Another calendar year is coming to an end, and as of today, the seasonal darkness begins to recede. As I look forward to 2011 and the return of the light, I am reminded of the following words of George Bernard Shaw. Through them I find meaning in the busy-ness of life and blessing for the fullness of each day that calls on my whole self to be of service. May we burn brightly and steadily in the coming year and bring clarity and warmth to a world in need.
“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake.Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me. It is sort of a splendid torch which I have a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it over to future generations”.
Ever since the mid-term elections, I’ve taken to choosing a politically-oriented question for the practice meetings I do with participants in our collaborative skills workshops. Specifically, in helping people to more firmly grasp the difference between content (an egg) and process (how you prepare the egg), I’ve invited participants to consider “process-oriented” changes they would like to see in our public leadership. It’s been interesting to see some of the common themes and requests emerge across the political spectrum. Below are some of the ideas that have come up for federal, state, and municipal/town levels:
Suspend use of the filibuster
Campaign finance reform
Greater legitimacy and possibility for independent candidates
Quarterly disclosures of campaign donors
Employ teams of citizen facilitators for the legislature
Collaborative leadership training for all public officials
Politicians eat from the same pie they cook up for “the people”
Greater transparency across the board in policy-making
I very much appreciate my colleague Gibran’s post the other day, questioning the degree to which slight shifts to the current system will make the differences we desperately need and seek. So, in asking for your additions to and comment on this list, I would also like to bring back a slightly altered question from his post – How do we organize public leadership in such a way that it supports our collective capacity to both address threats to the survival of our species and further our evolution?
In order to make the point that the sky is the limit in terms of the way in which we bring people together to collaborate and ultimately realize social change, I’ve taken to showing the video clip above and the one below back-to-back in our Facilitative Leadership trainings. The point I am trying to make is not that any one approach is necessarily better than the other, but that there are a plethora of options available to leadership between herding and hosting “the people,” and that much of this comes down to context and what we are trying to achieve. If it is true, as Barry Oshry says, that the work of leadership is to create the conditions for systems (human and otherwise) to be able to cope with threats (survive) and prospect opportunities for development (thrive), then we will understand and embrace the vital leadership role of process designer and use it wisely.
As has been stated elsewhere and at various times on this blog, our current unpredictable times and the complex nature of social change work would appear to ask that we move away from the leadership tendency, particularly in stressful times, to suck up responsibility away from others and drive, drive, drive. There is a particular and worthwhile challenge in perhaps counter-intuitively and more strategically stepping back, and making repeated invitations and the space for people to join and shape emergent responses (free hugs, anyone?).
The “No Labels” political effort feels more like the work of well resourced spin doctors than an emergent political movement that can address the paralyzing institutional polarization that might bring our country to its knees. I was struck by this quote from a New York Times story focused on Bloomberg’s role:
In fact, though, the rise of the independents represents a movement in exactly the opposite direction — away from party organizations altogether… This isn’t so much a political phenomenon as it is a cultural one. In the last decade or so, the Web has created an increasingly decentralized and customized society, in which a new generation of voters seems less aligned, generally, with large institutions. MoveOn.org and the Tea Party groups, for instance, were born as protests against the establishments of both parties, and they empowered citizens to create their own agendas, rather than relying on any elected leadership. Read More
“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”
-Leonard Cohen
Life and work certainly have been burning of late, and while I have been thankful for the opportunity across the board for full engagement of mind, body, and spirit, I am also missing some of my reflection and writing time. And now I hear the voice of Mr. Cohen again – “Forget your perfect offering, there’s a crack in everything, that is how the light gets in.” So here is my little offering of light as the seasonal darkness grows, in the form of a few questions that continue to smoulder throughout my work.
When was the last time a public engagement process failed because of too much participation?
Can anyone be process-averse? (Kind of like being allergic to the air we breathe?)
Has one ever really gotten it done?
Is there really such a thing as certainty?
What isn’t a work in progress?
If we know what we are doing isn’t working, what will it take to try something different?
How are we going to thrive if we don’t get at least a little crazy?
Last month we were graced by the presence of Kathy Sferra, who was on loan from Mass Audubon. Kathy took the initiative to approach us about spending one month of her six week sabbatical apprenticing herself to IISC, observing and contributing to our work and taking the lessons back to her home organization. She began contributing instantly as a thought partner, often making keen observations and asking good questions that her relative outsider perspective afforded. As her parting gift to us, Kathy offered up the following reflections and take-aways, specifically with respect to designing and facilitating meetings and other convenings, that I wanted, in the spirit of the season, to re-gift and pass along: Read More
The most important tool in that leadership technology is the emerging Self – the leader’s highest future possibility. Theory U is based on the assumption that each human being and each human community is not one but two: one is the current self, the person that exists as the result of a past journey; the other is the Self, the self that we could become as the result of our future journey. Presencing is the process of the (current) self and the (emerging) Self listening to each other.
My friends at the Engage Network recently asked me this provocative question:
What does it mean to create social change that is “human sized” and prioritizes people and relationships, rather than prioritizing large email lists, or campaigns, or raising money? What does that mean to you and YOUR work in the world?
Here is my first take at an answer:
I think of our obsession with scale as a vestige of the industrial paradigm that still has many of us ensnared. It is my hope that many more of us will shift towards a more organic paradigm as we pursue the work of social transformation. As my friends at the Berkana institute like to say, emergence is not about critical mass, it is about critical connections.
Transformative social change becomes possible as we move away from the abstractions of social scientists and an increasingly obsolete state apparatus. When we begin to own our role in the pursuit freedom we begin to understand that real relationships, with real people, who have real names and real faces are the actual field where justice grows.
My commitment is to design, host and facilitate spaces where this become palpably real. As we become practiced in new ways of being-with, as we get more frequent tastes for what it means to be more authentically connected, we ourselves begin to shift – and organic, sustainable growth becomes the way we do movement.
What about you? What does “human sized” social change mean to you and YOUR work in the world?
We are so lucky! The Pew Hispanic Center just published a report titled “National Latino Leader? The Job is Open,” and it seems we can’t agree on who our leader is. The report seems to lift this as an area of concern: “national leadership” has often been helpful for groups facing injustice. A down economy and anti-immigrant fervor make this a particularly difficult time for our community – so shouldn’t we be worried that we don’t have a leader?
The paradigm shift that is affecting our lens on EVERYTHING is also at play here. While it is wise to find lessons, we can’t look at the struggles of the past as providing the model for how to deal with the struggles of the present. If we are seeking an experience of justice and freedom that is significantly greater than what we have earned thus far, then we better be looking at movement with a very different lens.
The closer you get to Washington, the more likely you are to find allies in the immigration movement who would LOVE for Latinos to have an easily identifiable leader. But this is because Washington works that way, and the media works that way – the power structure loves to know who to call, and who to dance with.
While it would certainly be easier to move policy forward if we could act as a coherent whole, I think there is great promise in the unruly dynamism that our movement is working through. As we pull together to response to this crisis, we are being forced to recognize ourselves as a community and to support each other as such. This effort builds resiliency in a way that photo ops and headlines with policy makers could never achieve.
I am glad to be a part of a leaderless community that has finally braced itself to be a movement; it is a vibrant context that welcomes my leadership, and the leadership of many others.
We are so lucky! The Pew Hispanic Center just published a report titled “National Latino Leader? The Job is Open,” and it seems we can’t agree on who is our leader. The report seems to lift this as an area of concern, “national leadership” has often been helpful for groups facing injustice. A down economy and anti-immigrant fervor make this a particularly difficult time for our community – so shouldn’t we be worried that we don’t have a leader? Read More
“Let’s all keep an open mind” How many times have you heard that one? How often has it worked? Keeping an open mind is not as easy as following a ground rule once it has been stated, specially not in a culture where we are rewarded for being right – for knowing. Read More
Make Change Stick Beyond the MeetingTurn ideas into agreements that stick, and keep change going after the meeting ends. Perfect for teams stuck in “great conversation, little action.”
