Last Friday night, beneath the lights on the Bowen island football pitch, my co-ed soccer league team won our Cup Final 5-0. We played the best team in the league for the Cup and although were prepared for a tight game. we were rather stunned with the result. What happened far exceeded our expectations of what was possible. We played unbelieveably well. Football (I use the global term for “soccer” here) is a team game that is much like other team games in life. It features constrained action, bounded and with a purpose. It requires different people to perform different …
One of the things I love about my mate Geoff Brown who lives in the lovely Airey’s Inlet, Australia, is his incredible willingness to be playful and creative in his facilitation work and especially in his harvesting work. He is one of the few that gets how important the harvest is – at least as important as the hosting. In this great post, Geoff shares his recent experience with Open Space and with a fantastic harvest that captures that creative brilliance of the group he was working with: The day after Open Space
Silo busting is a very interesting thing. Everyone knows that systems atrophy when they divide their work into silos. Silos entrench difference and prevent learning across sectors whether we are talking about departments in an organization, or a social system like health care or child and family services. Silos have limited usefulness. They divide work into manageable chunks. But in general they create reductionist responses to systemic problems and they pose a massive challenge to people working nfor change. If we first have to bust the silos, and only then can we address the problems, how do we know we’ll …
From my recent work in the labour movement, a quote to inspire you in your work for social change: Howard Zinn: ”Ž”To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we… see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places–and there are so many–where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the …
In the middle of a four day gathering of indigenous child and family services organizations here in British Columbia. I’m back in my room even though it’s after lunch and our meeting was supposed to have restarted because history just got made. To understand what this means, you have to have an appreciation of how the state has related to indigenous communities in this country since colonization began. The essence is that tools of law and legislation have been used repeatedly to deny the jurisdiction, rights and responsibilities of First Nations from nearly the moment European governments set eyes on …