Resilient Japan

April 21, 2011 By

Hello friends,

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

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

Blessings,  Bob

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

Stepping Into New Possibilities in Japan

March 28, 2011 By

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

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

I see four main domains of work:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Possibilities

Bridge To Future

Tohoku Tomorrow

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

Who might help?

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

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

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

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

Social Ventures – Shikoku

December 17, 2010 By

My body did protest a bit at the 5:30am alarm after five hours of sleep.  But there was a Shinkansen “bullet train” to catch at 6:30 in Tokyo in order to arrive on the island of Shikoku a little after noon.  Shikoku is one of found main islands of Japan, in the Inland Sea, just across the waters from Kobe and Osaka.  I’m glad I made it out of bed!

I spent a delightful six hours with 70 people from all around Shikoku who had come to this second gathering of Social Ventures Shikoku, launched by Yagi-sensei from Kangawa University.  Although he  came to Shikoku only four years ago from Tokyo, the island and its people have captured his heart.

The workshop began with some jazz and some singing and moved into a bit of speaking by Yagi-sensei and Bob.  I did what I usually do and matched my words to his, finding the parts of his story about being in this work of social innovation which match mine, and then letting it flow.  The participants weren’t responding like to do in Tokyo or Osaka.  I couldn’t really tell how different things were landing.  A few faces were alive and responsive – but it was a quiet group.  We moved into a “fishbowl” format where we invited others to join us in the center of the room.  There was a hesitancy to join and when there, mostly questions and not much dialogue.  It felt as if we had not pulled people together in the room.

I think, perhaps, we had pulled them together.  But the quiet reserve which is a posture of respect in Japan is even more present here.  By the end of the day I knew people were engaged and appreciative if the space.

We used World Café to connect people’s stories in the room.  Then we used a version of ProAction Café to see who had work and questions they wanted to go deeper with.  An interesting list of offerings emerged:

  • How can we work with nature?
  • How can communities facilitate more marriages?
  • What can we do to encourage people to have more babies?
  • How can we have more positive education using art and English?
  • How can we each share the gifts we are born with?
  • Let’s create a “True-Calling-Network!”
  • How can we use what we have and do more with forestry and agriculture?
  • How can I change the way I farm?
  • How can we energize this prefecture with new opportunities?
  • How can the hospital and the community become more connected to each other?

Practical.  Focused.  Down to earth. Like the people in Shikoku.

We used a version of ProAction Café where nine “callers” stepped forward to offer these ideas.  Then we had two rounds of  world café, with the callers staying at the same table as hosts.  Participants divided themselves equally between the tables and helped the hosts think through their ideas.

In the second round, I was with a 63 year old man who has stepped up to making his family farm work. He’s spent his life as a general contractor around Japan.  Along the way he has practiced zazen and learned tea ceremony. He sees it has the last major challenge of his life.  His father died recently and now he wants to make the farm really work.  He’s looking at Community Supported Agriculture, which he believes is historically rooted in Japan long before it arose in the west.  He wants to make community by making a farm that works for all.  A really wonderful man!

People just working with each other to make things work.  No big egos.  Just people getting on with getting on with their lives…

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Filed Under: Art of Hosting, BC, Japan, Social Innovation, Strenght Based Tagged With:

Helping People Design Their Own Communities

December 17, 2010 By

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:

Unleashing Leadership and Inspiring Innovation and Creativity in Japan

April 28, 2010 By

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beginning of a fascinating several weeks in my adopted homeland.

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

Open Spaces Project in Southern Africa

April 15, 2010 By

I’ve had the chance to come to Southern Africa a couple of times a year for the last decade to work with wonderful people.  My work has been as part of The Berkana Institute and our efforts to create the Berkana Exchange as a translocal network of people and places building healthy and resilient communities.  Especially for the last couple of years I’ve been working with people from Johannesburg, Harare, Cape Town and Durban about how to find and support the people doing “our” kind of community work.  This work is based on beliefs that are resonant with those listed on the About section of Resilient Communities.  We find them everywhere  (next month my daughter Annie Virnig and I will be talking about these at the 2010 TEDxTokyo — but that is a different blog).

So, what’s cooking?  Over the last three months the GreenHouse Project in Johannesburg, South Africa and Kufunda Learning Village outside Harare, Zimbabwe, have been involved in an in-depth Appreciative Inquiry Process with the “Champions” of different community-based work and their partners.  They both asked certain key questions:

  • What motivates you? What gives you strength?
  • What do you value about your work?
  • What are you working to change?
  • Really Why are you doing this work?
  • Where do you see yourself and your work in the near future?
  • What do you need to take you and your work to the next level?
  • What natural partnerships are emerging and will be necessary in your work?
  • What practical lessons have you learned? Are you sharing them with others? How do they respond to your work and the lessons you have learned?
  • How is your work and the lessons from it useful?
  • What have you learnt from sharing with others?

In a word, these sessions have been amazing!  Listening to Dorah Lebelo talk about these conversations with people who are just getting on with getting on — who are changing their lives for the better by working with what they have without complaint — was inspiring.  And, at the same time, we noticed the difference in her energy when speaking about this work as compared to her protracted battle with the National Lotteries Commission to release funds already awarded to GreenHouse Project for two major construction projects.

I’m going to link their reports here — the one from GreenHouse Project is over 50MB so it will take a while to download — filled with lovely pictures and well worth the wait!  GreenHouse Project Report.  Kufunda Learning Village Report.  They are amazing, powerful and delightful reads.

As we talking about the learning from this process some different key phrases kept surfacing:

  • growing the work while shrinking the institutions
  • reclaiming relationships with people, land and food
  • learning — doing – reflecting
  • finding new meaning, creating new beliefs

At its core this is all really simple stuff.  And, most of us have forgotten it.

As our conversations continued we began to speak of the role of GreenHouse and Kufunda in all this.  They are hubs, seed crystals, catalysts, enzymes.  They play the critical role of helping people and systems see themselves and each other.  But what do they really do?

Okay, this is where it gets even more interesting.  They do the same things as the people ar St. Luke’s Health Initiatives mentioned in other places on my blogs.  Last month, working with SLHI in Phoenix we eventually said they have four core competencies:

  1. They connect and convene
  2. They support peer learning
  3. They are the “goto” place for information and knowledge
  4. They work from a strengths-based approach.

BINGO.  In their roles as hubs and catalysts, this is exactly what GHP and Kufunda do.  This is the core work which supports communities that practice what they believe and which aspires to create an influence beyond the immediate boundaries of their work.

Lots more to say about all this, but I’ll stop with this teaser!

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