Crowdfunding Community
When we talk about networks we tend to think scale, we think viral. But networks are also about community. Networks can thrive in that mysterious place where the most local intersects with the global.
Leave a commentTag Archive: creativity
Conditions for Emergence
The following comments was posted by Gibran as a response to Curtis Ogden‘s Collective Impact and Emergence blog post. In it we are challenged to think beyond our institutions and think about how to truly impact the communities we work with.
This is excellent Curtis. It brings me back to one of our most important inquiries – how do you nurture the conditions for emergence? With this inquiry, we are not just saying that emergence happens; we are saying that our best approach is to nurture it. It is a significant shift from a more top-down technical approach.
Leave a commentWhat adults can learn from kids
Twelve year old Adora Svitak called for mutual respect and reciprocal learning between adults and kids. Her TED bio calls her a “child prodigy” but I think that exceptionalizes her talents and perspective and implies that she is very unlike her peers. I think she models a poise and wisdom that is all around us if we just look for it.
Here’s a little taste of her talk.
Leave a commentA Decision Made
I made a decision not to worry.
Ever.
I began to understand that
it was a habit of my mind.
My heart doesn’t worry,
my body doesn’t worry,
only my head does.
I chose to establish a new habit
of consideration and trust—
trust that people are
tremendously resilient
and that the universe
could operate without
my constant nagging
interference.
~ Akaya Windwood
Leave a commentA Down-to-Earth Economy
The following post has been reblogged from our friends at yes! Magazine. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did!
Nature surrounds us with expressions of the organizing principles that make possible life’s exceptional resilience, capacity for adaptation, creative innovation, and vibrant abundance.” Read on as David Korten outlines how paying attention to natural systems can help us develop human systems that will sustain us for the long haul.
Leave a commentLiving Systems Lessons for Networks
I was recently turned on to the work of Louise Diamond by the Plexus Institute. Diamond has been bringing insights from the dynamics of complex systems to peace building work for many years. Her efforts connect to a growing number of practitioners and thinkers who see the need to approach social change with an ecological and evolutionary mindset. In one of her papers, she extracts some of the “simple rules” that yield core practices for working in this way. Here I have adapted and adjusted some of them in application to network building for food systems change. Read More
Leave a commentOPEN Summit
I’ve been on a whirlwind. And it began with my facilitation of OPEN Summit. The first ever leadership gathering of the world’s leading Online Progressive Engagement Networks. Think MoveOn.org as replicated in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Germany and Papua New Guinea. The great (and unbelievably sweet) Ben Brandzel had been dreaming this up for years!
Leave a comment“The World Needs Us to Be Fearless”
As they neared their 15th anniversary, the Case Foundation published “To be Fearless” as both a reflection on its work and a challenge to philanthropy and the social sector. The following are excerpts from this report, written by Cynthia Gibson and Brad Rourke for the Case Foundation. (“To Be Fearless,” The Case Foundation, 2012.)
Leave a commentComplexity and You
The following post has been reblogged from our friends at Management Assistant Group. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did!
Robin Katcher, the new director of the Management Assistance Group, is a friend of the Institute’s and a leader among those of us who work to bring an understanding of networks and complexity to the work of social transformation. I found these reflections on the more personal aspects of working with complexity to be specially appropriate for the beginning of a new year.
Leave a commentResilience
Andrew Zolli is a long time friend of the Interaction family. His recent piece on the New York Times, Learning to Bounce Back, reminded me of why Marianne Hughes, founder and former Executive Director of IISC has been raving about his new book on resilience.
1 CommentTurning to One Another
|Photo by Melissa Wiese|http://www.flickr.com/photos/42dreams/518103211|
I was so grateful when Laura Moorehead, Director of Training with the Institute for Civic Leadership, shared this reading from Margaret Wheatley at the close of my time with this year’s ICL class. From my perspective, there is much wisdom here, and the words do a very nice job of summarizing much of what IISC was there to share and discuss regarding leadership, networks, and collaborative change . . .
There is no power greater than a community discovering what it cares about Read More
Leave a commentSystems Thinking As a Spiritual Practice
David Peter Stroh hits the nail on the head with his recent post on the relationship between systems thinking and spiritual practice on the Leverage Points Blog. Our ways of seeing and ways of being are profoundly affected by our interior condition. Many aspects of systems thinking are deeply aligned with the wisdom of many spiritual traditions.
1 Comment