Confirmed yet again that the way to build community, and indeed strengthen participatory and democratic societies is to do work together. Peter Levine, who I feel like everyone should read, has a nice little blog post today that serves as a bit of a gateway to his own research and thoughts on this topic. Here’s his basic thesis: People are more likely to trust institutions if they are involved in diverse, participatory groups, because such participation gives them a feeling of agency, teaches them that compromise is necessary (it’s not a sign that leaders are corrupt), and encourages them to …
Context changes everything. This used to be a forest. Alicia Juarrero is the source of so much great thinking on the role of constraints in complex systems. Her two books, Dynamics In Action and Context Changes Everything are brilliant discussions of the role of intention and how constraints shape complex phenomena. They are philosophical texts, and so are slow reads, but well worth the effort. You can find many videos of her sharing her insights on You Tube and elsewhere. She is generous with her time and enthusiastic about her work. Last week I sat in on a seminar she …
if you are a non-profit/social services leader in BC, then we would love to have you at a free workshop we’re offering in the new year! It’s about using complexity practices to prepare for and navigate crisis and disruption in our organizations and communities. You can learn more and register at this link. This work has its roots all the way back in 2020 when Ciaran and I ran a Participatory Narrative Inquiry project for a group of organizations serving people with disabilities about how folks were coping during the early days of the pandemic. We learned a lot from …
C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) appearing in the night sky October 17 over Lake Opinion in Ontario. Shot with my iPhone 13 A collection of interesting links I found and posted at my Mastodon account this month. Happy Hallowe’en!
Some notes from three days of teaching a small cohort of leaders in the art of participatory leadership. —- When we teach the four fold practice of the art of hosting (also the art of participatory leadership) I’ve taken to doing it in a World Cafe. We use Cafe to essentially recreate the conditions that created the insights of the four fold practice 25 or so years ago. We invite people to tell stories of engaging and meaningful conversations they have experienced, look at these stories together for insights about what made them engaging and meaningful and provide and three …