I find my life becoming more and more becoming like one big teaching. From very early on, I have used my weblog as a place to do “open source learning” in the world. As a result, I have collected a number of these teachings on this weblog over the years, and here are some of the highlights.
LESSONS ABOUT WORKING WITH GROUPS
Tools and Processes
- Going deep into Open Space
- Really simple strategic planning
- Strategic planning using Open Space and World Cafe
- Making public meetings work
- Facilitate as the sky does
- The art of giving instructions
- The tyranny of flipcharts
- Using nothing but stories to experience emergence
- Otto Scharmer’s reflection questions
- Living in Open Space
- Presence, circles and granola: more on living in Open Space
Hosting and facilitating
- Objections to participation in conferences
- The difference between facilitating and hosting
- What Navajo people have to teach the world about collaboration
- Values, tools and authentic facilitation
- Working with the centre
- Harvesting nutrients
- Seven LIttle Helpers for dialogue and action
Maps and design
- A map for talking our way to a decision
- Use maps, not tools
- A basic design for extraordinary conversations
- Divergent and convergent thinking
- Balancing work, relationships and co-learning
- The mother map
- Using maps to help ground hosting practice
- The simplest way to host conversations
- Designing conversations to change the world.
- Keynote facilitation and changing the way conferences are designed.
Facilitation stories
- Hawai’i: speaking to the shadow and resting in the feminine
- Co-creating safety in a group
- Presencing in a small strategic planning workshop
- Using World Cafe in a conference setting
LESSONS ABOUT WORKING IN ORGANIZATIONS
- Changing an operating system
- Appreciative worldviews and living systems
- What we can learn from mushrooms
- Rapid prototyping at Boeing
- The gift of bureaucracy
- Strategy and improvisation
LESSONS ABOUT WORKING IN COMMUNITIES
- At the intersection of power and participation
- Patterns for building community
- Participatory community engagement
- Meg Wheatley’s 12 principles for community engagement
- Acting resourcefully in community organizing
- Hosting for conscious community to emerge
- Lessons from working with the Nuxalk Nation: A community opens space for itself, and Teaching and learning about leadership in a First Nations community
- Working with community action systems
LESSONS ABOUT LEARNING
- At play in the fields of flow: music, writing and participation.
- Remaining a learner while committing to action
- Emergent learning: watching my son teach himself to read
- How networks change learning
LESSONS FROM INDIGENOUS NORTH AMERICA AND BEYOND
- Working with cultural differences in indigenous contexts
- Inuit Qaujamajatuqangit
- The Navajo concept of k’e
- Ojibway genesis and the deep pattern of creation stories
- On dreaming and visioning
- Stories of transformation and decolonization in Open Space
- Quantum physics and indigenous worldviews
- Nuu-Chah-Nulth ha-wilh and co-sensing
- Principles of indigenous science
- Sky Woman’s teachings about transformation
- A Nuu-Chah-Nulth teaching about holding space
- Sonny Diabo and a Mohawk teaching about the path of life
- Herb Joe and a Sto:lo teaching on the perfect gift of humans
- Martin Brokenleg and the Circle of Courage
- The power of tribal structures in building peace in Somalialand
- Working with ancient patterns in the contemporary world at Sliammon
LESSONS ABOUT LIFE, THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING
- Turning our mind to practice
- What it’s like to make change
- The deep pattern of our stories
- Lessons for White Guys
- An invitation to work together
- Four good life practices for serving the world
- The responsibility of love
- Sometimes our best efforts do not go amiss
- Holding our enemies
- What I learned from John Muir
- What I learned from David Newhouse
- Remembering the birth of my son
- Trust and control
- What my ancestors created together
- Productive waiting
- Life on a pale blue dot
- Following eternal coyote trails
- Compassion and mutuality
- How to get home by air in the heart of a Canadian winter