Silo busting is a very interesting thing. Everyone knows that systems atrophy when they divide their work into silos. Silos entrench difference and prevent learning across sectors whether we are talking about departments in an organization, or a social system like health care or child and family services. Silos have limited usefulness. They divide work into manageable chunks. But in general they create reductionist responses to systemic problems and they pose a massive challenge to people working nfor change. If we first have to bust the silos, and only then can we address the problems, how do we know we’ll …
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Running an Art of Hosting workshop this week for employees of the City of Edmonton. We are about 30 people all together looking at the art of hosting participatory process, convening and leading in complex environments where certainty is an artifact of the past. Naturally because these people work for a municipal government, the conversations we are having tend to be about systems. We are working at the level of what it takes a system to shift itself as well as what it takes of an individual to lead when the answers are unclear. For me, lots of good insights …
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Lovely report here on the use of the Art of Hosting apaproach, Theory U and others of our social technologies in health care renewal in Nova Scotia. Within the report is a lovely little quote from My dear friend Toke Moeller: “Purpose is the invisible leader.” Given some of the work I’m doing in the next couple of weeks, that is a very good motto for me.
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From my friend Jerry Nagel, a quote from guitar maker Phil Patrillo: We send our kids to school. I call it the “brain laundry.” They teach them everything you don’t want them to know. It’s done in the name of education and fairness and righteousness, and the things of common sense and how things are done, are never explored. You get a piece of paper with your name on it, if you follow the instructions. I got a Doctorate not because I wanted the piece of paper; I got the Doctorate because my professor said to me, “You know more …
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Harrison Owen periodically restates his invitation to the world to not only join in Open Space but to go as far as you can in Open Space and see where it takes you. I feel like my work of late has been about this in many ways, and Harrison’s recent post to the OSLIST came at just the right time for me. Here is what he says: A long time ago a good friend, Ralph Copleman, was to be found in the middle of a large circle of peers dressed in a flowing cape and repeating the words, “Everything is …