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Visioning as the estuary of action
This is an estuary. It is the place where a river goes to die. Everything the river has ever been and everything it has carried within it, is deposited at it’s mouth where the flow slows down and...
View ArticleAction, complexity and a centre
Just coming off an Art of Hosting with friends Tenneson Woolf, Caitlin Frost and Teresa Posakony. Something Tenneson said on our last day as we were hunkering down to do some action planning, has...
View ArticleAddicted to knowing
The Cynefin framework is helpful in making a distinction between the worlds of complicated problems and the worlds of complex ones. One simple distinction between these two worlds is the extent to...
View ArticleWaking up beloved community
Last night in Vancouver listening to Le Vent du Nord, a terrific traditional band from Quebec. They put on one of the best live shows I have seen in a long time with outstanding musicianship combined...
View ArticleHow to get smart – the long answer
My friend Ginny Belden-Charles told me a great story today. She was working in Detroit on some community development issues with a number of activists and others. Their focus was on empowering...
View ArticleLearning more about the four fold practice
At our art of hosting water dialogues this morning, several insights on the four fold practice of hosting: on hosting ourselves, one of the participants who used to work in emergency medicine shared...
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Not knowing and disappointment
> I’m about to board a flight from Toronto to Vancouver and I had the thought this morning that I might share this flight with the Vancouver Whitecaps FC my local football (soccer) team. I am a huge...
View ArticleBlending Theory U and Art of Hosting
A reposne I made today on the Art of Hosting list about the workshop we are leading this week: We’re in the middle of a leadership residential for 25 leaders in the community social services sector...
View ArticleWhat does it take to make real social innovation?
Very interesting little article from David Wilcox about the differences between social entrepreneurs and social innovators. Here is how he describes those differences, from a tactical perspective: 4...
View ArticleDealing with disruption
I was listening to a brilliant interview with the theologian and scholar Walter Bruggeman this morning. He was talking about “the prophetic imagination” and using the poetry of the Old Testament...
View ArticleGetting beyond the reaction
My friend Bob Stilger writes today from the radiation fields of Fukushima where he has been joining people for the past year in the work of remaking lives after the tsunami and the meltdown. It’s...
View ArticleIncluding difference to strengthen a movements
Heard a great story today. I’m at a conference of union activists who are working to build their activist muscles up and do work in communities. One of the presenters here is Jason Sidener, who I’ve...
View ArticleThree practices Occupy gives and gave us
A little reflection today about social change and Occupy coming out of a conversation yesterday. When I was a young man we talk about “movements” like we were on the go. From whatever place we were in...
View ArticleIt’s not easy
Working with groups is not easy. This is Ian McGeechan, manager of the British and Irish Lions before a dead rubber test. My friend Kathy Jourdain was quoted yesterday as saying “our power comes from...
View ArticleMutations are the way to make change
Very few of us have our hands on the real levers of power. We lack the money and influence to write policy, create tax codes, move resources around or start and stop wars. Most of us spend almost all...
View ArticleMentoring in the world of hosting
All the best stuff I have learned about mentoring has been in the context of traditional culture, whether with indigenous Elders from Canada or in the traditional Irish music community. Traditional...
View ArticleNumbers aren’t everything
It’s an old saw with me, but Dave Snowdon puts it very nicely and succinctly: Numbers are good, but they are never the whole picture. Its easy to focus on them, they give the comfort of apparent...
View ArticleImproving community decision making
How many of you live in communities where community meetings are boring affairs punctuated by outrage? How many of you feel like influencing your local government means showing up en masse with a...
View ArticleBombs and killing and the responsibility or terror.
I hate bombs. In my 45 years I have had six friends and colleagues killed by bombs both on the Air India bombing in 1985 and in the London bombings in 2005. As a 10 year old kid living in England...
View ArticleWhy Managers Haven’t Embraced Complexity
Richard Straub writes in the Harvard Business Review, on a great piece about what stops managers from adopting complexity views: Complexity wasnt a convenient reality given managers desire for control....
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