When we are teaching dialogue practice and participatory meeting design, I often draw on the example of organizational and team staff meetings. Every organization I’ve worked with has these meetings and they ae almost nearly the same: an endless re-iteration of what people are doing, and rarely nothing more compelling that an email wouldn’t take care of. There is rarely even time for discussion becasue you have to get through everyone’s update in the 30 minutes assigned for the meeting. So I often advise folks who want to bring more participatory culture to their organizations to focus on staff meetings. …
Via Scott Thomas (@ScottGL1 on twitter) comes a very interesting note on a US weather service forecast from yesterday: I live on a small island located in a steep-walled inlet that opens onto an inland sea on the Pacific Coast of North America. Our island is medium-sized, about 12 km long and 8 km wide. Part of it sticks out into the Strait of Georgia, which is part of the larger Salish Sea that exists between Vancouver Island and the mainland. Part of our island sticks into Atl’ka7tsem/Howe Sound, an inlet that leads from the Strait 45kms inland to the …
I’m back in Tlaoquiaht territory on the west coast of Vancouver Island. This is a place I once described as The Land of Tsawalk as it is the cradle of a philosophy and cosmology of interconnection and interdependence that has been refined by centuries of Nuu-chah-nulth philosophers, leaders and families. We’re here to do an Art of Hosting with the Clayoquot Biosphere Trust and 40 or so local leaders and organizers. This will be the fourth Art of Hosting I’ve done here and they are always different, responsive to the land and the ocean and the people and the way …
We start on April 11…a deep dive into complexity theory and practice that will take you on a journey to understand complexity and work with it, both inside yourself and in your teams, families, organizations and communities. Come and join 30+ folks worldwide in an intensive, engaging, cohort-based exploration of these topics and tools. For more info, check out our program description.
I’ve been going down a bit of a rabbit hole these past few mornings, looking at some commentary and writing about Kurt Lewin. Lewin, who died in 1947 was a psychologist whose theory and research had a tremendous influence on the modern movements or organizational development, action research, Gestalt theory, change management and group dynamics. To read his writings now is to read a person deeply interested in the complexity of human systems long before there was much language at all available to even discuss complexity. His ideas – or more precisely other people’s ideas about his ideas – have …