Launching The Transformation Institute!

January 29, 2012 By Bob Stilger

Hi friends,

I’m beginning the “soft launch” of something that has grown out of my work in Japan over the last several years.  The Transformation Institute:  Community, Business and Personal Transformation is coming to life at web address Robert Theobald and I used for our work from the mid-nineties until his death just before the beginning of the new century.  Seems very fitting and appropriate.

Frankly, I don’t know exactly what the Transformation Institute is.  I just know it wants to be born.  Several questions contribute to its formation:

  • We will encounter more and more collapse of existing systems in the coming years.  How use collapse (disaster/emergency/revolt) as a springboard to transform our communities and our lives into ones which are healthy, resilient and thriving?  A friend in Japan made a critical observation last April, speaking of the triple disasters in Japan.  She said “we caused this.”  Three simple words.  They make us face the fact that while a natural disaster occurred, it was precipitated by an array of human choices.  Many of our choices will lead to more collapses.  Will we try to reconstruct the old normal, or can we learn how to use the energy of collapse to transform to a new more desirable state?
  • While there are differences in our community, business and personal lives, transformation of the three is interwoven.  How will we reconceptualize and recreate the relationship between these three aspects of our lives? One of my biggest lessons in Japan has been seeing what it looks like when business is still a part of community rather than apart from community.  I’m not trying to glamorize business in Japan or say there are not issues and problems, but what’s been striking to me are the ways in which community and social needs trump financial profit.  CSR isn’t enough, it feels kind of like an “oh, and, by the way, I wonder if there is something good we ought to be doing.”  What would it be like for community, business and personal to conceive of themselves as integral parts of a greater, related whole?
  • There is a great, latent potential for great cooperation and greater learning linking the whole of the Pacific Rim.  We are an ecology together.  How might the diverse insights, questions, knowledge and experience of countries, cultures and peoples on the Pacific Rim be invited into a deeper co-creative relationship?  How do we honor the particular problems and potential present in each context and learn together a we work to create a future that works for all?
  • Finally, the emergence of a new Tohoku Region in Japan will be a teacher to all of us.  How do we learn with and from the people of Japan as this beautiful Tohoku region comes back to life? What can those of us elsewhere around the rim contribute as people in Tohoku learn how to work together to create the communities, businesses and lives they want?  I remember the feeling in early April when I was co-hosting a group of 40 or so business leaders in Japan.  We began with grief, sadness and confusion that turned into excitement within three hours.  The shift was remarkable.  When I sensed into the shift these words came back to me:  we’ve been released from a future we did not want!  How can Japan lead the way in transformation?

It’s an exciting time.  Much is possible.  I invite you to help me think about how the new Transformation Institute might contribute to the possibilities which surround us!

Cheers,

Bob

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Filed Under: BC, Japan, Resilience, Robert Theobald, Social Innovation, Transformation Tagged With:

Profiles of Courage in Zimbabwe

October 2, 2011 By Bob Stilger

More than a thousand years ago, they came from the north of Africa, leaving the violence and seeking peace.  They came and they settled in an area that became known as the Great Zimbabwe, a kingdom from 1200-1500 AD which is estimated to have had a population of more than 10,000 and famous, today, for its unique stone architecture.  Little is known about Great Zimbabwe.  There was no written tradition amongst the people who came to be known as the Shona.  Some speculate that perhaps somewhere, lost in the archives describing the travel of Arabic traders across the African continent, there might still be records and more information.

I’ve just finished a week at the Great Zimbabwe, in the company of a little more than 30 passionate, committed, insightful and experienced Zimbabweans who are the leaders of a number of nonprofit initiatives.  My colleagues Marianne Knuth and Simone Poutnik offered a four-day training in the Art of Participatory Leadership under the guidance of Sabi Consulting, which is the steward of a network of nonprofits called Profile. When I arrived in Zim a little more than a week ago, it just felt good to be home as the spring Jacaranda trees release the majesty of their purple blossoms against the African sky.  I realized that I’ve been to this country more than any other in the last decade, except my own.  Zimbabwe has been a great teacher for me.  It has shown how people can come together to develop resilience in times of collapse.

My mind makes up stories when I don’t know what to expect.  I try to stop it – but it has a will of its own.  I arrived not knowing what to expect of this week.  Will the political stasis of Zanu PF and MDC hold a grip over this training?  So many have fled from Zimbabwe in the last decade, who is left that will come to this training?  Will they be eager to engage and learn or will they be reserved and cautious?  Who will they be?  Especially given that my work these past two years has concentrated in Japan, will I be able to speak and host in this culture in a way that is useful?  What will happen?

I’m just humbled and amazed.  WOW.  What an incredible group of people.  Each day as I learned more of their stories and their work I just felt deep gratification.  They are the people who are tirelessly working with what they have to build resilient communities.  AND, much of their work is confined within somewhat traditional structures where hierarchy is the only organizing pattern and where the priorities of the donor dictate many of the parameters of their work.

It was a difficult and demanding week.  They came expecting to be trained in participatory leadership, and found themselves sitting in a circle.  Some of them arrived wanting to know our definitions and expecting us to be carefully articulating frameworks and theories.  Instead, we invited them into exploration and questions.  Some wanted us to give them answers – we said good questions are more important.

In the Art of Participatory Leadership, we believe that a participatory experience is the key component of the learning field.  By the end of the first day, some of the participants were asking is your only theory one of keeping us confused??

 As our time together continued, there were many times of push back:  people here learn by being instructed – they are not asked questions, they are told answers?  People want to be delegated clear tasks with clear performance measures.  We’re not all that free, ourselves, to ask questions:  our donors tell us what they want us to do and how to measure it or our funding will be revoked.  In Zimbabwe’s crises, too many of our staff are just here because they need a job – they are not that committed and some are not all that well educated.  What is motivation for participation when the Director is paid eight times as much as others on the staff?

But beneath these questions was a yearning, and a knowing.  Some of our language didn’t make all that much sense, but as we hung in there together, there started to be a listening beneath the words.  I think the participants were beginning to connect what we said was possible with their own sense of yearning.  And the listening wasn’t all one-sided:  I certainly came to understand more and more how thoughtful, careful and strategic people will need to be in implementing more participatory learning processes in organizations.

In many ways part of this is the continuing burden of colonialism where people here were told that their own indigenous knowing and their own ways of building and maintaining community were woefully inadequate.  The white experts from the north would organize things in a proper sort of way.  They brought with them burearcracy for organization and new ways to measure, control and account for progress. The colonialists also brought a view that the resources and bounty of the world were there for the use of the most intelligent and powerful.

These views have been super-imposed on top of indigenous knowing and don’t fit. But formal education in Zimbabwe is based on learning from someone who stands in front of a classroom and tells them day-after-day that the world is mechanical and predictable.  Someone has to be in charge and tell others what to do.  Policies and procedures will guide actions under which people will use the authority delegated to them by the person at the top to achieve pre-determined results.

We worked in this dance between the really old – indigenous knowing, the old – traditional leadership from the colonial and modern era, and the new – participatory leadership to co-discover what would serve Zimbabwe well, now.  Each offer insights into ways of seeing the world and ways of being in the world.  The chart I drew, above, is pretty dichotomous chart and can lead to either/or thinking.  That’s not really useful for many reasons.   What is useful, I believe, is seeing how participatory leadership can be brought in to organizations to open up new insights, new possibilities, and new patterns of accountable action.

Those who came are more than able to work together to create a new Zimbabwe.  They have the fire and the will.  I suspect that many from this past week will take some of our ideas, structures, processes and tools and begin to adapt them for use in their own organizations.  I hope they will continue to find ways to support each other in stepping into this area of practice.  I know they have dedicated their lives to their work.  And I know they have perseverance!

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Design of Four Days:   Day One; Day Two;Day Three; Day Four

Many thanks to Simone Poutnik for the photos and for the design day depictions!

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Filed Under: Art of Hosting, BC, Bob, communities of practice, Participatory Leadership, Resilience, Zimbabwe Tagged With:

Resilient Japan

April 21, 2011 By Bob Stilger

Hello friends,

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

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

Blessings,  Bob

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

One week in Japan

April 12, 2011 By Bob Stilger

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blessings,

Bob

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

Stepping Into New Possibilities in Japan

March 28, 2011 By Bob Stilger

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

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

I see four main domains of work:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Possibilities

Bridge To Future

Tohoku Tomorrow

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

Who might help?

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

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

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

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

Collaboration: Essential Ingredient for Resilience

March 23, 2011 By Bob Stilger

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

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

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

Thanks Bob!

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


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

Quaking in Japan

March 13, 2011 By Bob Stilger

My heart reaches out to Japan wondering what I can do to help.  How do I witness this disaster from a distance in a way that helps to restore community and build more resilience?

Stay connected.  Stay connected.  Stay connected.  Those are the words that dance across my heartmind.  So I tweet and retweet.  I find friends on facebook and sent them support.  I e-mail.  And I share what I am learning through my connections across other networks, inviting us into deeper connection with each other.

This is another of those times when the subtle, or the spiritual, or the non-material is so incredibly important.  It is hard for me to stay focused there.  My eye slides off and I want to do something more active, something that will make more of a difference.  But perhaps it is enough — creating a focus for goodness and kindness.

I watch the news accounts and I check-in with my friends and what I see more than anything else is a wonderful unfolding story of human goodness.  It is still easy to fall to the temptation of “yeah, sure, we know how to work together when tragedy strikes.”  There’s a kind of longing in that statement, a regret.  But I have to say I am in awe when I see the extent of human goodness.  When I remember that it is our natural state, our way of being.  Our deep human goodness steps forward in times like these. We know how to connect and support each other and ourselves.

Of course we need to bring more of this into our daily lives.  I suspect we’ll get more and more practice in the coming years.  So I hear these stories of the goodness and ordinariness of life from my friends (via twitter):

  • We’re OK. Helping each other with sharing room for rest and sharing tips. After few min, Morning will come!
  • I and my families/friends are safe and sound. I walked back to home from the office last night. took me 5hours.
  • Many people had stayed at office or council center in tokyo. Train started running.
  • I’m OK. My family,too. And my younger sister had a baby last night! I’m happy and keeping praying everybody’s safe in this situation.
  • My family and I are all fine. I was in Hokkaido, and just cannot go back… But I think I can tomorrow.
  • I couldn’t contact my parents for seven hours. They are safe and back home.All family are fine. Thank you.
  • Now we are projecting a virtue of the Japanese that we have consideration for other people!!
  • We are in Tochigi Pref, stayed one night since stopped express train heading for Tokyo. a bit closed to North Japan.
  • We’re all ok. It’s amazing how calm and caring people are in many places even after such a disaster. Proud to be a Japanese!

We’re okay.  Helping each other.  Proud to be Japanese.  These are my friends and I love them.  AND they are just ordinary people.  Ordinary people discovering how to get along and how to help each other.  Ordinary people discovering how to take the next minimum step.  We know how to do this.  We know how to help each other.  We know how to be community.

Frequently we forget.  We get trapped inside our own little worries about being sufficient, or having enough. We build walls of protection which isolate us from each other.  When I am in Johannesburg from time to time, I see the literal walls — high, topped with broken glass or barbed-wire.  Intended to keep danger out.  And, of course, when danger comes in as it does from time to time, the walls isolate us from our closest neighbors who don’t know help is needed.

Disasters like the quakes in Japan and New Zealand reconnect us with our selves.  They help us remember what it is to be human.  A scene from Chris Bache’s book Dark Night, Early Dawn had stayed with me for many years.  He speak of a vision of people emerging from shelters, underground, in a time of vast devastation.  They rise from the rubble, look around and see who else has survived, and begin to connect again to make community and to continue our human journey.  These are the capacities which will sustain us in the times ahead and which we need to be cultivating now.

Let’s find the ways to invite human goodness and connection forward without these obvious disasters!

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Filed Under: BC, Bob, Japan, Resilience Tagged With:

Helping People Design Their Own Communities

December 17, 2010 By Bob Stilger

Yamizaka-san and I were invited to do a workshop in Osaka.  Yamizaka-san was a landscape architect 10 years ago.  Now he’s something else?  But what does he call it?  A community developer?  A community designer?  Both of those have the sense of someone working from the outside.  He works from the inside and is no longer sure of what to call his work.

40 or so people joined us at a small café in Osaka for an evening of dialogue.  Yamizaka-san is a charismatic character.  A decade ago the death of a dear friend helped him realize that he wanted to make a difference with his own life.  He kept noticing that he was attracted to people’s true stories and started to find his path.

He and I each spoke for a time before moving into several rounds of World Café.  We’d only met earlier that evening and didn’t know much of each other’s stories.  But as soon as we met, I was thinking about my friends from Elos Institute in Santos Brazil.  Ten years ago they were architects as well.  And they changed.  Like Yamizaka-san, they had this weird idea that architecture should serve people.  Imagine that!

Yamizaka-san, like my friends at Elos, had never heard of Appreciative Inquiry or Asset-Based Community Development when they started their community work.  Like them, he began developing an approach that was based on listening – really listening – to people’s stories about what they want in their community.  He talks about how he coaches the teams of people he how sends how to “just listen.”  Don’t signal your agreement with what people are saying,” he says, “or they’ll start trying to tell you want they think you want to hear.”

Just Listen.

When we’re helping communities develop themselves from the inside out, the role of the outsider is to listen.  From a place of listening it is sometimes possible to offer an idea or two, a story from somewhere else, or some conceptual frameworks.  From a place of listening it is possible to respond to the true requests that arise in the group.  But it comes from this posture of listening.

In a conversation in the U.S. in September with my friend Nomura-san from Fuji-Xerox’s KDI, we started to develop the idea of the sacred outsider, a different role than the expert outsider.  The sacred outsider is a mirror, reflecting back the knowledge and wisdom present in the system while occasionally sharing a glimpse of possibilities from beyond.

It was a lively evening in Osaka.  People sparked each other’s enthusiasm and experience and shared their ideas about how communities can design themselves and how some of us can be sacred outsiders to that process.

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Filed Under: asset-based, BC, Japan, KDI, Resilience, Social Innovation, Strenght Based Tagged With:

Social Innovation in Japan

November 10, 2010 By Bob Stilger

I am back in the beauty of Japan.  Last week I worked with a group of 40 business leaders on social innovation.  We met in the autumn beauty of Nasu, a rural area north of Tokyo.  Those who came are the original members of the Future Center initiative from Fuji Xerox’s KDI — Knowledge Management Initiatives.  KDI began 10 years ago, working with the ideas of Professor Nonaka around knowledge management.  They’ve begun to see that knowledge management is important, but what is essential is creating new spaces and processes by which innovation can occur.

We gathered in a lovely room, in a sparse and beautiful circle to begin our time together.  The day began with each person introducing themselves with a movement — what were they here to do.  We used this sense of sparseness and brevity many times during our two days together.  Seeing how little could be said to express a fullness. Time unfolded.

The Japanese word “ba” is translated literally as “place.”  But it actually means much more. The essence of coming together in Japan is the creation of good ba — the creation of a space of hospitality, respect, deep listening, high regard.  Because of their cultural attunement to ba, it is normal to have a conversation which references the good ba that is present in the room.  We had good ba in Nasu.  The stated purpose of our time together was to introduce the KDI Future Centers to Art of Hosting practices.  They already know that a core part of their work to spark innovation is to host conversations that matter.  The context we worked in was their personal and professional dreams for the future. The deeper purpose of this time was to deepen a field of relationships so they can support each other in the coming months and years as they and others create future centers.

We had silent walks in the lovely surrounding forest.  We brought out play doh and used it to model the Future Center they dreamed of. We sat together and talked in pairs and in World Cafe sessions.  We harvested — often asking for just one word.  The conversations were animated and powerful.  In so many ways people came alive in this authentic space.  Of course, they always do!  I was somewhat surprised at the length of the pause at the beginning of our one Open Space Technology session.  In my western mind, I simply judged it as Japanese hesitancy to stand up.  But my colleague Takahiko Nomura gave it another frame.  “You know about KY, don’t you,” he asked.  I shook my head and he went on to explain it to me.  Kuuki yomenai means “not reading the air.”  He went on to explain that his experience of the pause was that people were being careful not to be judged to be KYing; instead they were “reading the air” to see what they might offer in Open Space which would be of deepest service to the group.  Such a subtle and interesting shift from “what do I want to present” to “what do I think will be of greatest service to this group at this time.”

It is things like this which continue to blow me away in Japan.  There is a deep cultural competence about being in relationship — with each other and with the planet as a whole.  After 150 years of the so-called modern era, people know something else is needed.  AND, they are discovering how to work together to get it.

In my work here I keep coming back to a couple of key points.  The first is that the Meiji Restoration of 150 years ago ended the feudal era in Japan and ushered in the modern era.  It feels like these are the beginning years of a new Japan Restoration.  The second is to use a proverb in Japan — “the nail that sticks up is pounded down” — to ask how the rich weave of relationships here might be used to help all nails stand up?

The Japan I was introduced to 40 years ago is barely visible. Three, let alone four-generation families have almost disappeared. It is nearly impossible to have an omiai (arranged marriage). Life-time employment is simply a distant memory. It would have been unthinkable then that the vigorous middle aged men and women who lived in the single family homes near my host family in Fushimi-ku in the south of Kyoto would live alone 40 years later as widows and widowers. The idea that there would be a rising population of dokushin josei (bachelor women) and that the size of the Japanese population would be declining would have been unimaginable. People probably wouldn’t be as surprised that the uncompromising pressure on Japanese secondary school students would only get worse.

Last year’s defeat of the LDP after 54 years of almost continuous power is one obvious sign of the changes gripping Japan. But it is only visi­ble because it is something we know how to look for. What’s less obvious is the churning going on beneath the surface as people of all ages and all walks of life are stopping to question what Japan society is today and what they want it to be. It is an exciting time filled with possibilities.

The commitment people from these Future Centers have to finding a new way forward is refreshing.  They know innovation is essential and they know it has to come from the community as a whole.

Great to be here!

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Filed Under: BC, communities of practice, Japan, KDI, Resilience, Social Innovation Tagged With:

Unleashing Leadership and Inspiring Innovation and Creativity in Japan

April 28, 2010 By Bob Stilger

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:
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