A light week of blogging as I have been in a deep Art of Hosting, but here are some things that grabbed my eye this week from the newsfeeds in my life:
- Nancy White on why Sharepoint is NOT the solution you’ve been looking for (and I agree).
- Ria Baeck on Collective sourcing for living wholeness.
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Juicy:
- Jack Martin Leith on the generations of innovation
- Dan Oestrich on reflective leadership in lean times
- Dave Pollard on Christopher Allen’s musings on group size
- Geoff Brown works through Everything’s an Offer
- Crooked Timber on power and deliberation
- Common Ground explains why some contracts honoured and others are not.
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Hello Webby world…I have a request, especially of you systems thinkers out there.
I’m working on a project with a network of Native public radio stations in the United States to assess the unique impacts that these stations make in their communities. One of the things we would like to do with the stations is to provide them with tools to work with the feedback they get from the community and identify key things that make sense to work on.
I’m thinking that some systems thinking tools would be a useful contribution to the work here, and I’m looking for any tools that people use to work strategically with environmental scans to identify leverage points and possibilities to enhance the impact of work a radio station might do. The easier the tool is to use, the better.
So anything out there to point me towards? I’ll cruise through the Fifth Discipline books but I’m wondering what you might have discovered on the web. References and ideas in the comments please, soe everyone canbenefit from this inquiry.
Thanks in advance.
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Links that made me think this week.
- Holger Nauheimer release the newest version of the Change Management Toolbook
- Peter Rawsthorne blogs a great BBC documentary on what a post-fossil fuel farm might look like
- Siona van Dijk finds Paul Hawken naming the people I play with.
- Jean Sebastien Bouchard turns me on to art.
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A cold day to be on the outskirts of a cold city in a cold part of the world. When you travel midweek into Canada’s hinterlands and northern small cities, you share a plane with mostly hard and tired men who work for government or various companies doing business in the far flung nether regions of this nation. Whether it’s travel to Prince George, Thunder Bay, Prince Albert or Yellowknife, it seems like the same guys are on the flight – steak eating, overworked, tired, introverted, hard men. Once in a while, if they are coming home from a job well done, and travelling in groups, they are more garrulous, raucously celebrating and teasing one another across the rows of the small regional jets and Dash-8s that seem to be bulging at the seams to contain them.
On a late winter Tuesday afternoon the flight from Ottawa to Thunder Bay isn’t at all out of the ordinary. Mostly public servants on this trip, a couple of guys wearing jackets with CAT logos on them, two or three professional women, and a young couple who have seen better days, and who seem to be holding out for better days to come. The flight is quiet, descending through an oncoming blizzard to land on a snowy runway. When we disembark, the jetway doesn’t fit the fuselage very snugly and a blast of cold Northern Ontario air stings the face.
Here at the Valhalla Inn – a nod to the nordic history of this part of the world – wood trim and gas fireplaces in the lobby distract the eye from the cinder block hallways, and new carpets in the room offset the aging wood and vinyl topped room furniture. It seems like the meeting rooms are full of Aboriginal women and non-Aboriginal men. Almost every space has a sign that says that people are planning, and being the end of the fiscal year, everyone is turning their thoughts to next year, which starts on April 1.
There is something about the bleakness of being out here, far from downtown Thunder Bay, that brings loneliness on. I have two days of work here, but already I can’t wait to get home to my little house on an island in Howe Sound, where my family are.
It has been a long winter in many ways, and I’m ready for a rest and for spring to come on. Here, it feels a million miles away from that – not even the geese have dared venture this far notth yet, and the storm coming in deepens the mood.
Hunker down , do some good work with local First Nations leaders and youth and then get home. That’s the work of this week. Looking forward to ten days with the kids, writing some reports and getting my hands into the soil of the spring garden.