I am proud and lucky to count Toke Moeller as a friend, colleague and teacher. The other day, as I was checking his site for some information for some upcoming Art of Hosting trainings we are doing, I stumbled over his page of principles and assumptions for his work. They are worth reprinting here Some of our assumptions Organisations have more to do with living organic systems than machines Learning is a core competence in the network society Learning, change and transformation involve a degree of chaos The world is too complex to be led by individuals Sustainable solutions emerge …
Seeing is one of the capacities we need to take us to presence. Seeing what is truly in front of us is both a learned skill and a a creative act because to see clearly we have to find away around everything that clouds our perception of what we are looking at. From The Circle Project: Creativity is not the domain of The New; it stands firmly in the land of unimpeded expression where you “see what is there, not what you think should be there.” Remove the limits. Follow the impulse. There is no trick to re-inhabiting your innate …
In my move to WordPress, this post went missing…here it is republished. Jack on productive [tag]waiting[/tag]: Waiting is a fact of life. We wait in line, on hold, for people to get back to us, for traffic lights to change, for parking spaces to open up, for solutions to appear, for consensus to be built, for projects to move forward. What is unproductive waiting … and what is productive waiting? Two pieces, for me. First, there is the kind of waiting when our minds are not united with the task at hand, and second there is the kind of waiting …
I’m reissuing this invitation to join Michael Herman and I here on Bowen Island, British Columbia for an Open Space Practice Retreat from April 18-20, 2006. This is an intensive retreat for leaders, managers, facilitators, consultants, community activists, and anyone else who wants to open more space for renewal, visioning, learning and productivity — in business, government, educational and community organizations. This is an opportunity for deep learning about leadership and change, in the context of the practices that support facilitating Open Space. Folks who will find this useful include leaders, managers and facilitators working with very complex issues, requiring …
My buddy Harrison Owen has been writing like crazy a lot lately. He has been almost singlehandedly keeping the conversation going on the OSLIST, where Open Space practitioners gather to play. And the other day he launched a new paper into the mix: Opening Space for The Question. The paper is about the concept of Nichtwissen, a German word that Harrison translates as “Unknowing”. Open Space for the Question means to cultivate a practice that has us sitting in the Unknowing, working to find where the contemplation of the question takes us. In a really good synopsis of the practice …