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Expertise, learning and practice

January 17, 2013 By Art of Hosting, Facilitation, Learning, Practice 7 Comments

There is no way you can learn the art of facilitation, the art of hosting, by simply coming to a workshop. It happens from time to time that people show up for a three day workshop and expect that at the end they will be competent hosts of groups process in any situation. To get good at arts you have to practice.

Last week in Montreal, I saw 120 people come to an Art of Hosting with an overwhelming desire to practice. The invitation to them was to attend if they were wanting to develop and improve their practice. It made for an incredible experience. When people are invited to come to learn because they are ready to host, they are open wide to what is offered, not only by us as teachers, but more importantly by the group itself. This is an excellent ground from which to develop a practice of hosting, and the relationships that are formed are the critical supports for competency in that practice to unfold.

Somehow, the view of learning in the world has been confused with the kinds of quality control that is attached to manufacturing. We imagine that a learning experience will have specific achievable outcomes and that upon completing a course, we can be certified in the competency in which we have been trained. While this can be true for technical training, such as how to operate equipment, with things like art and strategy and leadership and communications and other practice based arts, the opposite is actually true. When I leave practice based learning events I recognize that I am a baby, just starting out, and with a lifetime of practice ahead of me. I can’t be certified to be competent, because there is no way to guarantee that I will be perfect. When we first begin to practice, we always make mistakes. Over a lifetime we develop our own styles and we get better at it.

Hosting is practice. The willingness to embrace it this way is the biggest indicator to me as to whether someone will eventually develop a competency in this art. Expertise is developed, not given or bought.

Anthony Braxton on marginalized self expression

January 16, 2013 By Improv, Music

I used to be a huge fan of Anthony Braxton back in the day.  Braxton is an unapologetic free music practitioner, a brilliant composer and improviser and a disruptive influence in the world of American music, and jazz in particular.

Here is a a lovely piece from him talking about the difference in perception between white men and black men striving to express an individual voice in contemporary America.  Beyond race, this also speaks to the marginalization of creative work in a world dominated by a mercantile world view:

FJ: Why is it that a white man striving for individuality is perceived as being liberal, but a Black man is termed radical or revolutionary?

ANTHONY BRAXTON: You put your finger right on it, Fred. I turn on the television set sometimes and they are talking about Silicon Valley. The guys are saying that they have these sessions where they just kind of get together and push ideas around and we’re changing these models, we’re doing this and we’re doing that. Suddenly they switch to Bill Gates or any of the visionaries who’ve become very successful. They talk about whatever they’ve come up with. Yes, it is always received on the level that it is intended in the sense that this is something that can be considered, accepted or rejected, but it is something that can be considered. For instance, when Lee Konitz in Wire magazine went to put me down, he didn’t say, “I don’t like what Braxton’s doing.” No, the first thing he made sure to do was undermine my credentials. “Oh, he isn’t qualified.” “Oh, he made a technical mistake.” So the question then is not what Braxton is doing, but suddenly I am operating from this deficit. This has been the game that has been played against guys like me from every sector. The Lincoln Center sector says, “Oh, well, he doesn’t play the blues.” What they are really saying is the he doesn’t have the kind of idiomatic psychology that we can see as playing ball in a way where this guy doesn’t have to be challenged, not to mention, what we have here is a profound myth understanding in my opinion of the whole blues tradition. I trace these understandings to Mr. Albert Murray and Stanley Crouch.

via www.jazzweekly.com | Interviews.

Simply put, What First Nations want

January 15, 2013 By First Nations 3 Comments

Since 1986 I have been working for our communities across Canada. I have met every national chief since George Easmus and am on a first name basis with two of them. I have worked in probably more than fifty communities but have hosted meetings with citizens of almost every First Nation in Canada. Much of my work is geared towards making things better, and in my life time I have seen improvements.

#IdleNoMore is one of the coolest things I have ever seen in my 26 years of working in our communities. It is a grassroots voicing of many concerns and issues, but it focuses on one thing: honour. If you have been wondering what First Nations want, let me break it down for you, because it is nothing new. The ask is for a simple honoring of existing agreements, studies and plans. To make it easy, here is a five point plan for radically changing First Nations communities for the better without doing anything new:

  • Implement existing treaties. The Crown made treaties with First Nations starting in the 1700s specifically to manage the relationship between governments. It is a simple matter to continue to implement these treaties as they are existing commitments that both sides can continue to live by. Existing treaty process are simple contemporary ways to work the relationship. Sme First Nations have chosen this path of reconciliation and they should feel free to continue to have that right to invite Canada to a legally binding relationship.
  • Update and implement the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples findings. When RCAP was created in 1992 it was in response to the way in which Canada had handled the 1990 Oka crises. It was an acknowledgement of the realities facing indigenous communities and it asked for and listened to thousands of hours of testimony about current conditions and possible solutions. It represented the best and brightest thinking of its time, and it proscribed hundreds of recommendations that would have changed things for the better. Thirty years later, only some of those recommendations have seen the light of day, and they have been half hearted implementations at that.
  • Revisit and implement the Kelowna Accord. In 2005 there was an unprecedented process that brought together First Nations leadership, provincial premiers, territorial leaders and the prime minister to reach consensus on a ten year program to seriously and collaboratively address the health, education and social needs of our communities. As one of his first acts in taking office, Stephen Harper scuttled the deal citing the $4 billion price take as too high. It was merely a fraction of what he was eventually willing to spend on fa handful of fighter jets, but it represented an historic opportunity to seriously make a dent in the socio-economic gaps between indigenous and non indigenous people in this country. By the way BC went ahead and implemented many of the Kelowna principles on their own and although there was so much they could do as a province without the Feds involved, they have made bigger strides than any other province since 2005.
  • implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Canada was one of the last countries in the world to ratify this declaration, but ratify it they did in 2010. All it takes now if for the federal government to work with first nations communities to create theologies that would ensure that indigenous rights are protected and responsibilities are implemented by rights holders, such as governments and social institutions.
  • implement Canadian law with respect to consultation with First Nations on legislation that may infringe rights. Aboriginal law is very complicated, but the Supreme Court of Canada has been very clear about the processes that governments must follow to adequately consult with First Nations on issues in which rights might be infringed. Whenever the federal government fails to do this, court cases generally go against them. So a cheap solution would be to engage in a consistent, honorable, legal and high level consultation protocol. If such a process had been followed with respect to the current government’s omnibus bills, #IdleNoMore would never have started.

In my lifetime I have witnessed the entrenchment of Aboriginal rights into our constitution and that many major initiatives that never got off the drawing board. My generation did what we could and now the young ones are saying “it’s our turn.”. And they are rightly saying that we haven’t done enough in the last thirty years. And they are speaking from a place of resourcefulness, connection and creativity that is totally different from what we had in the 1980s.

So Canada, make it easy on yourself. Just complete the good things we started together. Let’s just try that. Nothing new, nothing complicated, nothing we haven’t talked about doing before. But this time, let’s commit.

Rural Ontario Anywhere

January 7, 2013 By Uncategorized


On a journey through rural Ontario this morning as I visit family in Thornbury and Toronto before heading to Montreal tonight.

We are passing through the countryside south of Barrie. I just saw a sign that took me back 30 years. Outside a little restaurant the sign proudly advertised “homeburgers”

That made me smile because it is a word of this country only. A homeburger is a hamburger made fresh from ground beef rather than one that comes as a pre made patty. I have lived in British Columbia for 18 years and have almost forgotten that word.

Travelling through this country stirs my old blood memory.

Mutations are the way to make change

January 2, 2013 By Being, CoHo, Community, Emergence, First Nations, Leadership, Organization, Practice 4 Comments

Very few of us have our hands on the real levers of power.  We lack the money and influence to write policy, create tax codes, move resources around or start and stop wars.  Most of us spend almost all of our time going along with the macro trends of the world.  We might hate the implications of a fossil fuel economy, but everything we do is firmly embedded within it.  We might despise colonization, but we know that we are alos guilty of it in many small ways,

The reason challenges like that are difficult to resolve is that we are embedded within them.  We are a part of them and the problem is not like something outside of ourselves that we apply force to.  Instead it is like a virus or a mycellium, extending it’s tendrils deep into our lives.  We are far more the product of the problems we wish to solve than we are the solutions we long to develop.

Social change is littered with ideas like “taking things to scale” which implies that if you just work hard enough, the things you will do will become popular and viral and will take over the world.  We can have a sustainable future if “we just practice simple things and then take them to scale.”  The problem with this reasoning is that the field in which we are embedded, that which enables us to practice small changes is heavily immune to change.  Our economy, our energy systems, our governments are designed to be incredibly stable.  They can withstand all kinds of threats and massive changes,  This is a GOOD THING.  I would hate to have the energy system that powers my life to be fickle enough to be transformed by every good idea that comes along about sustainable power generation.  So that is the irony.  In the western world, the stability that we rely on to be able to “make change” is exactly that which we desire to change.

We are embedded in the system. We ARE the system.  That which we desire to change is US.  You want a peaceful world, because you are not a fully peaceful person – violence has seeped into your life, and you understand the implications of it.  This is also a GOOD THING.  Because, as my friend Adam Kahane keeps quoting from time to time “if you are not a part of the problem, you cannot be part of the solution.” Real change in stable societies like Canada comes only from catastrophic failure.  That may be on our horizon, but I call you a liar if it’s something you desire.  It will not be pretty.  Living on the west coast of Canada, I sometimes think about it because a massive earthquake will strike here – possibly in my lifetime – and it will change everything instantly and massively and forever.  So, while climate change and economic collapse are probabilities, earthquakes are certainties.

So let’s forget about prototyping new things and “taking them to scale.”  But let’s not forget about prototyping new things.  Because one of the big lessons from the living systems world view is that change happens in an evolutionary way.  It happens deep within the system and it requires two resources we all have – creativity and time.  It does not require hope.  Living systems do not hope.  They just change.

Years ago I was inspired by Michael Dowd’s ideas captured in “Thank God for Evolution” in which he talks about mutations as the vehicle of change in evolving systems.  Of course this is a widespread thought, but it was quite liberating to me when I first discovered it because it compels us to use our own creativity to make change.  Practicing something different, as some small level, is not a useless endeavour.  There is no way to know what will happen when you mutate the system.  And so that is a reason for practicing.  That is why I love Occupy and #IdleNoMore  and other social gathering practices.  They are creative mutations of the status quo.  And they are undertaken without any expectation of massive change.  Instead they seed little openings, the vast majority of which don’t go anywhere.  In an evolutionary system, mutations may introduce new levels of adaptability, but they might alos kill off the organism.  But to survive and evolve, an organism needs to mutate.  Remaining the same is also suicidal, because everything else is mutating and changing, and you will lose your fitness if you don’t also change.

So the second resource we all have is time.  if you are beholden to making change along a strategic critical pathway, especially in a complex living system, you will suffer terrible delusions.  Very few of us have that kind of time.  The kind of time we do have is the time to let whatever we do work or fail.  To orient yourself to this kind of time, you need to practice something with no expectation of it’s success.  The moment you cling to a desired result is the moment suffering creeps into your work, and the moment you begin to lose resilience.  Adaptability is reliant on creative imaginations working resourcefully.

So changing from within has something to do with all of this.  Watching #IdleNoMore is to witness a celebratory mutation in the system of colonization.  It is impossible to say if it will have the desired results that people project upon it.  But of course it will “work.”  We need to sit and watch it work as a mutation in a living system.  And the bonus is that we get to round dance while we do it!