Organization — Berkana Collaborative

Love and power, holons and process

November 29, 2011 By Chris Corrigan

Graphic from puramaryam.de

Last night as part of a leadership retreat we are doing for the the Federation of Community Social Services of BC, we took a bus into Vancouver from Bowen Island to listen to Adam Kahane speak. He spoke last night on the ten laws of love and power (the essence of which you can see amongst these Google results). There are a couple of new insights from the talk he gave which I appreciate.

Love and power as a complimentary system. Adam’s project is to recover useful definitions of love and power and to see them in a complimentary system. Seeing these two forces this way creates all kinds of important strategic imperatives in systems – moving from degenerative power to generative love, from degenerative love to generative power. This is polarity management in it’s core…the ability to keep a system of complimentary poles in a rhythm that oscillates between the upsides of both, but never rests in one or the other. This dynamic approach to love and power invites us to become skillful at both. The approach is fundamentally Taoist!

Turtles all the way down. We had a brief exchange about what is going on with the #Occupy movement in terms of this framework. A question was asked about whether #Occupy represented a love move or a power move. I said that I saw #Occupy representing a drive to wholeness, a unifying effort to unite the 99% – a love move. Much of the process evident at the three Occupy camps I have been to has been about inclusion and joining. Adam saw it differently. By distinguishing ourselves from the 100%, #Occupy is a power move because it is a drive towards the self-realization of the 99%. This is fascinating to me because it pointed out that love and power drives operate in different ways, in different scales even within the same process, This is what makes it so tricky to be in thiss dynamic. You have to understand at which level your love or power move is working. In everything we are involved in there are multiple levels of scale and focus (“turtles all the way down“) and skillful leadership is as much about knowing which scale you are at as it is about making the right move. Also Taoist: moving in line with the times and the context. This idea of acting in scale has come into our work today where we are looking at the living and dying systems model developed by Meg Wheatley, Deborah Frieze and a number of us in Berkana. Living systems scale, and exhibit similar patterns at each level.

Holons. That leads to the next insight, which is Adam’s use of the concept of holons to describe how systems are influenced by love and power. I like this a lot, because holons represent a stable structure at every level. I first was introduced to the idea of holons through Ken Wilber’s work, who developed the concept frost proposed by Arthur Koestler. Adam’s use of holons to illustrate love and power is very useful. Love in this case is the holon’s drive for connection and integration and power is the holon’s drive towards self-realization and differentiation. There can be many drives moving simultaneously, hence my use of the above graphic, which gets the picture across.

Power/love moves in process design. Adam spoke about “moves” that are called for when the power/love dynamic tips too far to ones side or the other. This comes from Barry Johnson’s work in polarity management, and for process designers, it has important implications. Using the love/power dynamic, we can make choices about the kinds of processes that we use to bring people together or to create the drive for self-realization. Adam mused that in process design and facilitation, World Cafe was a good example of a love move (as it tends the group to wholeness based on the fact that there is one questions that the whole group explores) and Open Space Technology as a good example of a power move (as it is dependant on agency and diverse streams of self-realization happening simultaneously). I though this was a pretty useful observation, and it behooves us as process designers and facilitators to think about this construction in the design choices we make.

Adam’s work on this stuff has legs because it is a very simple concept which becomes immensely complex in practice. But importantly, it is practice. Efforts to understand it in theory can be limited. The dynamic of practice, the complicated roughshod effort to get it right is where the reward is.

Filed Under: Art of Hosting, BC, Community, Design, Facilitation, Leadership, Open Space, Organization, Practice, World Cafe Tagged With: syndicated

The activist model of action

October 24, 2011 By Chris Corrigan

A lot of work I am doing these days centres on supporting activists. Whether it is through the Art of Social Justice, the work of addressing addictions related stigma in the health system, running a pro-action Cafe for the BC Government Employees Union Human Rights and Equity Conference, changing the conversation about immigration in the United States I am surrounded by people both within and outside of systems and corporate structures that are engaged in changing things.

Over the course of the fall I’ve been thinking alot about what I have been learning about action from these folks. I think the model of activist organizing and activity is applicable widely, not just in the fields of social change but in all kinds of change where complexity and new forms of leadership are needed. When I say activism, I mean models of action that are characterized by people working from the power they have, forming alliances, opening up participatory processes and working skillfully within systems to change substance and process. So here are a few insights from travelling the world with people who make things happen.

Pay attention to the process. Ironically, people associate process conversations with a lack of action. But my experience is that that having a focus on process makes action precise, participatory and sustainable and increases the chance of success. Activists who are trying to change systems know that the process is the deep architecture of systems and where systems are stuck, it is because the process is enabling that stuck-ness. You can see this at play in the #Occupy movement worldwide where people are working to learn about and implement new forms of democratic engagement. Skillful focus on process is a way to move innovation forward. At Berkana we say “Slow down to go fast” and this is what that implies. Become skillful with means and radically different ends have a chance.

Look for leadership everywhere. In the social justice movement there is a saying: “check in and step out.” If you come to a change initiative with privilege (ie you have power within the system) the best thing you can do to enable change is to check in with your privilege and step out of the conversation to create space for new leaders and new forms of leadership to come forward. Asserting your privilege closes space down. Becoming an ally to change initiatives is a powerful and important way to support emerging solutions and to allow leadership to come from anywhere. People with power and privilege can open lots of space if we get real about how our power works.

Connect initiatives. Yesterday our addressing stigma initiative had their first champions meeting. Ten people came together and we discussed the 15 action initiatives that were underway. The most important work that we did yesterday was to connect these initiatives together and connect them to existing work within the system so that we could weave a net that lifts the issue through the system. The analogy is similar to weaving a blanket. With single strands you cannot lift anything, but woven together, the strands can form a blanket that can toss people to great heights!

Remember that complex problems require multiple solutions. Using the Cynefin framework for making decisions about process and action has been very useful. The reason is that when we are working in the complex domain, participatory leadership is important and that activist model works well. Creating multiple prototypes and “safe-fail probes” is a powerful way to precipitate change. Relying on analysis and expert leadership is an excellent way to move forward in complicated decision making frameworks. Within organizations, there is a strong bias to defaulting to analysis and expertise. Consultative models are used for complex problems which consult people for ideas, but retreat to expert groups to make decisions based on what they have heard. This is not an appropriate mechanism for addressing complexity. Within organizations, the activist approach can be powerful but it needs to be learned. Wouldn’t it be something for social activists to train people within organizational structures on ways of social innovation?

Become skillful at convening. For me this goes without saying, but Peter Block’s work around emphasizing the competency of convening is an important one. Peter’s redux of this leadership competency is useful here:

• Create a context that nurtures an alternative future, one based on gifts, generosity,accountability, and commitment.

• Initiate and convene conversations that shift people’s experience, which occurs throughthe way people are brought together and the nature of the questions used to engagethem.

• Listen and pay attention

I see these capacities being worked and developed among activists in deep and accelerated ways. When you are working for community change, there is often more at stake than working within organizational settings. Leadership in organizations, especially commercial organizations tends to focus on efficiency, production and increasing revenues. Within communities, change is often precipitated by the threat to lives or livelihoods, addressing violence or inequality and improving complex indicators of health and well-being. Those needs have a way of focusing activist on doing things well, and people who don’t work in this world would do well to learn from those that do. If you are concerned about action, study and learn from those who do it when lives are at stake.

Filed Under: BC, Collaboration, Community, Facilitation, Leadership, Organization Tagged With: syndicated

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

October 5, 2011 By Chris Corrigan

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: syndicated

At the intersection of power and participation

September 29, 2011 By Chris Corrigan

Leaving New York today. It has been an incredible four days here working with my good friends Kelly McGowan and Tuesday Ryan-Hart and Lex Schroeder, Aniestla Rugama, Alissa Schwartz, and Aswad Foster. We were running a workshop called the Art of Social Justice in which we were investigating the intersection of participatory process and social justice work. Over three days we explored a framework that Tuesday has developed and investigated with Kelly for the past year. The framework includes and transcends the gifts and drawbacks of traditional social justice frameworks and of what we know about participatory process.

Tuesday is writing a lot more about this, but the essence of the framework is that neither social justice analysis nor participatory process are enough on their own to move us into the new forms of leadership that are needed in a world where social inequity and power are becoming increasingly complex, and where traditional forms of organizing are no longer reflective of the interconnected nature of global society..

A gift of traditional social justice analysis is the way it understands personal and collective power and privilege. This analysis concerns itself with transformation of both the personal and the social power dynamics in society, but it often contains within it an invisible current of control that runs deep in the architecture of social change process. It posits a social separation between those of us who are working for change in or allied with the struggle of oppressed peoples, and people in the system that are thought to be – traditionally – the enemy. Or it sets up a struggle between the system that perpetuates oppression and the people who are oppressed by it. In this world, in this time, that analysis is out of date. We are all connected to the entire system. As I showed in my last post, you can even discover how many slaves you employ. Even if you are heavily marginalized within the mainstream, you are connected to the system itself. As the sign said at Occupy Wall Street, “you are us.”

Those of us who are facilitators of participatory process often make grand claims about the power of processes like Open Space Technology and World Cafe to even out power differences. In a circle everyone is said to be equal and leadership can come from every chair. While participatory process does provide a useful methodology for decolonizing how we meet, it has several risks associated with it. For one thing, if we fail to take into consideration the context in which we are working, power can show up in participatory process in a dangerously invisible way. Some participants may be able to operate much more resourcefully because of their power or privilege by, for example, becoming the scribes for small groups and speaking for the group. Those who cannot write may not feel comfortable posting a session in Open Space, meaning that there is no way that their voices can be heard or their contributions incorporated. Furthermore, participatory processes, like all facilitation processes, heavily depend on the role of the facilitator. If the facilitators (and the process designers for that matter) are not aware of the currents of power and privilege within the context in which they are working, they run the risk of designing structures that keep marginalized people marginalized. If they come to the hosting role without awareness of and good practice around their own power and privilege, the social architecture that emerges can be very exclusionary.

Both of these fields of analysis have something to offer to one another and both have their own drawbacks, In Tuesday’s framework, she identifies a middle path, which she named co-revealation. It is going to take me a while to unpack this concept, but I can at least begin to see how it works. In the space of power-aware participatory leadership, the gift of relationship is active. As we move together through process, the emphasis on relationship is key and in working together relationship becomes more revealed. In the process, we treat each other with more and more grace and compassion, coming to see that as we are all interconnected both to each other and the systems in which we are working to change, we recognize that personal and social transformation is also both inevitable and required. In Saskatoon last week, one of our participants in the Art of Hosting was carrying the question “how do we collaborate with dictators?” as a way of trying to discern the limits of participation. In several conversations over these last two weeks I have come to ask that question of myself, and reframing it as “how do I collaborate with myself when I am being a dictator?”. With that inquiry active, we may find that dictatorship behaviors are present everywhere, and we may also allow ourselves and others the grace to be imperfect in our lives and behaviors. This doesn’t excuse violence or oppression, but rather it gives us serious skin in the game in trying to address oppressive systems. If we are not a part of the problem we cannot be a part of the solution. And in being a part of the problem we need to treat each other with some kindness and latitude, qualities that are born in relationship, even relationship with people with whom we have fundamental differences.

It may feel as if this stuff is a little old hat, but I experienced it differently in practice. During our gathering in New York a group of three participants brought a proposal into the third day check in circle that required a complete think of our agenda, in doing so they were both proposing a new idea but also challenging the power structure of the system. The design team had been designing the days as we went and hosting the process, but here the participants were inviting us to practice what we preached about awareness of power. The group could have chosen to create a drama around the situation, but our field of relationship was very strong. And so they issued the challenge as an invitation We immediately went into a circle process first to seek everyone else’s thoughts on the proposal and second to gain clarity around how to make it work. It was clear in our group that the idea being proposed – that we all go down to Occupy Wall Street and learn what we can there – was both an excellent idea, and also not one that everyone wanted to do. In the circle, I expressed my faith in the resourcefulness of the group and the design team to offer and hold multiple options so that the decision did not have to be an either/or choice. Towards the end of the first round of circle a proposal began to emerge that made some sense, and seemed workable. Kelly and I, as host and guardian of the circle, invited a round for additional clarity followed by one more round of any refinements to the proposal. Then we thumb-voted on it, took care of two small questions and went forward with a great new design for the day.

What emerged was a process whereby the morning would be spent in proaction café which offers people a chance to work on projects. The group that wanted to go down to Wall Street decided to use that time to prepare a learning journey for themselves while others worked on other projects. The afternoon was devoted to nuts and bolts learning in our space while about nine people went off to the occupation. We reconvened at 300 and had two short fishbowls to report on what each group had learned. That harvest was recorded both in video and on flip charts so tat it could be made available to the wider community.

Among the many lessons of the day was the fact that Tuesday’s ideas take us beyond the realm of analysis and into a practice of this middle space. In fact the middle space of co-revelation can only live in practice, it has no power in analysis or in the kinds of theoretical debates that rage without relationship. In those domains the middle space disappears.

It is hard to capture exactly the effect this week has had on my practice, but it deeply continues the theme of “seeing more clearly” that has been the greatest gift of my journey in and around the Art of Hosting community of practice for the past seven years. In our workshops and learning events, we seek less to train people in methodologies and more to situate participatory process in its wider context. Doing so gives the methodologies power and effectiveness and activates the deeper gifts of invitation, collaboration, participation and transformation. And although the word feels raw and new and vague, I think I can finally describe what we do as assisting groups to enter into the space of co-revelation. That was Tuesday’s gift to the group, and that was the group’s significant gift to ourselves.

And as if to confirm it, I sensed this new space active in Liberty Park on the two nights we went down there. The young people who are organizing Occupy Wall Street are doing so in a way that gives profound insight into this concept, but that is the subject of another post.

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

Rise up you guilty ones!

July 27, 2011 By Chris Corrigan

What a pattern…all over the world police attacking citizens…it happened here in Canada too last year during the G20 talks (that probably had some bearing on what subsequently unfolded in Greece). The most powerful line in that video is that one that welcomes us to the age where everyone is innocent except the people, who are guilty. That is a stirring reminder of how this story is being told.

If you are not a part of the problem, you cannot be a part of the solution! So, proud to stand with all those who identify as “guilty.” Time for those who don’t declare any responsibility for the state of the world to move aside.

Filed Under: BC, Collaboration, Community, Leadership, Organization Tagged With: syndicated

Art Kleiner on the organization as living body

March 29, 2011 By Chris Corrigan

The new issue of Fieldnotes is out from ALIA and within it, Art Kleiner muses about the metaphor of the body’s systems as a way of understanding information flow in organizations:

•   The hierarchy is a circulatory system for messages of authority; specifically, for anything that can be expressed as a number. It is the means by which the organization seeks scale. It flows from and to the top: the CEO and then the shareholders or owners. It might be analogous to muscle coordination.

•   The network conveys knowledge — in the form of gossip, guidance, information about opportunities, and anything else that people talk about easily. It is the means by which the organization develops its capabilities. It flows from and to a broad base of people throughout (and outside) the company. It might be analogous to neural networks.

•   The market is the exchange of goods, services, and money within an organization and its value chain. It is the means by which the organization manages its workflow. It transmits anything that can be bought, sold, or traded, flowing ultimately to the customer. It might be analogous to the cardiovascular system.

•   The clan is the family or community-like circulatory system, operating below the surface of every organization (and often subconsciously). It is the means by which a company’s culture is maintained, with a “core group” of its most important people at the center. The organization establishes its view of legitimacy through the clan. It might be analogous to the endocrine system.

via The Organization is Alive | ALIA Institute.

Art will be among the faculty at the ALIA Summer Institute this year, where I’m also teaching again.

Filed Under: BC, Organization Tagged With: syndicated

Acting resourcefully in a space of community organizing

March 4, 2011 By Chris Corrigan

This past week I have been in Minnesota working with colleagues Jerry Nagel, Ginny Belden-Charles and Mandy Ellerton. We were conducting a second residential training in collaborative leadership with a number of planning grantees working in communities to make impacts on the social and economic determinants of health.

In this residential we spent a fair bit of time working on tactical community organizing, exploring how to teach this from the perspective of the Art of Hosting. The traditional tactics of Alinsky-style community organizing operate by creating strategic targets for action and mobilizing community power against those targets. It’s a zero-sum game. In the Art of Hosting community and the Berkana models of community organizing, we generally focus on purpose and seek to build strategic relationships and structures that create longer term, resilient and sustainable responses to changing realities. The challenge for us as teachers in this was to explore and find a way to teach both so that we could help people become resourceful practitioners of a multitude of strategies.

Both have value. Recent events in the Middle East, as well as down the road from us in Wisconsin showed the need and power for traditional community organizing to respond to acute injustice and to take advantage of timing. And while mass occupations of public spaces and state Capitols have their place, they will flare out if the participants cannot find a way to use power to sustainably and wisely over time. The danger with many revolutionary movements is that they seize power and later exercise it without changing the nature of the power dynamics itself. Top-down remains top-down, and the patterns of leadership and power-sharing remain in place. For revolutions of any kind to be truly transformative they have to work on both levels – visible power dynamics and underlying patterns that generate those dynamics.

There is a great temptation to reduce this space into a dualistic “love vs. power” choice. Adam Kahane’s recent work has explored this dichotomy from a position of how love and power can be complimentary resources in leadership practice. If you ask people, many will privilege one over the other. ”You can’t expect autocrats to be toppled by love alone – you need to gain power.” Others will say that “the destructive exercise of power is what got us into this situation, and only building relationships based on love and respect will get us back.” Or as Martin Luther King famously said: ““Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.” In our group we had people who reacted in a strongly negative fashion to a discussion of power, because they perceived themselves as victims of power. In other situations I have found people will dismiss love as “sickly and anemic” and unable to make any real change at all. Reducing any of these dimensions to an either/or proposition will immediately drop you into a space of unresourcefulness, and that is NOT what we were after.

On our teaching team, we were well set to explore this dynamic. Both Jerry and Mandy have experience in traditional community organizing tactics, Alinsky-style tactical work in communities and organizing traditional political campaigns. Ginny and I are both students and practitioners of relational community development, both of us working a lot lately with using community building principles to work with change. And each of us has experience and curiosity about the other end of the spectrum so we were well placed to figure out an inclusive and transcendent framework that could be useful for our participants.

We began by defining some of the dimensions of a leadership space in which tactical action for mutual influence takes place. In other words, what kinds of strategies are useful for influencing people and participating pro-actively in change? We found three dimensions of action, which we set up as polarities:

Inquiry – Advocacy. From the world of systems thinking, this set of skills is well known. Balancing advocacy and inquiry is a key area for personal mastery to participate in deeper and transformational dialogue. Advocacy requires clear speaking, storytelling and compelling argument on behalf of oneself or a group. Inquiry requires openness, curiosity and a willingness to listen and be changed by what you hear. It is the domain of good, clear, non-judgemental questions.

Transactional – Relational. A transactional view sees the world as a space for negotiation, for winning and losing and where separation is useful. Relational practices and worldviews on the other hand bring us into each other’s sphere of influence in a way that builds sustainable alliances and systems of influence. It is important to engage in transactional activity sometimes, escaping from dangerous situations, demanding that an autocrat hand over power (and even seizing it from the person), negotiating and creating separate spaces of safety such as women’s centres, immigrant services, Aboriginal choice schools or First Nations governments. But for sustainability and co-evolution, relational tactics are important, building community around purpose. reintegrating a movement with society, letting go of a defined community of practice to allow emergence to take social innovation to the scale of an influential system.

Individual – Collective. Another key dimension that we discovered that gives the model a great deal of power and depth. There are times for individual actions and times for collective actions. Individual leadership can be power and visionary, the image of Obama as President. A powerful speaker can invoke what is called in Halkomelem “nautsamaut” – a powerful holistic collective single mindedness. On the other hand, people cannot work alone, and collective intelligence and effort is needed to undertake large scale and meaningful transformations.

If you place these three axes in relation to each other, you get a sphere, and that sphere becomes what we called “a space for action.” Within that sphere, many tactics and actions can happen, and depending on context, the actions will be considered right or wrong. Our goal then became exploring this space with an eye to creating resourcefulness in any given moment.

For example, the revolution in Egypt last month was a result of collective action based on relational strategies which took a transactional approach to shifting power in the state. Collective leadership assembled, demands were articulated, and Mubarak’s resignation was demanded. There was no place for relationship building with the old regime. By the time Mubarak held out his olive branch it was too late. The people wanted him gone and they wanted the power that was concentrated in his office to be moved to the people through a democratic constitution-building process. In this example there was no room for individual, relational inquiry. It was not the time for solo self reflection. Nor was there much in the way of a sole leader of the opposition movement. Democratic revolutions of this nature tend to have the occasional figure head (ElBaradei, Mandela, Havel, Gandhi, King,Tsvangarei) but the movement is run by groups and really powered by a mass of people. In situations where autocrats are overthrown by powerful individual figures (think Haiti, Cuba, Soviet Union, China, Liberia, Afghanistan, Zaire, Yugoslavia) the results become less democratic than autocratic, and often result in civil war rather than a peaceful transition of power.

Another example. On my home island, Bowen Island, we are currently engaged in a process to determine the feasibility of establishing a national park on our island. This has been a controversial proposal as it emanated not from a groundswell movement, but from a few hard working municipal councillors, some community advocates and the federal government. For the citizens of Bowen, the conversation has been vigorous and at times acrimonious as we faced an apparently dualistic decision between a future with a national aprk, or a future without one. We are a small community and relationships are very important. Many islands and small bounded communities have been torn apart by poorly handled land use processes. For us to succeed we need to not fall into the trap of advocacy for positions (especially as there is so little that can be known about the implications of either a park or a parkless future). It is not smart to be working alone, as we need collective intelligence and connection to come up with creative paths forward under either scenario. And if the work is transactional then we will be left at the end of the day with people who feel they have either won or lost something, with the serious implications for community sustainability over time. It seems to me that our choice is to balance advocacy and inquiry, to work primarily relationally and to engage as much as possible in a collective manner rather than by having individuals submit competing ideas. As an individual acting in this debate I have been less influential than times when I have been part of a collective voice.

So you can see that acting in this space is not about choosing the ends of any of the axes but rather about finding a sweet spot somewhere within the sphere of action where these three dimensions are balanced against the purpose and need of action.

In general what we teach in the Art of Hosting or arts of participatory and collaborative leadership, are strategies for leading in the relational half of this sphere, biased a little towards inquiry and balancing individual and collective practice. From this base, we can move to teach more advocacy by teaching storytelling models that build relations. We generally privilege work in the relational half of the sphere, because in general, the tactical world of change and development is not very proficient in these skills, and yet the transactional worldview is dominant in development work at the moment. People take transactional approaches to inquiry – needs assessments, gap analysis, studies, technical modelling – and transactional approaches to advocacy – report writing, lobbying, results based funding through RFPs. These activities are very familiar to community and organizational developers around the world. The leading edge of balancing that practice is seeking sustainability through relational strategies that help create restorative community and long term viability, which is work we do through the Berkana Institute All of these strategies and activities are useful, but there are times and situations in which some are more useful than at other times.

Practically applying this model should be very straightforward. Like any good framework it comes with a caveat that you can be in multiple places in this model at the same time. Defining and continually clarifying needs and purposes is very important. Sensing the call of the context is also very important. Waiting – a particular kind of active waiting, sensing the conditions and timing – is important too.

Action then proceeds using tactics and strategies that are appropriate to the times and the context. The leadership capacity needed to use this framework well is resourcefulness and a willingness to work with others who bring complimentary skills to the effort. It is also important that everyone remain open to mutual influence and inquiry so as to sense the best time to deploy appropriate strategies and leadership frames. Timing and trust is very important. Used well, I can see that this framework can be a powerful tool for mapping strategies and for generating and designing new ones.

Filed Under: Art of Hosting, BC, Collaboration, Community, Leadership, Organization Tagged With: syndicated

Kevin Kelly’s provocative idea

January 30, 2011 By Chris Corrigan

From Kelly’s excellent new book “What Technology Wants”:

“The technium contains 170 quadrillion computer chips up into one mega-scale computing platform. The total number of transistors in this global network is now approximately the same number of neurons in you brain. And the number of links among files in this network (think of all the links among all the web pages of the world) is about equal to the number of synapse links in your brain. Thus, this growing planetary electronic membrane is already comparable to the complexity of a human brain. It has three billion artificial eyes (phone and webcams) plugged in, it processes keyword searches at the humming rate of 14 kilohertz (a barely audible high-pitched whine), and it is so large a contraption that it now consumes 5 percent of the world’s electricity. When computer scientists dissect the massive rivers of traffic flowing through it, they cannot account for the source of all the bits. Every now and then a bit is transmitted incorrectly, and while most of those mutations can be attributed to identifiable causes such as hacking, machine error, or line damage, the researchers are left with a few percent that somehow changed themselves. In other words, a small fraction of what the technium communicates originates not from any of its known human-made nodes but from the system at large. The technium is whispering to itself.”

Filed Under: BC, emergence, Organization Tagged With: syndicated

How brains build societies

November 4, 2010 By Chris Corrigan

I’m at a Casey Family Programs conference in Seattle that is looking at applying science to early learning in kids. The people here are learning about brain science and the results of early adverse childhood experiences and what the science can tell us about how we should react in the policy sphere to create healthy kids, families and societies.

The keynote is by Jack Shonkoff, who is a leading brain researcher in this field and who has been sharing some of the basics of what we know about brain science, relationships and healthy societies. Here are some of his key points:

Experiences build brain architecture. What happens is that neural circuits develop to reinforce behaviours, emotions, motor skills and so on. Babies brains build a basic architecture by forming synapses and then a more complex architecture develops on top of that. For the first three year of life, babies’ brains form 700 synapses a second. Genes provide the template for this work, but experiences turn the genes on and off. So early life experiences are built into our bodies, encoded in our brains – for better or for worse. To promote healthy brian architecture you need language rich environments, supportive relationships and “serve and return” interactions with adults are the three things that promote health brain architecture. Prolonged stress and reduced exposure to supportive relationships – in other words, what are known as adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) – create the conditions for heart disease, diabetes, and other diseases that are a result of disrupted development of organ systems.

Toxic stress derails healthy development. In babies, stress is alleviated by contact with a caring adult. If a child is exposed to stress in large amounts, the brain loses the ability to turn off the stress responses, and the stress becomes toxic. Nurturing, stable and engaging environments are the antidote to stress. It’s interesting that in North America we don’t treat stress with much compassion – “get over it” is a common response. In the USA especially, a hyper individualistic culture diminishes the importance of stress.

Some positive stress is a good thing however – what we call in the facilitation world “The Groan Zone” which helps learning and helps healthy development. There is always stress associated with learning new things or doing things for the first time. In healthy development, adults help kids with this kind of stress and the kids learn strategies for dealing with stress, which amps up the heart rate and blodd pressure and then reduces it. Supportive relationships help children to learn adaptive and coping skills.

Tolerable stress is serious and temporary – death of a family member, natural disasters, war and violence, an experience of extreme despair and other things that can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder. This kind of stress is also buffered by supportive relationships. Families, extended families, friends, neighbours, supported programs need to step in and provide the buffering that reduces stress to baseline levels.

Toxic stress however is prolonged activation of the stress response in the absence of protective relationships. This includes living alone in violence, or with adults that neglect children or who are unable to care for children because the are sick or depressed. If you don’t have access to caring adults, the stress becomes toxic and the stress system is built into your brain architecture, placing hardship on your organs, your nervous system and your hormones. This is the kind of stress that leads to long term health and development issues.

Neglect can be as powerful as abuse. It doesn’t matter to the baby’s brain whether your lack of relationships come from neglect or abuse. It has the same effect on the brain, and it keeps the stress levels high. Seven hundred synapses a second don’t care what an adult is doing if there are no compassionate relationships. Reducing stress by reducing the numbers and severity of adverse early childhood experiences results in better outcomes. This doesn’t mean that we have to solve poverty and subsistence abuse overnight before we get better outcomes – it means we need to make policy decisions that ask the question about whether we are supporting healthy and supportive relationships. In other words, the social safety net needs to work both at the systemic level to reduce inequalities, and at the acute level to create spaces where people can learn and experience healthy supportive relationships at every age.

I’ve been listening here thinking about the implications for this in organizations and communities. To sacrifice relationships at the alter of work or learning is to not only inhibit the sustainability of what is going on, but also creates the conditions for unhealthy families, groups, communities and organizations.

Filed Under: BC, Community, Learning, Organization, Youth Tagged With: syndicated

Insights on shifting systems

September 27, 2010 By Chris Corrigan

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:

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.
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.
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: syndicated