Author Archives for Curtis Ogden

March 4, 2010

Listening (& Learning) as an Ally

peace

|Photo by bitzi took his umbrella and left|http://www.flickr.com/photos/bitzi/193922475/|

My wife and I are wrapping up our annual winter vacation to visit family in Florida.  Each year this proves to be something of a spiritual practice for me, and this trip has been no different.  As wonderful as it is to slow down, un-hunch shoulders, and wear fewer layers, the focus of my practice tends not to be the natural surroundings and climate so much as what I find to be the challenging social environment.

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February 25, 2010

Mission Affirmed

I want to thank Susan Wright of Wright Momentum for spurring on this post, which is in essence a response to a thoughtful dialogue we have had going for a few months.  My thoughts here are further inspired by a training my colleague Melinda and I did at the historic Penn Center on St. Helena’s Island in South Carolina, a site where the first school was built in the US to educate freed slaves.  It was also an important site for people to come together across racial lines to do strategy work during the Civil Rights movement.  Melinda and I had the good fortune to spend three days with the amazing Gulf Coast Fellows, a diverse group of grassroots leaders from Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas.  Our time with the Fellows affirmed for me the strategic direction IISC has recently adopted.  Specifically, in considering the next three years (2010-2012), our IISC”s staff has collectively committed to concentrating more of our efforts around: (1) helping to build power and collaborative muscle at the grassroots, and (2) supporting social change work that bridges sectors and organizations (including building networks).

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February 18, 2010

Accentuate the Positivity, Take 2

Positive

|Photo by Reenie-Just Reenie|www.flickr.com/photos/flickrchickr/2589059730|

In a previous post I referenced the work of Marcial Losada, which indicates that elevated group performance is associated in part with a high degree of “positivity.”   Specifically, groups that excel in terms of innovation and productivity tend to be those where there is at least a 5:1 ratio of positive to negative interactions.  The importance of this ratio has been further highlighted by some other findings and experiences I have had working with community-based activists.

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February 11, 2010

Question Box

Question

|Photo by Mikl Roventine|http://www.flickr.com/photos/myklroventine/2372327933/|

My wife and I recently missed one of our favorite church services of the year – The Question Box Service.  For a few weeks leading up to this particular Sunday, parishioners are typically invited to submit questions for the ministers to respond to.  These questions can be of any number of varieties – philosophical, ethical, political, personal, whimsical – and tend to be very wide ranging.  The answers to selected questions become that day’s sermon.   As interesting and entertaining as it is to hear the clergy offer their spontaneous reflections (they dress down for the occasion, doffing their robes and sitting crossed-legged on stools in front of the pulpit, a la talk show hosts), I find the questions themselves fascinating, especially when artfully phrased.  Just the reading of the card can elicit a ceremonious “oooh” or “ahhh” from the listeners.

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February 4, 2010

SOTU U

Seal

|Photo by nathanborror|http://www.flickr.com/photos/sketch22/3054286601/

With the dust now fairly settled from President Obama’s first State of the Union Address, I feel like it’s safe to offer a few comments here without being labeled an aspiring pundit.  IISC friend and fellow network-phile Bill Traynor of Lawrence CommunityWorks captured some of my own feelings initially – impressed by the speech, on board . . . for now.  Coming into that evening I was concerned about what I had been picking up as a big push of the “Obama brand”, leading me to ask along with Naomi Klein whether the man in the Oval Office is more about symbolic gesture than substantive change.  Suffice to say that I don’t have the behind-the-scenes knowledge to confidently declare how much is actually getting done.  But to the extent that anything in front of the curtain matters, and we know at least some of it does, I came away with some real adaptive leadership lessons from the SOTU Address.

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January 29, 2010

Leaderships for Our Times

Leadership - Liverpool street station

|Photo by victoriapeckham|http://www.flickr.com/photos/victoriapeckham/164175205/|

In this post I take a look at the overlap and differences between three leadership approaches to which we here at IISC regularly turn in light of our bent towards social change and beliefs about the world in which we live.

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January 28, 2010

Finding Our Place

It is rare for any of us, by deliberate choice, to sit still and weave ourselves into a place, so that we know the wildflowers and rocks and politicians, so that we recognize faces wherever we turn, so that we feel a bond with everything in sight.”

Scott Russell Sanders, “Local Matters”

Place 1

|Photo by Muffet|http://www.flickr.com/photos/calliope/150903281/|

Some dozen years ago I went on a road trip with my grandfather to our ancestral home in Arkansas.  Leaving from upstate New York at this time of year was not exactly a recipe for easy driving and awe-inspiring views.  After a particularly dreary stretch in Ohio, I was ready to snooze the rest of the way when we crossed over into Kentucky.  Suddenly things opened up.  As we continued south on Route 75, I felt my body started settling into the lovely rolling farm-studded landscape.  I remember how my breathing eased and the extraordinary sensation of “being home,” though I had only been to the state once before.

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January 21, 2010

Alignment vs. Innovation?

Two Paths

|Photo by jaybergesen|http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaybergesen/232023995/|

As it turns out, the practice of brainstorming has something of a bad reputation, though you wouldn’t necessarily know it from its prevalence in many well meaning groups and organizations. Research has shown that bringing people together to start brainstorming ideas yields fewer ideas overall, and fewer novel ideas, than having individuals first go off and think on their own and later compile their lists. The reason is that group think and social pressure can tend to tip and narrow group brainstorms in certain directions that rule out “out of the box” thinking. Furthermore, there is a tendency for many groups to want to come to agreement about certain ideas, preferring a sense of group cohesion and victory, over pushing one another and risking conflict and hurt feelings.

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January 14, 2010

Changing the Conversation

Protest

The photo above was sent to me by my father, who is also the photographer.  In fact, he is also the sign maker.  This statement currently sits by the roadside in front of my parents’ house in upstate New York.  When I asked what sparked this action, he wrote:

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January 7, 2010

Re-Solution to Change

Resolutions

|Photo by katerha|http://www.flickr.com/photos/katerha/4233144961/|

Legion are not just the excuses but the explanations behind the excuses for not living up to our annual New Year’s resolutions.  I know these excuses and theorizing about the real reasons for my failings quite well.  And yet this year I remain hopeful that I will have more success in honoring my commitments, thanks in part to the work of Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey.  In their book Immunity to Change, the authors lay out a handy set of questions that I believe shed valuable insight on how individuals and groups might hold themselves more accountable to genuine and realistic change aspirations.

In analyzing the pattern of a failed change effort, Kegan and Lahey suggest that we answer the following:

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December 31, 2009

Feeding Our Fire

One of my favorite poetry finds this year comes from Judy Sorum Brown, whose piece “Fire” ties in nicely with a theme that has been developing for me over the past twelve months.  In addition to Judy’s work, I am grateful for the writings of Larry Dressler, which have helped me to embrace the metaphor of “fire tending” (not firefighting) as part of the work we do as leaders, facilitators, consultants, teachers, and perhaps as parents.

Larry’s book Standing in the Fire points out that when we work with groups of people we are to some extent always playing with fire.  Fire can burn, of course, but it can also purify and renew, it can serve as fuel, it can warm us, and it can make us uncomfortable enough to get moving.  The key is first not to be afraid of the heat.  From there it all comes down to the choices we make about how to build and feed the flames in light of what it is we are trying to collectively accomplish.

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December 17, 2009

Claiming Nonindependence

ice storm

|Photo by Digital Agent|http://www.flickr.com/photos/specialagent/2241064739|

It was at this time a year ago that I made the trip to Keene, New Hampshire to teach my final weekend Change Models class of the semester at Antioch New England.  Just a few days prior, the entire region had been rocked by an ice storm for the ages.  When the storm hit I was in Maine.  Driving home the next day I heard reports about the worst damage being concentrated in western Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire.  All that had slipped my mind when I got up early on Sunday morning to drive to Keene.  It came rushing back when I got off of Route 2 heading north and the world turned dark and quiet.  Everything in sight was cocooned in ice.  Trees sagged.  Homes along the roadside for miles were without lights.  Businesses were shuttered.  The awesome force of nature really began to sink in.

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