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From the feed

January 14, 2019 By Complexity, Design, Evaluation, Leadership, Learning, Power 2 Comments

Five links that caught my eye over the holiday. New Power: How it’s Changing the 21st Century and Why you need to Know A book review from Duncan Green, whose work on power, evaluation, and complexity in international development, I much admire. Seems this new book invites a shift in thinking about power from quantity to flows: Old Power works like a currency. It is held by a few. It is closed, inaccessible and leader-driven. It downloads and it captures. New Power operates differently, like a current. It is made by many. It uploads, and it distributes. The goal with …

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Capacity building and scaling a participatory approach

January 3, 2019 By Art of Hosting, Collaboration, Evaluation, Featured, First Nations, Leadership, Learning

On the Art of Hosting email list last month, there was an inquiry posted by Monica Nissén asking about scaling the Art of Hosting as a leadership practice through levels of engagement. By “Art of Hosting” Monica means the four fold practice, which is the basic framework for leadership that gives our community a coherent centre of practice, around presence, participation, hosting others, and co-creation.  Monica asked whether hoping these practices would just go viral in a networked way is enough, and I replied with the following, tracing a couple of long term projects I have been involved in that …

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Gratitude to my partners

December 31, 2018 By Uncategorized 2 Comments

Several years ago I made it a goal to work wth more collaborators than clients. I think I did it again this year. These days there is a beautiful blend between those with whom I collaborate and create projects and those whom I call friends.   I want to extend my heartfelt gratitude to my partners this year, who make me way better at what I do.  Happy New Year to all. Caitlin Frost, my partner in business and life. Tenneson Wolf Bronagh Gallagher Caroline Rennie Lily Martins Helen Kuyper Avril Orloff Rowan Simonsen Amy Lenzo Phil Cass Dawn Fleming …

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From the feed

December 24, 2018 By Complexity, Emergence, Evaluation, First Nations

I’ll be away for a couple of weeks, so here is the last set of links for the year. Happy New Year. I am worried about democracy these days. Our electoral politics are ravaged by social media manipulation, an absence of policy discussion, and the influence of money.  Governance affords very little opportunity for meaningful citizen participation. Harold Jarche is worried too, and in this pots he tackles the question of how to save democracy head on. Our institutions are failing us. They were designed for the age of print, not  an electrically connected one. We need new structures and …

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Moving in a direction

December 18, 2018 By Collaboration, Complexity, Featured, Organization

Many times when clients contact me they ask if I can help them come to consensus or alignment on their shared purpose or desired outcomes.  They expect facilitation will help them to do this. Sometimes this is a good idea.  If we are working in a highly constrained project, like building a new building, getting everyone on the same page is important. But it’s also easy. All you have to do is bring in the experts, design a good implementation plan for a good solution and have project managers keep everyone on track, step by step. Most organizations are good …

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