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Public Engagement Principles Project

March 18, 2009 By Collaboration 3 Comments

The National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation is working on a project to set a number of principles for public engagement.   Here are the seven they have identified so far:

The Seven Core Principles

1. Preparation – Consciously plan, design, convene and arrange the engagement to serve its purpose and people.

2. Inclusion – Incorporate multiple voices and ideas to lay the groundwork for quality outcomes and democratic legitimacy.

3. Collaboration – Support organizers, participants, and those engaged in follow-up to work well together for the common good.

4. Learning – Help participants listen, explore and learn without predetermined outcomes — and evaluate events for lessons.

5. Transparency – Promote openness and provide a public record of the people, resources, and events involved.

6. Impact – Ensure each participatory effort has the potential to make a difference.

7. Sustainability – Promote a culture of participation by supporting programs and institutions that sustain quality public engagement.

I like these, and I like the deeper elucidations of these.   It would be a failry simple thing to make a deep workshop structured around these principles. Read more at Public Engagement Principles Project – Version 2.4: Core Principles for Public Engagement.

Tools to see the forest through the trees

March 16, 2009 By Uncategorized 5 Comments

Hello Webby world…I have a request, especially of you systems thinkers out there.

I’m working on a project with a network of Native public radio stations in the United States to assess the unique impacts that these stations make in their communities.   One of the things we would like to do with the stations is to provide them with tools to work with the feedback they get from the community and identify key things that make sense to work on.

I’m thinking that some systems thinking tools would be a useful contribution to the work here, and I’m looking for any tools that people use to work strategically with environmental scans to identify leverage points and possibilities to enhance the impact of work a radio station might do. The easier the tool is to use, the better.

So anything out there to point me towards?   I’ll cruise through the Fifth Discipline books but I’m wondering what you might have discovered on the web.   References and ideas in the comments please, soe everyone canbenefit from this inquiry.

Thanks in advance.

From the feed

March 13, 2009 By Uncategorized 4 Comments

Links that made me think this week.

In the shadow of Animikii-wajiw

March 11, 2009 By First Nations, Leadership, Open Space 4 Comments

mount-mckay

In Thunder Bay on the Fort William reserve there is a distinct volcanic remanant called Mount McKay in English but Animikii-wajiw in Anishnaabemowin.     Animikii-wajiw means “thunder mountain” so named because a thunderbird once landed there, ampong other things.

My mood has changed markedly after the work we did today working with Ojibway leaders and Elders from around the north shore of Lake Superior and parts further north and west of here on traditional governance and the assertion of Aboriginal rights and title.   This is timely stuff given the historic proposed legislation that will be coming before the BC Legislature soon.   There is good news on the Aboriginal title front and it can all lead to good things for First Nations – not without challenge and much effort mind you – but things are looking optimistic on the legal front in a way that is truly unprecedented.

At any rate, our work here is about exploring the meaning and practical implications of all of this stuff, introducing people to a powerful political and legal strategy that has been developed by the National Centre for First Nations Governance, and thinking about what it takes to do this hard work.   Today there were three great little teachings that came my way as a result of discussing traditional leadership.

Teaching one came from Nancy Jones one of the Elders who gave us small blankets with a medicine wheel design based on a vision that she had about unity, leadership and healing.   One of the great teachings in this medicine wheel was about the north, the direction from which winter weather and wind comes.   We laboured here through a blizzard today, waiting for an hour until whoever was coming was going to show up, and working small processes with diminished numbers.   But the Elder gave the teaching that essentially the weather teaches us that “whatever happens is the only thing that could have” and that the chaordic path is an inherent part of leadership: you can never really be in control.

The second teaching was from Ralph Johnson.   I asked him about the Ojibway word “ogiimaw” which is often translated as “chief” or “boss.”   I asked Ralph what he thought the word must have meant before contact, when the concept of “chief” was basically unknown.   He said that word relates to the word ogiimatik which is the poplar tree, the tree that is considered the kindest of trees.   Poplars are gentle, flexible, quiet and kind and are also good medicine.   He said this idea of kindness is what is under the word “ogiimaw” and that influencing people through kindness is the kind of leadership that the word implies.   This is very different from the kinds of leadership implied by the word “chief” which is a   title now won by competition in a band election, a process that seems to engineer kindness right out of the equation.   This is a great legacy of colonization – the lowering of kindness from a high leadership art to a naive sentimentality.

Ralph also gave me one more little teaching that rocked me.   He told me that the word I had always understood as “all my relations” – dineamaaganik – actually means “belonging to everything.”   Seems like a small change in translation, until another Elder, Marie Allen chimed in and said that the problem with leadership these days was the way ideas like “all my relations” activated the ego.   The difference between “all my relations” and “belonging to everything” is the difference between the ego and the egoless I think.   This is what Ralph was trying to tell me.   That the centre of the universe is not me, and things are not all related to me, rather I belong to everything.   Marie and I took a moment to express amazement at the way the earth used us to channel life in a particular shape for a short period of time.   We come from her, we return to her, and in the interim we do our work upon her.

So tomorrow, with this platform of reverance firmly established, we return to work with young and emerging leaders in Open Space.

Not so lonely here after all is it?

Thunder Bay

March 10, 2009 By Travel, Uncategorized 5 Comments

A cold day to be on the outskirts of a cold city in a cold part of the world.   When you travel midweek into Canada’s hinterlands and northern small cities, you share a plane with mostly hard and tired men who work for government or various companies doing business in the far flung nether regions of this nation.   Whether it’s travel to Prince George, Thunder Bay, Prince Albert or Yellowknife, it seems like the same guys are on the flight – steak eating, overworked, tired, introverted, hard men.   Once in a while, if they are coming home from a job well done, and travelling in groups, they are more garrulous, raucously celebrating and teasing one another across the rows of the small regional jets and Dash-8s that seem to be bulging at the seams to contain them.

On a late winter Tuesday afternoon the flight from Ottawa to Thunder Bay isn’t at all out of the ordinary.   Mostly public servants on this trip, a couple of guys wearing jackets with CAT logos on them, two or three professional women, and a young couple who have seen better days, and who seem to be holding out for better days to come.   The flight is quiet, descending through an oncoming blizzard to land on a snowy runway.   When we disembark, the jetway doesn’t fit the fuselage very snugly and a blast of cold Northern Ontario air stings the face.

Here at the Valhalla Inn – a nod to the nordic history of this part of the world – wood trim and gas fireplaces in the lobby distract the eye from the cinder block hallways, and new carpets in the room offset the aging wood and vinyl topped room furniture.   It seems like the meeting rooms are full of Aboriginal women and non-Aboriginal men.   Almost every space has a sign that says that people are planning, and being the end of the fiscal year, everyone is turning their thoughts to next year, which starts on April 1.

There is something about the bleakness of being out here, far from downtown Thunder Bay, that brings loneliness on.   I have two days of work here, but already I can’t wait to get home to my little house on an island in Howe Sound, where my family are.

It has been a long winter in many ways, and I’m ready for a rest and for spring to come on.   Here, it feels a million miles away from that – not even the geese have dared venture this far notth yet, and the storm coming in deepens the mood.

Hunker down , do some good work with local First Nations leaders and youth and then get home.   That’s the work of this week.   Looking forward to ten days with the kids, writing some reports and getting my hands into the soil of the spring garden.