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Differences are real; divisiveness is a choice

February 6, 2019 By Art of Hosting, Complexity, Culture, Facilitation, Featured, Power

I’m on the road, currently in Columbus Ohio, working my way through a two week road trip that has taken me to Ontario to visit family and to New Brunswick where I was part of a remarkable hosting team for the Art of Hosting Working Across Divides. It was a timely gathering for 70 people from government, civil society, and social enterprise to come and learn how to work with differences. In Canada’s only bilingual province, language is a massive difference between people, and New Brunswick has a multitude of language cultures. There are 34 local French accents alone in …

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Planning in pure dialogue

January 26, 2019 By Art of Harvesting, Chaordic design, Conversation, Design, Emergence, Featured, Flow, Practice

I’m just coming home from a couple of days in Victoria where Caitlin and I were with colleagues Rebecca Ataya, Annemarie Travers, and Kelly Poirier. We spent two days working on what I can only call “polishing the core” of the Leadership 2020 program that we offer on behalf of the Federation of Community Social Service of BC. We have run this leadership program for 8 years now, putting around 400 people through a nine month intensive program of residential and applied learning. The program has built collaboration, trust, and connection between the Ministry of Children and Family Development, indigenous …

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A calendar of seasons for my time and place

January 20, 2019 By Bowen, Featured, First Nations 2 Comments

It’s a beautiful day on the south coast of British Columbia.  A strong northwesterly breeze is pushing wind driven swell down the Strait of Georgia onto the southwestern shore of Bowen Island. There is snow on the mountain tops, but down here at sea level, it’s 7 degrees. The sun is shining and everything points to a clear evening to watch the lunar eclipse.  The rest of North America is locked into a cold freeze, and next week I’ll be tasting a bit of it with a two week trip to New Brunswick, Ohio and Ontario. This is the time of …

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My personal year of learning about evaluation

January 16, 2019 By Evaluation, Featured 2 Comments

For a number of years I have been studying and learning about evaluation. To be honest, working primarily in the non-profit world and working for social good and social change, evaluation always seemed to me to be the bugaboo that ruined the party. While we’re out there trying to create new things, innovate and respond to novel challenges, build relationships and community, and experiment and fail, evaluation loomed over us like a dark spectre, scolding us for being flakey or demanding that we be more grown up and more responsible. More than that, I had many experiences of evaluation being …

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Walking away from facebook

January 15, 2019 By Being, Culture, Democracy, Featured, Wordpress 17 Comments

Back in December I announced my intention to take a sabbatical from Facebook and see what would happen. There were a number of factors in that decision, and I’ll share what I learned and what I’m doing now.  I had a few reasons for wanting to take a break: Facebook was a huge time waster, and earlier last year I deleted the app from my phone (it and Messenger and Instagram track your life your life and serve you ads based on what you’ve been doing). As a result, I have spent a lot less time there, although I do …

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