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Artists and meaning making

November 13, 2007 By Art of Harvesting 2 Comments

Marshall McLuhan on the role of artists in harvesting patterns:

“When you give people too much information, they instantly resort to pattern recognition, in other words, to structure the experience.   I think this is part of the artist’s world.   The artist, when he encounters the present…is always seeking new patterns, new pattern recognition, which is his task.   The absolute indispensability of the artist is that he alone in the present can give the pattern recognition. He alone has the sensory awareness necessary to tell us what our world is made of.   He is more important than the scientist.   The scientists are going to wake up to this shortly and will resort en mass to the artist’s studio in order to discover the forms and the matter they are dealing with.”

Sono Hashisaki and I worked with an artist this week, Steven Wright, who drew some patterns and helped make meaning for us, and it was wonderful.   Gratitude overflows.   Thanks Steven.

The responsibility of love

November 13, 2007 By Being 6 Comments

Photo by Hamid Masoumi

This question of the responsibility of love continues to live in me. I wrote a comment at Dave Pollard’s blog that captures another facet of it:

Love IS a social issue and engaging in the world with love is a bit of a trick. It not only accelerates innovation and “better”, it is a double edged sword too. I think there is such a thing as “the responsibility of love” which refers to the way we wield the weapons of the heart in the world when we are working in the territory of open heartedness. When we choose to love, we choose to elevate and commit to certain things above other things – people, paths, choices, directions. There is pain associated with this choosing, made all the more stinging by the fact that we choose and exclude out of heart-felt action, which is action we are fully committed too. It results in pain, and so much of the world that is created by love is also full of grief.

Love and pain, bliss and grief are siblings in this world. If we choose to work with love, we enter this polarity. We may also choose to work with complete dispassion and equanimity, which is what the Buddha invited us to do. My path is not that refined yet. I still choose the path with heart, and that means the path of pain also.

The future of management needs hosts

November 9, 2007 By Facilitation, First Nations, Leadership, Organization 4 Comments

Taholah, Washington

If this article is any indication, the future of management will require more hosts and less bosses.   Hierarchies are disappearing, top-down and centralized is giving way to distributed, and organizations are becoming more open and engaging of stakeholders.

That is true everywhere in my experience, including here at the Quinault Indian Nation where we are reframing the tribal government’s strategic plan in several unique ways.   First we have established a core team of stakeholders from the government and community who are willing to take responsibility for stewarding the plan.   Second, the core team has proposed a new strategic plan model that organizes work not by the departments and programs of the Quinault government structure, but rather by “domains” which are yet to be determined but may end up being things like “prosperity” and “learning.”   Organizing the aspirations and preferred futures of the nation this way means that the government departments need to talk to each other and the community to move the Nation forward.   And finally the new plan requires engagement with many many people, to bring in the wisdom and ownership of the community so that the plan is theirs.   Tomorrow for example we will be hosting an ongoing cafe in the lobby outside the Nation’s general council meeting, where we will be hosting conversations with community members and capturing wisdom with a graphic facilitator.
As a result, our planning sessions are a combination of work and facilitation training because the core team knows that to do this means that they have to talk to people.   So we are exploring how to convene conversations that matter and that have an impact.

How is the shift in management changing the way you plan strategy?

Euan defines the bottom line

November 9, 2007 By Collaboration, Leadership

Tahola, Washington
From Euan:

Management is becoming about noticing and enabling rather than driving and controlling.Get yourselves a big melting pot of different social tools that engender different conversations and expressions of intent from your staff, watch like a hawk, spot the cool stuff, fan the flames and then protect the baby shoots from your spoilers.

Nice.

Keynote from Van Jones

November 8, 2007 By Leadership 15 Comments

Seattle, Washington

Tuesday wrapped wup with a great high energy keynote from Van Jones, director of the Ella Baker Center in Oakland, California..

This harvest was co-written by Nancy White, Teresa Posakony and Chris Corrigan

Van was nervous prior to his talk – some “jackass” came up and tapped him on his shoulder and interrupted his contemplation. “Don’t mess with me! I”m a spiritual agent.” I turned around and it was Peter Senge trying to wish me some good luck. We face the challenge of helping people to rise to the occasion of their lives. You get better, stronger, clearer, more articulate – a global phenomenon. At the same time the external world gets more complicated, scary, difficult to deal with. Both a sense of hopefulness and overwhelm and urgency. We are caught in between.

Paradox

Out of that paradox we will find incredible answers.

Van’s Story

It began with being pissed off about racism – a fundamental orientation towards the world. Born the year Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy were killed, school integration – wanted to prove something to the world about Black excellence and competence. But it was carried with anger. It brought Van into activism and a complete emotional and psychological breakdown.

After 10 years on the front lines, going into public schools, 30-34 kids and one teacher, six books, no chalk and no TP. Seeing kids frustrated in that situation, understandably. IN a place to do something stupid that landed them not in the principles office, but in the police station. Into detention centers where staff made more than teachers. Going to a lot of funerals. Kids in caskets with the elders crying. Three year olds who saw flowers or balloons would cry with the association of funerals or pavement memorials. Van worked 20 hours days, slept in his clothes, pushed to a point where he was sick all the time. Would start all his speeches – excuse me, I’m not feeling that well today, but I’m not as sick as this system we are trying to fight. Work it into the speech. Can laugh now, but on July 17, 2000 something went “bop.” IN bad shape. And the system was still standing there… The system didn’t even say “owie!” Just doing its thing. And Van was lost.

Van was looking at a newspaper and read about a spirituality retreat. “I can’t tell nobody in Oakland that I’m going to a spirituality retreat, but I felt called to go.” SO being a brave, principled person, he lied. “I’m going to the Raider’s game.” Because he knows his people. As a Black activist, working 20 hours a day, twitch when you talk and snap – people don’t’ think you’re crazy. You don’t want to be in the neighbourhood when they say “you’ve been out in the wood beating drums with white people? You are SICK!” He knew he could not bring it to the community directly. He’d sneak to Marin in the night. He got there and said “what is this? This is 20 minutes from the neighbourhood and everybody’s happy!” They carry these big rolled up weapons – their yoga mats. “What is this!” “They eat this ambrosial food that makes them happy, called tofu, and cars that don’t pollute – priusie – I said to myself, how did this come to be, 20 minutes from my house you have all of this going on and back in Oakland we have cancer clusters, learning disabilities, birth defects, off the chart pollution.” Two different realities. In his broke down state, he had to just be a witness and get help. He realized the best people he met before his breakdown lived 20 minutes from the best people he met after his breakdown and they did not know each other. If this kept going, we’d have eco-apartheid. The eco haves and have nots. Within 20 minutes of each other. Four syllables. A prayer. A hope. Imagining the young people he worked with that this could be available. Green jobs, not jails. Just came to him. All of these new products and services – hybrid cars, organic food – the positive green wave with solutions to global warming. Will this green wave lift all boats? Will it include everybody?

Green

Jobs

Not

Jails

Held as a prayer and it became a CURSE!

He went back to the neighbourhood, “We must begin to focus on the solar power, permaculture, and organic food, this is the path to freedom… where you going don’t leave me.” Going back and forth to marin county and oakland telling them all they have in common.

He’s saying these ideas have become popular because “the age of issues is over” – poverty, civil rights, crime. Issue is another word for the word problem…. so social activism has been stuck in the problems with all it’s cynicism. MLK did not get famous for saying, “I have a problem, I have a critique, a have a bunch of issues and I’m thoroughly pissed off.”

The age of issues is over, the age of solutions is here. We need to dream again and bring people together around actual possibility. Being present to a prayer.

Now he’s taking us to the “fourth quadrant” – saying he’s holding

Vertical Rich–poor

Horizontal. Gray problems to Green Solutions

Rich and gray

The conversations about environmental problems among affluent classes: polar bears, global warming, rainforests and other charismatic mega fauna. These are the right conversations from the place of self-preservation AND these are beautiful beings that are disappearing because of our actions. It’s good work

 Rich and Green

Affluent solutions…green consumption like hybrids, light bulbs, organic food, solar panels on the second home. Business opportunities for rich people and employment opportunities for others. This is good…better to invest in and buy things that help the planet and not harm the planet.

To see these as all correct and good is to see a bigger picture than the environmental movement sees, which is to say that there is both/and about the environmental movements and environmental justice.. If we get these right, we bring down the system that believes that it is alright to have disposal stuff and disposable people. There is nothing that is throwaway, not species, goods, people or neighbourhoods. The fourth quadrant helps us to imagine radically different partnerships, full of green health, wealth, employment and prosperity for poor people. It is the quadrant for green collar jobs.

People’s Grocery in West Oakland. West Oakland has 35,000 people and no grocery stores, but i almost exclusively liquor stores which just serve crap. Or you take five buses to go to Whole Paycheck Foods. 35,000 people stuck in an island of poor nutrition in a sea of abundant fresh organic produce. The kids that started People’s Grocery deliver fresh organic foods in the ‘hood.

Green collar jobs can’t be exported…they have to be local. Millions of buildings need to be retrofitted for millions of green collar jobs. The job is to connect the people who most need work with the work that most needs doing. This brings neighbourhoods together because they all have something to offer to the fourth quadrant.

Van designed the Oakland Green Jobs Corps program…this could happen in Vancouver with Aboriginal youth and workers in the downtown eastside. Van is great…I’m just imagining this happening in Vancouver, Aboriginal youth riding this wave of green prosperity and need in Vancouver and the building boom which right now gives them skills that can be used in this emerging economy.

Van closes by showing a picture of three kids. Everyone has a plan for these kids but not US. The only way to make these kids part of the world is to deal in solutions that recognize that we are all in this together. Everywhere.

Someone in the audience asked what his connection is in the UN. They saw the green jobs idea taking off with connections through UN and internationally before taking off locally. Which just goes to prove it’s all magical, you can’t predict it… it’s all just intention and a prayer. Just keep going!

Another audience member talked about the Youth Ecopreneurs Program and asked if there are venture capital programs working with programs to support green jobs. Van did a keynote at the Investor’s Circle. They liked it and asked “how can we help you?” Van didn’t have an answer… he walked into the room assuming he would not get support. He told the story as an example of why it’s important to withhold judgement.

Finally an audience member asked Van how he sustains his vision. He replied that when he started out with this new way of seeing the world there was no one around him who got it. So he created a Board of Directors for himself. He invited Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Bob Marley and others to be on his Board. He consulted the imaginary Board on a regular basis when he needed advice, imagining what they would say, the points they would argue with one another and taking inspiration from their writings and speeches. I turned to my friends and said that this is the kind of thing you do until you find real people that will spar with you and make you better. Very cool idea.

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