On the Open Space list, we’ve been discussing the merits of planning vs. muddling through. My two cents: I actually think that muddling through is not a correction to the conventional wisdom that stretegy and planning is the way to go. Muddling through has always been the way. The evidence is actually overwhelming. Show me something in the world, a finished process, project, thing or event, that was not the result of muddling through. Strategy is figuring out which way to muddle. Good strategists are great muddlers. They seem to muddle in the direction of the resources or of the …
Satsan Back in 1999 when I began my consulting practice, one of the first contracts I landed was with the British Columbia Vice-Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Satsan (Herb George). He was assembling a team to undertake a national process to educate and activate communities with respect to the exercise of Aboriginal title. One of the results of that work isan astounding collection of legal research papers hosted at the Delgamuukw/Gisday’wa National Process website. You will also find there a plain language guide on Aboriginal title which I wrote. Satsan took the view that Aboriginal title was there …
In one of the more poignant observations on last week’s American election, I read a recent letter to the Globe and Mail which pointed out that if the election were about values then the decision means that it’s okay for one man to kill another man, but not to hold his hand.
Another terrific find by riley dog, whom I read every morning. This short poem by Frederick Morgan captures some of the essence of BEING invited into a place where anything is possible, but it is all uncontemplated except in the moment: The Step From where you are at any moment you may step off into death. Is it not a clinching thought? I do not mean a stoical bravado of making the great decision blade in hand but the awareness, all so simple, that right in the middle of the day you may be called to an adjoining room. When …
This essay arrived on an email from my friend Anne Stadler. It’s by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, the author of “Women who run with the Wolves“: “For many decades, worldwide, souls just like us have been felled and left for dead in so many ways over and over brought down by naivete, by lack of love, by being ambushed and assaulted by various cultural and personal shocks in the extreme. We have a history of being gutted, and yet remember this especially ‘ we have also, of necessity, perfected the knack of resurrection. Over and over again we have been the …