Reading Adam Kahane some more and thinking about listening: If talking openly means being willing to expose others to what is inside of us, then listening openly means being willing to expose ourselves to something new from others.” — Adam Kahane, Solving Tough Problems p.73 It is a truism to say this, but I’ve been pondering the deep implications of this statement and what it means for a practice of listening and opening that becomes a leadership skill. It is almost impossible to describe what it is like to listen from the heart. We easily talk about “speaking from the …
Gabriela Ender, the creator of OpenSpaceOnline has a new eBook available from her site talking about how OSO works and its various applications. You can download the eBook for free here. Among the international Open Space practitioner community, there is general consensus that Gabriela’s software is the closest thing in cyber space to participating in a face to face Open Space Technology meeting.
Fort Rupert First Nation, BC I’ve just read “Blindness” by Jose Saramago. It’s a harrowing story of a human dystopia that is brought on by a nearly complete plague of blindness that sweeps through the entire population. It is like a modern day Kafka tale that, as the blurbs say, sums up the deepest horrors of the twentieth century. In the book, society quickly breaks down as everyone becomes blind and human morality and ethics follow suit. More frightening though is the resignation of the bands of people who wander around the city trying to find food, unsure of where …
Port Hardy, BC Some of my smart blogging compadres are posting series. Dan Oestreich has just put up the third of his leadership practices: caring for self. And Jon Husband has finished his ten point manifesto for managing in a wired world with the posting of number ten: permanent whitewater is the new normal (great title!). I love it when folks post things ina series. It gives us time to digest ideas as they are emerging and to see how they are evolving. It’s a fun way to write too.
Port Hardy, BC While traveling up to Port Hardy here I ran into my friend Art Mercer who is charge of Economic Development for the Nisga’a Lisims Government. Art is one of the members of the Counsel on BC Aboriginal Economic Development, a group I have worked with a fair amount over the years. The Counsel is a body that is challenging the status quo with respect to economic development in First Nations in Canada. For the past two years they have been hosting an annual conference called “Strategic Conversations” named for the strategic plan we wrote together in 2002. …