Tenneson Woolf, Caitlin Frost and I are snuggled into the attic rooms at the Capitol Hill Mansion B&B in downtown Denver, listening to some jazz, eating some pasta and salad and finishing up a productive design day together. We are preparing to teach the Art of Hosting to 60 leaders from the community at St. John’s in the Wilderness Cathedral in Denver. St. John’s is a high Anglican Gothic Episcopalian cathedral in the heart of Denver. We have been working with the cathedral community over the past couple of years to build the capacity among the 1700 members to be …
Share:
Coming back from Campbell River tonight. I was working with a group of Churches who are currently trying to understand their future. The United Church of Canada is in a period of massive restructuring due to all kinds of causes. We are very clear, retrospectively, what these causes are…everything from demographics shifts to the overall decline of Christendom. Most folks I have been working with over the past few years actually welcome these dynamics and realities, even though it means that the Church has plunged into a period of deep uncertainty. For people that are both spiritual AND religious in …
Share:
Interesting paper released that demands that policy makers adopt a complexity approach to policy making around environmental decision making. These principles are useful, and can you see how they would apply to social systems too? Create policies that have legs: When developing a policy to manage fisheries or allocate water distribution in agriculture, for example, make it flexible so it can continue to effectively manage the resource, no matter how it changes in the future. Support policies that encourage ecosystem diversity: Opt for plans that encourage organism and habitat diversity, because casting a larger net will let the policy …
Share:
Thinking of friends and especially the Elders and survivors in Alert Bay today as the residential school is torn down. I was in a meeting today where we were discussing ethics and the social contract that Canadians have with one another and here’s the thing: if you are a Canadian, whether born here or recently arrived, you are bound to an ongoing relationship with indigenous peoples. It is impossible for you to own land or to benefit from the taxes paid by those who have exploited resources without being directly connected to the original relationships that founded this country. This …
Share:
Later this spring, Gervase Bushe and Bob Marshak will be publishing a new text on Dialogic Organizational Development. It is a book that is a mix of theory and mpractice, written by both academics and practitioners. I contributed a chapter on holding containers. There are several events happening in the next few months in connection with the launch of what we hope will become the standard text in a new field. This includes a full day pre-session before the Academy of Management conference in Vancouver in August Here is what Gervase sent along this morning: Bob Marshak and I are …