Menu

Travelogue

February 7, 2009 By Uncategorized

A couple of days ago I headed across the northern United States on a Boeing 757 on United airlines – the hungry skies. United is a quirky airline. They have three classes of seating on their domestic flights: executive, economy and then what I call the “hole in the bagel class:” Economy Plus. Economy Plus consists of a third of the rows of the economy cabin with four inches more legroom than the back two thirds of the economy cabin. In practice, Economy Plus seems to offer pretty much the same legroom as every other airline, but the economy cabin is cramped and uncomfortable, esp[ecially if you are penned in and the person in front of you decides to recline. At that point, your tray table becomes unusable and if there is anything under your seat, your legs start to cramp up. They should properly call Economy Plus, plain old economy and refer to the other section as Economy Minus.

To enjoy the stretchy legroom of Economy Plus will cost you $40 extra dollars – ten dollars an inch – and wil almost certainly guarantee you a row to yourself, because it seems on the Vancouver-Chicago and the Vancouver-Denver flights, almost no one is enough of a sucker to pony up for legroom they would get on any other airline.

And then the Starbucks at the G terminal in Chicago won’t take my travel espresso cup because, the barista was worried about “cross-contamination.” When she said that I walked away, for there was little I could to persuade myself that a shot of espresso was worth the risk that Starbucks would contaminate my travel cup. Interesting.

Anyway, I’m in Michigan now meeting with 24 very interesting people from across Native America and Hawai’i engaged in conversation about the nature of native leadership and looking now at places in which that leadership is having an impact in the world. The retreat is being sponsored by Native Americans in Philanthropy and the Fetzer Institute. The weather here is very mild, and a big thaw is on. Snow and ice have been plunging from the roof of the amazing retreat centre here called Seasons. One more half day and then it’s off to Toronto where I get to see my family and my new niece Rebecca.

Teaching Web 2.0 skills without technology

February 5, 2009 By Collaboration, Learning 5 Comments

I was thinking the other day about how to teach kids in school Web 2.0 skills, prompted by my friend Brad Ovenell-Carter’s blog post on figuring out how young is too young,

Now my kids, don’t go to school, but they work actively in non-technological settings with collaboration.   They spend a lot of time together co-creating games, scenarios, worlds and activities.   My daughter, at 11, is helping out in a friend’s store and she helped train other workers on the inventory system the other day before taking inventory with her new trainees.   She has also been working with another friend to start up an Amnesty International group on our home island.

The discussion on Brad’s blog has been about critical skills in reading, learning how to read content that is user produced on the web.   To me Web 2.0 is about co-creating, so responsible writing is a key piece of the work, so in thinking more about how to teach this I thought about what a Web 2.0 based exam room would look like.

What if we tested kids on collaboration instead of individual achievement?   What if a class of 30 kids was given an exam one day but instead of every student getting a test paper there would only be six papers in the whole room.   The class would need to divide into groups of five and complete the exam together.   The Pass mark would be 95% and they would be allowed to talk to each other, steal ideas, look in books, phone a friend, whatever.   Each team of five would be responsible for the overall quality of their own answers, so they would also have to make quality decisions.   If there were several long form questions, essays and the like, they could divide the work up, or have a couple of kids draw up an outline and bring it to the group for polishing.

In most school settings, this would be called “cheating.”   In the real world this is how it works.

It’s not just about critical reading or accurate writing…it’s about providing real opportunities to practice collaborating and noticing that when you work together, you get a better result than if you work on your own.

Anyone know any teachers out there that have tried something like this?

On the road

February 5, 2009 By Uncategorized

Share photos on twitter with Twitpic

Off to Kalamazoo, Michigan to attend a retreat with the Fetzer Institute on Indigenous leadership.   We’ll gather together 24 or so folks from around the US who are working with leadership in Indigenous communities, organizations and governments and ask some interesting questions about the kinds of worldviews that drive our current practice of leadership, moving us away from traditional collective leadership capacities and towards individual leadership and scientific management models.

The photo above is the scene I just watched, the sun rising over Mount Baker.   My friend Dustin Rivers says that the [e Sḵwxwú7mesh word for this time of day is kwakweya, the moment when the sun peeks up over the mountains.

New day dawning.

Why invitation matters

February 4, 2009 By Invitation One Comment

From George Nemeth some a link to this post, which I repeat in full:

Today, about 35 local and regional organizations, foundations, companies and banks came together to support and actively engage the City of East Cleveland in its strategy for revitalization and transformation. No, not three, but 35. It began with an extremely simple concept, but often hard to do. We asked. We invited individuals to attend. We asked for engagement and questions. We asked for people to envision new partnerships, not based on previous relationships, but new ones. We invited individuals in a personal way to participate in a discussion.

I am not implying that “asking” by itself, is a remedy or endpoint. I think it is a constant and often gets over shadowed by the need to get the results, and not as a primary method of authentic networks, and allowing potential partners to respond in a manner that allows for dialogue, shared points of view, and connection/collaboration.

Also, I am not arguing that asking can itself turnaround our nation’s cities, but far too often, government operates without asking, without invitations, and just does. Whether in a cloak room or boardroom, under the glare of lights or behind closed doors, creating new visions for our region, demand asking, questions, challenging points of view, and ensuring that, as we create new democratic networks, that the people participate and lead. There is just no other way.

Qualities of noticing: building a personal self

February 4, 2009 By Facilitation, Practice 2 Comments

Following a great talk from Gil Fronsdel on how self is constructed, I had a nice insight yesterday about personal identity.

Fronsdel says that when something happens, there are three things going on:

  1. There is the reality
  2. There is what we think about the reality
  3. There is the “I” that is thinking.

These are conditional, that is, they depend on and arise from each other.   When I see something, I think something about it and my self in strengthened.   For example:

  1. It’s raining today
  2. I hate rainy days.
  3. I’m not suited to living in a rainforest!

In Buddhism, we get locked into suffering when we think ABOUT something and then believe that thought.   Who we are, our core identity, is in fact a set of stories we believe about our preferences about reality.

As a facilitator, this simple construction is a very important tool to use to reach clarity before working with a group.   Imagine this construction:

  1. People are yelling at each other.
  2. They are in conflict and I hate conflict.
  3. I am a peacemaker.

So yes, but in the moment, you are going to suffer some when the meeting you are running counters your experience of yourself.     You will think that you are failing if you are “a peacemaker” and yet your participants ar eyelling at each other.   As a facilitator, when I get caught in that kind of thinking, I notice that I immediately become quite useless to the group.   Why?   Because I have left reality and I am spinning around in my thinking about reality, suffering and self-involved as my identity and ego get challenged.

People who have no thoughts about conflict are incredibly resourceful when yelling arises.   They simply see yelling, they are able to listen and observe and notice what is happening.   But those of us that are still working on our comfort with conflict might shy away from it, shrink away in fear, try to paper over differences or deny the reality of the moment in favour of a temporary comfort.

This is why it’s always good to work with people, especially with people who are afraid of different things than you are.

Working on this stuff is a key personal practice for me.   I do it with meditation as well as working with Byron Katie’s method, called “The Work” to inquire into the thoughts and beliefs that are causing me suffering.   My partner Caitlin Frost uses The Work as a cornerstone to her coaching practice, and it’s a real gift to have that available in our little firm.   It lets me do much more than I ever could on my own.   I’m curious wht your experiences are and what your practices are to challenge the constructions of mind that limit your own work in certain situations.

Tomorrow, a post on what this process looks like at the collective level.