John Dumbrille on our recent efforts here on Bowen Island: That self governance will be better enabled using web tools is probable. After all, there are economic drivers (‘more for less’) propelling it. But probable success factors are all about money and efficiency and intention, spirit and design. Thinking the litmus test is – does this BOWEGOV etc help people come home to themselves. How to measure this may be ‘happy’ indices, or, put another way – ‘spirit of giving/sharing’ indices. I am dedicated to the face to face. Inasmuch as these tools bring us into generous relationship with …
Tenneson Woolf from a harvest poem called How Are You Navigating in the Time of Dramatic Change?: I sound like I don’t know what I am doing, but I do know. I find my way in the immediately infront, the next simple elegant step. The next simple elegant step describes my approach to action. Recently, in our little consulting firm we have adopted a project status process that involves writing down only the next step for each of our projects. When you take the to do list and write it as one thing to do only, one elegant …
This post from Jack is so useful and powerful that I’m quoting it whole here: One of my seatmates from Phili to Boston last night was Portland’s city planner, a gentle giant of an AfricanAmerican man who spent the post-war Bosnian years doing amazing work in economic development and country re-building. He lead the first public school integration in the country, a school where Serb, Croat and Muslim children went to school at the same building in 8 hour shifts in order to prevent any inter-contact. Taking key leaders and school administrators for a month in Geneva, he asked …
Finally settling into Peter Block’s book, Community: The Structure of Belonging. My partner has been hoarding it since it arrived a couple of months ago. In the opening chapters, Block takes inspiration from the likes of John McKnight, Robert Putnam, Christopher Alexander and others to crate some basic patterns for collective transformation. These are beautiful and quite in line with the work I do and the things we teach through the Art of Hosting. In fact, I’ll probably add this list to our workshop workbook. Here is the list, with my thoughts attached. From John McKnight: Focus on gifts. …
On the OSLIST, Marc Steinlin posed a few questions that I took a stab at answering: What means “holding space”? What is the function, if demonstrably one can do without? The $100,000 question! Several of us over the years have written things on it (I wrote a whole book trying to understand it) but it is an elusive process. And I think it changes with the scale and size of the group AND most importantly with the pre-existing depth of their own relationship. If I was to generalize I would say that holding space means helping the group …