Working with groups, I sometimes experience a kind of stillness where I think people become more present to that subtler and deeper sense of connection and belonging. It’s the sort of silence that transcends the efforts of efficiency experts.
The above is a photo of a rock I balanced on the rim of the crater of Halekala on Maui last week. I think this captures something of what Johnnie is talk about.
(more of my rock balancing efforts here)
Picture a field in which someone has planted wheat.
We imagine the harvest from that field to look lkike a farmer using equipment to cut down the wheat, thresh it, and seperate the seeds from the stalks.
Now imagine a geologist a biologist and a painter harvesting from the same field. The geologist picks through the rocks and soil gathering data about the land itself. The biologist might collect insects and worms, bits of plants and organic matter. The painter sees the patterns in the landscape and chooses a pallete and a perspective for work of art.
They all harvest differently from the field, and the results of their work go to different places and are put to different uses. But they all have a few things in common; they have a purpose for being in the field and a set of questions about that purpose, they have a pre-determined place to use the results of the harvest, and they have specific tools to use in doing their work.
What’s useful to note is that, despite the field being the same, the tools and results are specific to the purpose and the inquiry.
It is like this when we meet. There is much we can do, but a well thought through inquiry helps us to sift all that we might learn in the meeting to that which serves our purpose. When we can design questions that open up our curiosity, think through how we might use the results of our work and use the tools appropriate to the task, we can go deeper into our tasks and acheive emergent, innovative and better quality results.
So just try this for the next meeting you are a part of. Give some time before hand to create a little inquiry: “What am I curious about in this meeting?” Think in advance how the results of that inquiry will help you work better, and decide on at least one way in which you will use what you have learned. See if that doesn’t create just a little more engagement and createa little more momentum for the results.
Photo by Hector
In the Netherlands, a groupd of kids has challenged a government minister to see who can reduce their power consumption the most:
Being 14 is no obstacle to helping the planet, judging by the example of a group of Dutch school kids fired up by an idea as bright as an energy-saving light bulb.
The schoolchildren from Almere taking part in The Bet
Thanks indirectly to their efforts, vehicles at the Netherlands’ environment ministry will be running on natural gas by the spring of 2007.
The teenagers in Almere, a futuristic new town near Amsterdam, had called on the environment minister to outdo them personally in ways to save energy.
Over four weeks, and under the arbitration of environmental organisation Friends of the Earth, the two sides vied to come up with ideas for meeting the European Union’s minimum Kyoto goal of 8% savings.
Children from Helen Parkhurst School, which already has its own wind turbines, pursued The Bet at home, in class and in local businesses.
If they lost, the kids – average age 14 – would have to pull State Secretary Pieter van Geel around The Hague for a day in a rickshaw.
And guess who won? The kids reduced their energy consumption by 33% beating the minister’s 20% reduction.
This is an outstanding idea. I wonder what other challenges kids could think of to put in front of politicians? Pure passion bounded by responsibility.
At WorldChanging, news of a project intended to use web technology to work with indigensous oral cultures, tying traditional knowledge to biodiversity:
While there are those who argue that technology has led to the deterioration of traditional modes of communication and expression, the very same advancements are instrumental in allowing us to keep vanishing stories, cultural practices, and entire languages alive and thriving. By facilitating access to technology for people whose heritage is being challenged by the digital revolution, tech becomes a tool for nurturing traditional ways. Living Cultural Storybases is a new non-profit that works to do just that, using ICT to share knowledge amongst cultures and peoples with strong storytelling legacies.
More information at ths LCS website.
Just back from Maui, quickly becoming one of my favourite places on earth next to the little Pacific island I live on. Two weeks gloriously unplugged, so out of touch that my mother in law had to phone us from Vancouver to pass on a tsunami warning last week. I spent the fortnight boogie bording at beaches like this one – kamaole Beach in Kihei – as well as getting hosted by a myriad of fish on the near shore coral reefs at Ulua Beach, Keawakapu and Ka’anapali. I picked up a boatload of music, mostly slack key guitar stuff and some traditional mele chants (a great album from Charles Kau’upa). We ate great food, fesh pineapple and papaya, coconut candy and taro chips and bannafruit crisps and one of my world to-die-for foods, an ahi fish taco from Maui Tacos. We headed up to the crater of Haleakala on a clear, spotless afternoon, in contrast from the socked in visit last year. I’ll post up a few photos soon.
I was incredibly fatigued after the stretch of travel and work last fall and i’m bracing for an even heavier schedule this winter and spring. But for now, i’m back to an impending snowstorm here in Canada’s southernmost fjord, relaxed, a little tanned and ready to go.
Photo by Weave