I was up north on the weekend, working with a small community that has been driven apart by a large and contentious decision. It doesn’t matter what it was, or what either side wanted – the result is the same result that happens in many small communities: people who are friends and neighbours shouting and fighting with each other.
The team I was working with are trying to reinvent the way this community is engaged. We used a lovely redux of Peter Block’s work to help frame our conversation about design and implementation. A few things stood out for this group with respect to Peter’s work.
Changing the room changes the conversation. We talked a lot about the fact that changing engagement starts in this room and in this moment because this room IS the community. When we dove in about what was missing from the way the community engages it was clear that the ownership piece was the biggest one. As in many community meetings the way people traditionally engage is with passion that is directed outward. There is an expectation that someone else needs to change. We joked about the sentiment that says “I’ll heal only after every else has healed!” It was a joke but the laughter was nervous, because that statement cuts close to the bone. So we DID change the room and decided to hold a World Cafe. gathered around smaller tables, paper in the middle, markers available for everyone to write with…
So how do you begin a meeting with people who are invited to take up the ownership of the outcome? I am not a fan of giving people groundrules, because as a facilitator it puts me in the position of enforcer, and gives people an out for how the behave towards one another. So instead we considered the question of what it looks like when people are engaged. What stood out is how people “lean in” to the centre of the conversation. So the question became, how do we get people to lean in right away and take ownership of the centre?
The solution was simple but was later revealed to have tons of power. At the outset of the cafe as I was introducing the process I gave the following instructions:
“That paper in the middle is for all of you to use, as are the markers. We want you each to record thoughts and insights that other need to hear about. So before we begin I invite you to pick up a marker and write your name in front of you. <people write their names>. Now I want to invite you to answer this question: what is one thing you can do to make sure that this meeting is different? Write your answer beneath your name.”
People took a moment to write their names and their commitments. And they shared them with each other at the table. That is how we began.
The first round of conversation proceeded as usual, but I noticed something very powerful in the second round. When everyone got up and moved around they took a seat in someone else’s place, and often the first thing they did was to read the name and the commitment that was in front of them. Can you imagine coming across the name of someone who you have a disagreement with only to see that they have written “I won’t fight anymore” beneath their name? The core team is now going through all of the tablecloths and making a list of the commitments that people made. Taken on their own, they form a powerful declaration of willingness.
People reported that this was the best meeting the community had in a long time. And it had a lot to do with this tiny intervention of public ownership for the outcomes.
I’m at an Open Space conference in Grande Ronde, Oregon which is a summit of Tribal leaders and federal government agencies from around the Pacific Northwest of the USA, and Alaska. The subject of the meeting is improving relations around environmental issues.
As we were wrapping up our action planning session this morning, a young man walked into the room who I hadn’t yet met. He apologized for being late. He got delayed on the way in.
“No problem,” I said. “What was the delay all about?”
“Oh, I live near Nome Alaska and we were out hunting. Got a bearded seal and a walrus. They’re about 45 miles offshore on some ice floes and it took us a while to get them back. I’ve got to get back and get it dried and frozen and then go out and get a beluga. Some good open water now and the whales are only a mile off shore.”
I just looked at him. What can you say to that?
“Yeah, and on top of that, I’ve never been out of state before and I can’t believe how cheap things are down here. These sunglasses I just bought for 13 bucks would cost me 50 at home. I’m going to pick up a laptop and a necklace for my girl.”
Cool.
William Commanda, an important Elder from Kitigan Zibi near Maniwaki, Quebec died this morning.
I first met William in 1988 when I was doing some research at the Assembly of First Nations offices in Ottawa. He had come into the office to give a teaching on one of the wampum belts that he had in his possession. A large crowd of staff gathered around him and he spoke quietly and deliberately about the nature of the relationship between peoples on the continent. He was a powerful teacher, and could hold a room spellbound as he expounded on his teachings. He was fierce in communicating what he knew. He was warm too, and patient with people. I think he wanted to make sure that you truly and deeply understood what he was telling you.
In my life I have met some incredible Elders and teachers in my life and travels. People like Jake Thomas, Fred Wheatley, Manny Boyce, Albert Lightning, Edna Manitowabi, Umeek, Jake Swamp, Pualani Kanahele Kanaka’ole, Peter O’Chiese, Eddie Benton-Banai, Ernie Benedict, Bruce Elijah, and of course Grandfather William. Every moment I spent with these people is indelibly written into my memory. They are important keepers of human culture, and when we lose one, something important always dies with them.
My condolences to William Commanda’s family and friends.
Heading to Columbus Ohio today to teach at the 2011 Authentic Leadership in Action Institute with my friends Pawa Haiyupis and Tim Merry. We’re teaching a module on indigenous wisdom, ancient wisdom, universal wisdom. It’s new for me to be doing this, kind of a chance to sum up my last 20 years of learning, living and growing as a human being. I’m nervous and mindful of elder Herb Joe’s name for us: “poor weak human beings.”
I always feel humble coming to ALIA and this year I feel maybe more humble than ever. Our module is fully subscribed and many friends and colleagues will be with us. On the eve of the work I find myself far more curious about what I am about to learn rather than what I have to teach. And immediately that frame of mind brings me back in a deep and powerful way to the first steps I took learning about Anishinaabe culture and practice back in 1987.
So I sit here waiting to depart on a delayed flight to Toronto, grateful for all of the indigenous teachers in my life. Remembering Tom Little, Paul Bourgeois, Edna Manitowabi, Jake Thomas, Manny Boyd, Art Soloman, Marlene Castellano, Eddie Benton-Banai, Shirley Williams, Wayne Kaboni, Fred Wheatley, Bruce Elijah, William Commanda, Sylvia Maracle, George Cook, Umeek, Fred Johnson, Lila Brown, Cease Wyss, Dustin Rivers, Grace Nielsen, Willie Charlie, Leonard George, Pawa Haiyupis, Wally Samuel, Herb Joe, Satsan, Luana Busby-Neff, Taupouri Tangaro, Michael Elkington, Orlando Pioche, Mikk Sarv, Mick Dodson, Peter DuBois, David Newhouse and Sonny Diabo.
All of these men and women, some older, and some younger than me, are my teachers. they have shared some deep kindness with me, some important teaching that has brought me to a place of belonging either in myself or in the place in which I live, and I am grateful to them all, and many more besides.
As I head out on this trip, this quote seems important:
“The circle is one of the strongest shapes in nature. When we see the world from a Native American perspective, that circle shapes our vision. We find circles and the idea of the circle everywhere, from the shapes of most Native dwellings to the view of the world as a series of continual, repeating cycles. Human life, itself, is seen as a circle, as we come from our mother, the Earth, when we are born and return to that same earth when we die” . Lesson stories keep the Native people of each generation from repeating errors which their ancestors made. And today, because (as Sitting Bull is reputed to have said) “there are no longer just Indians here,” that circle of stories is desperately needed…”
Analyse this...!
Yesterday I had a chance to grab lunch with Dave Pollard in our local coffee shop on Bowen Island. One of the things we talked about was the supremacy of analysis in the world and why that is a problem when it comes to operating in complex domains.
I have been intentionally working a lot lately with Dave Snowdon et. al.’s Cynefin framework to support decision making in various domains. It is immensely helpful in making sense of the messy reality of context and exercises like anecdote circles and butterfly stamping are very powerful, portable and low tech processes.
Cynefin is also useful in that it warns us against a number of fatal category errors people make when trying to design solutions to problems. The most serious of these is remaining complacent in a simple context which has the effect of tipping the system to chaos. Nearly as infuriating and problematic to me is the applicability of analysis to complex domains.
Analysis has a dominant place in organizational and community life. It provides a sense of security that we can figure things out and operate in the space of the known. If we just analyse a situation enough we can identify all if the aspects if the problem and choose a solution. Of course in the complicated domain, where causes and effects can be known even though they are separated in time and space, analysis works beautifully. But in complex domains, characterized by emerged phenomenon, analysis tends to externalize and ignore that which it cannot account for with the result that solutions often remain dangerously blind to surprise and “black swan” events.
The Cyenfin framework advocates working with stories and social constructed meaning to sense and act in complex spaces. Where as analysis relies on objective data and meaning making models to create rules and tools, action in complex spaces uses stories and patterns to create principles and practices which help us to create small actions – probes in the system – that work in a nuanced way with emergence.
In this respect culture matters. The stories that are told and the practices thy are used to make sense of those stories is the method for acting in complex space. This distinction us helpful for me working with indigenous communities where program management may rely on analytical tools (and culture is stamped out in the process) but practices need to be grounded in culturally based responses. Using stories and social meaning making restores culture to its traditional role of helping groups of humans move together in complex domains while using analysis more appropriately.