I’ve known Tenneson Woolf for 20 years, and we have worked together, offering learning, facilitation and organizational support in various settings all over the place. Tenn is a global Art of Hosting steward and was amongst the first people to bring the Art of Hosting practice to North America in 2003, back when he worked with the Berkana Institute, and we all saw a need to bring a set of deep dialogic and participatory leadership practices into the world. Tenneson has a great blog, and devoted writing practice. He has extended his creativity engagement into the world of podcasting, where …
Four things conspiring here today. So before you dive into this post, go play Horde of the Flies at Complexity Explorables. Play with the sliders. Find a way to lock all the dots in one super stable state. Find a way to ensure endless randomness. Find a way to have the dots self-organize such that patterns emerge, persist for a while, and then change. Play with trying to control the system. See if you can get desired results. Now, what’s going on here? There is a relationship between organization and self-organization. Systems self-organize within constraints. Without constraints, anything is possible, …
That’s me, teaching something about living and dying systems from a decade ago. Years ago, I worked on a team with a client at a large US Foundation. We were planning a participatory process for a big stream of their work, and they were nervous. Large-scale participatory group methods were new to them, and lots of the leaders were nervous about losing control. That’s not uncommon, but the one thing that stuck with me was a line that came from our direct project lead. He said, “I don’t mind the highly participatory nature of the work, and I don’t worry …
Working with Complexity Inside and Out We are getting excited about our Complexity Inside and Out program which starts on April 13 and runs to June 15, every Thursday in the afternoon for the Pacific timezone, early evening in the Eastern time zone and late evening in western Europe. The course will cover: …and more. This program will serve you well if you are a facilitator working with groups in complex situations, a leader, a community worker, a strategist, a researcher, or a teacher. Or just a human who is curious about how the world works and is developing a …
I don’t know why I have never done this, but a recent misunderstanding with a client has prompted me to get more accurate about the room requirements we need for good participatory meetings. Many of my meetings involve being in both a circle configuration and gathered around small tables. It is possible to move table in and out, but for most meetings (and full day or more workshops) these room requirements will be ideal: Typical materials we use in workshops and participatory events include these: For local events, I usually bring the markers and post it notes, letter sized paper, …