Citizens and political representatives on my home island of Bowen Island, at a meeting this week in which a controversial decision was made to build an artifical turf playing field at our community school. I didn’t run this meeting…it was a regular council meeting, but the one in which the decision was made. The soundtrack is something of a political statement from the videographer, but the images are beautiful. They show my friends and neighbours as they sit pitted against one another in a tense meeting over a deep quality of life issue. Just studying and …
I’m reading through Otto Schamer‘s Theory U again, this time with an eye to noting how his model and stories can inspire designs in my own work. I came across a story in the book (can’t remember where) in which Otto is working with a group to make some meaning and see patterns, as a way of sensing the bigger field of work. The group was given a transcript of a lot of information – interviews mostly and invited to circle or highlight those quotes that seemed to talk to the bigger patterns out there. then, as an …
Last year I was invited to give a talk on the shapes of community engagement for a conference sponsored by the BC Treaty Commission called Forging Linkages and Finding Solutions. This is the slide deck I used and here is a transcript of my talk.
I can’t speak for Mexico, but this fall has had a transformative effective on the other 2 countries in North America. First, Barack Obama. And now here in Canada, the prospect of a progressive coalition unseating the newly elected Conservative minority seems like a more and more likely possibility. So what gives? First of all, the general mood of both countries has shifted to the progressive side of things, although in Canada, a weak Liberal leader and a screwy representational system left the Conservative party with 37% of the vote and the majority of seats and thus the …
Apropos of the fact that Tim Merry, Monica Nissen and I are hosting a module on the Art of Intergernational Hosting at this year’s Shambhala Institute for Authentic Leadership in Action, comes this quote from Jack Ricchiuto: Every aging generation questions whether the generation coming of age has what it takes to learn into maturity as defined by the aging generation. Easy for each to think it knows better than the other. The fact is that they will always know more together than they could in isolation or competition. Hierarchy has the relevance of fossils. In an age of wisdom, …