A reposne I made today on the Art of Hosting list about the workshop we are leading this week:
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If you run a lot of workshops or facilitate group work, you probably have times when you are inviting people to work in small groups for short periods of time. You might want people to reflect on a question for a couple of minutes, or work in small groups for a half an hour or even just take 30 seconds to write an insight. Some people like to time this stuff out, pull out a stop watch and count the seconds, but there is a 2 for 1 technique you can use that gets the job done and sneaks in a few moments of meditation and mindfulness.
Your mileage may vary but it turns out that for me, a full in breath and out breath lasts about six seconds. So now instead of timing things with a stop watch, i just sit and breathe. Ten breaths equals a minute. When I give a thirty second warning, I just take five breaths and call the group back. Counting breaths is a well known meditation technique which focuses the mind, stills the thoughts and promotes mindfulness. And if you are anything like me, that is a welcome practice in hosting strategic conversations and learning. It’s good for you, and as a host, good for the group.
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An early morning start from Bowen for a full day of work and travel. Off to run a full day Open Space for the Association of Neighbourhood Houses of BC and then on to Naramata to work with the leadership program of the Federation of Community Services of BC.
A rainy day of warm air and misty tendrils and landscapes half revealed.
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Was in a quick coffee conversation this afternoon with one of our local artisan metal workers on Bowen Island. He has been fascinated by bicycles for a long time and is thinking about how to build one that fits his 6’6″ frame. He has been scouring the net for information about building oversized wheels, and has decided that, as much as people are already doing it, there is something to be learned from “reinventing the wheel.”
Occasionally innovation has to go back to first principles. Often in the group work I do there are two approaches to innovation: stand on the shoulders of giants or reinvent the wheel. Both these approaches have some validity.
Almost anything you can think of doing has been done before by others. That doesn’t mean that “best practices” can be easily applied from one context to another, but knowing that someone somewhere has taken on the hard work of pioneering innovation – be it a product, a tool, an approach or a design – helps us to jump off from a starting point.
But sometimes going back to the beginning can be fruitful too. Often groups who have the time and resources can benefit from starting from scratch, thinking about how they could redesign what they were looking for if they had to do it from first principles. Groups that do that become resilient and build capacity, but it takes more time, and people will often accuse you of being inefficient.
I wouldn’t throw out either approach in doing innovative work. Be conscious about which approach will best serve and assemble the resources you need to build out from there.
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Entering the summer solstice. I crossed the Salish Sea today which provides this view of my home island and, today, a glimpse of two dolphins who passed us in a hurry, steaming their way north.
This is the time of year in the north when the light begins to wane. The time of the fullest and brightest days, the fulfilled promise of the winter solstice. For me it’s a time of waning fullness, letting myself empty out leading into some time off in the summer and a busy fall. I love the rhythm of waxing and waning, of light and dark, of ordinary time and non-ordinary time. A year divided into two forms of practice.
So I wish you a happy celebration of the fullness of promise, an honoring of the warmth and light, comfort if you need it and relaxation if it helps. And my wish for this six months is for a half year of good practice, putting to good use everything that has been learned in the winter and spring.
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