Something soft to go with the rain that is falling today on the west coast of Canada. I know little about this piece other than it appears on a compilation called “Below Code” from Japanese label Comatones Records of 10 years of mix tapes. Comatones describes itself as “dedicated to the production and dissemination of non-categorical contemporary electronic music.” The whole album is a fascinating listen.
Robyn Stratton-Berkessel posts about a great training she was a part of last week, while we were doing our OST practice workshop on Vancouver Island. And what is really cool is that she posted this diagram of the appreciative inquiry process, which is a lovely frame for doing anything really.
Naturally, this process maps nicely onto the map we use of the Open Space practices. Discovery requires Opening, Dreaming requires Inviting, Designing requires Holding and Destiny requires Grounding. And even within the positive topic choice, all of these practices come into play, as the design process that leads to an AI project, or an Open Space event demands that you use the same practices in planning as you do in execution.
When you are doing the work of conversation that is informed and connected to the heart, fractal integrity is critical because you can feel the dissonance when it’s not there.
I’ve known about the work of John McKnight for a long time. He is perhaps best known for Asset Based Community Development. When I was studying community development at Trent University, we were treated to his series on CBC Ideas called Community and its Counterfeits, later published as a book. McKnight was a young apprentice to Saul Alinsky, the famous Chicago-based community organizer. Over the years his work has garnered accolades from folks all over the political spectrum and has spawned community mapping, asset inventories and other now standard practices of community and economic development.
A few years ago another Chicago-based man of interest, Michael Herman, sat in on a class with McKnight and thought about how Open Space and ABCD might play together.
A post last month at Wealth Bondage, combined with a conversation I had with Richard Cornuelle (Denationalizing Community is my favourite paper of his) reminded me again of ABCD. There are a number of projects I am doing at the moment that might be a chance to put my work together with McKnight’s ideas.
When I began work in consultation and what is now called “community engagement” I based my approach on some lessons I learned from an Oneida Elder, Bruce Elijah. Bruce was our organizational Elder at the National Association of Friendship Centres in the early 1990s when I was there and he taught me a huge amount about process, healing and community work.
Over strong tea one night at my place Bruce recounted his approach to working with communities on community-wide healing. The first thing he does when he arrives to work in a community is to ask the people to take him to the place of power. When they are there, literally standing in the clearing, the building, the space where the community has its heart ans soul, he asks about why THIS spot is the power place and the begin talking about what the community still has. It’s appreciative, asset-based, spiritual development for a whole community.
This approach works for places of virtual power as well. If you are a facilitator or an OD consultant, the next time you begin a project with a client, ask them to take you to the place of power in the organization or community and see if you can’t discern what makes it so. It might be a physical place, or it might be a time or a collection of values, or a highly regarded project or initiative from which people take strength. I’m willing to bet that what you learn there will form the basis for whatever it is your about to do.
I was working with a client this weekend, the board of a quasi-professional association, and we were discussing ways to build better support for decisions. I introduced them to the consensus decision making model I use, something which is adopted from the work of Sam Kaner. They liked it and I agreed to write it into the report I was doing for them. Thought I’d share it with you readers as well…
Voting certainly has its place, but if you are looking for sustainable decisions, where unity and long term support for a decision are important, a consensus decision making model can often work better.
For consensus decision making to work it helps to have an issue with the following characteristics:
Consensus means that there is broad support for the decision. It essentially means that the decision of the group will have the support of the group to varying degrees. It also means that if there are key areas of disagreement, the groups commits itself to finding alternative ways to turn EITHER/OR questions into BOTH/AND solutions.
It is important that you make an agreement regarding what can happen should the group fail to come to consensus. My preferred alternative is to state that the group will use consensus until they reach an absolute impasse, at which time the group will decide the issue by a method chosen by consensus. So, if the group is stuck and everyone agrees to using voting to solve it, you may do so. This commitment keeps the group focused on meeting the needs of all participants, valuing everyone’s input and opinions on the subject at hand.
Consensus works bets when participants can indicate their support for a proposal with a range of opinion. Using a scale of 1-5 is the simplest way to do this. You may think of the scale this way:
1 = Absolute support, no reservations
2 = Solid support with some reservations
3 = Satisfied enough to move forward and support the decision
4 = Substantial issues remain to be discussed
5 = Significant issues remain, and support for the decision is absent.
The process works like this:
This is a straightforward process, but leads to very sophisticated decisions, with time spent focusing on the most important issues that need resolution for everything to move forward.
