Just thought I would share this piece of communication from my son’s school. he attends a middle school that has a unique focus on its approach to learning and character development and there is a lot I like about it. I especially like the way there are certain traditions that flow, giving a time for mentorship and responsibility. Check this out: November 1st Late Start It has been a tradition for the grade six class to try and formulate a valid argument (i.e. in the Practical Reasoning class) as to why students should be allowed to come late to school …
In this article, stringing together some obersvations about Louis CK and Mary Halvorson, Seth Colter Walls touches on the wellspring of collaboration. He writes a little of the play that replaces rehearsal for true improvisers, of finding outlets of artistic practice where “no one person is responsible for all the tunes–if tunes are even the order of the day. Such groups aren’t the ones that players use as reputational tent-poles; they’re the ones that successful artists keep going in order to keep the channel for new sounds open. It’s the jazz-world equivalent of Zach Galifianakis’s avant-chat Web-show “Between Two Ferns,” …
Just read an article on how the fear of failure is the greatest thing holding back innovation in the business world. One reads these kinds of articles all the time. The essence is that unless we can let go of fear or deal with our deep need to be in control at all times, innovation is stifled. This is true of course, but I see few articles that talk about how fear of failure in built into the architecture of the organization. We live in an expert driven culture. Kids raised in schools are taught at an early age that …
Here is a little diagram of the chaordic stepping stones mapped onto Sam Kaner’s Diamond of Participation. This is a pretty geeky Art of Hosting map, but essentially it describes the way planning unfolds in practice. The chaordic stepping stones is a tool I use to do a lot of planning. These nine steps help us stay focused on need and purpose and design our structure and outcomes based on that. the first four steps of Need, Purpose, Principles and People are essential elements for the design of an invitation process. Getting clear on these steps helps us to generate …
Yesterday I was giving a webinar and talking about some core Art of Hosting practices. We spent a while covering the four fold practice and then looked at the way in which various archetypal organizational paradigms play out in different organizational settings. I was trying to emphasize the idea of “practice” so that the participants would know that there is no right way of doing this work but rather the work itself is engaging in a constant practice, a constant searching for mastery. Towards the end of the call a participant reflected that all of this was rather too much …