Heading to Columbus Ohio today to teach at the 2011 Authentic Leadership in Action Institute with my friends Pawa Haiyupis and Tim Merry. We’re teaching a module on indigenous wisdom, ancient wisdom, universal wisdom. It’s new for me to be doing this, kind of a chance to sum up my last 20 years of learning, living and growing as a human being. I’m nervous and mindful of elder Herb Joe’s name for us: “poor weak human beings.”
I always feel humble coming to ALIA and this year I feel maybe more humble than ever. Our module is fully subscribed and many friends and colleagues will be with us. On the eve of the work I find myself far more curious about what I am about to learn rather than what I have to teach. And immediately that frame of mind brings me back in a deep and powerful way to the first steps I took learning about Anishinaabe culture and practice back in 1987.
So I sit here waiting to depart on a delayed flight to Toronto, grateful for all of the indigenous teachers in my life. Remembering Tom Little, Paul Bourgeois, Edna Manitowabi, Jake Thomas, Manny Boyd, Art Soloman, Marlene Castellano, Eddie Benton-Banai, Shirley Williams, Wayne Kaboni, Fred Wheatley, Bruce Elijah, William Commanda, Sylvia Maracle, George Cook, Umeek, Fred Johnson, Lila Brown, Cease Wyss, Dustin Rivers, Grace Nielsen, Willie Charlie, Leonard George, Pawa Haiyupis, Wally Samuel, Herb Joe, Satsan, Luana Busby-Neff, Taupouri Tangaro, Michael Elkington, Orlando Pioche, Mikk Sarv, Mick Dodson, Peter DuBois, David Newhouse and Sonny Diabo.
All of these men and women, some older, and some younger than me, are my teachers. they have shared some deep kindness with me, some important teaching that has brought me to a place of belonging either in myself or in the place in which I live, and I am grateful to them all, and many more besides.
As I head out on this trip, this quote seems important:
“The circle is one of the strongest shapes in nature. When we see the world from a Native American perspective, that circle shapes our vision. We find circles and the idea of the circle everywhere, from the shapes of most Native dwellings to the view of the world as a series of continual, repeating cycles. Human life, itself, is seen as a circle, as we come from our mother, the Earth, when we are born and return to that same earth when we die” . Lesson stories keep the Native people of each generation from repeating errors which their ancestors made. And today, because (as Sitting Bull is reputed to have said) “there are no longer just Indians here,” that circle of stories is desperately needed…”
Analyse this...!
Yesterday I had a chance to grab lunch with Dave Pollard in our local coffee shop on Bowen Island. One of the things we talked about was the supremacy of analysis in the world and why that is a problem when it comes to operating in complex domains.
I have been intentionally working a lot lately with Dave Snowdon et. al.’s Cynefin framework to support decision making in various domains. It is immensely helpful in making sense of the messy reality of context and exercises like anecdote circles and butterfly stamping are very powerful, portable and low tech processes.
Cynefin is also useful in that it warns us against a number of fatal category errors people make when trying to design solutions to problems. The most serious of these is remaining complacent in a simple context which has the effect of tipping the system to chaos. Nearly as infuriating and problematic to me is the applicability of analysis to complex domains.
Analysis has a dominant place in organizational and community life. It provides a sense of security that we can figure things out and operate in the space of the known. If we just analyse a situation enough we can identify all if the aspects if the problem and choose a solution. Of course in the complicated domain, where causes and effects can be known even though they are separated in time and space, analysis works beautifully. But in complex domains, characterized by emerged phenomenon, analysis tends to externalize and ignore that which it cannot account for with the result that solutions often remain dangerously blind to surprise and “black swan” events.
The Cyenfin framework advocates working with stories and social constructed meaning to sense and act in complex spaces. Where as analysis relies on objective data and meaning making models to create rules and tools, action in complex spaces uses stories and patterns to create principles and practices which help us to create small actions – probes in the system – that work in a nuanced way with emergence.
In this respect culture matters. The stories that are told and the practices thy are used to make sense of those stories is the method for acting in complex space. This distinction us helpful for me working with indigenous communities where program management may rely on analytical tools (and culture is stamped out in the process) but practices need to be grounded in culturally based responses. Using stories and social meaning making restores culture to its traditional role of helping groups of humans move together in complex domains while using analysis more appropriately.
Just off a call where we were discussing what it takes to shift paradigms in indigenous social development. We noted that we hear a lot from people that they are busy and challenged and they need clear paths forward otherwise they are wasting their time.
I have a response to that.
We don’t know what we are doing. Everything we have been doing so far has resulted in what we have now. The work of social change – paradigm shifting social innovation – is not easy, clear or efficient. If you are up for it you will confront some of the the following, all of the time:
- Confusion about what we are doing.
- A temptation to blame others for where we are at.
- Conflict with people that tell you you are wasting their time.
- A feeling of being lost, overwhelmed or hopeless.
- Fear that if you try something and it fails, you will be fired, excluded or removed.
- Demands for accountability and reprimands if things don’t work out.
- Worry that you are wasting your time and that things are not going according to plan.
- A reluctance to pour yourself into something in case it fails.
- A reticence to look at behaviours that are holding you back.
Social change is not easy. Asking for it to be made easy is not fair. Leadership in this field needs to be able to host all of these emotional states, and to help people hold each other through very trying times. It is about resilience, the kind that is needed both when things fall apart AND when things take too long to come back together.
Everyone needs to be a leader here, everyone needs to recognize these states in themselves and hold others in compassion when they see them arising in others. Working with the emergent unknown requires pacing, a big heart, and a stout challenge. To create the experiments that help us forward we need to be gentle with judgment, but fiercely committed to harvesting and learning. We need to cultivate nuance, discernment, advocacy and inquiry rather than jumping to conclusions and demanding rational analytical responses to every situation.
You up for that?
History is made in little leaps and bounds. A treaty has been signed on the west coast of Vancouver Island, and this month it came into effect. Here is the story.
Very interesting link here. Tipu Ake ki te Ora means “growing from within, ever upwards towards wellbeing.”
We share the Tipu Ake ki te Ora Lifecycle – an easily applied, and action focused leadership model that exploits Kiwi style teamwork. It provides new tools for organisations that wish to grow into dynamic living entities, rather than just behaving like machines.
via The Tipu Ake Lifecycle – An organic Leadership Model for Innovative Organisations.