Just off of an amazing Skype conversation with Jack Ricchiuto who is the second person I’ve talked to about my suicide prevention project. We spoke about what an appreciative perspective might look like and what kinds of design questions might help to shape a community forum. Jack pointed me to his work on a process called DreamSpace whic is in his book on appreciative leadership. DreamSpace focusses on seven questions: What kind of pictures of our community 20 years from now would be attractive to us? Where are there alignments among our collective versions of the future? Where are there …
I recently posted an invitation to help me design an appreciative summit and bits and pieces of a project designed to address Aboriginal youth suicide in north western BC. A small group of people have responded to that invitation from Ireland, India, the UK and right here in BC. Last night I had an amazing Skype conversation with Wendy Farmer-O’Neill from Gabriola Island, across the Strait of Georgia from Bowen Island, where I live. We spoke about ways to represent the voice of the community and the loss from suicide in policy discussions. We also spoke about ways to connect …
Organizations, leaders, people – in short, sponsors – who decide to take responsibility for convening an Open Space meeting often wonder what their role can be afterwards. In working recently with a community I asked the question to gather perspectives and one answer stood out: Be good stewards of passionate enterprise That’s a lovely way to talk about holding space for learning, action or development. Technorati Tags: leadership, openspace
On the OSLIST today, a question about success: If maintaining control means avoiding success…then what is the motivation for people maintaining that control? Is there another kind/aspect of success in play? Often people expect big things from organizational development “interventions.” They wouldn’t do so otherwise. Retreats, planning sessions, Open Space forums…all come with the expectation that doing something significant will change things significantly. In working with sponsors I do have conversations about what transformation really means and how willing people are to transform themselves to meet the new world they are wanting to be born. There is a real stretch …
Twenty years ago, in June 1985 I remember listening to the CBC at a friend’s cottage north of Toronto when the news came that Air India flight 182 from Vancouver to Delhi had been bombed out of the sky near Ireland. Three hundred and twenty-nine people, most of them Canadians died that day, including my friend Sanjay Sakhawalkar, his whole family and four other kids from my school. The summer of 1985 was filled with grief and sadness at the loss. I sobbed far more than a 17 year-old boy is supposed to. My dreams were filled with terrible recurring …