Organizations, leaders, people – in short, sponsors – who decide to take responsibility for convening an Open Space meeting often wonder what their role can be afterwards. In working recently with a community I asked the question to gather perspectives and one answer stood out:

That’s a lovely way to talk about holding space for learning, action or development.

Technorati Tags: leadership, openspace

On the OSLIST today, a question about success:

Often people expect big things from organizational development “interventions.” They wouldn’t do so otherwise. Retreats, planning sessions, Open Space forums…all come with the expectation that doing something significant will change things significantly.

In working with sponsors I do have conversations about what transformation really means and how willing people are to transform themselves to meet the new world they are wanting to be born. There is a real stretch in this work for people, to go into somewhere new while not abandoning what they know – the “safe ground” – even if the safe ground is no longer serving them very well.

Fear, trust, openness, chaordic confidence…all of these are emotions, practices and states we need to grapple with to open ourselves to transformation. We need to be able to embody change in order to be there to welcome it when it arrives.

And so for me success is relative, but what I really invite people to stretch into is that place where they can embody the success they want. If they can’t then we have to get real about what we’re willing to do.

But if they CAN get really big and offer themselves up for change, unbelievable things can happen. I’ve just seen it happen most recently in Prince George.

Technorati Tags: leadership, facilitation, openspace, success

I’ve mentioned Nipun before…an amazing weblogger. Today in my RSS feeder comes this lovely analogy:

Technorati Tags: decentralization, power

The website of the National Centre for First Nations Governance is finally online.

This is a huge addition to First Nations communities, and dare I say, many other places as well. The Centre is a kind of open source research and dialogue hub for leading edge thinking and conversation on First Nations governance along the lines of the Delgamuukw site we prepared for the Assembly of First Nations. As I have said all along, the lessons that are being learned as First Nations experiment and implement new forms of governance based on traditional processes that are valid for the 21st century are lessons that can benefit all communities struggling with defining themselves, using their assets and resources and institutionalizing new ways of becoming more free in a global context.

Spend some time watching the video (especially Patrica Montour’s presentation on revolution and empowerment) and browsing some of the research papers and thinking about how they might apply to your own community, state, province or country. This is a big “good news” story for First Nations and it shows that we are leading the way in opening up and testing new ideas about what governance means.

Technorati Tags: firstnations, governance, goodnews

I’m interested in how blogging, email and Skype connect us and more importantly, what we do with those connections. This has been the subject of conversations I’ve recently had with Rob Paterson and George Nemeth among others. Now I’d like to put this to the test, but reaching out across the blogosphere using these tools to gather ideas on a project I’m working on.

I’m beginning a new process with a client to design an appreciative summit for a group of First Nations. I’d like to use this opportunity to practice connecting with people over Skype to bounce ideas around.

The project involves a number of communities, community organizations, youth, service providers and government looking at youth suicide prevention. What I am interested in is simply connecting with others and talking about design issues. All I can offer in return is a series of decent conversations at this point and some assessment of how a collaborative conversation can unfold using some of these tools. You’ll also have the satisfaction of contributing thinking to a serious issue facing First Nations youth in this country and I’ll willingly offer what I can to any of your projects in return.

For us consultants labouring alone, working on local issues in a global community, the world is our water cooler and the internet is what makes it work. If you want to play drop me an email (chris@chriscorrigan.com) or Skype me at chriscorrigan.

Technorati Tags: appreciativeinquiry, aboriginal, firstnations, youth, suicide, skype