My old friend and neighbour Tom Walker has surfaced as a candidate for a new political party here in BC: the Work Less Party.

Tom has been a passionate advocate for the 35 hour work week for as long as I have known him, seven years or more. He has done some really interesting labour relations research in his day too. With the launch of this political party, it’s clear that he has put his money where his mouth is. The party is no joke…Tom’s work has largely been about the social, economic and cultural benefits of a 35 hour work week, and if that seems too narrow a peg to hang a platform on, well, it beats tax cuts as the hub of a constellation of solutions.

When I was in university, I researched and wrote a paper on the James Bay Cree and their efforts to negotiate a deal with the governments of Canada and Quebec in the eraly 1970s. The deal, which became the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement was negotiated between communities of largely traditional indigenous peoples and two levels of Canadian government, with a very sophisticated industrial utility, Hydro Quebec, watching in the wings.

In the paper, after doing scads of archival research at McGill University, my co-author Gary Heuval and I discovered that the Cree negotiators, all of whom were hunters, had actually viewed the entire exercise as a hunt for unfamiliar game in strange territory. To prepare, they readied themselves as they would have for a hunt, including consulting with the community about its needs, dreaming the territory, equipping themselves with the right tools and becoming familiar with this prey they were seeking. By adopting a traditional approach, they were able to negotiate a treaty and bring home what the community was requesting, as if they had spent a winter out on the land dreaming up moose and fish, and harvesting enough to support everyone.

This is what seeing is. As Rezendes points out, seeing is a process of becoming unified with one’s environment so that you understand yourself as a part of it, rather than as an aloof observer. Becoming wholly integrated with your environment means that you can begin to dream the opportunities that are inherent in it, much as a traditional hunter dreams about the place where he or she will meet the deer that will become food. Only with the utmost care and attention, does seeing, in this deep sense, result in this integration.

As Rezendes says in this interview:

We can find that field of practice in the forest or in the office. Organizations are nature too, as are the environments in which organizations operate. But to bring this capacity of deep seeing to those settings, we need the same degree of care and attention as the tracker does: we need to be able to “become sensitive to what usually goes unnoticed.” Simply running numbers, doing surveys and conducting consultations will not make clear the opportunities that are inherent in the chaos of the present. We must practice a little deeper, take all the information and sit with it until the future emerges into our sight, like a deer track in the jumble of forest litter.

For those of you who are wont to read a good business book from time to time, you might want to check out this little gem from Fast Company on how to read them.

The essence: distill the central idea and create your own toolbox. Good advice that, especially when combined with another recently seen (but forgot where) idea that there is no such thing as the perfect business theory. A good consultant holds good theories and their opposites in mind at all times.

Which is why we need decent holistic frameworks for working in organizations. That way we can find the variety of truths about organizational and personal capacities and put them to use appropriately.

The Globe and Mail published an obituary today for my father in law, Peter Frost. The obit focuses on his work with emtional toxicity in organizations, work of which he was so proud.

He was the co-author and editor of dozens of books, but Toxic Emotions At Work was his first solo effort and I think it was the one of which he was the most proud. It followed on the heels of his first articles in the Harvard Business Review, starting in 1999. After a career of plowing away on the margins of organizational theory, he had finally cracked the mainstream, and his work was being read widely and used in organizations by people who were really suffering.

In the obit he is quoted this way: “I will continue to promote attention to the need for humane workplaces and for dignity and compassion toward all members of all organizations, wherever they are.” Even in his dying he practiced that dignity and compassion.

If there was one thing I learned from being with him while he was dying, it was the power of telling stories to heal, connect and hold one another. Stories were so central to his work, but until then I had never thought of storytelling as an act of compassion.

We miss him terribly at this cold time of year, but it’s nice to remember him warmly.

Received my invitation today for the 23rd International Symposium on Organizational Transformation (OT23). This year, friends Susan Kerr and Sheila Isakson among other are hosting the gathering in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. This year’s theme is “Welcoming Spirit”:

If you want to go, email Sheila at isakson@juno.com.