On the Open Space list, we’ve been discussing the merits of planning vs. muddling through. My two cents:
I actually think that muddling through is not a correction to the conventional wisdom that stretegy and planning is the way to go. Muddling through has always been the way. The evidence is actually overwhelming. Show me something in the world, a finished process, project, thing or event, that was not the result of muddling through.
Strategy is figuring out which way to muddle. Good strategists are great muddlers. They seem to muddle in the direction of the resources or of the political will or of the greatest benefit to others.
Planning is fun, and very useful for the short term, like on the last half day of an Open Space. But planning that goes beyond “when will we talk again” or a simple to-do list needs to be aware that the muddle factor increases as the time frame increases. More importantly, and more seriously, planning that doesn’t take into account a muddle factor and that creates a complex, long term and fixed to-do list is both disempowering for people and largely ineffective. It ties people to the plan (rather than the other way around) and limits exposure to true sources of inspiration and innovation.
For a comprehensive set of data on the effectiveness of muddling, check out the Nobel Prize winners speeches. When you come to a Nobel Laureate that says that their accomplishment was the result of a great strategic plan, let me know.
Rather than crow about their planning, here is what one recent
chemistry laureate, John B. Fenn said. He quoted the American poet Walt Whitman:
A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul”
How about that eh?
Satsan
Back in 1999 when I began my consulting practice, one of the first contracts I landed was with the British Columbia Vice-Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Satsan (Herb George). He was assembling a team to undertake a national process to educate and activate communities with respect to the exercise of Aboriginal title. One of the results of that work isan astounding collection of legal research papers hosted at the Delgamuukw/Gisday’wa National Process website. You will also find there a plain language guide on Aboriginal title which I wrote.
Satsan took the view that Aboriginal title was there for the taking. That there was no need to ask any level of government for permission to exercise it. In fact, he argued that the landmark Delgamuukw supreme court case made it encumbant on First Nations to exercise their title. Use or lose is sort of the dictum of the day.
But exercising title is not a willy-nilly process. It requires that a First Nation also perform the role of a government in order to regulate, legislate and exercise inherent Aboriginal rights. Satsan has gone on to head up the First Nations Governance Centre.
There is an intimate link between the possession and exercise of Aboriginal rights and title and the implementation of excellent governance systems. What these two websites show is just how much of that work is being undertaken and led by First Nations themselves. This is decolonization that empowers local communities while playing on the legal and political fields of the colonial society.
In one of the more poignant observations on last week’s American election, I read a recent letter to the Globe and Mail which pointed out that if the election were about values then the decision means that it’s okay for one man to kill another man, but not to hold his hand.
Another terrific find by riley dog, whom I read every morning. This short poem by Frederick Morgan captures some of the essence of BEING invited into a place where anything is possible, but it is all uncontemplated except in the moment:
The Step
From where you are at any moment you
may step off into death.
Is it not a clinching thought?
I do not mean a stoical bravado
of making the great decision blade in hand
but the awareness, all so simple, that
right in the middle of the day
you may be called to an adjoining room.
When we are at a point where “stoical bravado” seems our only option, sometimes we need to simply be more sensitive to the call of life in its subtlest forms.
This essay arrived on an email from my friend Anne Stadler. It’s by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, the author of “Women who run with the Wolves“:
“For many decades, worldwide, souls just like us have been felled and left for dead in so many ways over and over brought down by naivete, by lack of love, by being ambushed and assaulted by various cultural and personal shocks in the extreme. We have a history of being gutted, and yet remember this especially ‘ we have also, of necessity, perfected the knack of resurrection. Over and over again we have been the living proof that that which has been exiled, lost, or foundered can be restored to life again…
Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take “everyone on Earth” to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale.”
Especially in a world where so few of us have a say in tomorrow’s decision that affects all of us, there is lots of good advice in this piece.