I have great clients. Most of the people who end up working with me do so because they want to work in radically more participatory ways, opening up processes to more voices, more leadership. In conference settings this means scheduling much more dialogue or running the whole thing using Open Space Technology and dispensing with pre-loading content. But there persists, especially in the corporate and government sectors, a underlying nervousness in doing this. common objections to making things more participatory include: It’s too risky We’re not ready for it I’m worried it won’t work There won’t be enough structure People …
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 …
From an email sent to a friend of mine (a Mohawk, for context!) about the art of harvesting. It includes an uncited hat tip to the Cynefin framework, and focuses on his particular field of education: Harvesting, as you know being from a tribe of long standing agrarian practice, (!) is constituted of all kinds of things. Mostly though, you need an artifact and a feedback loop. What is the tangible piece I can hold in my hand and point to, and how does it fold back into the system to create learning. many systems do well at harvesting the …
If you want to learn the way another culture thinks, listen to their stories. But don’t just listen to any stories; listen to the stories they have about how knowledge is gained. That gives you the key to understanding all of the other stories and teaches you everything you need to know about the experiences you need to have to gain knowledge. Thinking about the Nuu-chah-nulth methodology of oosumich today which is the way of stilling oneself to listen to the world and enter a dialogue with the unseen. My friend Pawa says that prayer is the act of speaking …
Johnnie Moore had an interesting thought this morning: Jeff Jarvis talks about the Gutenberg Parenthesis. Those who bemoan the supposed short attention spans of the networked generation, typically measure this by the capacity or willingness to read a book cover-to-cover. This assumes that reading books is normal; but what about the vast span of human history before books? Perhaps we’re seeing a reversion to ways of knowing that were diminished by the printed word… to a more oral culture in which remixing is natural. This reminds me of the book, The Alphabet and the Goddess which also suggests that reading …