard someone describe an exercise where you strip away everything you are doing and you discover what it is you would ALWAYS do under any circumstances.  Are we working on the issues that people really care about?

3. Conversation is the way that humans have always thought together.  In conversation we discover shared meaning. It is the primal human organizing tool.  Even in the corridors of power, very little real action happens in debate, but rather in the side rooms, the hallways, the lunches, the times away from the ritual spaces of authority and in the the relaxed spaces of being human. In all of our design of meetings, engagement, planning or whatever, if you aren’t building conversation into the process, you will not benefit from the collective power and wisdom of humans thinking together.  These are not “soft” processes.  This is how wars get started and how wars end.  It’s how money is made, lives started, freedom realized. It is the core human organizing competency.

4. To change the conversation, change who is in the conversation. It is a really hard to see our own blind spots.  Even with a good intention to shift the conversation, without bringing in new perspectives, new lived experiences and new voices, our shift can become abstract.  If you are talking ABOUT youth with youth in the process, you are in the wrong conversation.  If you are talking about ending a war and you can’t contemplate sitting down with the enemy, you will not end the war, no matter how much your policy has shifted.  Once you shift the composition of the group, you can shift the status and power as well.  What if your became the mentors to adults?  What if clients directed our services?

5. Expect leadership to come from anywhere. If you expect leadership to come from the same places that it has always come from, you will likely get the same results you have always been getting.  That is fine to stabilize what is working, but in communities, leadership can come from anywhere.  Who is surprising you with their leadership?

6. Focus on what’s working, ask what’s possible, not what’s wrong. Energy for change in communities comes from working with what is working. When we accelerate and amplify what is working, we can apply those things to the issues in community that drain life and energy.  Not everything we have in immediately useful for every issue in a community, but hardly anything truly has to be invented.  Instead, find people who are doing things that are close to what you want to do and work with them and others to refine it and bring it to places that are needed.  Who is already changing the way services are provided?  Which youth organize naturally in community and how can we invite them to organize what is needed?  What gives us energy in our work?

7. Wisdom resides within us. I often start Open Space meetings by saying that “no angels will parachute in here to save us.  Rather, the angel is all of us together.”  Experts can’t do it, folks.  They can be helpful but the wisdom for implementation and acting is within us.  It has to be.

8. Everything is a failure in the middle, change occurs in cycles. We’re doing new things, and as we try them, many things will “fail.”  How do we act when that happens?  Are we tyrannized by the belief that everything we do has to move us forward?

9. Learning is the only way we become smarter about what we do. Duh.  But how many of us work in environments where we have to guard against failure?  Are you allowed to have a project or a meeting go sideways, or is the demand for accountability and effectiveness so overwhelming that we have to scale back expectations or lie about what we are doing.

10.  Meaningful work is a powerful human motivator. What is the deepest purpose that calls us to our work and how often do we remember this?

11. Humans can handle anything as long as we’re together. That doesn’t mean we can stop tsunamis, but it means that when we have tended to relationships, we can make it through what comes next.  Without relationships our communities die, individuals give up, and possibility evaporates.  The time for apologizing for relationship building is over.  We need each other, and we need to be with each other well.

12. Generosity, forgiveness and love.  These are the most important elements in a community. We need all of our energy to be devoted to our work.  If we use our energy to blame, resent or hate, then we deplete our capacity, we give away our power and our effectiveness.  This is NOT soft and cuddly work.  Adam Kahane has recently written about the complimentarity of love and power, and this principle, more than any other is the one that should draw our attention to that fact.  Love and power are connected.  One is not possible without the other.  Paying attention to this quality of being together is hard, and for many people it is frightening.  Many people won’t even have this conversation because the work of the heart makes us vulnerable.  But what do we really get for being guarded with one another, for hoarding, blaming and despising?

We could probably do a full three workshop on these principles (and in the circle just now we agreed to!).  But as key organizing principles, these are brilliant points of reflection for communities to engage in conversations about what is really going on.

Filed Under: Art of Hosting, BC, Being, Collaboration, Conversation, Design, Facilitation, Invitation, Leadership, Open Space, Organization, Philanthropy, World Cafe, Youth Tagged With:
« Older Posts
Newer Posts »