Michael Herman's Blog (2003-2016)
Inviting Agility in Challenging Environments
just in from the campfire (still at no mind) where a very few of us lasted until 3am, a german accordian player, a swedish singer, myself and a few others, writing a song as the sun came up in the middle of the night.
“…feel how precious it is to have grace walking beside you… holding your hand… loving you now… flow through your heart… the seeds in your hand… bloom in the land.”
how lucky to be along for this ride and be able to add a few words along the way. grace.
This is a new word for this American blogger, but clearly “festival” means something to my European friends this week, here at Ångsbacka, a spiritual or heart center in central Sweden. I’m here in week two of the No Mind Festival, seeking to support and extend openness, acceptance, love and compassion into the world. Some bits of the scene here, mostly observed as I walked across the central lawn space yesterday afternoon…
…day four of the second week… sunny blue sky and bright sun continue… rolling green meadows bounded by forest… couples sitting together in practice, or lying together on blankets… parents with little kids napping… some kids perpetually fascinated with the small fountain and goldfish pool… some of the wee ones naked and painted, running and giggling… some adults painted too… one old guy comes to lunch wearing nothing but blue paint, but doesn’t stay very long…
some meditate in the grass… or trade massages… a wild-looking viking sort of guy journals quietly… a young woman sketches in a diary in the shade of a small fruit tree… blankets and a few tables scattered around, a big family picnic… the pulse of african drumming comes from one corner of the festival space… spiritual music and chanting from another direction… somebody yells powerfully, releasing something into the forest… heart music from the big barn “may i take peaceful steps upon the earth… i bow to you a flower… i love your fear… walk slowly… i want to be your lover baby…”
…a woman knits a fuzzy orange scarf in the cafe… the wind lifts long brightly-colored satin pennants from the tops of 20ft sticks… long blond hair and loose frilly skirts… chocolate covered ice cream on sticks… a guitar strummed for some at the fire circle… the ashes of yesterdays food boxes whipped into the air… conversations a light buzz over cups of tea on the deck… a meadowful of tents, one of cars, trailers and housetents in the parking lots, other packed into small dorm rooms… volunteers cooking and cleaning and smiling… two guys with boxing gloves sparring in the parking lot…
…at campfires, i’ve heard mostly beatles and bagpipes, and almost no dylan, denver, or other folk tunes… some bicycles, a nearby lake beach, small village, a creativity space full of paint, fabric, plaster and more… kids on swings and dipping in an inflatable pool… open stage, drumming, dancing, healings, tantra, concerts, and a wee bit of open space technology growing into the mix this year for the first time… and absolutely no one appears to be “in charge” of anything but the organic vegetarian kitchen… so perhaps the chef rules all… for now.
the thing that stands out is the spirit of love, the steady flow of music, the freedom of movement, the quality of smiling, openness in so many faces… open hearts and open eyes everywhere, it seems.
more on how we took over the kitchen and changed the world in my next posting.
It’s 2:30AM here in central Sweden, and I think it’s already starting to get light out. I’m not sure it ever really got dark. So strange to look out the window at in the middle of the night, and see all the way across the meadow!
A few weeks ago, I had a couple of long Open Space coaching conversations with my friend Theresa Williamson, the founder of a successful and exciting community movement, called Catalytic Communities, in Brazil (Rio). Then she went off to try Open Space with her colleagues:
Every three months, CatComm’s staff spends a day away from the Casa or our home offices discussing accomplishments over the previous 3 months and new objectives for the following period. Thanks to a recent brainstorm with Michael we were able to experiment with Open Space for the first time. And the approach was overwhelmingly successful. The level of creative thought and exchange, and the sentiment of collaboration among staff, were all heightened. And I expect this to grow as we train and experiment in Open Space. What most surprised me was what the naturally positive approach inherent in Open Space taught me about how I had been handling things in the past…
…each staff member noted on a piece of paper a topic they wanted to moderate during the afternoon, with the intention of answering the question: “How do we make more good things happen at CatComm?”
In addition to focusing staff attention where staff were naturally interested, and on building on the positive in what we’re doing, Open Space also empowered staff to take control of the meeting. We will be incorporating Open Space into future open meetings held at the Casa with community leaders. Of course there topics will not be as imaginable as among staff with a clear common mission. As a result, we expect that implementing Open Space in open community meetings will result in exciting and unexpected collaborations and discussions.
As the director of CatComm I was refreshed to see staff taking control of the meeting… I was fascinated by the topics that came up naturally, as they are different to those I would have posed, but are perhaps closer to the pulse of what is really important…
Mostly, however, I was amazed to discover that in the past our staff focus has often been on the negative — “what have we not accomplished that we had planned to and why?” By asking the opposite question — “what have we accomplished and how can we do more of that?” — one arrives at the same answers, but through an empowering process rather than one that is disempowering.
Thanks for your work and your story, Theresa! This is just how it’s spozed to be! Now, just keep it going. It never has to get any more complicated than this — even when it’s really complex or conflicted. Just keep Opening!
At the end of our wedding, Jill and I went to a big gathering drum, started a pulse together, and invited our friends and family to come join us. Thanks to Chris Corrigan for capturing that celebration drumming in a big (7.6MB) .WAV file.
We just don’t know what his name is. Two weeks ago my sister-in-law Amy was dancing at the wedding. Last night she and Mark were up all night at the hospital, until successful delivery about noon today. Welcome to the family, small fry, whatever your name is! Congrats and Thank You, Mark and Amy!
Looking forward to some time with this one before I jet off this Wednesday to facilitate open space for 600-800 at the NoMindFestival in Sweden.
UPDATE: It’s Charles “Charlie” McIntyre Herman, named for my Dad and Amy’s family. Held him tonight and he’s a solid little guy! woohoo!
Something more than a week later, we’ve got some photos from friends and family posted. We thoroughly enjoyed the whole of it, from planning little surprises and having dinners with family in the days before, to having so many great friends in one place, telling stories and making music together in middle of the ceremony itself. I hope some of the fun of it all will come through in the photos.
Light blogging ahead while I enjoy the ripples, paint a few rooms, post more photos, and scribble a lot of thank you’s.
UPDATES: Our online Photo Album is done. We think we have all the photos we’re going to get now and we’ve spiffed the layout. Maybe someday we’ll have a go at cropping and captions, but for now we think it’s a pretty good view.
Well, I guess it’s started. Had dinner with Jill’s parents and grandma last night, just in from Texas. Tonight we add my parents to the party. Tomorrow the rest of family and a few cast and crew friends, more dinner than rehearsal. Then everybody for the (not really so) big wedding moment on Saturday.
Finished with cake and catering details yesterday. So the party is assured. Still working on writing those vows.
This shot is from our retreat in February.
Raffi Aftandelian and friends are translating on of my recent articles into Russian, for a collection. Not surprisingly, translating what we’ve called the “four practices of open space” and “inviting leadership” has been rather challenging. This from a proposed translator’s note seemed to have some merit on its own…
…there is a certain poetry in open space, a poetry that i have practiced capturing for almost ten years now in how i write. it means that words are often chosen for the specific reason that they mean many things at once. and like poetry, sometimes they are even chosen for the way they sound. so this makes translation very challenging, because these different meanings are intended to be read and heard and considered simultaneously, together. there is meaning in each interpretation and also some implication of having them both be true at the same time.
it is this holding of two states at once, distinct and together, that gives open space it’s texture and power. people are aware of themselves as individuals, and of the group as a whole. they are aware learning (taking in) and contributing (giving out), at the same time. open space is a dance of opposites, spirit and productivity. this is difficult to capture once in any language, and more challenging still to translate into another. in the end, we might say that open space is its own langauge, a language of movement, and the best way to really understand it is to do it. and be it. together.
I missed a piece. This should have been part of yesterday’s linkage, but just as well to have it standing here on its own. This might come closest to the original vision of sCNN.
BloggersChoose is a program of DonorsChoose. It’s a way for bloggers to invite attention and giving to specific, large- and small-scale projects in need of support.
This from their launch:
…bloggers can visit our website, look through a list of projects that teachers are requesting for their classrooms, and select one or more to ask their readers’ help to fund.
We want bloggers to take an active role in this project. We’re excited about the potential blogs have to broaden both our outreach and the results we produce for teachers and students.
In our beta test, the readers of one blog, Tomato Nation, raised more than $30,000 for New York City public schools. But don’t let that overwhelm you – another blog managed to raise $500 from my readers, which fully funded a middle-school literacy project and bought tadpoles for first graders in Brooklyn.
No amount is too small (or too large): projects awaiting funding right now range from $147 for a set of dictionaries in San Francisco to $8,578 for a new playground field in South Carolina.
All of these projects that need funding are youth and school-related, proposed by active teachers.
Here are some things I’ve been wanting to write into the Small Change News record for some time. You will recall that Small Change was about market-type exchanges of information (stories) and resources (including funding), between “little individuals,” toward positive impact. So these are interesting new markets and new kinds of giving and sharing:
Prosper.com – A market for small-scale loans. Think eBay for money. People post stories, have reputation scores (credit ratings), and others can loan money and make interest. The future of banking?
Kiva.org – Another micro-lending site, this one for small business entrepreneurs in developing countries. As far as I can tell, these are no-interest loans, so the interest we give up by lending here is another form of charitable giving.
GrassCommons.org – is publishing information that helps consumers make ordinary purchasing decisions in line with their values and the common good. we become what we buy. spend smart!
GoodNewsNetwork.org – Geri Weis-Corbley calls GNN “news that reflects our values”. This comes pretty close to the original vision for sCNN. Lots of little individuals out there doing good things.
Pledgebank.com has been mentioned here before, but is another one that fits with these and is very much in line with the sCNN vision. Needs can be posted and funding pledged. No payments charged until the project is fully funded.
Glad to see these kinds of markets springing up, especially the loan markets.
Meanwhile have been talking with Phil Cubeta last week about the next generation of Giving Conference. Raising the four core questions that came out of the sCNN work: What do we want? Have? Need? And what will we Do? …in that conversation and in C3 conversations this past weekend. I know the GrassCommons and GNN folks through RecentChangesCamp, a Giving Conference spin-off, so our Giving Conference and sCNN work just keeps going, and growing.
If all else fails on the wedding-writing scene, we can always go back to these Dr. Seuss wedding vows.
Pastor: Will you answer me right now
These questions, as your wedding vow?
Tomorrow we start messing with the deployment of family cars, in preparation for the wedding on the 24th. Might be getting close to the end of productivity and posting here.
I leave you with two new gems that I’ve just finished polishing. Not all new, but both significantly expanded from their last editions.
Open Space Technology: Inviting Leadership Practice – reviews the basics of Open Space, considers its evolution, and points to its dissolving into the ongoing practice of Inviting Leadership.
Open Space Technology: An Inviting Guide – a short guide for Inviting Leaders, with new meeting/event planning worksheet and notes on sustaining action after the big meeting.
Slow blogging ahead…
Wedding planning is in full swing here. One week and counting. The to-do list is getting lots of attention, even though mostly everything is decided. Now it just a lot of last minute logistics.
And the surprises. Or as I like to call them, as of today, Special Operations. These are the things that need to be on the list, but that Jill doesn’t know about. Little surprises. But how to keep track of them, and get time for them, if not on the list?
Code names, of course. So along with beverage shopping and airport pickups, we have things like Operation Corner Pocket, Operation Crystal Temple, Operation Frosty Krinkle, Paper Chase, Mouse Factory, Port and Starboard, and Handlebar on the task list.
Now, if we could just finally have a good run at Operation Write the Vows…
Somebody called today with a situation, an opening, a “better-than-zero” chance to propose a plan to take an old bureaucratic program to a new level using Open Space Technology. What to do?
I referred him back to the four questions from the Inviting Philanthropy post two days ago, re-framed a little bit into the context of him going to his boss and boss’s boss to inquire:
I suggested he make his own list. Run through it with his boss, adding the boss’s list to this. Then take it higher up to check their list against the chief. If nothing else, these four questions cut through a lot of potential crap. And saves my buddy from busting it on a proposal that goes nowhere.
Meanwhile, I see these four could be the very active punchline to the Inviting Leadership story that Corrigan and I are cooking:
My favorite place of action just now, by the way, is a new blogging project for Chicago Conservation Corps. Oh yes, and wedding planning… T: -1 weekend and counting. Blogged our organic wedding cake bakery today over there at C3. Yum!
No Mind Festival, that is. Last week we put together a nice little design for a series of Spaces to be opened as part of the No Mind Festival in Angsbacka, Sweden next month, for 600-1000 participants. Registration is open to all!
The first week of the Festival, July 7-13, is the tenth annual, with a theme of “Celebrating Life”. This year they’ve asked me to run the second week mostly in Open Space, July 15-21. The theme for the week is “Living Our Gifts.”
The (rough draft) design is rather unique and runs like this…
On the evening of the first full day of the conference, we’ll do the first of four openings, setting the agenda for each of three breakout sessions the following day. The first three rounds of this will be on three sub-themes that are still being crafted, each articulated along the lines of “Inviting _____ “.
The last of the four sessions, will be a sort of Open Space on Open Space, the theme of which will be “Inviting Leadership”. This theme will let us do some brief teaching and noticing about what Open Space is, how it works, and invite people to consider the implications and possibilities for using it elsewhere, after the Festival. The nature of Inviting Leadership also generalizes away from Open Space, so to include all the other methods and views and approaches that will percolate around the Open Space sessions all week.
In making the distinction between the Open Space sessions and the pre-determined sessions, we thought about it in terms of viscosity. The pre-planned sessions are a little bit thicker, more viscous. The OS sessions, a bit more fluid. This helped us find the edges of each, with the pre-planned structures ultimately containing the OS sessions, like oil caps the water underneath it in a bottle.
Because the whole of the Festival runs on the contributions of 150 volunteers, willing invitees, we articulated the edge between the OS and other sessions in terms of time: the Invited festival is everything already invited and established, the Inviting festval is the OS part, the fresh, growing, edge of the invitation, where the structure is still taking shape.
Chris Weaver shared a bit of his model for “State of Grace Philanthropy” today, by email. His approach focuses on projects and retreats and leads to “State of Grace” documents for sustained project funding and action — all of which got me thinking about my own model for what I might call Inviting Philanthropy. What follows is distilled from my work on Small Change News over the last two years, since the Giving Conference which Phil Cubeta recently summarized.
First, philanthropy is about love, care, and people. We might generalize to include all beings. We might acknowledge current use and practice and allow that it now means something about money and resouces, action and results. Inviting Philanthropy is about all of that.
Next, the basic model. Start with some people with projects, and also some people with funding. These can be all from one project or issue area, or a diverse group. Projects and funding at any level are okay, what matters is passion and a willingness to commit. Recognize that the project people have some money, and the money people have some ideas about projects. Ask everyone to write the answer to four questions, providing whatever one-on-one coaching is needed in order for them to articulate:
Now, invite everyone together, in Open Space, to work on Philanthropic Action: Issues and Opportunities. All manner of caring and commitment are welcome, actively invited. The ticket to enter is that you’ve answered these four questions. Copies of everyone’s 4-part statement are available on a table. In the course of the conversations, people pass out these statements like business cards, and refer to them like we refer to websites… “oh, yes, there’s a bit about that there in my answer to #2.” In this way, what is wanted, what is available, what is needed and what is willing are all mixed together.
In the last segment of the Open Space meeting, imagine Sunday afternoon of a 2-day weekend program, there is an invitation to focus on specific projects that might go forward. The invitation is to merge any number of individual statements into one project statement. Add to that a “State of Grace” spin on things that will help the group ride out any potential conflicts.
Rinse and Repeat. Do this on an ongoing basis, probably quarterly, and allow all of the statements, for individuals and projects, to be updated and shared in a new round of Open Space.
Publish everything, the notes from breakout sessions, the personal statements, the project statements, and especially the project news reports, as things actually get done.
Invite care. Invite coherence. Invite conversation. Invite collaboration. Publish everything and everyone point friends and colleagues to the website, and bring colleagues to the retreats. Inviting Philanthropy.
I’m halfway through a remarkable program being run by the City of Chicago, Department of Environment. It’s 12 hours of training classes, four resources-rich info dump sessions on Land, Air, Energy, Water and Community. Twenty-six of us are going through the program, each one pledging in advance to initiate and lead some sort of conservation or awareness project this summer.
I’m not sure if it’s my offical project or not, but it IS a project — we’ve initiated a Chicago Conservation Corps weblog. Grounding, grounding, grounding, I am. It feels great to be using skills and tools developed around the globe with people I can actually join for lunch and barbecues without buying a plane ticket.
Nice to write about something solid, for which we already have solid language. This post about the I-Go Car Sharing program helped me remember that I really do know how to write! A welcome break from all this fuzzy fishing about for the language of Inviting Leadership. It’s fun to use words that are already commonly defined and understood, for a change!
This kind of makes me want to move to Kalamazoo, with a name like that and people like this in town…
International Conference on
Engaging the Other: The Power of Compassion
October 26-29, 2006 in Kalamazoo, Michigan USAAn international, multi-cultural, multi-disciplinary conference examining concepts of “The OTHER” from a universal, cross-cultural perspective to promote wider public dialogue about concepts of “Us and Them”
Sponsored by Common Bond Institute, HARMONY Institute, the International Humanistic Psychology Association, the Fetzer Institute, and Western Michigan University. Supported by a growing international list of universities and organizations.
Hoping to be doing my own compassion practice that week in sunny Kathmandu, Nepal, otherwise I’d have to think about getting over there… and ask them about Opening a little Space, too.
It sounds like something called Unity ’08 could be the first internet political party, nominating a presidential ticket through an entirely online process. Its leaders are for real. Peggy Noonan and Margaret Carlson commenting today on the venture in WSJ and Bloomberg.
Noonan thinks they’re missing the mark. Yes, she says on polarization, no on it being Dems and Reps. I think she’s absolutely right on calling the split as being between People and Politicians. I think they missed another point as well.
The internet is cool, and helpful, but it’s not the innovation we really need in politics. If we’re going to organize the people, well enough to run the joint (the country), and really take it away from Washington, then we’re going to need real conversation. Buzz beyond the hard drives. The Pols meet face to face, and so must We the People.
This brings me back to what we were talking about at the Practice Retreat in Vancouver a few weeks ago. One of our participants was asking about how Open Space could be used in political campaigns. She wanted to use it to run the campaign, but I thought the real power was to run the district or state or country that way. Here’s how…
First, we need to blow up the notion that candidates need to get elected to before they can do anything to change the world. They’re spending big money and talking to tons of people. That is the game. If they are running, they’re already in.
Next, they are putting out all kinds of information and messages. One of those messages needs to be: “Come meet with your neighbors, fellow constituents, to discuss a theme like Democracy in Action: Issues and Opportunities for Ordinary People, Elected Officials, and the Future of America.”
When the vols go out knocking on doors, they distribute this invitation, the message being: we’re not waiting, we’re going to start changing things right now. This is not business as usual. In this day and age, that is already a point won for this candidate! People don’t have to show up to the event to get the message.
When the people show up for an all-day convesation on this, lots of remarkable conversations happen. People take notes, which get posted to the candidate’s website. Clearly not conducting business as usual. People get connected. Energized. Some of them pass out more invitations to the next event. Others just go do some of the things they got to talking about with their neighbors. This is not your father’s town hall meeting… this is We the People, talking to We the People, about what We the People.
News of that goes on the website, as well. Suddenly, the candidate is at the center of a whole new movement, linking people and government. If that doesn’t guarantee some free media coverage on the 10 o’clock news, I’d be surprised. Momentum builds. I think we should give it a name harkening back to the First Continental Congress… call them something like Community Congresses.
Now who wants to pull the plug on that when the election comes? Even if that guy loses, the person who wins is going to have to answer to the organization that this candidate has built. Win or lose, that candidate has changed the game. Win or lose, that candidate IS the political leader of that district.
Now where is one of those candidates so that we can give this a proper demonstration? Granted, it probably works better in a district or statewide contest, but that could include races for US House and Senate.