Both the article and the book deal with what Nassim Taleb describes as the characteristics of a black swan (i.e. a highly improbable event), which are: it is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact and after the fact we concoct an explanation that makes it more predictable than it was. The near financial collapse (saved from complete collapse by government intervention), the astonishing success of Google and 9/11 are all black swans. Both authors speak directly to our human limitations in explaining our inability to see what’s coming whether opportunity or disaster. A major reason according to Taleb is that humans are hard-wired to focus on specifics when we should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on what we know and simplify, narrate and categorize. And, we simply do not reward those who can imagine the impossible. Read More
A gratitude-heart
Is to discover on earth
A Heaven-delivered rose.
– Sri Chinmoy
The other day I shared with my colleagues an experience I had of a sudden feeling that came over me, during a moment within the hectic routine of a typical morning, in which I felt great peace and joy amid the flurry of my two young daughters, husband and me readying to launch into our day. An intense feeling of love for my family and all those I am blessed to have in my life came over me, and seemed to emanate from the deepest fiber of my being out of nowhere. I was awe-inspired by this deep, unexpected, and unprompted feeling of gratitude. I’m more accustomed to feeling moments of gratitude during or after contemplation, but because of its spontaneous onset and its lingering affects, I recognized it to be a great gift.
According to Dr. Michael McCollough Professor of Psychology at Southern Methodist University, when scientists began researching links between religion and good mental and physical health, their studies indicated that gratitude plays a significant role in one’s sense of well-being, as many of the world’s major religions acknowledge and convey the virtues of gratitude. Further study including the secular population showed that those who had a tendency toward gratitude were more likely to be happier and healthier than those who did not, whether they were religious or not. Read More
Today’s post is inspired in part by a story I heard recently about a foundation that was paying consultants to work with grassroots community initiatives at a lower rate than it was for them to work with “more formal” organizations. It is also fueled by last week’s work with some amazing community activists in Holyoke, MA at the Food and Fitness Policy Council and from around New England at this year’s Grassroots Retreat convened by the New England Grassroots Environment Fund (NEGEF) and Toxics Action Center (TAC). It both blew me away and fired me up to learn about all of the initiatives that are under way from Hartford, CT to Hardwick, VT, Great Barrington, MA to Little Compton, RI, focused on local food and energy production, the preservation of local water rights, smart growth promotion, healthy lifestyles for our children . . .
Many of these efforts are being run with very few resources beyond the passionate people who have other full-time jobs or who in some cases are unemployed and still working as volunteers (this is not to overlook the financial support and wonderful technical assistance offered by the likes of NEGEF and TAC). Often these change agents are in the work because they cannot not be in it. This is about their lives, their families, their homes. And yet, what seems to get lost is that it really isn’t just about their lives and communities, it’s about all of us and wherever we live. We always live downstream or upwind from someone. We are all connected. Read More
Recently at the Web of Change Conference at Hollyhock in British Columbia, there was a session on “Organizational Transformation,” facilitated in large part by Sam Dorman and Jason Mogus (with some thoughts thrown in by Gibran Rivera and myself). In large part, the session was discussing the ways in which organizations are wanting to incorporate technology and social media into their operations and need to shift structures and cultures to do so. Sam and Jason described that many organizations have traditionally been organized so that these functions were siloed into either a technology/IT function or a communications function – and often brought in after direction was set and strategy was developed as the way to spread the word. What has become clear is that this approach not only doesn’t work, but REALLY REALLY doesn’t work. It’s critical for the folks creating the technology strategy to be integrally involved in development of direction and strategy – not just the add-ons that come later.
One of the big questions at Web of Change was how do you do this? It’s a question about how you actually change the culture of an organization, once you’ve identified the direction you want the culture to head. We talked about the model of a collaborative organization – changing from traditional hierarchical organizations to a collaborative model (one of the things IISC works with organizations regularly to do). Gibran then started talking about how, in actuality, much of what’s being done technologically needs to be replicated in person – dispersed leadership, emergent thinking and self-organized, network approaches rather than centralized, hierarchical decision-making. So the question is: what would it take to really unleash the potential of individuals to create and implement projects that bring about real change – and what organizational structure would support this? Read More
The gap between theory and practice is always larger than we tend to see. I love my job because it consistently invites me to help groups bridge this gap. I just had a beautiful time working with a group of network weavers who are part of the Young People’s Project. The task is to help them understand how networks work and how to behave as weavers for their own national network.
The challenge of this work has been to take all the amazing things we are learning about the role of weavers in a network and figure out how to apply these to the day to day work of these weavers. Instead of spending too much of our time in the fuzzy world of network theory, I grabbed directly from Jack Ricchiuto’s piece on The Power of Network Weaving and went on to adapt it to very practical exercises for the weavers. Read More
Vision is up. It’s everywhere. President Obama has brought the fine art of visioning to the highest office in this country and is inspiring others to partake in his enticing images of an engaged and service-oriented citizenry as well as in becoming fellow storytellers of a preferred and more hopeful future. Just the other day people I know who work in state government mentioned that they are seeing visionary language on Massachusetts state websites the likes of which were lacking prior to Governor Patrick taking office. And many who have been laboring for years for a more just and sustainable world, sense the window of opportunity that has opened to audaciously put forth their intentions for, and commitment to, a reality that may have seemed unimaginable only last year. Despite (or perhaps because of) the economy, boldness is in!
Which raises the question for me – what makes vision work? I mean, what really makes it take? For every group or person I work with who gets excited about personal and organizational visioning, there is another who sees the endeavor as being lightweight and fluffy. “Where’s the beef?” they want to know. Where’s the action? How does intention become invention? Read More
My colleague Linda Guinee recently forwarded a great blog post by Mark McGuinness of Lateral Action . Mark is a consultant in the realm of personal creativity and productivity and he is the father of infant twins. This recent development has him taking a hard look at the advice he often gives others and what holds up under the demands of two babies and sleepless nights. Whether or not you are a parent of young children, it is well worth a read, and I couldn’t agree more with tips such as “let go of routines, focus on systems” and “you can’t please all the people all the time, prioritize the important stuff.” Much of this is in line with Melinda’s post last week (see “Less=More: A Dare”).
I have so much more to say than I can possibly write in one post, plus I’m just getting back so there is still so much to integrate, so much that is yet to unfold – Web of Change was AMAZING! It certainly was that retreat experience that so many of us are familiar with, the lovely high that comes up when we drop our guard together – yes, it was that, but it was also more than that. Web of Change was also a brief experiment in taking some of the best principles of life online and applying them to the offline world.
Change is of course the gathering call, the convening is meant to foster the intersection of social media and social change. We were surrounded by people who care, and who are also smart, and bold in their thinking. The fact that the convening is oriented to people using social media to make change means that they are inherently familiar with what the emergent paradigm feels like – it is decentralized, self-organized, open source, generous. I’m not saying that every single one of us can now live within this emergent paradigm, but there is an awareness of this transitional moment and an intuitive understanding of it. Read More
What if in order to spend more time on the things that matter, we really do need to spend less time working on those things and on everything else, too?
What if its true that our energies, time, intellect, creativity and gifts — if concentrated, focused, harnessed, smartly— really will yield more, better, longer-lasting, more potent results and legacies than they will if we are everywhere-and-no where in particular, all things to all people, jack of all trades, and eh….spread too thin?
And, what if it is true that in a more focused, streamlined, measured, discriminating, approach to life and work will thereby make the experience of our working and living itself more rewarding? Read More
We had an interesting conversation during last week’s Engage for Results session at the Donors Forum in Chicago. IISC has been partnering with Grantmakers for Effective Organizations(GEO) to offer this two day skill-building session to foundations interested in strategies for engaging stakeholders in their grantmaking. This offering grew out of GEO’s Change Agent Project, which revealed the strong interest on the part of nonprofits to be in deeper relationship with funders in order to achieve greater impact.
On the first morning, I shared some striking results from a 2008 GEO survey of attitudes and practices of foundations in the United States. Specifically, less than half (49%) of those foundations surveyed indicated that it was important for their organization to seek external input. Among GEO membership the number was higher, coming in at 78%. However, the survey also showed that overall only 36% of respondents actively solicited feedback from their grantees. That strikes as quite a discrepancy between stated beliefs and actual practice. So I turned to the workshop participants for reactions.
We had an interesting conversation during last week’s Engage for Results session at the Donors Forum in Chicago. IISC has been partnering with Grantmakers for Effective Organizations(GEO) to offer this two day skill-building session to foundations interested in strategies for engaging stakeholders in their grantmaking. This offering grew out of GEO’s Change Agent Project, which revealed the strong interest on the part of nonprofits to be in deeper relationship with funders in order to achieve greater impact.
On the first morning, I shared some striking results from a 2008 GEO survey of attitudes and practices of foundations in the United States. Specifically, less than half (49%) of those foundations surveyed indicated that it was important for their organization to seek external input. Among GEO membership the number was higher, coming in at 78%. However, the survey also showed that overall only 36% of respondents actively solicited feedback from their grantees. That strikes as quite a discrepancy between stated beliefs and actual practice. So I turned to the workshop participants for reactions.
