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January 20, 2004 By Uncategorized

My fellow Bowen Islander John Dumbrille is getting his new blog into second gear:

“Tom Peters’ and other’s vision of globalization, a vision which is coming true at a breakneck pace, will only be a fascinating, and rich future for those who are free enough to change. I don’t believe that it is inevitable that the income gap will continue to grow, and that the extremely poor will grow in numbers, covering the world more evenly. But to escape this we have to change – I do not think that books are enough or 3 hours of homework in grade 10 are enough, cramming for college entrance is enough, college specializaiton is enough. We cant outrun a train. We have to adapt.

Children have to be raised to be independent enough psychologically to be entrepreneurial. And for that to happen, education has to change – to move from mass systems of control and compliance, to systems that bring out the humanity and skills of a child, encouraging children to be themselves, stand in their own wisdom, and find their own way. I think this will require smaller classes and self-paced learning.

I see good examples of new successful models, e.g home schooling success stories, but I see few on a larger scale. The schools are underfunded, mothers and fathers are busy in jobs that they respond to with fear and compliance, qualities that are inevitably brought home with the bacon. Maybe new initiatives are coming. I hope so, as without this revolution, we’ll bring up another wave of highly educated workers and middle managers who are trained to serve in a system that disappears and takes the ladder with it.”

It bears mentioning that we are both involved in a wonderful community of homelearning families here on Bowen Island, working with our kids and each other to provide a creative learning environment outside of the school system. John and his family are helping to create that new world and those new initiatives.

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January 19, 2004 By Uncategorized

From time to time as I travel around the country working on First Nations issues, I sometimes hear from non-Aboriginal people how First Nations were immigrants too, as if this somehow undermines the notion of Aboriginal title. While no one population group ever seems to stay put for very long, First Nations have had a very long history of occupation of the coast. Here in the Vancouver area settlements dating back 9000 have been discovered in a number of places along the Fraser River and in parts of Burrard inlet. These settlements would have been established not long after the ice melted 10,000 years ago.

But today comes news that even older settlements have been discovered on the coast. According to this story (read quickly; the link will rot), there has been occupation of Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands) for up to 12,000 years:

“Pieces of two spear points discovered in a remote limestone cave on B.C.’s Queen Charlotte Islands represent the oldest evidence of human occupation on the Pacific coast of North America north of California.

Animal bones found in sediment layers next to the spear points on the west side of Moresby Island outside Gwaii Haanas National Park are confirmed to date back 11,800-12,100 years (a figure calculated from 10,500-10,800 radiocarbon years).”

If you compare that against what was happening in the rest of the world at that time you can see just how old First Nations occupation in British Columbia really is. For example, 8,000 years ago, most of these non-Aboriginal folks ancestors were just discovering how to grow cereals and domesticate sheep in Mesopotamia and Persia. It was only 5,000 years ago that Egyptian civilization got going. First Nations folks have been in this province for more than twice that amount of time.

Kind of funny to be involved in “land claims” with that kind of pedigree eh?

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January 17, 2004 By Uncategorized

Starting a list of weekly linkage to interesting places I have seen but not dwelled much in this week:

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January 14, 2004 By Uncategorized

I’ve been looking at flow states and transformative moments lately especially with relation to how these states lead to various forms of freedom. Today I find on Bernie DeKoven’s DeepFUN some words about what he calls “Coliberation.” It’s long but worh quoting in full:

CoLiberation: what happens when we work extraordinarily well together. Like on a basketball team or in an orchestra, when we actually experience ourselves sharing in something bigger than any one present. This is what I call the experience of the Big WE. It’s a corollary to the Big ME experience of self-transcendence. If the Big ME is the ‘peak experience,’ CoLiberation, the Big WE, is like becoming a whole mountain range.

I know I’ve experienced it in games and sports and the performing arts. And, what makes me especially hopeful, I’ve also experienced it in business meetings.

The central experience that led me to write my book The Well-Played Game was, in fact, a game of ping pong between my friend Bill and myself. Let me describe it to you, thereby exemplifying the selfsame example of the kind of experience I hope you will share with us:

‘My good friend Bill was and is so much better of a player than I that there was actually no reason for us to try to play a ‘real’ game. Playing for points was clearly pointless. So, we decided to just see how long we could keep a volley going. It was a perfect challenge for each of us. For Bill, just getting the ball to hit my paddle was an exercise worthy of his years of pongish mastery. After half the night of this, we managed to sustain an almost infinite volley. We actually lost count.’

That’s all that I ask. Some description of a shared transcendence that made you feel just about as big, ME-wise and WE-wise, as you can get. Larger than life. Enlarged by each other’s largesse. Beyond time.

And, corollarily speaking, those exceptional experiences of working together, when we’re really working and really together. As deliciously distracting as the technologies of collaboration may be, when collaboration is it’s at its best, so are we.

I’ve been calling these kinds of meetings ‘coliberating.’ It’s cute, because it almost sounds like something beyond ‘collaborating.’ But ‘liberating’ is only part of the truth. Yes, in deed, those moments in which we have actually managed to free each other from whatever constraints we usually impose on each other, these are truly and actually what you would call coliberating. But there is something beyond CoLiberation, beyond the meeting itself. Some coincidence of selves that undefines the limits of our capabilities. A coincidence having almost nothing to do with the meeting, and everything to do with the human spirit. Shared moments of unusual clarity, vivid communication. Spontaneous combustions of understanding.

I certainly see that in meetings I run, especially Open Space Technology meetings. And so, not coincidentally, it is interesting to note that Open Space folks like Jack Ricchuto and Ashley Cooper have been asking questions about this state recently too.

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January 14, 2004 By Uncategorized

This is going to sound funny, but I startled myself with the thought today that I am a small-business owner and an entrepreneur.

It sounds funny because I was asked if I would like to compete on a request for proposals. I said “I don’t compete” which is true, because I am a one-man show and I CAN’T compete against firms with offices and slick marketing materials and secretarial support (all of which it seems is designed to make the firm look credible enough to win the bids it needs to support the infrastructure it has…I believe Buddhists call this samsara)

I have found that trying to assemble a team of my associates to compete in bidding processes takes up too much unpaid time, and I have been burned once by having ideas in a proposal stolen by the client and used by the winning bidder. That in itself was funny, because if they had asked me if they could use my process design ideas, I would have let them.

That’s because, I discovered today, my business model is one of service. Truly being in service. It is important to me to provide services to clients who are doing good things. Sometimes I even donate these services. Very often I give away knowledge about Open Space Technology (after all, Harrison Owen set the trend by refusing to copyright the process). If you want to shadow me on an Open Space gig to learn more about the process, all you have to do is ask. I run training programs, for which I charge, but if you are really interested, and you want to ride shotgun with me, you are more than welcome to come along.

Likewise there are a few clients for whom I work for free. This has included in the past my home community of Bowen Island, for whom I have facilitated Open Space meetings and participated in citizen engagement initiatives. I kind of see this as my civic duty. I have also worked for free for some First Nations simply because I believe strongly in what they are trying to do.

When I first left university and entered the workforce, I had a strong sense of my role in the world as modeled on a somewhat traditional role of Elder’s Helper, common to many Aboriginal societies. Basically the Elder’s helper acts as a companion for an Elder, running errands, cooking food, taking care of the person’s needs so that the Elder can deliver his or her teachings and contribute wisdom to the community. The helper gains a great deal in this role, including an opportunity to be exposed to teachings and wisdom in an intensive way.

That has always been my business model. The people and organizations I work for have inherent wisdom and much to teach the world. My interactions with them as a facilitator are intended to make it easier for them to do that work. In return I get paid, but more importantly, I get exposed to a huge range of teachings and learnings, many of which find themselves back to this blog.

Now I don’t mean to say that this business model makes me morally superior to those for whom competition is the the key. But it just occurred to me today, that after four years of being in business, that it is possible to run a successful business in a capitalist economy without competing. My business is based on offerings. I offer something to the market, I try to do a good job and if people like it, they hire me again. I am not perfect, and I make mistakes. I always vow to learn from my mistakes and my clients, like the good Elders they are, are generous in forgiving me.

So it sounds funny to say that I am a successful small-business owner and entrepreneur. But I am going to reclaim those words anyway, because today I learned that it is possible to be that while staying away from the samasara of competition.