Here are a number of bits and pieces that have been waiting around for ages to get posted:
- Donella Meadows on being a global citizen and dancing with systems. From Bill Harris at Making Sense with Facilitated Systems.
- Getting Started with Action Learning, also from Bill.
- Dave Pollard on indigenous capacities for learning and discovery:
The word indigenous* means ‘born into and part of’, and by inference ‘inseparably connected to’. We are all, I think, indigenous at birth, born into the Earth-organism and connected in a profound and primal way to all life on the planet, even if we are born in the sterile confines of an ‘antiseptic’ hospital. But we are quickly indoctrinated into the civilized conceit of human separateness, and that conceptual separateness is reinforced by a physical separateness until, soon enough, we forget that we are a part of a constituency greater and deeper than family or state. Conception thus becomes our reality.
My most important moments of learning and discovery have occurred in those rare moments when I’ve been able to briefly shake that illusion of separateness, and re-become indigenous, liberated, part of the real world.
- More Dave, on what we can learn from aphids:
If I’m correct, then the aphid I’m looking at right now does think and feel. She wonders. She is curious. She experiences the profound joy of living, and the commensurate desire to go on living. She enjoys the company of and communication with others. She is driven to learn and gets satisfaction from doing so. She experiences emotional grief and/or physical pain at being lost, separated, witnessing the death of a fellow creature, or being stepped on. She cares about all the life she can fathom, and as long as she lives she fathoms more, and passes along more knowledge, and more reason to care, in her DNA. That is why she is here.
- Na’Cha’uaht on Indians and oil:
One of the most basic and fundamental Nuu-chah-nulth principles is embodied in the phrase, “Hish’ukish Tsa’walk” (Everything is one/connected). A full comprehension of this principle teaches us that we cannot support unsustainable development. We cannot support an industry that would threaten our watersheds with complete devastation. We cannont gladly shake the hands of corporations who use proxy governments (US, UK etc.) to wage wars all over the world, killing other Indigenous people. We cannot make the best of an inevitable corporate imposition by selling ourselves for a few jobs and money. We cannot accept this inevitability.
- Squashed Philosophers, a redux of the major thinkers that underpin Western thought.
- Getting out of confusion through conversation by Nadine Tanner:
Conversation can help move us out of the discomfort of confusion. Inquiry opens a space for meaningful conversation. It makes your intangible confusion visible to others so you can begin to build a more complete understanding.
So, next time you’re confused try staying with it for a while. Share it with others. Start conversations. Connect the otherwise unconnected dots
- Patti on following desire lines:
When faced with a bird’s eye view of my own desire lines, measuring in quick paces the decisions I’ve made or not made, do I allow them to become the real path, or do I put up a concrete barrier to redirect myself back to the “official” road? And what is that process of creating our own path? What feelings does it entail, engender, cause?
As Finch said,
“Sometimes, following unknown paths, we find ourselves in a maze of growth, in failing light, unsure where we are, flailing through jungles of stiff, impenetrable shrubs and sharp briars in deceptively benign-looking woods. All at once we realize we are lost, unable to retrace our steps. Then, suddenly, we come out onto a paved highway, far from where we thought we were, feeling a gratefulness and a relief we are ashamed to acknowledge.
But sometimes, just sometimes, we come upon a new and unexpected clearing, a magical place unanticipated in our daily thoughts or even our dreams; and when we do, we are so amazed that we cease even to wonder whether we will be able to find our way back home, or, perchance, whether this might in fact be our new home.”
- Lisa Heft’s collection of papers on Open Space Technology
- Kevin Harris’s musings on community leadership, with links to an interesting paper.
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As Michael and I make some progress on our writing, I find that I have been assembling together bits and pieces of writing I have done over the years and putting some papers up at my site.
Today I want to invite you to have a look at a new paper called “Six observations about seeing” which is composed from some blog posts I made 18 months ago or so.
As always, comments are welcome.
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Inspired by a project I have been involved in with the Anecdote boys and Viv McWaters, I have written a paper on language and leadership practices in convening a dialogue. Here’s the introduction…
William Isaacs book Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together is continually inspiring reading. It equates very well with the practices that we are teaching fo Open Space facilitation and it is a useful guide for other forms of process facilitation. In the book, Isaacs describes four fields of conversation, essentially politeness, breakdown, inquiry and flow. Within each of these four fields of dialogue, there are a number of practices to cultivate and things to do as the nature of the dialogue keeps changing. In a short chapter but important on convening dialogue, Isaacs outlines a guide for leadership in each of these four areas. I have been using this guide more and more frequently and, in addition to Isaacs’ work, I have been collecting questions and language approaches to help move deeper into these dialogic spaces. What follows is a brief overview of the four fields, Isaacs guide to navigating the fields and the questions with which I have been working.
The whole paper is yours to read. I’d appreciate any comments.
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When Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev were locked in the most critical period of the Cold War in 1986 they arranged for a summit in Reykjavik, Iceland. Reagan had been developing the “Star Wars” project and the ante was upped on the nuclear game. Gorbachev, for his part, knew that fighting the Cold War was costing him the opportunity to make economic reforms at home. Gorbachev came to Iceland wanting to go deep into the relationships between the two superpowers and he was prepared to make Reykjavik a watershed event. To the surprise of many, apparently Reagan got on board with that intention too.
The summit had all the makings of the typical Cold War summit, with some kind of arms reduction treaty at the end of the day. But Regan’s advisors were worried that the USA would give up ground just for appearances. Indeed, a treaty did come out of the summit, and it was a treaty that was further in scope and range than anything either side had been prepared for. It saw the elimination of all short and intermediate range nuclear weapons, and it began to address the deeper implications of fundamental change to the strategic relationship between the United States and the USSR.
Gorbachev later said that the Reykjavik was the turning point in the Cold War. And when asked why, he said it was because the two leaders had a real conversation, and not just talk about stuff they had been told to talk about, but about the core things, the things that mattered.
This morning I ws listening to an excellent little podcast from The American Experience about this story, and I was reminded of a post at Doug Germann’s blog earlier in the week where he simply asked “When have you even got anything significant done without a conversation?”
It is not just that significant things require conversations, but that significant things can also arise from conversations. We need to be open and listen deeply into that space, but we can nonetheless find generative dialogue to be the thing that unlocks even the tighest knots we tie ourselves into.
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At the Public Resources page of the Center for Contemplative Dialogue you will find an interesting little publication called The Path of Contemplative Dialogue: Engaging the Collective Spirit (.pdf), by Stephen Wirth. In the book, contemplative dialogue is seen as radiating from some core principles:
- Trust in the basic unity of human people and all life.
- Nonviolence in spirit, word, and action.
- Commitment to seeking truth with compassion and humility.
- Commitment to speaking truth with compassion and humility.
- Willingness to risk suspending the rush to action.
These principles are close to my core principles of facilitation but with some emphasis on truth that I’m toying with adding to my own list.
The implications of these principles and the process that emerges from them can extend in many places. In a recent discussion on the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation list, Wirth offered some insights into how to make large scale conferences worthwhile learning experiences using contemplative dialogue approaches:
Engaging a group seriously and looking at what its common purpose is, how its ability to learn well together affects the state of the organization or field, and honestly naming the problems that arise from the individual learning stance. This too is where distinguishing the possibilities of dialogue from discussion is significant. Dialogue used here in its technical sense of ‘building shared understanding’ and not just the interchangeable usage with the words discussion or conversation. Further distinguishing ‘learning’ as something more than drinking from the fire hose of ‘theory’ that usually gets sprayed out at such gatherings and consciously inviting/challenging the group to do something more than ‘the usual.’…
Blending meaningful input with thoughtfully designed reflective dialogue allows participants both to engage material and then broaden the groups thinking in relation to it. I assume an effective process requires a skillful blending of time to create safety for the group to speak well together, thoughtful process questions, and allowing meaningful time to reflect and speak to these questions.
Oftentimes I notice a dominant cultural value toward speed and productivity undercuts effective engagement of the group. To arbitrarily assemble groups of eight and give them eight minutes total to share their ‘most meaningful experience of dialogue’ with one another, is a kind of process violence I find all too common. A critical element of good process design requires walking back through the intended process and outcomes and looking realistically at whether the design can produce the hoped for quality of
group interaction.
I am in the midst of putting the final touches on a design for a large scale conference, and these insights could not have been more timely and useful.