Michael Herman's Blog (2003-2016)
Inviting Agility in Challenging Environments
I want to come back and say more about these four practices for embodying Open Space as leaders and organizations… opening/willingness, inviting/goodness, hosting/support, and grounding/sustaining.
In the meantime, my sister the yogi sent this picture of herself today. She’s about 7.5 months pregnant. Could there be any better picture of these four practices?
chris corrigan sent me his notes from his latest incarnation of ouropen space technology training and practice workshop. i’ve been noodling on it as i cook lunches and scrub pots at the center these last couple of days. i’ve pushed his four around a bit and we’ve yet to duke it out over the details. here’s a first attempt at my own version, which maps back to my early work on InvitingOrganization…
1. practice of opening. it’s about willingness. willingness to see, to know, to open. it’s personal and reflective, but can be felt physically in body and charted in organizations.
2. practice of inviting. it’s about goodness. finding benefits TO others, as in what’s in it for them, and also benefits IN others, as in recognizing what they can add to the process of achieving what is desired personally in the first practice. it makes that first practice social, collective, organizational, and cultural, but also documented in invitation emails, letters, posters.
3. practice of holding. it’s about supporting movement and change. providing space and time, structures that support without making decisions for people, giving attention, carrying in awareness or carrying forward, holding in one’s heart or home or conference room. it creates room for others to expand, explore, experiment… to bring new things out in the world. it is simultaneously logistical, mental, and emotional.
4. practice of practicing. it’s about sustaining, returning, realizing, and making real. this is action, taking a stand, making progress, going somewhere, documenting results. this implies the continuation and diffusion of the above. standing ground, staying the course, seeing things through. it is the personal and individual (I, me, my) pursuit of the good that WE invite, in the space that WE provide. It can look simply mechanical and become deeply meditative, as we go round again, starting with Opening. (note… this might also be called the practice of “participating,” perhaps “making,” or simply “doing” or “changing.” stay tuned.
What’s really gorgeous about this is that in addition to mapping and guiding the practice of Open Space Tech as potentially very large group intervention in organizations, it also scales all the way back down into a simple, powerful one-on-one personal coaching model. Alternatively, it’s a leadership coaching model that can scale up to open, invite, hold and change the whole organization. what’s more, we can teach it in our usual two days, or serve it up as a brown bag lunch session.
Originally posted to sCNN – the smallChangeNewsNetwork
Chris Corrigan, PRINCE GEORGE British Columbia.
…facilitating a two day roundtable conference on economic opportunities for Aboriginal communities. There are people all over BC here, and we’ve been treated to a performance tonight from Juno nominee (and new friend) Marcel Gagnon as well as tastings of the wines of Nk’Mip, North America’s first Aboriginal winery. As fun and interesting as all this is, today’s proceedings were stolen by several acts of overwhelming generosity…
Now they are well on their way, raising money and finding a venue for a Youth Forum. Contact Chris(at)ChrisCorrigan.com if you have something to learn or contribute to this.
technorati: sCNN | SmallChangeNews
Looking forward to MeshForum 2005, May 1st-4th in Chicago, where I’ve been asked to facilitate a day of working and learning in Open Space.
MeshForum will bring together academics and business professionals across many fields and industries, bound together by a shared interest in Networks – in understanding, navigating, securing and working within and with them.
Registration is open now…
Originally posted to sCNN – the smallChangeNewsNetwork
Michael Maranda, CHICAGO: Greetings to all on the planning committee for the 7th Community Networking Conference, scheduled for the end of April, 2005.
Although not quite 2 months remain before we convene “Open Space Austin” we feel that this is the right time for this event. We have much to do as leaders, visionaries, activists and advocates in the field of Community ICT, and now is the time to get to it.
A draft of the vision that has emerged is available here on the wiki. Questions and comments are welcome!
technorati: sCNN | SmallChangeNews
Acting within our spheres of responsibility
Originally posted to sCNN – the smallChangeNewsNetwork
Thanks to Chris Corrigan for sending… “Have a peek at this. It’s Dave Pollard (in How to Save the World) on what the media should be: sCNN!”
The job of the media is to make interesting what is important. That was Bill Maher’s challenge to CBS’s Lesley Stahl on his show last night. He’s exactly right. What the legacy media do mostly now, an indication of lazy, cowardly, chintzy, risk-averse journalism, is try to make important what the lowest common denominator of viewers find interesting — irrelevancies like celebrity trials and sensational crime stories… So what are the media to do? Change the model.
1. If a news item is not actionable by the audience, it isn’t news and should not be reported.
2. News items should be long enough to inform the audience what needs to be done.
3. Reports should be assessed on their position on Covey’s urgent/important grid, and only items in quadrants I and II (HIGH Importance, regardless of Urgency) should be reported.
4. The media should abandon the pretense of objectivity.
5. Every story should be followed up on a regular, scheduled basis.
…recall that newspapers started as broadsheets — partisan, single-subject reports cranked out by activists, and that at one time people were so engaged in long-term thinking that they flocked to meeting halls to hear advocates, philosophers, scientists, and writers talk at length about one subject, and then retired to the local bars to debate about what to do.
Now, think about the current model for online journals (blogs). Let’s see, we write mostly short articles talking about events we read or heard about in the legacy media, those articles are displayed in reverse date order, and after a week or so, they disappear into the ‘archives’ never to be seen again.
Never, that is unless they are chock full of good project ideas, like this archive could be, as we start to post news of the projects we know about where little individuals are making SmallChange add up. Send your news?
technorati: sCNN | SmallChangeNews
Originally posted to sCNN – the smallChangeNewsNetwork
Lenore Ealy and friends had a fantastic little comment thread running here, leading Lenore to conclude:
I increasingly think the answer to this dilemma is to move away from viewing government itself as either a bete noire or our savior–getting our focus off of public policy and more onto the ways we ourselves are giving and encouraging one another to give.
This is what sCNN is wanting to invite and support here. It’s also what I’m seeing happen in a number of different flavors at Omidyar.net.
The interesting thing is that these various little eddy spaces for gifts and giving occur in the midst of, in spite of, and without much reference to the larger questions about large donations and projects. Things like 1 Tin Cup, Mini-Action, Fridge Magnets (all Groups at Omidyar.net) and sCNN are feed directly and exclusively by individual care and attention. Precious and powerful in the same moment.
Despite some years now of attending to self-organizing meetings and movements in Open Space, I am still working to sift out just how best to tend this sCNN space, how to balance content, framing description, open posting and tech/editorial necessities. Recently, I’ve been focusing less on sCNN policy and more on what I have to give this space, convinced of the power of this process and still aware of this being only the fragile beginning. Your comments and contributions for posting are welcome!
technorati: sCNN | SmallChangeNews
Harrison Owen, originator of OpenSpaceTech, recently posted this to the OSLIST worldwide practitioners listserve:
When I see people using Open Space “just” as a meeting management tool, I don’t have much problem in suggesting that there might be broader applications and implications. As I said to an executive of a large multi-national, “I think you need to understand that you have just bought a Ferrari – but you are using it to go to the corner market. The car will get you there, but that may not be the best use of the car.” And when I see people performing at inspired levels in an Open Space and also having fun – only to return to the drudgery of Monday morning where they are miserable – I must honor their choice for sure. But I also feel more than a little sadness.
Chris Corrigan, my co-conspirator and co-developer of the OST training program we’ve run run around the world, reports in from the road, somewhere in northern (i think) British Columbia:
I’m using a whole new way of dealing with the material, more of a coaching type workshop, introduction into the role of the facilitator, logistics, connecting passion and invitation and so on and then some open space to get projects going.
In my own practice, too, I am finding that a coaching approach is most effective for getting into (or get others into) the practice of Opening Space. Can’t wait ’til Chris can fill me in on what he did this time. Sure there’s nothing sad about the results there.
Mailboxes are blue. When I put an envelope in a blue US Postal Service box, I’m done with it. All postal jokes and general grumblings aside, once it’s in that box, my whole body believes it’s as good as there.
UK Royal Mail boxes are big red tubes. They look official enough, but dropping a bank deposit (not just any old letter!) into the slot, I can’t help but notice my nervousness. Of course it’s a post box, and yet I have absolutely no direct experiential evidence to prove to myself that this money is not lost forever. Brain is convinced and pushes on, but somewhere deep in my cells, body is totally unconvinced, edgy even.
No wonder kids ask so many questions. They have so little reason to believe anything new. What a rush!
Originally posted to sCNN – the smallChangeNewsNetwork
Thanks to Vince Monical, founder of ABCfree.com, for sending this in reference to our listing of other SmallChange working models.
I saw your link to freecycle on your giving model links page, and I want to request that you also put in a link to www.ABCfree.com. Both sites let users give and get all kinds of stuff for free. However, ABC Free also helps local schools in two ways. First, schools get a first look at all items posted. Second, ABC Free donates a portion of its advertising based revenue to local schools.
ABC Free has some product features that freecycle lacks. For example, you can build a “wish list” and be emailed when something on your list becomes available in your area. This way you don’t get bogged down with lots of emails that you have to sort through.
I may sound a bit biased; after all I am the founder. It is a great site, and I hope that you can check it out. If you like what you see, then I hope that you can put a link from your site, it would really help us to grow.
Send your own SmallChange giving into action news to mailbag@smallchangenews.org.
technorati: sCNN | SmallChangeNews
This afternoon random sites in my bookmarks suddenly failed to load. In one case, I could load the xml feed but not the html pages of a favorite blog. I’m not sure if that was weird or not, but the randomness of the connections certainly was. At first, I thought I’d lost the line to my cell here. As I say, several bookmarks failed to load. So I typed “shit” and googled it as a test. Google responded as usual, with a list of links. I clicked number one and found something interesting.
And so now I ask you, is the internet shit? …or is it delicious?
Originally posted to sCNN – the smallChangeNewsNetwork
The last week of silence here belies all of the work I’ve been doing behind the scenes, mostly at Omidyar.net, where that emergent online community of 5000 has been trying to decide what to do with $25,000. Some just want to post up some projects and vote. Others, like me, have been designing various ways of leveraging the existing eBay-style feedback points reputation system into a self-organizing, self-funding community micro philanthropy system. Some fantastic people there and still not sure if it is a place to do real work yet.
Reflecting on my last couple weeks of intense work there, I am more clear than ever about some things:
sCNN wants and needs to have partners! This experiment wants to be a community project. If you’d like to be part of a smallish (but growing) group of passionate and responsible Actors, blogging and tagging small change, email me or just go start tagging!
technorati: sCNN | SmallChangeNews
I spend a good part of my mornings these days chopping veggies and washing big pots, pans and bowls. Somehow putting a little love into the food while wielding a big kitchen knife isn’t any trouble at all. The real mystery is at the sink: how does the dish soap really work?
This matters tremendously because I wash a lot of dishes, our spanish cook does everything in olive oil, and because I had to take an 8-hour food safety course that is pretty much designed to scare the crap out of you, or at least to scare it off your hands.
So here’s a short answer and the really long answer, the latter comes complete with the scary stuff to make you really want to do it right. Yikes.
Originally posted to sCNN – the smallChangeNewsNetwork
There has been a huge discussion and debate going on at Omidyar.net recently, regarding how to allocate $25,000 of potential funding. In one of the downstream conversations, springing from Tom Munnecke’s micro philanthropy notes I posted a few items back, Tom was made the distinction between old (macro) philanthropy and the new (micro) philanthropy we’re working to invite and support:
…one of the major differences between this approach and the other award/proposal models is that it is driven by the process of giving and attracting attention to what works. The proposal and grant-giving/fundraising approaches are driven by those seeking donations and promoting their causes… [and] cash donations are but one tool in the Better World Toolkit – money is an amplifier, not a motivator in this model.
This is such a critically important distinction and shift, this focus on attention as the primary source of power in philanthropic giving and receiving. Each of us, with the power of our attention, has something to give to the process of making good things happen. This power is, of course, inside everyone, already distributed through human birth, but allocted or available only in direct proportion to one’s ability to direct and refine, focus and expand, move and sustain — and act — on one’s own attention.
The opening of sCNN to public posting is intended to be an open and direct invitation to refine our individual and collective attention in order to support smaller and smaller changes for the good.
technorati: sCNN | SmallChangeNews
For the last two weeks or so, I’ve been working as kitchen yogi, aka cook’s assistant here at the Centre. This means I spend most of a 9-3 shift pulsing between chopping veggies for 30 or 40 hot lunches and washing piles of big pots, pans and spoons.
After all the cooking, I return to my cell for a like number of hours of working online, pulsing between local body and cyberspace, between GMT and other timezones, between MHA (for profit) and sCNN (for passion), and between current conversations and future conferences. Evenings and weekends I pulse between my two homes, here and Jill’s place.
I realized this morning that I’m involved in conversations in London, Chicago, Kathmandu, South Africa, Vancouver, Open Space (wherever that is) and a few other places that I can’t quite pin down on the map. It’s getting to be quite the heart stretch, all this pulsation, and a very interesting world. God knows I’m glad to be in the kitchen to keep it all ever so slightly tethered to ground.
Originally posted to sCNN – the smallChangeNewsNetwork
Last October, we ran a national, 4-day conference and training (Open Space and Appreciative Inquiry) to support peaceful development throughout Nepal. We also set up a number of weblogs so that they could report their good news. Buddhi Tamang has been reporting all kinds of NAINN progress there since then. More than ever, given recent political developments, we are hoping that we can repeat the peaceful development conference this year. Initial funding required is $2000. Look for a DropCash campaign to start this Spring!
technorati: sCNN | SmallChangeNews
My old buddy Daniel O’Connor has, at long last, leapt into the blogosphere. He’s been working on an integral economics book for a couple of years. Looks like he’s going to start spilling his secrets at Catallaxis. Take your thinking cap when you visit. He’s not messing around:
Catallaxis is a blog about the market
Originally posted to sCNN – the smallChangeNewsNetwork
…added to the News You Can Use links roll in the sCNN sidebar:
technorati: sCNN | SmallChangeNews
Good to hear Euan blogging in his own words yesterday, concluding…
We can no longer rely on the certainties that appeared to underpin our world. Experts who knew all the answers, structures that remained unchanged for decades, society that neatly lined up the way it was meant to and individuals who knew their place and assumed the roles expected of them.
In the fragmentation of sense-making, as the comfort of mass media and culture dissolves into so many individual bloggy, often foggy, and other voices, it occurs to me that the clarity we each achieve is directly related to the quality of attention and energy that we each bring to the task, for ourselves. And any sense we make is a gift to everyone around us. Uniquely universal. Hmmm….