Fires continue to burn here in British Columbia. Kelowna, in the Okanagan Valley has suffered some heavy losses with 240 homes destroyed and up to 30,000 people evacuated. It seems as if things are starting to get back to normal for some of those evacuees, but it’s going to take five days of steady rain to get the fire under control.
For a very visceral expereince of what is happening in Kelowna, have a look at this video, produced by Media Button.
A Map, from Micheal Herman’s Inviting Organization
Having Michael Herman here on Bowen Island for a couple of months has been a treat. Usually we communicate by email and phone a lot, but yesterday we went down to The Snug, Bowen Island’s local coffee hangout, and my erstwhile boardroom where we discussed an evolution of the inviting organization.
Seems like what we have been working on for the past little while, grounded as it has been in the model of the four quadrants as described first by Ken Wilber and later by Harrison Owen and then Michael gives us a map for working with the evolution of invitation in organization. What we began to do yesterday was to map out how the practice of compassion in organizations and communities, as a personal practice, can be opened to support ever widening circles of invitation to spirited performance and participation.
We took the four quadrants, as outlined above and changed the icons a bit so that heart stayed with passion, story/vision became eyes (connected to the brain), structure became two feet running to capture the urgency that drives organization and action became a bowl symbolizing the pelvis, or the seat of power, that which supports heart and brain.
Broadly speaking, the four quadrants now collapse into Wilber’s Big Three, (I We and It) which means that we see brain/eyes (I), heart (We) and pelvis/legs (It). Within communities, like with the work we have been doing on Bowen Island, pelvis represents the structures that support the community like municipal government. That is where the power resides. Heart is the courage and the passion of citizens engaged in dialogue, not simply for the sake of contributing to the power/management structure, but also dialogue for its own sake, in support of the connections that arise from the urgency of circumstance. And all that supports a higher level sense making function, captured here on Bowen Island by the Bowen GeoLibrary, but also captured in other places by maps, stories, histories and other clues to the culture.
The same works in organizations, where the power rests in the structures and production activities that are essential to an organization. Heart is the passion people bring to work, passion which can go toxic if, as Michael says, “the passion has not yet extended to include the whole” (a wonderful definition of conflict). All that is supported by the practice of management, which is a head thing, making sense of the world, the structures, the demands and the human resources within and outside of the organization.
It’s possible I think to link these things to personal practices too. Practices like Zapchen Somatics which help the body to rest in the pelvis and clear the central channel that links pelvis/heart/brain together. Open Space Technology is the practice of heart, inviting passion and responsibility and we feel strongly that the practice of compassion in management as outlined by Peter Frost in his book Toxic Emotions at Work and followed up by his work with Compassion Lab is the connection between the heart and brain functions…handling toxins in order to extend compassion within and outward from the organization.
This stuff is all very raw right now, but will continue to evolve. No coincidence that I stopped publishing Open Space yesterday just hours before this conversation took place. Open Space was about the Inviting Organization. We’ve looked at that in practice for 12 months and now it’s time to get bigger.
But there’s another possibility. You can let go and yet keep hold of it. With your arm still outstretched, turn your hand over so that it faces the sky. Release your hand and the coin still rests on your open palm. You let go. And the coin is still yours, even with all this space around it.
So there is a way in which we can accept impermanence and still relish life, at one and the same time, without grasping.
— Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, pp. 34-35
This weblog will be changing a little starting now. Everything that has gone on before will continue to go on, but something else will be added. This is why.
More homes destroyed last night in Kelowna. It seems this summer like the whole province is on fire. The Red Cross is looking for donations, so read this story and follow the links to give.
Good luck to my friends in Kelowna and Naramata.
Folks have been asking, but I’m here to tell you that there is no news on the HaidaBucks Cafe situation. Last time we looked at this story, HaidaBucks had asked Starbucks to basically stop lying to its customers.
I sent a note to Starbucks about that debacle, and haven’t heard anything back from them. Customer Relations suddenly disappears when your company starts lying to people.
HaidaBucks wants an apology, which seems reasonable, and Starbucks has not been forthcoming with that.
So the absolute latest on this situation is, in the words of one of the HaidaBucks guys, “Starbucks is still trying to wish the whole thing away. Should have news soon.”
Anyway, I’m still forgoing Seattle based lattes in favour of independant coffee shops, and I haven’t been disappointed yet.
