Thanks to the current ICL/Hanley Center Health Leadership Development class for the conversation that inspired this impromptu composition . . .
How Matters
How matters,
Perhaps more than you think.
Who you invite matters,
And how you invite them.
How you come together matters.
What you talk about and how you talk about it matters.
Where and how you start matters,
As does where you go next,
And where and how you end.
How matters.
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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:
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?
Leave a commentThe “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
Leave a comment“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.
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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
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Click here to see The 1st Proposition
Click here to see The 2nd Proposition
Click here to see The 3rd Proposition
The 4th Proposition of Theory U is:
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.
Leave a commentMy 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?
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Click here to see The 1st Proposition
Click here to see The 2nd Proposition
“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
Leave a commentWishing you all a restful and nourishing Thanksgiving, along with reminders of the bounty that may be closer than we think.
The Wild Geese
Horseback on Sunday morning,
harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp sweet
of summer’s end. In time’s maze
over fall fields, we name names
that went west from here, names
that rest on graves. We open
a persimmon seed to find the tree
that stands in promise,
pale, in the seed’s marrow.
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear,
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.
From Selected Poems of Wendell Berry, by Wendell Berry. Copyright 1998 by Wendell Berry.
Leave a commentJust coming off the second public offering of Whole Measures: Transforming Communities by Measuring What Matters Most, IISC’s joint venture with the Center for Whole Communities. I have to say, the workshop experience keeps getting better and better. More is yet to come (next stop, New Jersey in March), and I wanted to offer these words as a way of summarizing our evolving co-creation.
What we talk about is what we see,
so must convene conversations that matter.
What we see is what we measure,
so we must see the whole (system).
What we measure is what gets done,
so we must measure what matters.
What must be done cannot be done alone,
so we must design and facilitate collaborative processes.
We cannot do any of this by transaction or command and control,
so we must embody transformational leadership.
Leave a commentWeb of Change from Web of Change on Vimeo.
Leave a commentSometimes it takes science a little time to catch up with the world’s wisdom traditions. Recent research findings from a couple of Harvard psychologists, Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert, confirm what meditation and mindfulness practitioners have long known – our ability to stay focused in the present has a strong correlation with contentment. Using data collected from a specially designed iPhone application, the researchers report that people spend nearly 47 percent of their waking hours thinking about something other than what’s happening in front of them. Furthermore, they find that, “Mind-wandering is an excellent predictor of people’s happiness. How often our minds leave the present, and where they tend to go, is a better predictor of our happiness than the activities in which we are engaged.” You still with me?
My colleague Gibran Rivera has recently been blogging about Otto Scharmer’s Theory U, and the power of collective presence this framework promotes. Essentially, Scharmer affirms that how we attend and the quality of our individual and shared attention and intention affects what emerges. We know this from the simple and yet profound experience of listening to someone in a fully engaged way and or when we cultivate and participate in sacred spaces and rituals. In other words, “presencing” is not just about happiness, but ultimately new ways of seeing, being and doing. Knowing all of this, can we more boldly accept the invitation of mystics and poets in the midst of our otherwise mundane and muddled lives?
For Presence
Awaken to the mystery of being here
and enter the quiet immensity of your own presence.
Have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.
Receive encouragement when new frontiers beckon.
Respond to the call of your gift and the courage to
follow its path.
Let the flame of anger free you of all falsity.
May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame.
May anxiety never linger about you.
May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of
soul.
Take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek
no attention.
Be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.
May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven
around the heart of wonder.
Make Change Stick Beyond the Meeting
Turn ideas into agreements that stick, and keep change going after the meeting ends. Perfect for teams stuck in “great conversation, little action.”