In Open Space Technology meetings, action plans begin with baby steps. In the action planning phase of an Open Space event, I ask participants to identify key projects that need to be started or ideas that need to be moved forward. In order to focus small, self-organized workteams, I distribute a small form that helps to capture immediate next steps.
As a result, I am always looking for questions to focus planning groups on concrete collaboration. I found a few today at Reforming Project Management Theory and Practice:
1. Who could help me with this?
2. What do I have to offer others?
3. What new ways can we meet on a regular basis?
4. How can we stay in tune with each others’ changing project work?
5. What can you do to be more responsive to each other?
2. What do I have to offer others?
3. What new ways can we meet on a regular basis?
4. How can we stay in tune with each others’ changing project work?
5. What can you do to be more responsive to each other?
Very useful, combined with a question that asks the group to identify a time and place to meet again.
My friend and fellow Bowen Islander John Dumbrille is beginning to engage with issues of accessibility for Web sites. He has some recent posts on his blog which look to me to be the beginning of a white paper. It will be interesting to see how his thinking evolves along these questions:
The first phase of standards implementation has missed the mark. Designers served pages that didn�t offend anyone � but which, like a drab casserole, were universally disliked.
�Simple� or �common� does not make for great design � �appropriate� does. A person who has had a brain injury that affects her cognitive functioning, and a person who was born blind both have “disability” in common, as well as some legal or social disconnect issues. But their lives and needs are very different� so why serve them the same experience?
The question is an interesting one from a web design point of view, but my curiosity is piqued a little more in thinking about these same questions applied to organizational structures. Connecting people, all people, in common endeavours requires attention to diversity AND functionality. It’s not a question of one size fits all, as John also points out, but many sizes serving many.
At the very least it’s given me some nice food for thought for our regular coffee breaks together.
Good luck to my friends in Te Tau Ihu as they continue with their hikoi to protect Maori rights along the foreshore and seabed in New Zealand. This is a busy week upcoming in Maoridom. Follow all the news through Google.
Ten or so pieces of notable linkage:
- Healing the Impact of Colonization, Genocide, Missionization, and Racism on Indigenous Populations via Jeff Aitken
- Indigenous Environmental Network: “”A network of Indigenous Peoples empowering Indigenous Nations and communities towards sustainable livelihoods, demanding environmental justice and maintaining the Sacred Fire of our traditions.”
- Creativity resources from Martin Leith, Charles Cave and mycoted.
- Culture and Commerce: Traditional Arts in Economic Development (big .pdf) via The Urban Institute and The Fund for Folk Culture
- Online Papers in Philosophy via wood s lot
- Noosphere Evolution and Value Metabolism: An examination of the nature of behaviousr and the structure of culture and consciouness (.pdf)
- Metamorphic Change: Leadership as Strategic Introspection and Serious Play (.pdf) from Resilient Systems
- Sensing and Shaping your Future: Practices for revealing an growing what is essential, soulful and most alive (.pdf) also from Resilient Systems
- Maori Proverbs, because e Koekoe te tui, e ketekete te Kaka e kuku te kereru. Via Apothacary’s Drawer.
- Movement as Network: Connecting People and Organizations in the Environmental Movement (.pdf) via Gifthub
More links at my de.licio.us
In response to my post on the Emergent Organizations paper, Anne Stadler sent me a James Broughton poem which captures the essence of her thinking at the moment on emergence, responsibility and action:
This is it.
The is really It.
The is really It.
This is ALL there is,
And it’s perfect as it is.
There is nowhere to go
But Here.
There is nothing here
But Now.
There is nothing now
But This.
And this is it.
This is really It.
This is All there is,
And it’s perfect as It is.
Broughton, by the way, had a wonderful aphorism that reminds me of Anne’s longtime collaborator, and one of my mentors, Harrison Owen:
Crazy old men are essential to society.
Otherwise young men have no suitable models.
Otherwise young men have no suitable models.