|Photo by Joanna DeSilva|http://www.flickr.com/photos/22699882@N05/3925277668/in/photolist-6YS5ib-731gRb-7xiBcx-a1ytiD-7CaEeJ-ajVWkp-98jyKZ-dpFP4y-a4Kv9w-a8mSWm-a4Kth5-c3wLoG-7UDmJg-cJkmD7-7MfYHF|
I read a quote earlier this week that I had seen before that went something like, “We need to act our way into a new way of thinking.” Indeed, increasingly what seems to be called for is the practice of prototyping and risk-taking, breaking the more linear and often drawn out process of plan-act-reflect-refine. This poem by Mary Oliver, from her book A Thousand Mornings, captures something of this spirit for me: Read More
I want to tip my hat to mentors and thought partners, both near and far, for fueling my thinking around the topic of this post – thanks to Carol Sanford, Richard Hawkes and Tom Lombardi at Growth River, Glenda Eoyang, Richard Barrett, and my IISC colleague Gibran Rivera. There is much discussion in the social sectors these days about the need to be more fearless, to take risks, to fail early, to be innovative and vulnerable. Influenced by my colleagues, I like to frame all of this as being about our need to think and act more “vertically,” that is, with an evolutionary thrust, in the direction of personal and systemic growth and development, opportunity generation, and a sense of accountability to a greater community or “we.” Read More
|Photo by grongar|http://www.flickr.com/photos/grongar/4965343939|
Building on yesterday’s post of the video about sociocracy, and inspired by the work of John Buck and Sharon Villines that I mentioned there, I’ve been pulling together a list of ways that leaders at all levels in organizations and networks might encourage more collective self-organizing, self-correcting, resilient and adaptive behavior. Here’s a start and I invite readers to please add: Read More
Just wrapped up a public Pathway to Change workshop this week in Boston, during which I spent some of our time talking with participants about the importance of process design teams in collaborative change work. These “little engines that can” become the backbone of our complex multi-stakeholder work as they hold the stake for creating an environment and a pathway that brings out the best in the many people attempting to realize a new reality around a given issue or issues. To this end, a spirit of risk-taking, thinking outside of the box, engaging in iterative work, and maintaining a willingness to prototype as “social architects” can be vital to long-term success. I thank Tom Wujec for helping me to make the marshmallow tower-inspired point and ask what his message means for your teamwork.
