{"id":3835,"date":"2013-05-17T20:30:22","date_gmt":"2013-05-18T04:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/?p=3835"},"modified":"2013-05-17T20:30:22","modified_gmt":"2013-05-18T04:30:22","slug":"inappropriate-action-planning-makes-me-sad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/inappropriate-action-planning-makes-me-sad\/","title":{"rendered":"Inappropriate action planning makes me sad"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year in Slovenia, a group of Art of Hosting practitioners gatherd for a week at a well loved 17th century manor to be together. \u00a0I suppose you could call it a “conference” but we all called it a “Learning Village.” \u00a0And it was a learning village. \u00a0The agenda we set was for a five day Open Space gathering. \u00a0there was music and local wine drinking and a learning journey on the land, and the teenagers cleaned out an old stone chapel that hadn’t been dusted for 300 years. \u00a0We talked about our work, did tai chi and aikido, played football and made art. \u00a0Our kids fell in love and broke up!<\/p>\n

It was a village, and there was tons of learning. \u00a0And no action plans, no next steps, no commitments, no necessary reports. \u00a0A few months later there was a harvest document<\/a> lovingly stewarded by a few people. \u00a0This is all appropriate and good.<\/p>\n

And sometimes, there are gatherings where next steps and action plans are important and necessary and are the reason why we are gathering. \u00a0But always? \u00a0No.<\/p>\n

I have begun to notice that when I see conference agendas with “next steps and action plans” attached to them (and especially attached to the end of the last day when everyone is tired and most people have left), I become sad. \u00a0Actually and emotionally a little sad. \u00a0i think it is because doing this unconsciously reduces the pure experience of being together and intenstly learning into something “productive” in order to justify doing it.<\/p>\n

So please, think really carefully about whether or not you gathering needs action steps, especially if you are planning a conference where the purpose is for people to simply be together learning and connecting. \u00a0That alone is significant action. \u00a0Do we really need to justify it any further?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last year in Slovenia, a group of Art of Hosting practitioners gatherd for a week at a well loved 17th century manor to be together. \u00a0I suppose you could call it a “conference” but we all called it a “Learning Village.” \u00a0And it was a learning village. \u00a0The agenda we set was for a five day Open Space gathering. \u00a0there was music and local wine drinking and a learning journey on the land, and the teenagers cleaned out an old stone chapel that hadn’t been dusted for 300 years. \u00a0We talked about our work, did tai chi and aikido, played …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[19,6,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conversation","category-facilitation","category-learning"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piBp1-ZR","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3835"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3836,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3835\/revisions\/3836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}