On virtually every indicator of individual and community health and well-being, people of color in the U.S. experience worse outcomes and more barriers to success than their white counterparts. Intervening to reverse these trends requires intention and attention: intentionality about understanding the historic and present-day manifestations of racism and attention to effective ways to intervene.
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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.
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The following is a letter by Akaya Windwood, President of the Rockwood Leadership Institute and member of the IISC Board of Directors.
About a week ago I was in my car on my way home, and traveling toward me on the busy sidewalk was a young man (20-ish) on a skateboard. It took a moment for me to register that he had a toddler-aged girl on his shoulders. Neither of them had helmets or shin pads or any protection whatsoever.
My first thought was “Stop! Get that child off his shoulders — they could both be killed if he hits a rock! This is child endangerment!!!” All my alarms started clanging, and I was on HIGH alert.
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|Image from Anders Sandberg|http://www.flickr.com/photos/arenamontanus/273180669|
Yesterday I posted a bit of a summary of Carter Phipps’ provocative new book, Evolutionaries, which included the suggested trajectories from a variety of evolutionary thinkers and observers, including greater (and increasing rates of) external and internal complexity, convergence, creativity and change. The implications I left off with included a call for a stronger embrace of our creative self-starting (entrepreneurial) potential and also the necessity of engaging in more intentional and skillful collective (cooperative or collaborative) effort.
To take this another step, there is much in the evolutionary (biological/physical and philosophical/spiritual) literature that validates and extends our thinking about how to work with life and dynamic systems to steward change in broadly desirable, just, and life-affirming directions.
Leave a comment“Innovation is as much a function of the right kind of relationships as it is of a particular kind of individual vision.”
-Carter Phipps
I capped off my summer reading with what was for me a fascinating and important book – Evolutionaries by Carter Phipps. Phipps is the editor of EnlighteNext magazine and enthusiastic about the evolutionary worldview and how it is showing up in many different fields, from biology to sociology to philosophy and theology, transforming our very understanding not simply of the cosmos, but of ourselves. Over the past few years, readers of this blog have probably picked up on the interest that my colleague Gibran Rivera and I share with Phipps when it comes to the evolutionary worldview. Evolutionaries does a wonderful service in deepening and broadening as well as bringing much more nuance to this perspective, rendering it more timely, accessible and applicable to the work of social change. Read More
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Happy 130th Birthday, [Organized] Labor Day!
On this Labor Day, let’s remember its origins in the ranks of organized labor. But first, a look at which workers we’re celebrating today.
Who’s unionized now? (Source: Huffington Post: Labor Day History: 11 Facts You Need to Know)
Service station attendants 96,000
Musicians, singers and related workers 179,000
Bakers 183,000
Pharmacists 232,000
Firefighters: 258,000
Chefs and head cooks: 281,000
Taxi drivers and chauffeurs 286,000
Hairdressers, hairstylists and cosmetologists: 718,000
Farmers and ranchers 825,000
Teachers 6.5 million
Not to mention health care workers, police and many other professions.
Leave a comment“Sensitivity can be very self-absorbing.”
-Bill Reed
|Photo by Dan Zen|http://www.flickr.com/photos/danzen/5611377054/in/photostream|
The older I get the more of an appreciation I have for science. Perhaps this is the natural balancing process that occurs over time in my Myers Briggs profile – more T to my natural F, more S to my natural N. It also owes to the impatience I have with the tendency I’ve noticed to throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to social change. Two examples I’d like to lift up are thinking about and reactions to consensus and hierarchy. As I become more influenced by research into living systems, I realize that these concepts are often given a bad name because of our tendency to take (or make) things very personally. Read More
Leave a commentI learned recently about the work of HASTAC and Cathy Davidson, and appreciate what she raises here about the importance of designing for divergence and difference. And I would also take her up on her third question and ask what she might be missing. For me, it is one thing to distinguish between experts and novices, and another thing to altogether redefine “expertise,” understanding that academic/formal educational training is not the sole source of valuable knowing. Let’s lift lived experience to that level as well! Read More
Leave a commentIt is hard to believe that I may have to convince some people that 6 minutes is worth their time to watch this, but seriously, think of how easy it is to fritter away that time in other ways. This is well worth the watch, as is reading Bill McKibben’s recent piece in Rolling Stone Magazine. Both the video above and the McKibben article put much in perspective and remind us why climate change is a fight we cannot afford to lose. They also confirm why it is so important to come together as a community to share solutions, ideas, and positive energy. For an opportunity to do this in New England this fall, check out Connecting for Change.
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|Photo by Qoncept|http://www.flickr.com/photos/37418570@N03/4488784822|
Fresh off of an offering of Pathway to Change to a group of leaders from across sectors in southern Massachusetts, and with another 3 day workshop on the horizon in San Francisco (July 24-26), I’ve been considering how the theme of fear often comes up in discussions about impediments and challenges to effective collaborative change work – fear of failure, fear of losing something, fear of the unknown. And I’ve been more and more convinced by how important intentional, creative, and strategic process design is in building pathways through this fear. This notion has been validated in the writing of Chip and Dan Heath, most recently in their book Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard. In a one page summary, the Heath brothers highlight the important three steps of: (1) directing our rational selves (what exactly are we trying to accomplish?), (2) motivating our emotional selves (what’s so compelling about that future destination? why can’t the current conditions continue?), and creating a clear path between where we are now and where we want to be. Read More
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|Photo by Amani Hasan|http://www.flickr.com/photos/amani1306/2357549928|
A blog post on the Management Innovation Exchange site has got me thinking. In a post entitled, “Forget Empowerment – Aim for Exhilaration,” Polly LaBarre profiles Ricardo Semler of Brazil’s Semco Group. Semco is noted for its dramatic turnaround as a business, and for its unusual way of managing itself under Semler’s leadership, as noted by LaBarre -“no organizational chart, no fixed offices or working hours, no fixed CEO, no HR department, no five-year plan (or two- or one-year-plan), no job descriptions or permanent positions, no approvals necessary.” All of this is geared towards increasing individual autonomy and agency, participation at every level, and trust. The results are reported to be quite astounding with respect to business outcomes as well as employee fulfillment, with a long line of interested prospects at the door. Semler himself has even freed himself up to pursue interests in the realm of helping to reform primary education and the legal system! So how can I not help but be curious about some of what I/we might bring into our organizational life and work at IISC? Read More
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