Caring About Community

How important is it that we care about our community?  Many of those who are relatively privileged to live in suburban neighborhoods prefer there specifically because they want to live somewhere they don't have to care about. They enjoy assuming that everyone will mind their own business. They enjoy working, buying, worshipping, learning and entertaining outside their neighborhood.

I haven't see data on this, but after living most of my life in urban neighborhoods, it has been my experience that people who have a choice about where they live and live in urban neighborhoods do care about the communities they choose. Of course these are generalizations with exceptions, nevertheless the issue raises the question about how important it is to care about the community we live in.

I would argue, as I have in communities across the US that in thriving communities, people wisely care as much about the whole as they do about the skies because they see the fates of each intrinsically interdependent.

Trusting Yourself

"Trust what works. When you trust what works, you trust yourself." This was my Twitter post last night, inspired by Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hahn in a recent talk. Showing up with integrity, in any context, begins with trusting oneself. The whole emphasis invokes interesting questions:

What does it mean to trust yourself?

How much do you trust yourself today? 

How much does your integrity, authenticity and showing up have to do with trusting yourself?

What would you be like with stronger self-trust?

Thich Nhat Hahn suggests an intrinsic relationship between trusting ourself and trusting what works. This implies that trust what works in our life is core to trusting ourself. It's an interesting, compelling and radically realistic perspective.

 

Creating Alignment In Your Life

A dear friend recently asked for my thoughts on creating alignment in one's life, particularly when it is multi-dimensional and dynamic. I include in my notion of life all domains including significant and casual relationships, work, enjoyments, passions, personal development and pursuits. I suggested that he take any, and eventually all, of his life domains and consider four dimensions: Should, want, could and will. These reflect the reality that our lives are always unfolding at the intersections of obligations, interests, possibilities and commitments.

What should you do?

What do you want to do?

What could you do?

What will you do?

This creates time and space alignments that support a vital, flourishing and sustainable life. It is sustainable because it is realistic. It is flourishing because it considers a spectrum of possibilities. It is vital because it speaks to all that matters to us. It makes inherent trade-offs more apparent and paradoxically allows for greater confidence and courage in the life we express, explore and embrace.

The State Of Passion At Work

The Deloitte Center For the Edge recently produced research results indicating that almost 90% workers work without passion. The number at senior leadership levels is an incredible 80% given the disproportionate financial incentives to which they are positionally entitled. Passion is what causes people to love change and challenge, learning and always high standards of achievement. Here are the five myths about passion the research challenges:

Myth 1: Only youth is passionate: Deloitte’s research shows that older workers are just as likely to be passionate as younger workers. Passionate workers are not concentrated in any age group. Myth 2: Small firms nurture passion better: Large firms are equally as effective, or ineffective, at cultivating passion in the workforce as smaller firms. Myth 3: Passionate workers congregate in certain regions. Deloitte’s research found that a worker’s place of residence did not influence the likelihood of worker passion. Myth 4: More education nurtures passion. The research showed that educational attainment overall did not have a statistically significant impact on worker passion. Myth 5: It’s the knowledge workers. While passionate workers are overrepresented at higher corporate levels (around 18-20 percent), some front-line workers reported being passionate (around 6 percent).

In my work with organizations, I think of passion as what emerges when people declare the possibilities they are committed to creating. I have see very few organizations invite and engage this actually accessible and powerful expression of passion that makes all the difference in performance.

Problems and Questions

A science community leader this week talked about how he responds to problems his team presents to him. He asks them to bring questions rather than problems. It's a simple and significant shift on many levels, reminiscent of Einstien's proposal that problems cannot be solved from the frame from which they are initially defined. Where problems are declarations of deficiency, questions are declarations of inquiry. Two different modes of thinking, being, knowing and doing. The shortest distance to new perspectives is the inquiry of questions rather than problems.

Working With, Not For, Others

Many of the wisest people I know would argue that one cannot be authentic and hierarchical at the same time. This applies to  both the power and responsibility have and have-not ends of the hierarchy. The perspective forms the basis of the notion that we are most authentic when we work with rather than for others.  The shift is important on many levels. We do our best work in collaboration rather than compliance. Compliance is an intrinsically reactive and defensive space. Collaboration is an intrinsically proactive and creative space.

The Challenges Of Public Policy

Recent research and conversations with public policy advisors and observers reveal that US economic and financial policy makers can be ill-equipped to make decisions that take into account the complexities of the issues embedded in these spaces. The unfortunate and costly dynamic comes about as the result of unrealistic models and inadequate knowledge of the multiple factors involved. I know economists who would argue that the systems and dynamic currently at play are more than not intrinsically unpredictable. One prime implication is for local communities who are wise to react to these realities by taking responsibility for their own financial and economic habits and legacies. This is the opposite to managing by hope that patriarchical institutions will or can assume this responsibility for communities. That said, all institutions and experts need to continue to act responsibly and intelligently in whatever policies they inform and shape.

 

Leader As Beekeeper

As it turns out, beekeepers come in two varieties: kind and self-protective. One difference is handling technique, where kinder keepers use their hands and self-protective keepers use gloves. Bees are naturally kind with kind keepers. Angry hives are the consequence of self-protective keepers. This dynamic serves up a complete metaphor for leadership, beginning with deep insights into the implications of culture and leadership. 

Are There Really Productivity "Secrets?"

Social media daily features secrets to Everyhing. We learn the secrets to whatever we want to pursue by the most talented people living and passed. And they are all secrets to those who don't discover and explore them. When it comes to productivity, most things labelled secrets are what we might already know and might not know is a good practice. Here are the tips that continued to be recycled across multiple lists.

Have systems for everything: tracking appointments, tasks and commitments

Create spaces and times with minimal distraction potential 

Start your day with easy or difficult things: both work for different reasons

Set goals to keep yourself at least as proactive as you are reactive

Manage your energy so you have energy available when you need it.

I would preempt all secrets with the macro-truth: Know yourself. Know what makes you most and least productive and manage your time accordingly. If that's been a secret to you, the good news is is no longer.

Simple Conversations

It's been my observation over the years that people often make conversations far more complicated and difficult than they need to be.  It's possible to radically simplify most conversations into three things: 

What we know

What we want

What we are willing to do. 

We move the conversation forward simply by expressing, inquiring, and listening. We say what we know, what we want and what we will do. And we ask others what they know, want and are willing to do.

It can actually be that simple. 

The Illusion Of Control

Those of us fortunate to have worked behind the scenes with all kinds of leaders have the unique perspective that, actually, none of these people have any more control over the world than anyone else. The illusion of control implies an assumption that people "under" their rule daily relinquish their wills in return for parental protection from uncertainty. No one does. People willingly do what they do. It is an inaccurate conclusion to think that any human being can take responsibility from another. This doesn't mean leaders are useless. Many have much to offer, starting with reminding people of their intrinsic freedom and responsibility that becomes the basis for their authentic engagement, consciousness and growth.

(Thanks Chris Thompson for the reminder)

The Arts Conversation

I think it's easy to argue that having any kind of artistic expression enriches one's life because it connects us to our uniqueness. It doesn't matter which kinds of art we engage. Our expression media can be music, writing, cooking, painting, yoga, gardening, landscaping, sculpture, photography or drawing. All are learnable and require little innate talent to arrive at the point where we simply enjoy the experience of self-expression. As our craft develops, we develop, because it is all self-discovery and self-expression.

More On The Piazza

I wanted to add more context to the new community building model I am proposing, called the Piazza.  The idea is that when people come together in community around any focus, they come with at least four interests:

  • People who want to know more
  • People who want to debate and argue
  • People who want to talk about something else
  • People who want to do something

Each of the four conversations in the model invites each intention. Best of all, people can move to different conversations as their sense of the focus shifts. Each provides a unique and authetic space where people with like conversational intentions can find each other and connect.

Like Open Space, one of the inspirations for the Piazza, any number and variety of people can be invited. People "vote with their feet." The initial focus can be a problem or possibility and change shift and spin off others in the process. It allows for both grass roots and institutions to engage in unpredictable and improbable collaborations.

And as people get involved in the Doing conversation, several potential projects and efforts can emerge and that people can assign themselves to.

 

Multifactorial Social Problems

I don't think it takes a building full of experts to realize that many of the things we call social problems exist because of multiple concurrent factors. Think: poverty, joblessness, powerlessness, hunger and homelessness. It becomes equally clear that it takes a village to impact the multiplicity of factors for any of these. Village here means networks of resources and efforts.  No one person, program or institution can impact all factors for any single social problem. It is pure delusion, albeit a useful truth, that any one anything can impact all factors. In fact, we now know that the more any one strategy is pushed instead of a network effort, that strategy will make the problem actually worse.

Any progress happens to the degree that networks are developed.

Reinventing Community Gatherings: A Radical Proposal

Many of us who design and host (facilitate) community gatherings, whatever the focus, are always thinking about new approaches. We borrow and improvise models and experiment when and however we can, always in search of a better model. One of the givens in this space is that people come to the table in very different kinds of consciousness. I believe we do best when we start with where people are. This is vital when we want the conversations to start and stay authentic.

So here's the idea I'm currently cooking on.

Everyone is invited to join any of four conversations: the Discovery conversation, the Discussion conversation, the Divergence conversation and the Doing Conversation. They can shift to another conversation any time they want. They can stay as long or as little as they want. They can arrive and leave whenever they want. They can invite others into a conversation when they know or suspect they might have unique value to add.

People come to the Discovery conversation to learn and share learning. Questions are raised and answered or researched. The intention is to increase the amount and quality of facts people have on the focus of the gathering.

People come to the Discussion conversation to share and argue opinions related to the focus. Facts are optional. The intention is to win friends and influence enemies. 

People come to the Divergence conversation to talk about why something else is more urgent or important than the given topic featured in the original invitation for the gathering.

People come to the Doing conversation to make commitments to individual and shared actions that would help make possible what they consider success and progress relative to the focus.

It's a very simple model. People can engage in any or many of the four conversations, move between them and cross-pollinate ideas among them. Everything gets recorded so new people joining a group can engage most relevantly and productively. Everyone gets a copy of the whole process afterwards.

The process has two promises: 1) People will be able to talk about whatever they want to talk about with others who come to the table with common conversational intentions and 2) People who want to do things can do this with others and without distractions.

I'm calling this a Piazza.* Also see the following post: More On The Piazza

 

*A piazza is commonly found at the meeting of two or more streets. Most Italian cities have several piazzas with streets radiating from the center. Shops and other small businesses are found on piazzas as it is an ideal place to set up a business. Many metro stations and bus stops are found on piazzas as they are key point in a city. Wikipedia

When Should Students Be Allowed To Grow Up?

In his NY Times piece today, The Wilds of Education, Frank Bruni argues that education is about exposing not protecting students relative to the realities of the world we expect them to successfully navigate. This directly contrasts with the failed attempt by public school decision makers to ban from standardized tests any words that would make students "uncomfortable," like: divorce, slavery, poverty, hurricanes and, of course, birthdays.

When we advance as a civilization toward engaged learning, we will expect that students are ready to know the realities of the world when their questions about them authentically emerge. The job of educators is to guide discoveries at the edges of comfort so learners feel more wise, compassionate and empowered by their learning, no matter what the subject. 

When it comes to raising the next generation, we have a couple paths to follow and carve. One is protecting them from learning how to undertand what's uncomfortable and the other is equipping them with the tools to do so. The option we don't have is handing them a world devoid of things about which they might feel less than confortable.

Shaping Expectations Of The Young

Today I came face to face with one of the archetypal tensions in education. What kind of learning should we expect of each young person at each phase in their development? The continuation of industrial Era massification of everything argues that learning should be standardized in direct and persistent denial of individual uniqueness.

I did a three hour storytelling workshop in which the featured participants was a group of really bright and generally affable 10 year olds. They continuously challenged and surprised my assumptions about their passions, strengths and capacities. I never honestly knew how each would respond to new directions and feedback until I heard and saw and felt their responses in the moment. All that mattered in their success was my capacity and interest in presence and creativity, the opposites of assumptiveness and arrogance. They did splendidly and delighted in the experience. That's how it works.

Exorcizing Corporate Jargon

I continue to be more amazed than entertained by people wasting time arguing over the unreconsilable distinctions like: strategy, tactic, objective, goal, function, value, principle, vision, direction, mission and so on. In rare moments of cynicism, I suspect that people argue about these abstractions precisely to postpone the kind of simple communication that requires some kind of commitment on their part. They represent the vocabulary of the status quo. And because the declared head of the table declares the official definitions, it doesn't mean the group will get beyond business as usual. My intervention of choice is to absolutely refuse to become complicit in their agenda. Instead I pose the simplest of questions, like:

What do you want?

Why do you want that?

When do you want it?

What are you willing to do about it?

What help do you need?

Who do you want to help?

These have the power to bring about authentic commitment, action and making a difference for a change.