Meg Wheatley on great questions to ask as we think about measurement, especially in complex living systems (like human communities):
Who gets to create the measures? Measures are meaningful and important only when generated by those doing the work. Any group can benefit from others’ experience and from experts, but the final measures need to be their creation. People only support what they create, and those closest to the work know a great deal about what is significant to measure.
How will we measure our measures? How can we keep measures useful and current? What will indicate that they are now obsolete? How will we keep abreast of changes in context that warrant new measures? Who will look for the unintended consequences that accompany any process and feed that information back to us?
Are we designing measures that are permeable rather than rigid? Are they open enough? Do they invite in newness and surprise? Do they encourage people to look in new places, or to see with new eyes?
Will these measures create information that increases our capacity to develop, to grow into the purpose of this organization? Will this particular information help individuals, teams, and the entire organization grow in the right direction? Will this information help us to deepen and expand the meaning of our work?
What measures will inform us about critical capacities: commitment, learning, teamwork, quality and innovation? How will we measure these essential behaviors without destroying them through the assessment process? Do these measures honor and support the relationships and meaning-rich environments that give rise to these behaviors?
These are great questions to consider at the Show Me The Change conference in Melbourne as we dive into questions on the implications for complexity on the measurements used to evaluate change in living and complex systems.
From a recent Art of Hosting in Sweden comes a learning from some young leaders thinking about how to lead in networks:
1. Open and transparency of decision making process and “organizational” structure, even if it’s dynamic. No Taboos or un-written rule. The aim should be to make the system as visible as possible.
2. Empowers loads of action (systemically): What is the minimum structure needed to enable self-organizing and action?
3. Good communication culture (this is the real challenge I guess)
4. Clear process of creation and updating the leading thoughts
5. Low entrance step, it’s easy to join, accessible.
6. Inclusive, nobody is left out if they want to contribute and participate.
7. Purpose large enough but clear enough. People should feel that I want to be part of this. Purpose is container both for action and expansion. Case: 350.org brought together many networks, as did Survival Academy.
via How to lead a network well? ideas from AoH Karlskrona | Monkey Business.
This is my friend Colleen Stevenson, a lovely graphic recorder that I work with whenever I can. Here she is talking about permaculture principles, something which she knows a lot about, and talking about this large shart she drew to capture and start conversations on how these principles work in learning.
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 Island, from Departure Bay on the east side, through Port Alberni and along the shore of Sproat Lake, through the pass and down to the west coast. It’s a landscape of high mountains, big trees, big clearcuts and huge beaches. Everything is scaled so big that you can’t help feel small and humbled in this landscape. And to beat it all, last night I chased the sun across the island and it beat me to the open Pacific. By the time I made the turn for Tofino it was pitch dark and the sky was ablaze with stars and the Geminid meteor showers littered the heavens with fireballs and frequent streaks of light.
The first time I ever cam to BC, in 1989, I came here, or more precisely, I stayed a week in Heshquiaht, on the north edge of Clayoquot Sound, visiting with my friend Sennen Charleson and his family. Sennen died a few years ago in a road accident in northern BC, and I can feel his presence here in land from which he spent many years in exile, but which always called him strongly. There is a riotous complexity to the rainforests of the west coast, and a presence unlike anywhere else on earth. Everything is quiet, knowing that you cannot make more noise than a storm from the ocean or the clatter of rain through the canopy. Human noises disappear here, like a the ripples from a pebble tossed into surf.
I’m excited to be designing a three day learning experience here with some apprenticing mates, Norinne Messer and Laura Loucks. We are using the framework of tsawalk for our work together, a concept that is deeply rooted in the Nuu-Cha-Nulth worldview and that influences everything from resource management to spiritual ceremony to the role of community. It is forming the basis of a unique partnership that will produce a marine use plan for Clayoquot and Barkley Sounds, and over the next few days, we will look at how tsawalk informs our work with communities, influences design choices for community engagement and self-development.
One of the processes we will be using is based on the Nuu-Cha-Nulth spiritual practice of “oosumich” which is a form of prayer and self-knowledge that helps us to access knowledge from the interior worlds of spiritual source, individual persoanlity and community. It is a form of investigative methodology that is complimentary to science, which examines and makes sense of the external world. Working together with these methods, we can come to a holistic understanding of the world, a practical expression of tsawalk. Oosumich is a spiritual practice, intended to connect with the spiritual aspects of the world that we can also understand materially. Oosumich itself is a secret and a scared practice, but what we know of it can be used to work in leadership learning and process design.
Some of the basic values that are involved in the expression of tsawalk are aphey (kindness), isaak (respect) and he-xwa (balance). As I sit here designing today, I am thinking very carefully about how these three basic show up in hosting work. Some of my preliminary thoughts are:
aphey
- being helpful for the common good (“hupee-ee-aulth”)
- paying attention to good relations and increasing more of them (an appreciative approach to growing community)
- ask for what you need, offer what you can (PeerSpirit Circle principles that apply to Nuu-Chah-Nulth life from the way in which people help each other with work, food gathering and preparation and ceremony)
isaak
- every voice has it’s place. When we hear a voice of dissent or confusion, it is not out place to judge it, but rather to figure out how it is related to the whole. If tsawalk is the principles, there can be nothing outside of that, and so all voices have a place.
- all creation has common origin and we pay respect to that common origin by acknowledging the relationships that are present in the world.
he-xwa
- balance comes from having a core, which can be a purpose or a solid centre or a ground
- the world is a constant balance between energies that create and those that destroy. Balance is not a static point in time, but a dynamic practice. We have to learn to be sensitive to imbalances both in the external world and in the internal world. Where there is too much red tide, people notice, and they know it means something is out of balance with the marine environment. When there is too much chaos in a meeting, it means that people are confused and more order and clarity has to be found.
All of these ideas form the basis for some teaching, for some play and learning. I’m thrilled to be here.
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 and worried people sitting around for a few days trying to reach a creative agreement. One kid said that she doesn’t work very well if she thinks there is a tiger behind her about to eat her.
So we had a little circle and talked about what we know about principles of meeting together. The kids generated this list:
- Be serious but not bitter
- Optimistic
- Not grim
- Respectfully, without insulting each other
- talk with civility
- peacefully
- consider the whole planet
- Be calm
- happily and confidently
- include everyone and make sure everyone has a voice
- be positive and useful
- get different opinions
- have fun
- break into groups to get more ideas
- make sure groups get mixed up.
- no shouting
- come with an open mind
- talk nicely and treat everyone as if they were a relative
- make sure to move. maybe dance together.
- feast
- have music and entertainers, and hire a jester to make fun of yourself.
We even took this advice, and broke into groups to see what kinds of things we could brainstorm around climate change solutions. The kids worked for 40 minutes in a world cafe, and then we shared some ideas (“Someone needs to develop shoes that massage your feet while you walk.” “Busses should be free”). We discovered that if we practice some of the principles, they really do result in creative thinking, and a more civil tone.
So the kids were pretty clear that they didn’t have answers about climate change, but they did have recommendations about HOWthe leaders should meet in order to find creative and sustaining solutions. We made four videos (the kids chose to do sketches) which we are editing and will get quick parental approval before sending off to Copenhagen through various channels.
My takeaway on this is that there is a lot of science and highly technical information that is required before you can make useful contributions to the global warming debate. Very few of us have access to that level of understanding and while we might have some good ideas, we don’t really have the ability to engage at the level of understanding that results in concrete solutions.
We do however all have experience of conversations that work. Youth are very clear about ways in which learning takes place. I was delighted when they began naming principles of participatory process and conversational leadership, which are just fancy terms for what we already know about how to collaborate. Twelve year olds CAN make a contribution, and can learn and reflect on process as they share their own experience about what works.