I am proud and lucky to count Toke Moeller as a friend, colleague and teacher. The other day, as I was checking his site for some information for some upcoming Art of Hosting trainings we are doing, I stumbled over his page of principles and assumptions for his work. They are worth reprinting here
Some of our assumptions
- Organisations have more to do with living organic systems than machines
- Learning is a core competence in the network society
- Learning, change and transformation involve a degree of chaos
- The world is too complex to be led by individuals
- Sustainable solutions emerge through conversation and collaborative endeavour
- Conversation and dialogue opens the collective intelligence, wisdom and action
- Diversity is a gift – not a problem!
- New insights and understanding are at the heart of reflective living and wise acting
Some of our design principles
- What is meaningful must always be at the center
- The combination of good theory, methods and bold practice creates learning
- Engaging many of our intelligences brings about learning of a higher quality
- Going from participation to contribution enhances learning
- Plan for emergence
- Conscious choice is a precondition for learning
- Clear context and purpose brings clarity and focus
- “Less is more!”
Toke is a remarkable host. Seeing these principles in practice is a treat.
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Seeing is one of the capacities we need to take us to presence. Seeing what is truly in front of us is both a learned skill and a a creative act because to see clearly we have to find away around everything that clouds our perception of what we are looking at. From The Circle Project:
Creativity is not the domain of The New; it stands firmly in the land of unimpeded expression where you “see what is there, not what you think should be there.” Remove the limits. Follow the impulse. There is no trick to re-inhabiting your innate creativity. You simply have to see again. It takes work when you are no longer three years old–we’ve all been subjected to the most rigorous dullness training–but it is worth the effort (even the most dismal cubicle has possibilities when you show up unfettered).
Show up unfettered, bring creativity to the act of seeing.
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In my move to WordPress, this post went missing…here it is republished.
Jack on productive [tag]waiting[/tag]:
Waiting is a fact of life. We wait in line, on hold, for people to get back to us, for traffic lights to change, for parking spaces to open up, for solutions to appear, for consensus to be built, for projects to move forward.
What is unproductive waiting … and what is productive waiting?
Two pieces, for me.
First, there is the kind of waiting when our minds are not united with the task at hand, and second there is the kind of waiting when we are fully engaged.
On the first one, the waiting in lines, on hold and so on, we can choose to be mindful about that waiting or use that waiting to do something else. I think the question then starts to come apart, for there can be no such thing as productive or unproductive waiting. Only waiting in which we are present and waiting in which we are not.
For people wanting to meditate, but who find that they don’t have enough time in the day to do so, these periods of waiting can be true gifts. They can be like mindfulness bells, ringing us into awareness. When we are asked to wait or “forced” to wait, we can simply direct our attention to being mindfully present and practice awareness.
The second kind of waiting is the one that really fascinates me. This is waiting when we are fully engaged in the present. The most powerful experience I have ever had of this was when my children were born. Being with my partner through two long labours was a very interesting kind of waiting. Time starts to do funny things – it gets shifty and stretchy, and your awareness of it detaches and solely rests on the emergent moment. A child will soon be born, and the best you can do is to be fully alive to that possiblility. Distraction serves no purpose. In fact, with our second child, my partner commented that at one point it felt as if she was living in a ghost world. As we walked around with her living through this long and low grade labour (40 hours!) she noted that none of people we were walking past had any idea of what was going on between us and within her. She felt in the world but not at all a part of it – like a ghost. But she was deeply within the moment.
This is a deep [tag]presencing[/tag]. It is waiting for something to emerge, something life changing, possibly life threatening, and yet with no way to know how it will all unfold. Radical trust into the moment, radical readiness to accept what will come.
When Otto Scharmer writes about presencing, I think this is what he is talking about. We can practice for these kinds of moments by embracing the first kind of waiting, which gives us the capacity to appreciate the second kind on those rare occasions in our life when we are gifted that experience.
[tags]birth[/tags]
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I’m reissuing this invitation to join Michael Herman and I here on Bowen Island, British Columbia for an Open Space Practice Retreat from April 18-20, 2006.
This is an intensive retreat for leaders, managers, facilitators, consultants, community activists, and anyone else who wants to open more space for renewal, visioning, learning and productivity — in business, government, educational and community organizations. This is an opportunity for deep learning about leadership and change, in the context of the practices that support facilitating Open Space.
Folks who will find this useful include leaders, managers and facilitators working with very complex issues, requiring the cooperation of diverse stakeholders, where conflict is quite possible (if not already present), and where there is an urgent need for right action. Anyone looking for a way to get beyond business as usual, for better, faster and cheaper results on our most important issues and opportunities will find benefit here. The depth of this program has much to offer the most seasoned leaders and facilitators, including experienced users of [tag]Open Space Technology[/tag].
This three day residential retreat will look indepth at the the work Michael and I have been doing on the Four Practices of [tag]Open Space[/tag].
We’d love you to consider joining us. Visit the retreat page for more information, and feel free to pass it on.
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My buddy Harrison Owen has been writing like crazy a lot lately. He has been almost singlehandedly keeping the conversation going on the OSLIST, where Open Space practitioners gather to play. And the other day he launched a new paper into the mix: Opening Space for The Question.
The paper is about the concept of Nichtwissen, a German word that Harrison translates as “Unknowing”. Open Space for the Question means to cultivate a practice that has us sitting in the Unknowing, working to find where the contemplation of the question takes us. In a really good synopsis of the practice that gets us there, Harrison writes:
There is a phrase, perhaps even a practice, that comes I believe from the Quaker Tradition. It is “sitting the question.” The notion is a simple one, however hard it may be to implement for impatient knowledge seekers. When deep questions arise, Stop! Don’t move a muscle; keep your fingers off the keyboard and away from Google. Don’t talk to a soul and avoid the library. Just wallow in the question, savor it, and consider it from all angles. Go under it, around it, inside. And for goodness sake, don’t even think about an answer, for surely as the sun rises, any answer you think of will be premature. And a premature answer will not only be irrelevant, but it will also prevent you from experiencing the bitter-sweet moments that arise when sitting the question. And who knows, as you sit it may happen that the question evaporates into thin air, in which case you are spared the thankless task of finding an answer to a meaningless question. Then again, the question may become deeper and you will be consumed with the possibilities of not-knowing, and your Possibility Space will have expanded almost without limit. Nichtwissen will have given its gift.
This is what is required for emergence to happen if a large group of people are to generate innovative responses to the question before which they are sitting. It ultimately comes down to a personal practice of opening and a personal practice of grounding with a whole lot of communication and social trial and error in between.
[tags]open-space, facilitation, practice[/tags]