The Northern Voice blogging conference was going on yesterday just over the water from me in Vancouver. I’m not there, electing instead to stay here on Bowen Island and get a weekend of nothingness in. There has been a lot of travel lately.
However I kept up with the goings on through Nancy White’s blog which has set new standards for conference blogging in terms of pure output.
I’m also due to receive an oral report of the goings-on from Seb, who will arriving on Bowen this afternoon to join my family for a walk down at Cape Roger Curtis.
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Apropos of my post a couple of days back on vision and action comes a nice quote from Flemming:
The things to do are: the things that need doing: that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done. Then you will conceive your own way of doing that which needs to be done — that no one else has told you to do or how to do it. This will bring out the real you that often gets buried inside a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviors induced or imposed by others on the individual.
–Buckminster Fuller
That’s one to save for sure.
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The Indian Rope Trick, whereby a “fakir” suspends a rope in mid air and has an accomplice climb it, provides a rich ground to examine the enduring nature of mental models and other stories we force ourselves to believe. The New York Times > Books >This whole piece is worth the read but here’s the money shot:
So…perhaps the true secret of the Indian Rope Trick is the way the supple human memory combines events we’ve really seen with legends we’ve only heard, and shapes them into the best possible story to tell our grandchildren.”
What’s interesting to me is to look at why we have need of such a story? What does a belief in that story give us?
Good questions for all the stories that imbue our lives with meaning and richness, true or not!
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I was being interviewed today for an article on Open Space Technology and something blurted out of my mouth that I thought was worth keeping, or at least investigating a little more.
We talk about Open Space being fueled by passion bounded by responsibility. I said in the interview that everything that has happened, everything that surrounds us, owes its existence to someone bringing together passion and responsibility.
And everything that we don’t have lies out of reach as long as there isn’t enough passion and responsibility working together to create it.
What do you think? Am I just talking smack here?
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Fouro has it right:
Had a conversation this weekend–several, actually–about how one goes about changing an organization.
In the course of chatting I realized something simple: You can’t change organizations. You can only reveal them to themselves. And they like what they see. Or not.”
Once we reveal ourselves to ourselves we can begin to heal, effect changes, choose futures, reconnect pieces and establish life again.
And organizations reveal themselves through story seen through eyes and ears attuned to deeper meaning.