I’m proud to call Billy Parish a friend; he is an incredibly sweet person. I am a fan of his commitment and imagination. I’ve been hearing about his company, Mosaic, since it was but an idea. I was blown away to see it featured in today’s New York Times – A Bet on the Environment. Read More
Leave a comment
We partnered with a foundation as they built a network of leaders who shared a deep passion for their city. In the beginning, many of the leaders wanted to do something together quickly. We encouraged them to pause, build deeper relationships, and see what emerged. Read More
Leave a comment
The following blog post is Part 1 of a series dedicated to Race and Social Transformation. Special thanks to Gibrán Rivera, Miriam Messinger, Curtis Ogden, Sara Oaklander, Mistinguette Smith and Maanav Thakore for their support in completing this series! We encourage you to share and comment!
In the U.S., the work of transforming racism is often stuck in an unproductive binary: either transform people or transform systems. Fortunately, more and more people recognize that we have do both and more. Read More
1 Comment
We facilitated a network focused on improving early childhood education and care. The initial focus was to build leadership capacity and facilitate strategy development with stakeholders across a state to design a more holistic statewide structure for decision-making related to early childhood. Read More
Leave a comment“The point is that justice was always going to elude Trayvon Martin, not because the system failed, but because it worked.”
– Robin D. G. Kelley
|Photo by Ben Sutherland|http://www.flickr.com/photos/bensutherland/8496877807|
The post below is a somewhat edited version of one that appeared on this blog a year ago. As we have continued to have conversations at IISC and with our partners about the implications of the verdict in the George Zimmerman case, one thing that has become clear about who and where we are as a country is that there is an overall inability and/or resistance to thinking about racism from a systemic perspective. As evidence, we hear comments such as, “Race did not have anything to do with this verdict. The women on the jury are not racist.” Or, “Justice was done. The jury followed the letter of the law.” Read More
Leave a commentRegular readers know that facilitating for the Barr Fellows Network has been among the most rewarding work I have ever gotten to do – here is why, part 2
Leave a comment
Andrea Nagel and I have been facilitating retreats for the Social Justice Funders Network (SJFN) of Massachusetts for the last year and a half or so. What an honor! Network members include individuals who work at foundations both small and large across the state and who have intentionally created a space for learning and relationship-building across roles, institutions, and issues. Read More
Leave a comment
|Photo by TREEAID|http://www.flickr.com/photos/53871588@N05/5726759624|
This post is not exactly about an insurance policy, at least not in the traditional sense. Picking up on the metaphor of last week’s piece on “Network Gardening,” today we bring focus to how we can protect the early growth of networks for social change. Protect them from what? The temptation to jump to action too quickly, leapfrogging the “problem conversation,” the tendency to want to institutionalize everything (what a friend calls “incorporation fever”), naysayers, exclusionist practices, and the heavy hitters who are used to getting their way. Read More
Leave a comment
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 comment
|Photo by Libby|http://www.flickr.com/photos/libbyandnicki/6337707632|
A number of months ago, I posted something on what I called “The Dimensions of Social Space,” the gist of which was the proposal that we are called to tend to different dimensions of our social being in our change work – the autonomous/individual, the communal/collective, and the transcendant/”divine.” When I wrote that post, I was thinking of these as three interlocking circles in a ven diagram. I have since evolved my thinking to see them as systems sitting in nested fashion, going from the lesser (individual) to the greater (divinity) in terms of complexity. Much of this development owes to the field of living systems thinking and the mentoring of Carol Sanford. Read More
Leave a comment
|Image by zachstern|http://www.kassblog.com/2011/07/systems-thinking|
I had a unique opportunity the other day with a client to do a little year end reflection about the path we have walked with a complex multi-stakeholder change process, which has featured a dive into systems thinking thanks to IISC friend David Peter Stroh. David was actually the one who put the question out there, “What have you gained as a result of adopting a systems thinking lens?” Here is some of what came up in terms of gleanings and appreciation:
Leave a comment
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