A friend sent me a piece called “There has to be a Big Crises” by Michael Kane about what it will take for Americans (and I would say Canadians too) to wake up to Peak Oil. The article paints a disparaging picture about the ability of North American leadership to wake up to the creeping decline – James Kunstler’s “The Long Emergency” – before it’s too late.
Having spent the past two weeks in the States, and the better part of next week there too, I agree that the signs are not good. In Maui the radio is filled with ads for loan companies and car dealerships aiming to finance or sell you the “sharpest looking trucks and SUV’s on this Island.” Even as Americans are dying for hegemony in the Middle East, as the country bankrupts itself for a war to secure oil, conservation seems the last thing on the minds of the mainstream. The American way of life keeps chugging along, hastening the decline rather than seeking to stave it off.
So perhaps it will take a crises to change minds, but if that’s the case, I don’t like America’s chances at the moment. Katrina was a wake up call, if ever there was one, for how America might handle a big crises, and it didn’t fare too well. One of the big things that was missing was an active community sector that was able to take care of itself. The centralization of FEMA, the States and the local government was a bottle neck for action, and eventually the stories of real help and coping came from people that took it into their own hands to steal buses, distribute food care for children and tend to the sick and elderly.
That was in contrast to the way in which parts of Sri Lanka survived the tsunami last year. In two talks (mp3s at audiodharma.org), Joanna Macy told the story of Sarvodaya, a Buddhist organization that cultivates a spiritual practice of giving and community building called Sharmadana. The lessons learned from how Sarvodaya dealt with the tsunami include the fact that biggest way they had prepared was simply but cultivating these practices over years and years of work. When the tsunami struck, they simply went to work as usual, able to cope with the massive demands on organizers because of their training and practice.
I have spoken with David Korten and others about this, and all agree that practice of community is the thing that will mitigate the inevitable emergency. As facilitators this can become our prime responsibility. After Katrina hit, Peggy Holman, Tom Atlee, Mark Jones and I convened a series of conversations with leaders in the dialogue and deliberation community to see what could be done about helping people in the Gulf Coast implement wise action. Since then, a larger group of people have done all kinds of work down there, using conversation cafes, appreciative inquiry and other processes to bring the community into a space where it can participate in rebuilding its own future.
America in particular has a grand tradition of helping in community. Traditionally Americans helped each other out when times were hard, raised barns together, shared food with one another, created great institutions of philanthropy, charity and care. But in the last century these quaint customs were sacrificed as the country became more urbanized and as a result, there is a loss of knowledge about what it’s like to live in community. Suburbs and exurbs and car and consumer culture do not contribute to this community. Mega churches and gated communities are examples of a “turning in” to help, not “turning out” to lend a hand. The fragmented and insular nature of American (and Canadian) urban and suburban life is the Achilles heel of dealing with crises that the leadership says is coming.
So let’s not wish for this crises before its time, and let’s not expect the leadership to be prepared. Anyone who works in community, be they helpers, facilitators, or others has a treasure to offer, and that is to seed and practice the art of community now. Whether you invite people to come together to build something, play music, feed people, improve things or just talk and muse upon things, these practices are the key to communities surviving. Cultivate intimate connections and community locally RIGHT NOW and then let us turn together to face the crises. By then, as the Sarvodaya teachers tell us, we’ll be able to handle it.
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I’ve been facilitating groups for as long as I can remember, going back probably 20 years to high school when I ran both informal and organized youth groups with my peers. It has probably been about twelve or thirteen years ago that I started to actually pay attention to what I was doing. But only in the last five or six years, as I have been facilitating full time, have I noticed a deepening in my practice.
Work as practice. And by practice I mean something akin to a spiritual practice, whereby one undertakes a life of value and meaning through living in a particular way. When I feel my facilitation practice deepening, I notice that what I do is becoming more and more aligned with who I am.
I am starting to see just how important that is in the work I do with groups. When I was first starting out, I used to collect “tools” for working with groups. I had what amounted to a cookbook of ideas for working through different processes. I got some success in simply following the instructions and helping the group get to where they wanted to go. For most groups, and perhaps even a lot of facilitators, this is enough. It certainly served my work for a number of years.
The thing that changed that, and caused me to deepen my practice, was noticing what happened when things went wrong. Occasionally groups strayed far from the expectation I had for them and when the movie departs from the script, the facilitator’s REAL work begins. In these situations What I noticed was my own anxiety and panic about being in the unfolding chaos. I had very little idea what to do, and on a couple of occasions, things just went very wrong.
In reflecting on these experiences I realized what I was lacking was chaordic confidence, a term I appropriated from my friend Myriam Laberge. Chaordic confidence describes the ability to stay in chaos and trust that order will emerge. It’s a subtle art, but it is essential to working with groups who are themselves confronting chaos. If you can stay in the belief that order will emerge from what Sam Kaner calls “The Groan Zone” then the group has something to hitch its horse to, so to speak. But if you are married to your tools, and things go off the rails, you feel like a fish out of water, and you flop around unable to deal with the uncertainty around you. I’ve seen it happen – we probably all have – and it’s not pretty.
Developing chaordic confidence is more than acquiring more tools. It is about integrating an approach to life and work that is anchored in a a set of principles and values that serves our clients. For me these values include believing in the wisdom of the group, trusting that chaos produces higher levels of order and seeing conflict as passion that can be harnessed in the service of progress.
I began looking at some of the tools and processes and approaches I was using and started to realize that the things that worked for me and that brought a better experience to my clients, were processes rooted in the same values that I try to live. This weblog,tagged as “living in open space” is largely about that journey to live and work with the principles of Open space Technology – principles that amount to creating a practice of invitation. Living a life of invitation is a blast.
And there is more. My repetoire of approaches is expanding into a full range of what Toke Paludan Moeller calls “hosting practices.” And as I adopt and work with things like the world cafe and appreciative inquiry, I realize that the values and principles underlying those processes feel authentic to me. When I use those approaches to working with groups, my clients are getting ME, and not just a set of tools. I try to bring my whole self to this work now, with a large dose of chaordic confidence rooted in principles and values that link what I do with who I am. Doing and Being meet in the board room or the retreat centre.
We facilitators don’t talk much about this stuff, but I think it actually preoccupies a lot of our time and thinking. My own preparation for group involves many hours of design and reflection on process and principles so that I can go to work offering the highest level of service to the people with whom I am working. And for me, this means reflecting on what is core to my life and work.
So this is a long winded way of offering some insight into facilitation practice, perhaps mostly for those who are new to this path and who are realizing, as I am, that there is a life time of learning about oneself involved in this work. So as a service to those who might be interested in developing this deeper connection between life lived and tools used, I offer a set of links to principles underlying the processes I work with (and some I don’t work with!) in groups and communities. I offer these up both as a guide to group work and as a compendium of principles and teachings about living. See what you think…
Principles of process and life
- Open Space Technology
- Appreciative Inquiry
- Dialogue
- Circle
- World Cafe
- Dynamic Facilitation
- Chaordic principles
- Four fold way
My recipe book is changing. It’s no longer about tools for group work, but is instead a collection of teachings about living a true and good life of service to heart and community.
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George Nemeth got riffing on my post about project management as jazz and a really cool conversation evolved in his comments (scroll down). One of the comments from John Galt challenged the idea that strategy can be created in an emergent and improvisiational framework:
The jazz metaphor is apt for improvisation. Not for strategy as we are speaking about it. One nice definition of improvisation in strategy is the act of �creating strategy as it is being implemented� or making it up as you go along. Now, classic strategy is a process for thoughtful managers in mindful organizations. Mindful � is a phase that Karl Weick, a strategy guru at U of M has discussed at length. In fact, Weick�s article outlining lessons for organizational strategy from high-performance firefighters in HBR may be a good read in the present context.
Nonetheless, a key point I would suggest is to keep straight that the improvisation idea is great for implementing strategy NOT for developing strategy. Two separate processes � currently there is no strategy for implementing, it appears.The new organization and its projected final shape appears to fit some of the criteria laid out in earlier comments � strong nodes, intersections of energy and resource networks, proven leaders rather than retreads, midsize and large corp. players who will not tolerate chatter masquerading as action, etc. So, it appears to have the right make up to finally help strategy development happen, with or despite the local political leadership.Also, strategy cannot be a networked concept or a movement based idea. No matter how flat an organization is, it needs a head � a leader � to ultimately forge strategy � a direction � and lead the rest of the organization. It cannot be a multi-headed hydra or a shapeless amoeba. Sure, individuals and all-comers may �feel included� but it will not go anywhere soon.
Organization-wide exercises in appreciative inquiry, for example, have not taken off after years of pushing the idea, in comparison to classic strategic planning (or its cousin, contingency planning). Appreciative inquiry may be best for pushing organizations – who have reached a steady state of �good� � to higher planes of �excellence.�
This is an interesting post on several levels. I want to instincively challenge the notion that traditional strategic planning has actually worked. I mean it’s probably fine for actually making a building, but the moment there are self-organizing processes involved (markets, networks, groups) then rigid top-down strategic planning goes out the window. I might not be giving John enough credit here, but I feel like strategy for process, like the plan for a city, could stand to incorporate a lot more improvisation.
In the context of a city, the thing about having someone “in charge” of developing strategy is that it’s kind of a mug’s game. For one thing, the basic fact that 2.5 million people will improvise its implementation should be enough to make planners give up the notions of tight control of its development. Howdo you anticipate the hive mind of 2.5 million people? You can’t do it by decree, not in a democracy at least (and not truly in a dictatorship either, or so says Jonathan Schell). Instead, you need to create spaces where improvisation can flourish and thereby invite the citizens create their own city.
The same goes for organizations too by the way. This is not a case of the “lunatics running the asylum” either. It simply acknowledges that self-organization and improvisation are critical to success and incorporating these dynamics into planning anticipates the kind of outcomes that create and sustain robust enterprises.
Strategy is usually very vague, especially for big cities, and that’s not necessarily a problem. Citizens will claim space, enterprises will emerge, residential units will get developed, markets will spring up and disappear. For sure some people in local government have the power to set parameters, be it by zoning or by laws or taxation, but I don’t think of this a classical strategic planning. If an area next to an industrial area is zoned residential to improve its character and developers don’t want to touch it and the market stays away, then all the strategy in the world isn’t going to get housing built there.
So now you need to think about including many more people in the development of strategy so that you can make good decisions based on the values of those that actually control things: the citizens. Power acting alone is dumb power. Power acting with heart, as represented by the values and meaning that citizens bring to a place is smart power. And that informed power can rely on good planning to help it make the smart move in one direction or another, so that power, plan and people are moving together.
When you start tipping in that direction, then strategy development starts to get quite imnprovisational, and that is not a bad thing. In fact it seems to me that it makes the whole project more robust because it acknowledges right off the top that there are deep self-organizing principles that will come into to play whether they are built in or not. So better to build them in in the beginning.
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I’ve been an autodidact all my life. My learning programs have had little to do with what I was fed in school or in the approved training programs of the various places I’ve worked. In fact, when I was with the Department of Indian Affairs, I tried to initiate a new learning program to foster leadership. I advocated giving every employee their $800 a year training allotment and allowing them to spend it on whatever learning program they wanted. If employees chose to take the government sanctioned filing training, that’s fine. If people wanted to spend the money on a 13 week cabinet making course, no problem. As long as the money was spoent on a learning program, it was fair game.
Naturally, you can imagine that the powers that be in the federal government were a little nervous about the notion of public servants spending taxpayer’s dollars on cabinet making classes, but my point was a bigger one. It is in learning about something we are passionate for that we develop the capacity to make connections to the world of work. We become better thinkers when we can connect the experience of learning to the rest of our lives. Despite the fact that the Government of Canada has a pretty good management development centre, it’s a tragedy that the vast majority of career public servants to go through life with the the only learning taking place in labs where they study contract management or learn how to write replies to letters sent to their Ministers. In that respect, I think that we are not serving our public servants, or those that work in our corporations, within our society. Connect learning to real passion and you have employees who suddenly discover that there is something that they care about. Triggering that reaction leads to them finding other ways to bring an autodidactic approach to the workplace.
And this is the time for that. We are living in an era that I fantatsized about 25 years ago when I first saw the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Even as a 10 year old boy I knew right away that the Hitchhiker’s Guide was the thing I wanted. A little handheld device that contained all of the knowledge known about the galaxy. Twenty five years later, I’m hooked up on the web to a fat pipe, I can carry a PDA and learn just about anything i want to. I can even take a course at MIT.
All of this is to illustrate that we live in an era where networks can serve autodidacts beautifully. Not just data networks either, but social networks, communities of practice and learning exchanges. We suddenly have the capacity, each one of us, to live in a world of rapid change, adjusting our learning styles to suit the needs of our lives:
Change is racing along so fast that the old learn-in-advance methods are no longer sufficient. While network infrastructure is evolving exponentially, we humans have been poking along. Because of the slow pace of evolution, most human wetware is running obsolete code or struggling with a beta edition. We�ve got to reinvent ourselves and get back on the fast track.In a world where we don�t know what�s coming next, what constitutes good learning? We�re in whitewater now, and smooth-water sailing rules no longer apply. In whitewater, successful learning means moving the boat downstream without being dumped, preferably with style. In life, successful learning means prospering with people and in networks that matter, preferably enjoying the relationships and knowledge.
Learning is that which enables you to participate successfully in life, at work and in the groups that matter to you. Learners go with the flow. Taking advantage of the double meaning of �network,� to learn is to optimize one�s networks.
The concept that learning is making good connections frees us to think about learning without the chimera of boring classrooms, irrelevant content and ineffective schooling. Instead, the network model lets us take a dispassionate look at our systems while examining nodes and connections, seeking interoperability, boosting the signal-to-noise ratio, building robust topologies, balancing the load and focusing on process improvement.
Does looking at learning as networking take humans out of the picture? Quite the opposite.
Most learning is informal; a network approach makes it easier, more productive and more memorable to meet, share and collaborate. Emotional intelligence promotes interoperability with others. Expert locators connect you to the person with the right answer. Imagine focusing the hive mind that emerges in massive multiplayer games on business. Smart systems will prescribe the apt way to demonstrate a procedure, help make a decision or provide a service, or transform an individual�s self-image. Networks will serve us instead of the other way around.
It’s a tragedy that we still rely on classrooms full of bureaucrats doing paperwork as the paragon of corporate learning.