My friend Adam Yukelson wrote and asked me about how I hold questions instead of goals: I was speaking with Gabe Donnelly last night and she was sharing a conversation the two of you had last year in which you said you don’t set goals, but rather, live in a question or questions. We were both drawn to this idea, and curious how it works for you. Do these questions tend to be broad and existential? Short-term and specific? Both? Neither? Are there subsets of questions? How do you know when a new …
I am helping to design an interesting gathering in June of next year that will be part of a bigger initiative to shift the values conversation around sustainability. It’s interesting for all kinds of reasons, not the least of which is the conscious invitation of indigenous peoples, social entreprenuers and leaders who are firmly connected to the biggest and most influential systems in our world. We’re seeing what we can do together. The initiative is called Beyond Sustainability: Cultivating a community of leadership from a platform of reverence. After an intense and creative weekend of designing, here are some of …
Myriam Laberge posted a link to a video of David Gershon talking about what it takes to take change to scale. What struck me about the video was not so much his message as what it actually is. It’s a “trailer” for a 2007 conference sponsored by the Omega Institute. As an artful act of invitation, this is briliant. How many of us outside the movie industry consider making trailers to gatherings? Putting audio and video to work in this way is a fantastic way to get the message out, introduce people to ideas that will …
From George Nemeth some a link to this post, which I repeat in full: Today, about 35 local and regional organizations, foundations, companies and banks came together to support and actively engage the City of East Cleveland in its strategy for revitalization and transformation. No, not three, but 35. It began with an extremely simple concept, but often hard to do. We asked. We invited individuals to attend. We asked for engagement and questions. We asked for people to envision new partnerships, not based on previous relationships, but new ones. We invited individuals in a personal way to participate in …
Last year I was invited to give a talk on the shapes of community engagement for a conference sponsored by the BC Treaty Commission called Forging Linkages and Finding Solutions. This is the slide deck I used and here is a transcript of my talk.