Nineteen years ago today I set off on a short walk on a beautiful Ottawa spring morning traveling about eight blocks from our apartment on Frank Street to my office on Cooper Street. For me it was the first day of work at the National Association of Friendship Centres and the first real salaried job I had since leaving university in August 1991. I remember the walk well, remember the warm morning, and the feeling that I was lucky to have landed a job with a great organization, especially after a winter of living on meager UI benefits. I knew …
Yesterday I had a chance to grab lunch with Dave Pollard in our local coffee shop on Bowen Island. One of the things we talked about was the supremacy of analysis in the world and why that is a problem when it comes to operating in complex domains. I have been intentionally working a lot lately with Dave Snowdon et. al.’s Cynefin framework to support decision making in various domains. It is immensely helpful in making sense of the messy reality of context and exercises like anecdote circles and butterfly stamping are very powerful, portable and low tech processes. Cynefin …
At The Snug on #Bowenisland this morning. http://yfrog.com/h42hqdgj # The only thing certain about this cloudy sky is that the sun will follow. # First BowFeast in a Box meal http://post.ly/214o9 # Sweet scent of blossoming alder carried this morning's gusty wind. # Nice seats at the Twins-Blue Jays game last night. Now waiting for a ferry to take me home. http://yfrog.com/h2t3tfodj #
Back in Monticello, Minnesota on the banks of the Mississippi River where we are running the third residential learning session in collaborative leadership for a cohort of groups working to improve health in their communities. The river is high here, and the channel is full. Downstream, in the rest of the United States, the Mississippi is challenging communities and families who are in a fierce struggle to learn how to live with the river’s whims, with the river’s power and its overwhelming desire to renew the floodplains that stretch away from the main channel. Sitting by the river yesterday it …