Archive for Networks

May/15/12//Gibrán Rivera//Featured, Networks

Connection, Attention and Trust

I’m just coming out of a mind bending, heart expanding retreat with Orland Bishop, Rachel Bagby and the Barr Fellows Network.  It was one of those experiences that is hard to put into words.  For lack of a better word, and I hope Orland doesn’t mind this, it was more like being with a shaman than with a facilitator.

Orland led us in an exploration of intention and attention as he invited us to question how we relate to reality itself.  He led with the idea that our relationships – and therefore our human experience – can be radically redefined if we make it our purpose to truly understand the other; and to do it with radical acceptance.

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May/14/12//Cynthia Silva Parker//Networks

Connection by Design

Two things reminded me of the power of design and physical space this week. First, in a workshop for Juvenile Justice leaders, the 12 participants were seated at three tables. It was a cozy arrangement and the tables were useful for handling the volume of materials they were using. After a morning focused on race, class and culture dialogue skills, we brought the chairs together in a circle in the front of the room to close a segment of the conversation. I asked folks how that arrangement felt and they say “Good!!” There’s nothing like removing physical barriers and enabling everyone to see everyone else easily to foster relational and conversational intimacy!

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May/09/12//Curtis Ogden//Featured, Networks

Network Leadership

As I prepare to do a couple of trainings for leadership in multi-stakeholder networks in the New England region (focus being on the skills of facilitation, process design, and managing decision-making), I intend to frame our conversations with some exploration of the differences between traditional organizational leadership and what is required to steward networks towards positive impact.  I begin with the presumption that network form and function are chosen strategically for the ability to accomplish something that could not be done at all or as well through other approaches.  Whether trying to develop a food system to eliminate food insecurity or change an educational system to yield more equitable opportunities and outcomes, the attraction to a network approach is likely due to a desire for some combination of the following: Read the rest of this entry »

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Apr/12/12//Curtis Ogden//Networks

Network $ustainability

Compared to my post from yesterday, this certainly feels like a big shift, going from the sublime to the tactical.  At a recent gathering that I facilitated, members of the steering committee of a food system change initiative, local and regional funders, and members of other organizational networks came together to discuss ideas for ensuring the long-term financial sustainability of the committee’s work around ensuring community food security.  We came at this from a few different angles, including a conversation about actual and perceived constraints and challenges to supporting this kind of net work.  Here is a taste of what came up, which resonates with what I am hearing in other networks as well: Read the rest of this entry »

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Apr/11/12//Curtis Ogden//Networks

The Subtle Power of Networks

“Life is irresistably organizing.  Life opens to more possibilities through new patterns of connection.”

 M. Wheatley & M. Kellner-Rogers, A Simpler Way

The late David Bohm pointed out the lost potential of quantum physics as he saw it being assimilated by a traditional and very mechanical mindset that wanted to make it another instrument of control, prediction, and quantification.  For him the power of the field was much more subtle, qualitative, and lay in the understanding that there is an “implicate order” to reality from which form emerges via our thoughts and efforts to make meaning.  From Bohm’s perspective, much of what ails us stems from disorganized thought that has us attaching to form, regurgitating and defending our prejudices, as opposed to thinking that embraces the more creative flow of life.  As he once expressed it, “Thought is creating divisions out of itself and then saying that they are there naturally.” Read the rest of this entry »

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