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What is the foundation of what we do?

April 3, 2009 By Art of Hosting, Collaboration, Conversation, Facilitation, Open Space, Organization, World Cafe 6 Comments

Lovely day here in Marin County hanging out with friends and charting some interesting paths forward on a few projects.   One highlight of the day was spending time with Amy Lenzo, who I have known for a while but met only one time previously when we were on an diverse and eclectic team of facilitators holding space at the Pegasus systems thinking conference a couple of years ago.   Amy is, among other things, the web goddess for The World Cafe community and we spent a lovely lunch at the excellent Buckeye Roadhouse talking over the nature of our work, the ways in which we look at the art of hosting within rich social spaces and what is at the core of our approach to things.   We were reflecting on what the World Cafe, Open Space, Berkana and Art of Hosting communities (among many others) have in common and it comes down to these four things – archetypal patterns if you will:

  1. The source pattern for our understanding of group process is the circle
  2. The source pattern for leadership within that process is “hosting” or facilitative (or “holding space“)
  3. The source pattern for design of process is diverge – emerge – converge
  4. The source pattern of our worldview is living systems

These four patterns form a set of foundations about our practice.   They stand in contrast to foundations of group work for which:

  1. The source pattern for understanding group process is the traditional school room.
  2. The source pattern for leadership is the teacher or command and control
  3. The source pattern for design is linear: moving from point A to point B
  4. The source pattern for worldviews is mechanistic.

These distinctions are useful because the source patterns serve as an invitation.   If you find yourself in alignment with the first set of patterns, you’ll probably find kin in the Cafe, Open Space, Berkana and Art of Hosting communities.   If you relate more to the second set you ‘ll probably find yourself engaged with people from more traditional training backgrounds.   There is certainly a time and place for both, and the skillful application of one or the other sets of foundations is what is brought by artful process practitioners.

From the feed

April 3, 2009 By Uncategorized

Hungry?  Eat…

  • Niels Teunis invites us to kill the mission statement and find three words instead.
  • Dervala Hanley tweets the death of the MBA.
  • Ria Baeck republishes Fancis Moore Lappe on wyas systems can redesign food systems
  • Johnnie Moore blogging Dave Snowden blogging some interesting peer learning in the hotel industry.
  • Aftab Erfan blogs about a Deep Democracy event in South Africa.
  • Peggy Holman is blogging her new book on Patterns of Change and looking for comments
  • Henry Mintzberg on the failure of management training

A Pablo Neruda poem for Caitlin

April 2, 2009 By Being One Comment

When I read this Neruda poem, I thought of my wife.

Sonnet XVII

I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz

or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:

I love you as certain dark things are loved,

secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom and carries

hidden within itself the light of those flowers,

and thanks to your love, darkly in my body

lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,

I love you simply, without problems or pride:

I love you in this way because I don’t know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,

so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,

so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

via Neruda.

Loving downtown Portland

April 2, 2009 By Travel 3 Comments

I’ve been in Portland Oregon this week working with Native community radio stations from across the United States on an exciting capacity development project.   While here I’ve been enjoying the city.   Portland, Seattle and Vancouver really are sister cities.   We share the same climate, the same eco-systems and concerns, the same look and feel.   The histories of the three cities are intertwined by the people that have lived on this coast since the cities were founded.   The Columbia is the furthest south outlet of Canadian freshwater on the west coast, so in many ways, what flows nearby here is tied to what happens in the Canadian Rockies.   Out in the ocean, the migration of birds, salmon, whales and seals intimately connects these three cities too, even though Portland isn’t strictly a coastal town.

I have been here only once before, on a road trip to California, and I never spent any real time in the city.   On this trip, I was staying in a downtown hotel, and working a light schedule, so I had time to walk around and explore.   Took in dinner one night at a lovely restaurant, Higgins, which serves local, seasonal food in a west coast style.   I also stumbled into the real world version of Powell’s Books which is located in a funky little neighbourhood surrounded by the specialty bookshops that it spawned.   It’s a very friendly book store for such a big place, and full of helpful and cheerful staff.

I’ve been travelling by public transit on this trip too.   I almost took the train from Vancouver but was constrained by time.   Otherwise I would have loved to have gone from Vancouver straight through to San Francisco by train.   As it is the only train I will ride on this trip is the excellent MAX light rail in Portland which whisks you from the airport to downtown in a little over a half hour for $2.35.

On my way now to Sausalito to spend the weekend in some relaxed but important conversations around designing a global conference which will be held next year on Hawai’i.   Looking forward to being in the Bay area, and at the same time, resolved to return to Portland again soon.

Face to face

March 31, 2009 By Collaboration, Open Space 5 Comments

Interesting stuff popping out today around the net on social tools and face to face.   On the OSLIST, there was a little discussion on using twitter and facebook and the pros and cons.   I posted these thoughts:

I love the social tools because they allow me to connect with and get to know people in far flung areas who are closer to me in thought and spirit than those who are nearby.   For me, twitter, facebook, skype and blogging are a means to an end, and that end os sharing open face to face conversations with folks that are in disperate places, but with whom I learn a lot.

And something to think about intergenerationally is that there are teenagers now who have lived their entire lives in a world with blogging, skype, and facebook.   Think about that for a minute.   These people don’t consider these technologies to be old at all.   They consider them the default setting.

In a time when intergenerational conversation is becoming more important (how do we talk to the people with whom we have saddled with a trillion dollar debt, to explain to them to follies of our excess?) knowing a little about how these technologies enable self-organizing behaviour among digital natives is very important.   And learning to use them I think is as important as employing other powerful social technologies like, say, Open Space.

So I don’t begrudge the unwillingness to particiapte in the collective monkey mind (thanks Karen!) or the pining for real contact, but I do encourage people to learn about and play with these tools, just like we have with OST and see what happens…

And then today, a couple of posts in the feed.   Wendy Farmer-O’Neil dives back into blogging with a piece on “Web 3.0” and my neighbour and friend Emily van Lidthe de Jeude offers a lovely reflection on working with real world intimacy and global connectivity.