Jack Ricchiuto on simplifying strategy: Every organization, and community, I work with on strategy is very relieved when I liberate them from the inane practice of traditional academic language in the process. I refuse to allow them to waste valuable time debating over the distinctions of: goal, objective, strategy, tactic, and night maneuvers. (I throw in the military reference to “night maneuvers” to inject humor into what is usually a very humorless and uninspired process – and it works.) What do we do instead? We replace these never-agreed-upon jargon with complex words like: where, why, how, and what. To be …
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So far my favourite expression here at the Art of Participatory Leadership is “listen loudly.” People use it to describe a quality of attention where your ears are filled with sound and meaning, even if the person you are listening to is whispering.
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Writing from Tofino, on the west coast of Vancouver Island which is about as far west as you can go without leaving North America. I’m here this week to run an Art of Hosting training with a number of community coordinators for 14 Nuu-Chah-Nulth communities around Clayoquot, Barkley and Kyuquot Sounds. We’re going to be learning together about methods for community engagement and participatory leadership and all of it based very deeply in the concept of Tsawalk (from the Nuu-Chah-Nulth principle of “heshook ish tsawalk” meaning “everything is one.”) Last night I drove out here across the spine of Vancouver …
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A smart observation on the deep architecture of good design: One conclusion so far is that the possibility space for change opens up when we connect different people who can begin resonating together around shared stories, opportunities, and dreams. It’s a process of liberating people from the confines of clusters of sameness and ideological colonialism so they can move toward more diverse connections and pragmatic alignments. As it turns out, the fusion of difference and resonance is a powerful approach because in that space, people move away from trying to change each other, which opens the space for the possibilities …
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So we had our little learning village today with the kids at Aine’s learning centre which my partner, daughter and I designed. We explored these questions of what kind of inner climate is needed to engage around questions of climate change and the kids followed the energy. They got really interested in what kinds of things they could say to the global leadership meeting in Copenhagen. They wanted to convey a sense that, yes this is a serious issue, but how you choose to meet together matters. They were dismayed and discouraged by the prospect of a lot of angry …