Last night in the closing circle, my friend Pauline LeBel offered an observation that so much of our conversation, informed as it is by the great cosmological story, is very human- centric. She asked “What can we learn from the great love affair between the sun and earth?” It is a love affair in which the Sun asks for nothing in return. A group of us today took a walk on the land as a response to that observation. I posted a session in the Open Space today called “How does a forest change a mind?” We walked into the …
I just had lunch with Jessie Sutherland from Worldview Strategies. It was one of those encounters that was a long time in coming: we both seem to run in circles that intersect and I’ve known about her work for about a year but until today we had never met. I first became aware of Jessie’s work through an email inviting me to join a conference call on residential school reconciliation. Following the links, I found her website and her company, Worldview Strategies. Jessie’s life and work is about reconciliation and peacemaking and it intersects with my work on a number …
Today a post by Peter Buys on the OSLIST caught my eye… I am fully convinced that Open Space is a marvelous tool to stimulate individual creativity; spontaneous collaboration (for the duration of the Open Space event); and an expression of trust in people by the client (in other words the ones who bought / decided for the Open Space event)…Many if not most Open Spaces are only very short blips (events) in typically much longer processes of change. But the Open Space does not really address that issue nor does it really offer (as far as I know) options …
From Doug at FootprintsintheWind.com: “Conversation changes the world. To suggest to someone that their ideas will be heard and acted upon is the most radical thing we can do. Any time we listen to someone that is what we are conveying” One of the most fundamental teachings for me from the Art of Hosting is about attention to design. When we sit down to consciously create conversational spaces in which people are invited to show up whole, we can have a significant impact on the work at hand. Meetings are popularly knocked for being all talk and no action. Business …
I was hanging out with my mates and fellows from the Art of Hosting yesterday here on Bowen Island. Any time I get to spend with these guys changes the way I see things. Yesterday Toke Moeller was describing a game he has developed called Flowgame, which is a way of asking questions and hosting conversations to sustain flow on these questions. In passing he mentioned that in order to play, you have to have a real question, and he described a real question as a question where you have something at stake. That’s a wicked definition if you think …