Good spot from Johnnie Moore on the power dynamics of safety in groups. Hint: it comes from attending to rank, not cohesiveness: Nancy Dixon writes about the conditions that favour good quality conversations in organisations. She uses the term psychological safety to describe the conditions that allow people to take risks in conversations. She distinguishes that safety from cohesiveness (for which it could be mistaken). The latter may feel safe but really sets everyone up for groupthink. The safety Nancy talks about allows challenging things to be said. The essential precondition for that kind of safety is largely to do …
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Yesterday was wonderful. We spent the whole day around a fire on MacKenzie Beach listening to three stories and reflecting back what we learned. Pawa’s father Moy and uncle Tim both told stories of growing up in a traditional family and village. For me Tim’s story of getting stranded with his brother in a rowboat was powerful and contained all kinds of teachings about leadership, knowledge and practice. In the afternoon we did the same with Admire’s story from Zimbabwe, the story of what is happening at Kufunda Village. A full day of deeply listening to stories, harvesting lessons …
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The weather here on MacKenzie Beach near Tofino is unusually summery. THe families that were running around over the Thanksgiving weekend are gone now and only a few remain behind. We began our learning village with a circle gathered around a fire on the beach, maybe 20 of us, sharing Indian Candy (half smoked salmon) dried berries and tea, telling the stories of our names and why we responded to the invitation to join a week of learning together. We don’t have young ones here, but the oldest is 82 and we have folks from Denmark, Zimbabwe, the United …
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“Tell everyone you know: “My happiness depends on me, so you’re off the hook.” And then demonstrate it. Be happy, no matter what they’re doing. Practice feeling good, no matter what. And before you know it, you will not give anyone else responsibility for the way you feel – and then, you’ll love them all. Because the only reason you don’t love them, is because you’re using them as your excuse to not feel good.” – Esther Abraham-Hicks via whiskey river. Heading to Hahopa today. Hahopa is an idea. It is a place of the heart and the …
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Inspired post by Dave Pollard today on the challenge of scale and the confusion of control. Complicated systems require few connections in order to be manageable: It is because business and government systems are wedded to the orthodoxy of hierarchy that as they become larger and larger (which such systems tend to do) they become more and more dysfunctional. Simply put, complicated hierarchical systems don’t scale. That is why we have runaway bureaucracy, governments that everyone hates, and the massive, bloated and inept Department of Homeland Security. But, you say, what about “economies of scale”? Why are we constantly merging …