I’m sceptical about any politician that says they will lower grocery prices by instituting tax cuts or providing rebates to consumers who will just spend that money on inflated grocery prices. Solutions need to be structural. Public grocery stores might be part of that solution, however.
I had no idea about US energy markets and the role that meteorology plays in them. Today Mark Ingalls lifts the lid on all of that a bit.
Chief Laurie Carr expresses an eloquent calling to account for Prime Minster Carney, using his Davos speech to hold him to a high standard of integrity at home.
Prime Minister, this is precisely what Canada demands of First Nations, participation without power, consultation without influence, reconciliation without restitution. We are asked to stand politely at the edge of the room while decisions are made and then told we were included.
You called for “naming reality.”
So let us name it. Canada speaks the language of values abroad while practicing expediency at home. It champions a rules-based order internationally while treating First Nations rights domestically as obstacles to be managed, delayed or overridden.
For many of us, as important as Carney’s speech was, and as truthful as it was, it was also clearly at odds with how his government has pursued their domestic policy over the past year. The excuse of “we need to move fast because the world is facing a crisis” cannot be a rationale for us to move unjustly. Both can be true if both speed and justice are principles that limit and drive your action.
Loneliness at work, at home, in community. It’s pervasive. Some research is reporting on interventions.
Research points to several evidence-based approaches that can reduce loneliness when implemented thoughtfully. First, providing social support is one of the most reliable ways to reduce loneliness, particularly for people already at higher risk. Peer mentoring, group-based support and structured opportunities for connection are especially effective because they create safe environments where relationships can develop.
Building social skills also helps. Loneliness is not always about a lack of opportunity; it can also reflect difficulty initiating or sustaining social connections. Interventions that strengthen interpersonal skills, such as communication and relationship-building, can reduce loneliness by helping people feel more confident and about social interactions at work.
Volunteering reduces isolation. Volunteering has emerged as a particularly promising strategy for reducing loneliness. Engaging in meaningful, pro-social activities outside one’s core role can strengthen social bonds and increase feelings of connection, making it a valuable component of broader organizational strategies.
Give someone a call today.
For those of us who facilitate for a living the question of online vs virtual dogs is constantly. The surge of good online technologies has enabled participation across massive distances at very little financial and environmental cost. A good online facilitator (and they are NOT common) can create a warm and effective dialogic container using virtual tools. Online tools are useful and online spaces are a brilliant option for accessibility. They help in all kinds of ways. Since well before the pandemic I have offered courses and workshops online but I have to admit that I still prefer face to face especially if I know what we are doing requires building a strong and enduring relational field.
Yesterday a prospective client told me for the first time that they no longer do zoom trainings for their staff. It is not a good use of their training budget because staff don’t like it, it’s is not effective and by now most folks have figured out how to be online with as little participation and attention as possible. As a teacher I too find this state of affairs to be pervasive and I expressed my admiration for this policy.
This person is pointing to the biggest problem I have with online: it doesn’t seem to build the enduring relational field that face to face meetings do. For transactional outcomes I suspect online is fine but if you spend all of your time relating to people mediated through technology, I suspect that it has an enduring negative effect on relationality, and therefore long term sustainability of a team’s culture and intangible outcomes.
I’d welcome research on this. Today I came across an article in my feed that reports on a court case from Ontario that ruled on the question of whether online was the appropriate forum for a settlement conference. The judge ruled it was and the article summarizes his findings this way:
Spiegelman does not state that mandatory mediations should presumptively be virtual, nor does it elevate technology over judgment. Justice MacLeod was careful not to replace one rigid default with another. None of this will surprise experienced mediators or counsel. But the decision carefully probes the lingering assumption that physical attendance is inherently superior and reframes face-to-face presence as a question of process design, evidence, and proportionality.
For mediators and counsel this confirms the reality and post-COVID experience that virtual and hybrid processes are no longer provisional. They are part of how mediation in civil justice now operates and they will be evaluated by courts by considerations of function, not nostalgia.
This case provides a clear message. Courts will have little patience for procedural skirmishing over mediation logistics unless a genuine process concern is identified as the issue. What drives settlement is not the room, but the readiness of the participants, the authority at the table, and the quality of the process design.
Spiegelman is a reminder that, in every mediation, form should follow function and disputes about form should not be allowed to derail the goal of resolution.
The article points out that there is little evidence to suggest that there are differences in outcomes between online vs in person settlement conferences. My observation is that this is probably true depending on what you consider the outcome to be. If the outcome is simply “a settlement” then perhaps this is the case. But alternative dispute resolution, practicesd more broadly, can also be about conflict transformation, relationship repair, and enduring accountability.
To that end I looked for some research that discussed this further. To my surprise there was very little. I would have thought over the past five years that justice system researchers might be interested in this question. but perhaps they were simply not asking the RIGHT question. Also, it should be said that I didn’t scour the entire internet for answers!
But I did find this paper from Paul Kyrgis and Brock Flynn at the University of Montana: The Efficacy of Mandatory Mediation in Courts of Limited Jurisdiction: A Case Study from the Missoula Justice Court.
The authors examined a number of landlords-tenant disputes to see if virtual conferences were effective in not just settling a case but creating an enduring settlement. To do that they simply looked at whether cases returned to court.
Finally, remote mediation appears to have mixed results. Remote mediation has undeniable benefits in facilitating participation and program scalability. But those benefits come at a cost. The ultimate settlement rate for remote mediations was a full ten percentage points lower than the aggregate ultimate settlement rate. That lower ultimate settlement rate suggests that remote mediation may not foster the same level of accountability or engagement as in-person sessions.
Their full paper is worth reading for the literature review and their methods. They alos spend a lot of time discussing all the various factors that may or may not contribute to enduring settlements and the cases that make up their sample. And I am definitely extrapolating from their conclusions a bit when I say that something happens face to face that builds relational accountability.
But still, this is one useful way to look at what else happens in face to face meetings vs online because in dispute resolution I surmise that some forms of relationship repair helps to make the settlement enduring.
Those of us responsible for designing and hosting meetings of all know in our bones that something different happens when we are all in the room together. We know that relationships come into play much differently. we know that strong fields are built and these are essential for building enduring results.
Six years after our pandemic started do we finally have data to be able to look at this question? If you know of good research in this field drop it in the comments.
I was recently reflecting on Vaclav Havel‘s essay “The Power of the Powerless.” Acts of living in truth are critical for recovering power from those that have stolen it and are using it for oppressive purposes. Havel’s work has long inspired me and underpins the basis of how I see good dialogic work and participatory leadership. Small democratic acts of participation,collaboration, co-creation, inclusion and relationship are critical. There is no scale at which these are not critical if one values a world in which we participate together in building a future that serves all.
I was quite startled to hear Mark Carney quote Havel yesterday in his speech in Davos. Carney told some truths for which he is rightly being lauded. But as a Prime Minister he has a lot of work to do to build a society here at home where the most vulnerable don’t get steamrolled for the expediency of his large scale power moves.
I believe a lot of things can and must happen simultaneously to act within a world which has had much uncertainty and unpredictability introduced to it so quickly.
I am not prepared to give up a hope for a world of participatory and relational power alliances, especially here in Canada and especially with First Nations (seek out Christi Belcourt’s writing on this on Facebook, if you dare) I understand the need for speed but I also caution us all not to set aside things like justice, sustainability, and inclusion of the otherwise marginalized at the table lest we build the new system based on emergency measures and forget to be a society that stays committed to human rights, justice and environmental care, even if we don’t always get that right. I don’t believe one negates the other.
Doubling down on AI, defense, and fossil fuel energy production takes us towards a future where the wealth will be generated for the few who currently have the power with resources that are non renewable. Communities and ecosystems will be devastated as the costs are externalized for more generations. What assurances are there that these moves will build better and more resilient societies? Who will be asked to sacrifice for this future? Will we both defend ourselves from larger powers so that we can build a long term and effective education and health care system? Where we support and build up our natural ecosystems.
I don’t have answers. But I ask, what other ways can we align middle power nations that is built on the strength of relationship and long term care for people and planet? If the global system of power and economics needs to be realigned, what is the range of choices we have? How might we expand that range?
Carney has achieved what the entrepreneurs coveted “first mover’s advantage.” As a Canadian, based on the policy decisions he has made domestically, I am unsure how he will use it. In his speech his lauds his domestic accomplishments:
Since my government took office, we have cut taxes on incomes, on capital gains and business investment. We have removed all federal barriers to interprovincial trade. We are fast-tracking a trillion dollars of investment in energy, AI, critical minerals, new trade corridors and beyond
And yet. Every provincial health care system in Canada is currently in a crisis. Affordability continues to price an entire generation out of their start in the world. Our post-secondary education systems are failing because we underfunded them, forced them to rely on high paying international students, and then stopped that immigration program. Wealth inequality is the biggest threat to our survival as a democracy. And yet we still cut taxes.
I can envisage a dystopian world where AI, oil and weapons are the currency that just gets spent in a hyperscaled and hegemonic battle for supremacy among the few. What can the rest of us expect from this?
Yesterday Carney said “You cannot “live within the lie” of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.” That is true. And yet does he not see to see how his latest moves to fast track projects like an oil pipeline to the west coast reflect exactly this approach via a vis First Nations?
Carney also said “if you are not at the table you are on the menu.” That is a chilling statement to me because, despite the outpouring of pride and excitement about how he named the current global order, what he is proposing puts most of us on the menu. Carney’s commitment to a doubling down of neoliberal principles as the basis of his invitation to fight does nothing to address the pressing challenges faced by most of the victims of the global experiment of the last 45 years. I hope he changes that stance but I don’t think he will.
It is no surprise to most of us in Canada that Carney has become a fairly traditional “progressive conservative.” Most of us voted for him because he was preferable to the current conservative party’s populism which was based on outrage baiting and very little cogent policy. Things have become so bad in the world that we missed Brian Mulroney.
As for Havel, his wisdom is perennial. Carney’s speech is good but I encourage you all to read Havel. Just because the Prime Minister quoted him does not mean that the rest of us don’t need his strategy and tactics. We – most of us – are on the menu, remember. And Carney is not the green grocer.
We have a big job ahead of us. If we are to defend ourselves against threats of the global superpowers we need to do a much better job of talking about what makes us different. If our sovereignty matters, we need to say a lot more about why. And if someone whatever Carney is proposing “wins,” then what are building with the peace that follows?
After a long career in politics culminating in five years as Canada’s ambassador to the UN, Bob Rae has some opinions on Canada’s place in the world and our ability to meet collective crises together. CanadaLand interviewed him today.
The Economist today is also speculating on what’s going on and how NATO and Europe might face the current crisis. They spend a few minutes trying to figure out what’s motivating the US interest in Greenland and I couldn’t help thinking that, in an effort to expand the size of the US on a map, someone is obsessed with the Mercator projection which makes far northern islands look bigger than entire continents.
My neighbour Don Shafer’s substack is a really good extended exploration of dialogue and democratic participation and today he names an important aspect of the apathy and overwhelm that citizens are feeling.
What many of us experience as chaos is better understood as administration.
Robert Arnold writes that power hasn’t advanced only through spectacle, but through paperwork, procedure, and pace. Executive authority expands while legislatures stall. Oversight is performed rather than enforced. Institutions remain visible, but unreachable. The rituals of democracy continue even as their capacity to interrupt harm thins.
That produces a uniquely destabilizing effect. When the forms remain intact, but outcomes fail, it becomes harder to know where responsibility lies or where pressure can still be applied. In that environment, outrage becomes ambient. Constant. Untethered. And all of it happens faster than it can be named, faster than oversight, faster than response, faster than writing this Substack.
We teach the Chaordic path, the dance between chaos and order that enables self-organization, as an idea that helps leaders and facilitators understand the boundaries of action between those that enable participation and those that induce apathy. At the opposite ends of control and unbounded chaos, which we call “chamos” lies apathy or, as Dave Pollard has written, cultural acedia.
Don nails this. What we can sometimes experience as complete chaos can actually be control and vice versa. It doesn’t matter because the result is the same. I think authoritarians understand this. It’s quite easy push people to apathy through control or chamos. The challenge, especially collectively, is maintaining the structure and form that enables and channels the natural creativity and unpredictability of life towards the emergence of life-giving contexts. Bootstrapping our collective capacity to do that from a place of widespread disenfranchisement and dehumanization is the work right now. As it always has been.