I have great clients. Most of the people who end up working with me do so because they want to work in radically more participatory ways, opening up processes to more voices, more leadership. In conference settings this means scheduling much more dialogue or running the whole thing using Open Space Technology and dispensing with pre-loading content. But there persists, especially in the corporate and government sectors, a underlying nervousness in doing this. common objections to making things more participatory include: It’s too risky We’re not ready for it I’m worried it won’t work There won’t be enough structure People …
Bob Stilger on “decision happening” rather than “decision making:” I’d add to what John has written by introducing the concept of “decision happening” rather than “decision making.” It is a term I coined a decade ago and am reminded of from time to time. Decision happening uses collective discernment to discover the decision that is happening before our very eyes. It has a very different energy than “decision making.” There is a curiosity. It has an openness and a sense of inquiry rather than a driving quickly towards a given decision. It invites the participation of spirit, non-material beings, the …
Two dear friends, Ashley Cooper and Juanita Brown, are up to some world-changing mischief together in the mountains of North Carolina. They are going deep into hosting intergenerational conversations. Here’s why, from Juanita: I have always been fascinated by large-scale systems change and what might enable whole societies to shift into more life-affirming patterns. Over the years I had the great good fortune to have older corporate and community leaders take me under their professional and personal wings as I engaged with this work. I began to think abut the challenges we face at every level of system today. I …
I am here in the Morton Arboretum in Chicago where we are at the end of the first day of an Art of Hosting with our friends in the Illinois community of practice. We have just been harvesting out of a World Cafe that was held on the question of “What time it is in the world?” We used a design I have been using with teams and communities that are needing to do deep sensing. We went for three rounds on the same question and had the hosts at each table go and deeper into the conversations that were …
Back in Monticello, Minnesota on the banks of the Mississippi River where we are running the third residential learning session in collaborative leadership for a cohort of groups working to improve health in their communities. The river is high here, and the channel is full. Downstream, in the rest of the United States, the Mississippi is challenging communities and families who are in a fierce struggle to learn how to live with the river’s whims, with the river’s power and its overwhelming desire to renew the floodplains that stretch away from the main channel. Sitting by the river yesterday it …