Archive for July, 2011

Jul/28/11//Curtis Ogden//Collaboration, Featured

Negativity and Self-Limiting Advocacy

“When the only tool you have is a hammer,

every problem begins to resemble a nail.”

-Maslow’s Maxim

Someone once said, “Advocates can be hell to work with, but they make good ancestors.”  Agreed.  And . . . Read the rest of this entry »

Comments [17]////Permalink// Like [15]
Jul/27/11//Curtis Ogden//Learning Edge

Who Do We Think We Are

The physicist Fritjof Capra, founder of the Elmwood Institute, tells the story about a meeting convened years ago by him and his colleagues with a group of Native American elders and thought leaders to explore different perspectives around ecological thinking.  From the outset, the gathering was marked by some suspicion towards the Elmwood group, given the historic dynamics of exploitation.  The meeting opened with a round of introductions, and an Okanagan woman from British Columbia was first to speak.  She began by stating the tribe from which she came and then described the landscape where the tribe lives.  She then talked about her father’s and paternal grandparents’ origins, in similar detail, and continued with a description of where her mother and maternal grandparents’ came from.  In the end, she linked each family member not just to a named geographic location, but also an illustration of the associated rivers, mountains, plants, and animals.  “This is who I am,” she said, wrapping up. “The features of the land determine my conduct, responsibility, and ethics.  Now I want to know to whom I am talking, before I say anything else of substance.   And I don’t want to hear the books you’ve read, the degrees you’ve obtained, or the organizations you are a part of.” Read the rest of this entry »

Comments [5]////Permalink// Like [14]
Jul/25/11//Cynthia Silva Parker//Featured, Race, Class, Power

Power and Privilege: Undoing

In case you missed my earlier posts in this series, [include hyperlink to first post], I am raising a series of questions about power and privilege in social change work at the invitation of the “Walk the Talk” zine/book project. Prior questions included:

Today I want to pose two related questions. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments [3]////Permalink// Like [8]
Jul/21/11//Curtis Ogden//Collaboration

Building Power Through Collaborative Change

In this week’s public Pathway to Change workshop in San Francisco, participants engaged in a practice meeting facilitated by some of their colleagues that focused on effective means of building power in collaborative change efforts to enhance their overall effectiveness to realize more just ends.  The assumptions going into the conversation were that power is defined as the capacity to influence people and one’s environment, create change, address needs, pursue desires, and/or protect interests.  Furthermore we suggested that power is not a fixed asset that people possess. Rather, it is socially constructed, understood, and legitimized through social relationships among individuals and groups of people. Given that it is not fixed, it can also grow or be grown.

So here is the list of ideas that surfaced for ways to build power and we certainly invite your reactions and additions (items in bold ended up being given higher priority by the group): Read the rest of this entry »

Comments [2]////Permalink// Like [10]
Jul/20/11//Curtis Ogden//Learning Edge

Value-As Storytelling

In our Whole Measures workshop, we come to a point when participants realize that the promise of learning how to “measure what matters most” is not a case of digesting “best practices.”  This is often a difficult moment, one fraught with frustration, but also the beginnings of insight (or a reminder) that we are each part of a gradual unfolding that is unique depending upon our particular context, and that to simply embrace some kind of cookie-cutter method of measuring health and wholeness is futile.  This is so, in part, because before we measure what matters most, we must determine what matters most, and this changes from system to system.  Furthermore, it is no easy task of discernment.  Often people are good at setting goals, or talking abstractly about “values,” but this does not always equate with getting to heart of what is most meaningful to us, as demonstrated by the lives we actually live or our hearts’ deepest desires.  One of the best processes we’ve found for doing this is to embrace storytelling. Read the rest of this entry »

Comments [3]////Permalink// Like [12]
< Older Posts