In Seattle yesterday I was listening to a keynote by Dr. Jack Shonkoff who is a breain researcher at Harvard with an interest in early childhood development. He said an interesting thing about American health care which kind of answers the question for me about what the US is good at. Many Americans who are opposed to public health care use the argument that people from other countries come to the United States for the world’s best treatment, surgery and acute care. No question that if you can afford it, the USA has the best. BUT – and this was …
Silo busting is a very interesting thing. Everyone knows that systems atrophy when they divide their work into silos. Silos entrench difference and prevent learning across sectors whether we are talking about departments in an organization, or a social system like health care or child and family services. Silos have limited usefulness. They divide work into manageable chunks. But in general they create reductionist responses to systemic problems and they pose a massive challenge to people working nfor change. If we first have to bust the silos, and only then can we address the problems, how do we know we’ll …
I’m at a Casey Family Programs conference in Seattle that is looking at applying science to early learning in kids. The people here are learning about brain science and the results of early adverse childhood experiences and what the science can tell us about how we should react in the policy sphere to create healthy kids, families and societies. The keynote is by Jack Shonkoff, who is a leading brain researcher in this field and who has been sharing some of the basics of what we know about brain science, relationships and healthy societies. Here are some of his key …
From the Applied Improv Network ning, here is a great set of Improv Games for Larger Groups. For use in conferences, large groups settings, school assemblies, church services, riots and demos, sporting events, concerts, Apple store lineups, picket lines and anywhere else a few dozen people or more are gathered. I especially like this line from Paul Levy in the discussion “There are no large groups, just tiny facilitators!”
If this is Sunday morning I must be back in Toronto shaking off the cobwebs from a redeye from Vancouver. Will I ever be home? # Settled into a beautiful retreat centre in Arnprior Ontario on the shores of the Ottawa River for an art of hosting #AoHArnprior # Home? I'm actually home? Ahhhhhh…… # Lovely morning,,,early ride to the continent to work with some United Churches in White Rock, and excited for Spurs v ManU! #coys #