Tonight in Vancouver I’m acting as a provocateur at an event sponsored by my friends and colleagues at Waterlution. Water City 2040 is a ten-city scenario planning process which engages people about the future of water across 10 Canadian cities. Tonight’s event is part of a pilot cohort to see what the process can offer to the conversation nationally. What’s powerful about this work is that it’s citizens convening, hosting and engaging with one another. This is not a local government engagement process or a formal consultation. This is a non-profit organization convening deliberative conversations. The advantage of that is …
This afternoon I’m coming home after a morning running a short process for a church in Victoria, BC. The brief was pretty straightforward: help us decide between four possible scenarios about our future. Lucky for me, it gave me an instant application for some of the stuff I was learning in London last week. The scenarios themselves were designed through a series of meetings with people over a number of months and were intended to capture the church’s profile for its future, as a way of advertising themselves for new staff. What was smart about this exercise was the …
This afternoon Caitlin and I were in a delightful conversation with new colleagues that ranged across the landscape of the work we are all trying to do in the world, supporting leadership, supporting quality and addressing the ineffable aspects of human experience that pervade our work on leadership. And in the conversation we found our way to the idea of friendship. In our Art of Hosting Beyond the Basics offering we are exploring friendship as a key strategic pillar to transforming the nature of engagement, organizational life and community development. And today as we were discussing friendship as the highest form …
My son has been working on a project for his grade nine year. At his middle school, graduating students are required to complete a year-long project called a MasterWorks. Finn has chosen the reconstruction of a downhill bike skills park. Earlier this year, our local government flattened the one we had without consultation, and Finn has been part of the team leading the charge to rebuild it in a different location. My dad has been active in his community working on developing a dog park and also helping the village with it’s official community plan. As a result, he has …