Interesting reads this week: DeAnna Martin on a design for using Dynamic Facilitation with large groups Worldchanging Canada has a great post about art derived from the complexity of nature Metafilter link of an insane film about fishing for Great White Sharks. From a beach. Surfing is involved. Rob Bailey on the perfect crab curry Ravi Tangri on innovation in the service industry in hard times Nancy White, with palpable delight wraps up her take on Northern Voice Sheri Herndon emailed an interesting link about how Obama communicates by George Lakoff Dustin Rivers takes his blog to new digs. …
Myriam Laberge posted a link to a video of David Gershon talking about what it takes to take change to scale. What struck me about the video was not so much his message as what it actually is. It’s a “trailer” for a 2007 conference sponsored by the Omega Institute. As an artful act of invitation, this is briliant. How many of us outside the movie industry consider making trailers to gatherings? Putting audio and video to work in this way is a fantastic way to get the message out, introduce people to ideas that will …
Just returned from an event in Victoria to raise money and awareness for the first ever Authentic Leadership in Action Institute (ALIA) on the West Coast (May 19-22 at Royal Roads University, if you’re interested). Last evening, 120 people packed in to hear Meg Wheatley talking about leadership in uncertain times. She spoke mostly about the capacity for fearlessness, or a leadership stance that operates beyond hope and fear. It is something that she has been talking about for a long time, and in fact, she has a recent piece in the Shambhala Sun on this very …
Things to chew on from the last weeks newsfeeds. Viv McWaters writes a great piece on the role of facilitators in disastery recovery. Christopher Gohl‘s new blog, diagoal. Rob Ballentyne will take you to see the solar eclipse of a lifetime this summer (he’ll also show you a comet for free!) Jack Ricchiuto on using a moleskin to manage to do lists. Nancy White and others launch the Community and Networks Connection. Viv McWaters blogs about the community site for facilitators helping with the bushfire tragedy in Australia.
Over the years I’ve written about how convoluted strategic planning gets for most organizations. Most of the small non-profits I work with seem to think it’s wise to use mainstream business strategic planning frameworks to plot their way forward. Even though these frameworks are pursued with the best of intentions, for many volunteer Boards of small and meagerly funded organizations, it’s usually overkill to adopt highly technical frameworks for planning. It might just be too much. Even the process of vision, mission, goals and objectives is often too overbearing because it tends to force conversations into boxes, …