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.
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.
“If I can’t have what I want, I will settle for great free public education for every kid; fair wages for every kind of work; a guaranteed right to vote; an end to segregation in our hospitals, neighborhoods, airports, child welfare departments. I will settle for justice. I will settle for love. I will settle for freedom.”
Today we often use the word extraordinary to refer to something amazing, something great. The overwhelming re-election of the nation’s first Black President through the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression is a truly extraordinary event.
Our paradigm is our lens on everything. It is how we make sense of reality. For example, a deterministic paradigm is a lens that makes you see everything in terms of cause and effect. It gives you a mechanistic lens with which to make sense of the world. Determinism can be a really useful perspective – one way of looking at things – but it becomes a problem if it is your paradigm – THE way in which you look at things.
“If it’s work we try to figure out how to do less, if it’s art we try to figure out how to do more.” Regular readers of our blog know that we are big fans of Seth Godin here at IISC. And if you’ve been to anything I’ve trained or facilitated you have probably heard me rail against the dominance of an obsolete industrial paradigm.
In this video, Godin asks “What is school for?” and he clearly points to all the industrial trappings that are badly limiting how we educate our young – even in “high performing” contexts. We are in the middle of a significant paradigm shift, and this is one of our most important questions.
“No good work is ever done while the heart is hot and anxious and fretted.” Olive Schreiner
I couldn’t agree more! We’re fond of a related quote that “The success of an intervention depends on the interior condition of the intervener.” Bill O’Brien
I know that it’s hard for me to do good work when I’m fretful, exhausted or feeling insecure.
The following post is reblogged from Seth’s Blog. Short and simple , yet full of wisdom. We hope that it will enrich your life and much as it has ours.
Do the extra work not because you have to but because it’s a privilege.
The following blog post was reblogged from Emergent By Design. We hope that you enjoy it as much as we did!
*Our source was initially and inadvertently omitted. We apologize for the mistake.
I’ve had the privilege of working with a lot of organizations over the years that want to shift their culture to become more diverse, inclusive and equitable. The article we are posting below is about changing culture in general. What specific applications do you see for shifting organizational culture toward greater diversity, inclusiveness and equity?
I recently had the privilege of engaging in a public dialogue with Amy Edelstein, senior teacher of Evolutionary Enlightenment. We were brought together to talk about the relationship between active citizenship and active spirituality.
The very idea of citizenship emerges in the context of a trajectory, a movement from less freedom to more freedom. There is something aspirational in it, it is supposed to help us move towards an unfinished project – an ideal.
I’m a process junky. I believe that good process makes it possible to do things that would be impossible otherwise. Any effort ambitious enough to try and shift a system from competition to common intention is an effort that must rely on good process. Good process provides and often temporary social architecture that is designed and facilitated to maximize generative collaboration.
I love the fact that the mainstream can’t get its head around what #occupy is all about. I am glad the movement does not fit a pre-existing paradigm.
I love the fact that occupiers themselves find no consensus on what #occupy is all about. It means the movement is still emergent and therefore most alive.