Tag Archive: creativity

June 24, 2013

Unfinished March

Thanks to our colleagues at the Economic Policy Institute for “Unfinished March”—an initiative highlighting the original demands of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the work that still remains unfinished. Decide for yourself how many of the demands have been met and what’s still on our collective to-do list. Read the entire report here.

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June 18, 2013

Social Change Institute

Beauty matters, nature nurtures us, this year’s “Social Change Institute” was a remarkable experience and a real privilege to facilitate. Get people with passion together, in the perfect setting, careful design and good facilitation, and good work is bound to happen.

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June 11, 2013

Tried and False

The following post has been reblogged from Seth’s Blog. He is a genius and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did! 

The tried and true is beyond reproach. It’s been tried, and of course, it’s true. True because it worked. In times of change, though, most of the tried is in fact, false. False because what used to work, doesn’t, at least not any longer. Sure, it might be what you’ve always done. But that doesn’t make it true, or right, or best. It just means that you already tried it. The nature of revolutions is that they destroy the perfect and enable the impossible. Seeking out the tried and true is the wrong direction for crazy times.

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May 21, 2013

OPEN Summit US

In January of this year I was privileged to design and facilitate the first ever International OPEN Summit.  Today I’m on my way to facilitate the first ever OPEN Summit US.  The leadership of our nation’s “Online Progressive Engagement Networks” are coming together to support the development of an informal network by strengthening relationships among the people doing this work.  Read More

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May 15, 2013

Feeding a New Economy

This beautiful video speaks to the importance of will, community, and creativity to transform an otherwise unused asset into a new engine for local economic vitality.  In the words of catalyst Greg Cox, “This is an evolution. . . .  You come up with an idea.  The human animal reacts with fear almost all the time.  And you go, ‘Ah, it can’t happen.  It’s Rutland.  It’s not going to happen here.  It’s been too difficult.  We just don’t have the capacity.’  This is the way the story is.  We looked at the outcome we wanted and we’re trying to rewrite the story.”

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May 7, 2013

What Strategy Is NOT

Photo provided by Alex Pelayo. Check out the rest of his amazing portfolio here!

This post is Part III in a series on Strategic Planning and Emergence.

Your vision is not your strategy.  Neither is your plan.  Your benchmarks are not your strategy, nor your complicated grids.  Your hedgehog or your very audacious goals are not your strategy either.  Your predictions of what the future will look like, no matter how organized and well researched, are definitely not your strategy.

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April 30, 2013

Strategy, Planning, Emergence

Photo provided by Alex Pelayo. Check out the rest of his amazing portfolio here!

I spend a lot of time figuring out how to work with emergence.  You don’t plan emergence, you create the conditions for emergence.  But how does that fit with strategy?  How do you do strategic planning in a world that is too complex for straight lines and long timelines?

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April 8, 2013

The Importance of Scheduling Nothing

The following post has been reblogged from Linkedin CEO Jeff Weiner. We hope you enjoy this post along with some of his other blog posts! 

If you were to see my calendar, you’d probably notice a host of time slots greyed out but with no indication of what’s going on. There is no problem with my Outlook or printer. The grey sections reflect “buffers,” or time periods I’ve purposely kept clear of meetings.

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