Chris Corrigan

Community organizing is a hoot!

Posted by Chris Corrigan - 05/09/08 at 02:09:35 pm

Nice find from Kevin Harris who blogged the Republican’s digs at Barack Obama’s community organizing experience:

George Pataki: ‘He was a community organizer. What in God’s name is a community organizer? I don’t even know if that’s a job.’

Then former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani delivered his own snickering hit job. ‘He worked as a community organizer. What? Maybe this is the first problem on the resumé,’ mocked Giuliani.

A few minutes later, in her acceptance speech for the GOP vice presidential nomination, Sarah Palin declared, ‘I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.’

One of the responses from the Obama camp was:

‘Let’s clarify something for them right now. Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies.’

Exactly…that is exactly what community organizing is.  Republicans do it too.  

It’s beyond me why so many Republican politicians find it so hard to be actually funny.  Every time I hear “jokes” like this, I just want to draw a little square in the air in front of me whilst rolling my eyes.  It’s as if years of country club roasts had conditioned them to slightly off-colour jokes being met with nervous titters.

 

Books about being human

Posted by Chris Corrigan - 05/09/08 at 01:09:21 pm

Recently Karen Sella posted a request to the OSLIST among other places for books that are about being human  Today she posted the list.

Here is your new life reading program!

Silly season begins

Posted by Chris Corrigan - 04/09/08 at 04:09:59 pm

So it seems that we are having a federal election here in Canada.

I’m a little interested in democracy and as I\ve had two phone calls today, I thought I might as well keep some notes here about my experience with the local candidates.

Today John Weston’s comapaign called me.  Weston is running for the Conservatives here in West Vancouver - Sunshine Coast - Sea to Sky Country.  So I’ll admit upfront that I’m prejudiced here - I haven’t ever voted Conservative, and that isn’t likely to change in this election.  I did however find the experience of communicating with Mr. Weston’s campaign a little funny.

I got called around 4pm to ask if I\d support Weston in this election.  I usually at least ask some questions - and in the last election I had a long conversation with the Conservative candidate on my pet federal issue - Aboriginal rights and titie.  This time I felt like just cutting the crap and I told the caller I wouldn’t be supporting Weston at all.

I figured that was the end of it, but it wasn’t.  An hour later I got a call back from a call centre asking if I supported Weston.  Intrigued. I took the bait and asked the caller why I should support John Weston.  She didn’t really know.  SHe pointed me to his website, which I have also done and said I should look there for more information.  Then I asked her why she liked Weston.  She said that she couldn’t really answer that question, that she just worked at a call centre and that was that.

So the guy who wants my vote can’t even find people who support him to call me?  He has to hire a call centre with people who don’t seem to care one way or another to do his ground work for him?  This is a little strange and a little sad.  One of the things I enjoy about election campaigns is the rabid support that campaign staff and volunteers exude for their cadidate.  It makes for fun sport and often really great conversation.  In this case, the whol thing defleated before my eyes.  Will John Weston’s campaign call centre continue to call me over and over with dispassionate invitations to visit his website, or am I going to get to talk to someone about the Conservatives change in policy following the residential schools apology?

To be continued I guess.

Three essentials to move teams to communities of practice

Posted by Chris Corrigan - 04/09/08 at 01:09:16 pm

 

I’m working a lot with communities of practice these days, or more precisely, teams and groups that aspire to becoming communities of practice.  In seeking to be simple about the process of moving from a group to a deeper community, I’ve been designing meetings using this map, to ensure that we give equal weight to work, relationships and co-learning.  In my experience, when we do that we set the conditions for a group to become more cohesive and to discover new learning and emergent solutions to the issues on which they are working.  This is a design tool, a map to help us keep what’s important in mind.  Within each of these three domains are a plethora of practices and tools, and all of these need to be applied wisely, but I am finding this 30,000 foot view useful.

Work

Of course the reason for meeting is to do work. Getting clear on this is important, and I use several different maps for helping groups come to clairty about the work they need to do. My favourite at the moment is what we call the chaordic stepping stones, which is a logical procession of moving from need to structure and practice by anchoring everything we are doing in what is needed at the moment. Gaining clarity on what our work is is important.

Tools for gaining clarity on work include design tools like the diamond of participation, the chaordic stepping stones and other project planning tools that invite clairty about questions and harvest insights back into the team’s work.

Relationships

For groups to be more than just collections of individuals, they need to focus on their relationships. Relationships are the glue that keeps work sustainable. When we pay attention to how we are together it creates the conditions for our work to excel over the long term. Teams or communities that have to focus on toxic, competitive or unhelpful relationships spend too much energy caught in conflict and difference and can’t get real work done. At the outset of working with a team or community of practice, it’s important to identify relationships as a key capacity leading to innovation, excellence or success. And when things go sideways, having solid relationships in place ensures that hte group can find a way out quickly and effectively.

Tools to support good relationships include using participatory and inclusive processes like World Cafe or Open Space Technology and spending time listening to one another’s stories and perspectives. A list of principles like these ones help groups focus on what is important in the container of their work. Good process matters..

Co-learning

If an individual or a group is wanting to become innovate or to think or practice its way to another level of work, learning is essential. At a personal level, cultivating curiosity is critical, so that individuals enter work, practice and conversations with questions that guide their participation in an endeavour. Conceiving of these as a learning journey is very helpful in this regard.

Beyond individual learning, collective learning or co-learning is the fastest way to breathroughs. Engaging in collaborative inquiry, co-presencing and co-realizing a la Otto Scharmer’s Theory U is important to keep a group on the edge of its own learning. Groups need to practice fearlessness to try to embrace new ideas and new ways of doing things.

Tools to support this work include learning journeys, appreciative inquiry, co-presencing and ongoing high level conversation about what a team is learning - a meta-level process.  

Alive in the intersecations

The intersection of work and relationships results in one feeding other and leasd to sustainability in the kinds of endeavours one is undertaking, especially when the going gets tough.  At the intersection of work and co-learning is innovative thinking that helps to drive work to new levels.  At the intersection of co-learning and relationships is where a group comes to see itself as more than just a team, and learns new ways of being together and new forms of connection that serve the greater purpose.

And of course at the centre of it all is the possibility of community, arising out of a balanced approach to all three domains.

To give this model a test run, think of a number of groups you are currently involved in and think about what you hunger for in them.  It’s likely that you are paying attention to just one or two of these domains, and that the missing one contains the thing that you hunger for.

I realize some of these concepts may be unfamiliar, or couched in strange language, but the idea is pretty simple: do what you can to pay attention to an dbalance these three factors and you can set the groundwork for a group to meet in a way that helps it evolve into a community of practice.

I would love to hear reports of how this map describes your territory.

A summer of reading friends

Posted by Chris Corrigan - 03/09/08 at 10:09:01 pm

 

 

I have a stack of books I am working my way through this summer, and they are all written by friends.  I think this is pretty remarkable actually.  From the top down, here is what’s on my reading table:

• Finding the Sweet Spot by Dave Pollard.  This one just arrived this evening, although I read a proof that Dave sent along.  It’s typical of his writing, and will be a familiar tome for regular readers of his blog, How To Save The World.  The book outlines a path for creating a life of sustainable work and enterprise using his well developed model of natural entrepreneurship.  It’s a brilliant, accessible and portable guide to saving your own ass and the world along with it.  
• The Return of King Arthur by Diana Durham.  Diana was with us at the Art of Hosting stewards gathering in Carleton Nova Scotia this summer, working with her partner Jon to make a film about some of the work we are doing.  Diana’s book is a deep exploration of the powerful myths and archetypes of self-knowledge and transformation.  She goes far into the western European tradition and to show the essential pathways on the journey to mastery.  It’s an incredible book.
• Howe Sounds, an anthology of Bowen Island writing.  My home island is known in Canada for being a haven for writers and this anthology, published way back in 1994 showcased a number of them including Nick Bantock, Robert Bringhurst, Victor Chan and Jim Kearny.  A few current friends are anthologized here too including Brad Ovenell-Carter (wriiing about bread, about which he an I are passionate) and Julie Ovenell-Carter who is known as a travel writer and who contributed a poem writtne for her young daughter.
• Almost Green by my friend and neighbour James Glave.  James has written a book that is both deadly serious and achingly funny about the middle class grasping towards sustainability.  The book charts his journey to build the most ecologically sustainable sturcture possible - what turns out to be an eco-shed studio space.  Along the way he talks about the economics of sustainability and why the middle classes in North America are destined to remain almost green.  The book is honest and changes very few name to protect the guilty.  When it was released in July, Islanders kept popping into the bookstore just to see if they were in it.  If you want a taste of James phenomenal writing, download his ebook on deer hunting, Buck The System.  
• Teaching an Anthill to Fetch by Stephen Joyce.  Stephen sent me this book a while ago and then I ended up meeting him at an Art of Hosting we did in Cochrane, Alberta in June.  The book is a how to guide to developing collaborative intellegence in the workplace and goes through anumber of tools that meaders, team members and managers can easily adopt to begin their learning about leveraging collaborative intellegence.  It’s accessible and it also points in many directions and invites readers to go deeper.  A very practical introduction to the field.
• Open Space Technology: A User’s Guide by Harrison Owen.  This is the third edition of Harrison’s guide and it’s updated with several new pieces about action planning, and wupporting the client.  The community has had a bigger hand in this version than in previous versions and Harrison has gathered the wisdom that makes sense and recast it in his amicable style.  This is really a classice in the field of facilitation methodology.  It’s dead simple to use and is really all you need to set up and run an Open Space meeting.
• Hippie Chick Reunion by Kathryn Barber.  Yet another Art of Hosting companion, I met Kathryn in Florida in May and this book lay at the bottom of my suitcase for a couple of months before Kathryn prodded me to read it.  On the surface it is a story about a group of women reuniting in 2001 to celebrate the protagonist’s 50th birthday.  They were a wild bunch back in the day, and their memories are vividly relived.  Under the surface though Kathryn has written a parable for social evolution, and the book is highly indebted to Ken Wilber’s integral models and Don Becks Spiral Dynamics as it weaves the worldviews of the characters together in a dynamic tale.

Viv McWaters on doing and teaching

Posted by Chris Corrigan - 01/09/08 at 10:09:33 am

The thing about working as a facilitator and helping groups become acquainted with their own brilliance is that you really want to be able to leave a group once it can take care of itself.  For me, my consulting practice is as much about building capacity as it is about doing work.  Viv captures this beautifully today:

So those of us working as facilitators are demonstrating how to tap into the wisdom of a group of people. How to hear what they are saying, build on each others’ ideas, and create solutions. The world needs a lot of creative solutions, I think. Not everyone has facilitation skills. Not everyone understands the difference between dialogue and debate, when to inquire and when to advocate. These skills will be necessary. Not as a profession - but as something we can all do. Maybe once we could, and we’re on a journey of rediscovery.

For my part, I’m going to continue to try and do myself out of a job. To let others in on ’secret facilitators’ business’, build capacity where I can, use processes that are easy to learn and transferable, train others, share resources, help each other.

A new map: talking our way to a decision…and beyond

Posted by Chris Corrigan - 30/08/08 at 05:08:31 pm

I was working with a group yesterday that was making a number of small decisions as they worked their way through an agenda.  The meeting was semi-formal and my role as facilitator was mostly to hold space and draw attention to process where appropriate.

I let the group talk, asked questions from time to time and noted the decisions that they had made.  As I was observing this group working, I noticed something interesting about their process.

Frequent readers will know that I use the diamond of participation often as a map to organize and design meeting processes.  One feature of the diamond is the three phases that groups go through, from divergent thinking through emergent thinking to convergent thinking.  There are noticiable transitions between these three phases, with groups becoming quiet when the hit the groan zone, and the energy becoming lighter when concrete proposals and decisions begin to emerge.

Yesterday I was watching the pattern of the conversations in the group and I noticed that the language changed.  Participants began and ended each journey through the groan zone using lots of “I” language and while they were in the middle, there were lots of “we” statements.  A typical agenda item began with one partcipant introducing it with a personal statement or a question.  The group listened and then replied with further I statements.  These responses were a combination of personal questions and personal responses to ideas.  Typically I heard things like “What I\m wondering about is…”, “I don’t like that idea very much…” “I can see your point…”

As the conversation unfolded however, there was a shift to “we” and group members began exploring ideas that were in the best interests of the group. People seemed less preoccupied with their own ideas and began working on the emerging ideas that were capturing energy.  There was the occasional drift back to “I” language but for the most part I heard things like “We could do it like this…” “We don’t have the time or resources for that…” or “How else could we do that?”

Finally, you could tell the conversation was coming to a close when people started discussing the personal implications of the emergent decision.  “Okay, so I will make that change to the timetable…”  “I like this choice…” and so on.

Not just a flow from I -> WE -> I, but I also noticed that the conversation went from curious to concrete, and that this map took the form of quadrants, similar to the ones I have worked with before.  This observation is in line with Otto Scharmer’s Theory U, and this diagram above shows the path the conversation took also shaped like a U, with the group going from inquiry which opened up options to concrete decisions and implementation plans.

The cool thing about this map of patterns is that it gave me enough for to be able to hold very lightly the conversational space that the group was in.  I watched them go through this process something like 15 times over the course of the day and only a couple of times did they get stuck.  When they did, it was simply a matter of consulting the map to see what to do.  I intervened at least one in each of these four quadrants, something like this:

• Asking for more clarity in personal introduction of agenda ites, and alos inviting the person introducing the item what they are curious about.
• Helping the group see emergent ideas as they were taking shape and asking about the nature of the ideas rather than people’s personal preferences or thoughts.
• Inviting people to concretize what they were hearing, and to explore the implications of one option over another.
• Inviting personal responsibility and ensuring that implementation plans were in place for each decision.

Simple, but this is value of having maps at your finger tips to help find your way through the wilderness of emergent conversation\

Update: Dave Pollard has built on this thought and redrawn the map and I like his thinking.  I will say though tha tthis version of the map stops at decision making, and my interest is in seeing the way the individal comes back into the fold as implementation takes over.  We’ll be talking more about this I think at the Art of Hosting this month here on Bowen Island.  At any rate, here’s Dave’s map:

Thanks Dave!

Living Peace: the open space of our lives

Posted by Chris Corrigan - 24/08/08 at 11:08:42 am

Raffi Aftendelian has released the final version of Living Peace: the open space of our lives.  It features contributions from all over the world, including a piece from my life and business partner Caitlin Frost about parenting in Open Space.

Another free book from the Open Space community.  Thanks Raffi and everyne who contributed!

Harrison Owen on dancing with the devil

Posted by Chris Corrigan - 22/08/08 at 04:08:38 pm

Raffi Aftendelian unearthed a beautiful gem today. Writing on the OSLIST, he quoted something Harrison Owen had written 40 years ago when he was unknowingly being inspired to create Open Space Technology. As a text to a photo essay on life in a Liberian village, Harrison wrote:

A very special part
of any village celebration
is the appearance of the various “devils.”
The word devil is very misleading,
and was undoubtedly
the unwanted gift
of an early missionary
The devils are not evil,
but rather represent
a respected (albeit feared)
part of the village.
Nothing of importance happens
unless they appear and dance.
In their appearance,
all aspects of the village
are brought together-dance,
music, government, and religion.
When the “Devil” dances, life goes on.

***

In the village,
all things go in a circle,
and everything fits.
To speak of the drums
is to speak of the dance,
is to speak of the Devils…

Weaving and Forging
Fire and Steel- the Bush
Life, Death and Life again.

Ain’t that something? Another little tidbit to add to the nascent beginning of Open Space.

Light on the Golden Gate

Posted by Chris Corrigan - 22/08/08 at 12:08:01 pm

From our recent trip to San Francisco…light streaming through through one of the uprights on the Golden Gate Bridge.

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