It’s been a couple of days since I’ve been home from Prince Rupert and it’s going to take a long time to fully process the youth suicide prevention summit I facilitated on Thursday. The overwhelming result of that gathering was a profound invitation from youth to connect again with their families, communities and traditional laws.
The biggest hurdle to overcome in working with suicide as a topic is the fear and overwhelming nature of the problem. In many ways it seems ridiculous to choose an appreciative framework to deal with the topic, but that’s what we did. The result of having that approach I think, was that it invited the youth to help us become unstuck in this work, and they replied to the invitation in spades. Around 150 of them showed up to let us know how to get through this.
The biggest lesson from the youth is that the smallest things can make the biggest difference. They shared with us lists of needs and wishes, but most profoundly, they offered a way forward, for it is not enough to simply create new programs. Rather, a new approach is needed, an approach that the youth summed up elegantly with the word “WE.”
I want to share some things I wrote in a report I provided on Friday to a gathering of leaders and policy makers, and see what you readers think. I titled the report “WE” to capture the essence of what the youth were saying, and in doing so I learned that the youth were providing wisdom far beyond their years. My colleague Patricia Vickers and I spent hours reflecting on Thursday night and ended up with this framework for understanding what we saw. It was confirmed on Friday when we put it to people for response and action.
I started the report with a quote from a Nisga’a youth, Peter McKay who spoke about his own struggle against suicide and abuse. In his concluding remarks he said “I�m your brother, I�m your son, I�m your uncle, I�m your father.” From there I carried on:
There were two major lessons from the Inter Nation forum. We learned a great deal about the kinds of things youth want in their communities. But these things are not unfamiliar to us � recreation, education supports, better relationships with police, connection to culture. What makes them different is how youth are engaged around these things. That was the transformative power of the Inter Nation forum. It was no mere conversation and report out. The way the youth approached the work � and the way they were received by leaders, adults, policy makers and others � caused a real shift in energy around the issues of youth suicide and community healing. In a word, it seems that many people became �unstuck� around these issues.
Tackling an issue like youth suicide is difficult for two reasons. First there is immense fear about the issue. We are afraid that if we do anything wrong, life will be held in the balance. Second the issue seems completely overwhelming. We cannot conceive of anything we can do to �fix� the problem. We have no idea where to start, and we have no idea if what we decide to do will have any effect. The problem is huge, systemic and seemingly insurmountable, at least by one person acting alone.
This degree of fear and overwhelming complexity freezes us. It�s hard to take decisive action. It�s hard to think we have found a leverage point. To move past this frozen point, we must find a way to come unstuck. The youth offered us that way yesterday. They invited us to become bigger. They invited us to do things differently, to truly engage and work with them to achieve community transformation.
We can take steps forward that are meaningful if we replicate the way in which the youth were invited to work in the Inter Nation forum and replicate the working relationships we have developed with them. This implies a new kind of relationship with youth, and it means moving ahead on the things we know youth need in a different way. The degree to which we are able to work differently will be the difference between action that makes a change and action that doesn’t.
Choosing �WE�
The youth were very clear with us. They said that the answer to these questions about suicide and community healing is WE. Using the word �WE� has major implications, because it suggests a place we need to arrive at together, a place where youth come to take responsibility for the changes in their communities.
To get there, there are two stages that youth leadership passes through and it�s important to understand those stages. As policy makers and leaders we can play a role in supporting those stages.
These two stages support first of all, the emergence of the youth voice. This is where youth feel that they can stand and speak truth, tell the story of their lives and of the futures they want for themselves. This is the �I� stage.
The second stage occurs when youth are heard. This is the �I � YOU� stage, and it happens when youth get a hearing from those they are talking to. Often we leave our relationships with youth at this level, thinking that if youth have been heard then everything is alright.
But the Inter Nation forum showed us that youth wanted to go beyond the �I � YOU� stage to a stage where �WE� was the norm. �WE� is about youth taking their place in the community and contributing to the future direction and the present situation. They want mutual respect, and mutual engagement in these areas, calling strongly for activities that integrate the whole community, or that involve parents or that involve other members of the community like police and schools. This sentiment can perhaps best be captured by a quote from one youth who said �When we are given respect we give respect.� The role of leaders and communities in developing �WE� is to become like a bowl, open to receiving and holding the leadership and voice of youth so that their contributions can be supported and made meaningful.
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What I and many others noticed at the end of the day was an absence or a decline of fear in the room. It�s not so easy to understand why this happened, but I think it�s useful to think about it because if we are to replicate this kind of experience, we should understand how it was that the youth managed to work in a way that took the fear away.
First, we invited youth to look at what is good. In the policy roundtable dinner on Tuesday night, there was a sense of being overwhelmed at the extent of alienation and loss that our communities and people have experienced and that seems so overwhelming when we think about youth suicide. By choosing five affirmative topics, the working groups invited youth to help us go beyond this alienation and loss and look at their opposites: connection and what we have. This immediately opens up new possibilities. It allows us to live with the fear and at the same time open ourselves to the possibility that we might also be engaging in something that changes everything.
Second, Peter Mackay, the youth quoted at the beginning of this report, invited us to notice that there is no �You and Me� only �We.� Peter�s story is everybody�s story and knowing that we were all going through this, youth, parents, Elders and leaders meant that we could all see a role for ourselves in moving forward. This is very important because it acknowledges that healing one part of the community heals all of it, and it also acknowledges that the pain and sources of pain are multi-generational and can only be addressed with multi-generational responses.
Third, we saw the exemplary openness of leaders and policy makers who were willing to sit with youth and promise to find ways to support them. This was a blessing for youth because it meant they could look at ideas in a way that invites everyone to work together. The focus on community and cultural activities was a clear signal that these youth were looking for answers within themselves and within their communities. As one group of youth wrote �Self sufficient communities so that you are reliant on yourself rather than handouts or money.� There was an acknowledgement and a desire and an explicit invitation from youth to their cultural teachers, Elders, leaders and parents to �work with us.� They invited community connection as a response to the invitation for support and openness. Almost every group of youth wrote about connection to culture and involving their parents in more activities. They want mutuality.
Finally, following on that, it is important to note that the youth seem not to be asking for answers from outside of themselves or their communities. They are looking within, as one Elder said of Peter Mackay�s speech, and finding the answers there. They are asking for help where they need it, but not looking to others to solve these problems. I get a strong sense that they want to do this together with people who have leadership and other resources and who can help bring their visions of a peaceful and healthy future to reality.
When I shared these reflection with the leaders and policy makers the day after the event, there was an immediate recognition among some Elders and hereditary chiefs that what the youth were talking about was nothing less than traditional law, the Ayuukw. The core of the Ayuukw is respect and connection. One Elder in attendance said that the youth were speaking to an absence that they had seen in their lives, a space where once they had been connected to the life of their Nations through the Ayuukw, but now were lost. Their call for connection and mutuality was nothing less than a call for the full re-establishment of the relations specified in the Ayuukw.
Things move from here. I don’t know where the issue will end up, or what might evolve and happen, but the overall sense is that something came unstuck in Rupert last week.
When I engaged in this project, I put a call out to my readers to help me design this summit and several people jumped in to help. I’d like to thank especially Wendy Farmer-O’Neil, Jack Ricchiuto, Peggy Holman, Robin Stratton-Berkessel, Dina Mehta, Annette Clancy and Johnnie Moore for their conversations and support on Skype and email. Their ideas, so generously offered from three continents, had major impacts in the design of the forum and what we were subsequently able to do with the work.
Prince Rupert, BC
The results aren’t quite in yet, but it was a good day, as this doodle from one of the participants indicates.
Last week I was part of a remarkable Open Space event sponsored by the United Community Services Cooperative. I was able to bring my new friend Wendy Farmer-O’Neil along to introduce her to Open Space. She performed above and beyond duty helping out with the reports and generally sharing the space holding duties. And then she came home and blogged about it:
I think that my heart and soul know that Open Space is the possibility realized�a way we can be together in truth and freedom�that it brings out the best of who we are�when we are willing to give ourselves fully to the process. And I am in withdrawal, feeling the pain of not being in that space anymore�I want to live in Open Space� always� Fortunately I know that this is possible�and so a new journey begins�
When I closed the space at the ninth annual Open Space on Open Space, Michael Herman grabbed me and said “You’re in deep.” I knew it. Now Wendy knows it too.
Indigo Ocean emailed me an invitation to answer this meme:
You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
Hmmm…Am I burning? I can’t remember F451 well enough to remember what I should be here!
Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Kerewin, the Maori protagonist of The Bone People by Keri Hulme
I read this book at a time in my life when I had violently lost someone I loved. Kerewin was a timely companion to see me through that grief.
The last book you bought is:
Thoreau’s Method: A Handbook for Nature Study by David Pepi
Just picked this up at a used bookstore and devoured it. Lovely work looking at a methodology for being in nature (and not just wilderness).
The last book you read:
The Life of Pi by Yann Martel
“This story will make you believe in God.”
What are you currently reading?
The Way of the Earth by TC McLuhan
Shingwauk’s Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools by JR Miller
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (with my daughter)
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Five books you would take to a deserted island:
Flow by John Ashbery
A Poet in New York by Lorca
Cosmic Canticle by Ernesto Cardenal
Collected Poems of TS Eliot
Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu
(and also, could I have a CD filled with Project Gutenberg? And something to read it on?)
Lots of poetry. One could take these poets and spend a lifetime absorbing oneself in their works.
Who are you going to pass this meme to (3 persons) and why?
I think, Jon Husband because he reads more than anyone I know, Michael Herman, for the opposite reason and the first person to show up in my RSS feeder….which is…Jack Richhiuto
In the Open Space world, we talk about the four pre-conditions that make for great open space events: diversity, complexity, passion and urgency. The more you have of these, the juicier the event becomes. That is counter intuitive to most ways of thinking, because in most cases it seems that problem solving processes aim to homogenize, simplify, rationalize and slow down. If we can just get a handle on the problem, the thinking goes, we can apply the best possible solution.
This mechanistic view does not work with so-called “wicked problems.” It can generate solutions or options or ways forward which are reductionist. For me, it is the kind of thinking that arrives at one vision statement for an organization of 100 people instead of a multi-faceted vision that is inclusive and brings everyone along.
So via elearning post, today I came across this paper that looks at how wicked problems are solved by non-linear processes:
“The natural pattern of human problem solving appears chaotic on the surface, but it is the chaos of an earthquake or the breaking of an ocean wave. It reveals deeper forces and flows that have their own order and pattern. The non-linear pattern of activity that expert designers follow gives us fresh insight into what happens when we work on a complex problem. It reveals that in normal problem-solving behaviour, we may seem to wander about, making only halting progress toward the solution. This non-linear process is not a defect, not a sign of stupidity or lack of training, but rather the mark of a natural learning process. It suggests that humans are oriented more toward learning (a process that leaves us changed) than toward problem solving (a process focused on changing our surroundings).”
Designers who work this way, in the experiment discussed in this paper exhibit the following strategies:
They would start by trying to understand the problem, but would immediately jump to formulating potential solutions. Then they would go back to refining their understanding of the problem. Rather than being orderly and linear, the line plotting the course of their thinking looked more like a seismograph for a major earthquake… We call this pattern both chaotic, for obvious reasons, and opportunity-driven, because in each moment the designers are seeking the best opportunity to progress toward a solution.
I note two things about this quote. First, the fact that designers working on a wicked problem are engaged in an iterative relationship with the definition of the problem itself. Second, the pattern is “opportunity-driven” meaning that exposure to new ideas at any point in the process can contribute to breakthroughs.
This chaotic strategy is exactly the argument for Open Space Technology. We need people working in these ways to solve these problems, OST provides the space in a very short period of time to exercise the strategies that contribute to solving wicked problems. In fact, the time constraints in Open Space (1.5 hour conversations over a day or two) mean that there ISN’T time to engage in linear thinking, and this may be why OST creates the conditions for people to access the depth and resourcefulness that is needed to move forward on this tough issues.
UPDATE: Johnnie Moore liked the paper too, and found this quote:
It suggests that humans are oriented more toward learning (a process that leaves us changed) than toward problem solving (a process focused on changing our surroundings).
Fantastic.