Category: Miscellany

I love this image for movement, decentralization and my own work in OpenSpaceTech and the world…

When I was trying to explain the new paradigm of a movement and the relevance of decentralization in this world, Jayeshbhai promptly summarized it — ‘Just like a banyan tree.’ Indeed. Banyan tree starts with a root but when any of its branches hit the ground, they become roots too. In a short period, it’s impossible to figure out the original root, and it’s also very difficult to remove a banyan tree.

From a remarkable blog by Nipun Mehta, who’s walking and blogging his way through India with his partner Guri. Thanks to Christopher for catching this one for me.

I have been around the world teaching OpenSpaceTech as a practice in invitation. This is an excellent example of the opportunity for such practice. Harrison Owen posted this to the OSLIST email group…

My Inbox is a rich source of adventure. This little note from a CEO for example:

“XXX Inc. has a highly skilled team of ~100 people doing great work and we are also attempting to manage a company that differentiates ourselves by maintaining a unique company culture. We want to define, defend, and enable these values to be who we are, what we do, and how we behave as a collective organization. Building trust and allowing diversity, debate, and protest to flourish in an organization of high achievers is a difficult thing. I’m searching for ways to provide openness, healthy dialog, and a supportive atmosphere for these stellar people to deliver all they are capable of (collectively) to improve the lives of thousands of people living with cancer.

Basically I’m looking for techniques, methods, tools, and or simple ways to create an open environment of trust within a growing organization. My Dilemma: How to create a communication environment that’s open, listens, hears, understands, and is responsive? I am looking for practical executable methods to model these value behaviors within a for profit business enterprise. I want to work for a cause and I want those that join the company to be equally as committed to a similar standard. As companies grow and become successful it can be easy to become complacent or to compromise on these values. I’m looking for ways to help prevent organizational entropy, human dysfunctional politics, divisiveness, unhealthy behaviors, and the like within the work environment at all levels of the company. This value system requires a lot from management team and the organization, as well as asking a lot from our employees. But I believe that building on such a foundation and supporting our human capital in such a way we will ensure our success as a transformational company.”

He asked for comments and reflections in advance of a meeting with this CEO.

I said this:

almost always i find that the first few paragraphs or minutes of a conversation with a new contact or client — when they give this sort of snapshot of who they are, where they’ve been, and what they want next — is the perfect, most honest invitation.

these are the clearest pictures they can give, simple and clean, understandable to an outsider, and with all the honesty that is sometimes withheld, for all kinds of reasons both cultural and personal, from insiders.

my first question is then “who’s needed to create such an organization?” my second question is “how soon can we get them together?” maybe the third question is “what would we need to do to make sure that you (the ceo) lives to tell about it?”

seems to me that as long as we see culture and environment as something that is created by one person, sometimes a chief and other times a “bad apple” troublemaker, or some small group of same, we will always work to hard and always fall short. as soon as we turn the task over to an invited group of everyone, the job is already done, the environment is shifted, and we’re right there in it doing the real work in a whole new way.

as ever, the leap is in beginning.

More and more, I’m beginning with some simple lists, especially when I don’t have an opening shot like the one above. This list works pretty well for small projects and whole organizations, immediate crises and long-term strategy:

• best things we’ve ever done,
• current conditions that matter,
• things we know we want/need to do/have/create now/next,
• people needed to get it done,
• resources and supporting structures available to leverage,
• sacred cows, dead mooses and other lines not to be crossed,
• potential meeting dates,
• potential meeting places,
• how we’ll know it’s really working

Is there any other way to get things done quickly and easily in organization than pencilling these things out, inviting everyone, and opening some space for all of their work to move?

Oh, yeah, we could pick one person to tell everyone what to do, and the we could keep on doing exactly what we’ve always done, until that one person figures it out and tells us otherwise. But how long might that take??? Let’s go!

I’ve been firing up the Small Change News Network again, coming out of the full-time meditation center volunteer mode now. Moving into team blogging mode there soonly. Sorry this post doesn’t rhyme for “Poem in Your Pocket Day.”

I read John Mauldin’s weekly markets and investments letter. Last week he digested a ten-year geo-political forecast by stratfor.com, “private, quasi-CIA intelligence service” and makes connections to global markets. The letter and forecast touch on the breakup in China, market breakdown in Russia, collapse of the dollar, and the growing pains of “moderate” Islam. Fascinating stuff.

There is wisdom in not reading news of big stories that we can’t act on. A lot of crime news would fall into this category. A lot of political commentary too. I use bits like Mauldin’s letters to orient myself in the big world so that I can act, invest, vote and converse more effectively in my own small and local worlds.

Thanks to Dan O’Connor for the initial tip on Mauldin.

I’ve been living a rather simple, but busier than you’d expect, sort of life for the last five and some months. I’ve been mostly resident here at Jamyang, in the upstairs cell block of a 135-year-old courthouse turned meditation center, just across the Thames from central London. Primary duties have been cleaning, receiving, and cooking.

My neighbors in the three other upstairs cells are all transients. Many are monks or nuns or volunteers working for just a few days. Some other staff and volunteers live in bigger cells downstairs. In my time here, the four-member volunteer team has come from Spain, Columbia, Holland, Russia, England, Germany, Canada and the USA. The cell renters upstairs in my hallway have come from many more places.

This is a building where monks robes look pretty normal, and second-hand working and travelling clothes are common. When I go out of here in suit and tie for a meeting, it gets noticed. Yesterday, Grace Davis, one of the upstairs visitors, asked me about where I was going last week. As I explained my work, a lightbulb goes on and she says, “That sounds a lot like this thing called Open Space.”

Turns out that after I went around the world running OpenSpaceTech training and practice workshops in 2002, one of my partners, Brendan McKeague, an irishman now rooted in Perth, Western Australia, ran around that continent doing some more trainings. Grace, and english woman with connections down under, attended that training. So strange and wonderful to trip over one’s own lineage halfway between home and Oz!

The Tutor/Mentor Connection seeks to connect people who from around the world with information and networks that help support the growth of comprehensive, voluteer based tutor/mentor programs.

Dan Bassill, founder and director, is a pioneer in the use of mapping and website technology to support tutor/mentor programs around chicago and beyond. I love it when cool stuff like this originates in Chicago. Dan’s been at this for 30 years now. Glad to see his insights and connections emerging in a weblog.

Welcome to the blogosphere, Dan!

Some people think salsa is a condiment. I tend to think of it as a fifth food group. This might be my greatest sacrifice in spending these last several months in London. There are about four, okay maybe five, Mexican restaurants in the whole city.

Jill works with a woman who’s married to a Mexican guy. We thought they should know where the burritos are, right? Well, yes… they do. And yes, we have no burritos, no salsa, no chips in this town… unless you count nacho cheese Doritos. Not the same!

Jill’s parents just came to visit, so we tried one of the four Mexican joints we’ve heard of. They come from Texas, so we figured we’d either have some good food or a genuine cross-cultural experience. We knew we were in trouble when they brought bottles of ketchup and malt vinegar with the nachos.

weekly updates from himalayan climbing, oceans,
poles, and elsewhere. happy birthday mark!

The Nepali king and military have placed tight restrictions on what can be printed and broadcast there, following the “royal coup” of February 1st. I assume the main media websites are similarly banned from reporting on what is really happening there. Friends and colleagues I’m working with there send conflicting reports by email and it’s hard to tell if they feel safe to speak freely.

Now it seems that at least one blog is filling the information gap. United We Blog …for a Peaceful and Democratic Nepal showed up in Google News this week. It’s the straightest scoop I’ve seen from there. At least it’s the most detailed. This is powerful media in dangerous times.

Meanwhile, my friends who are organizing the Nepal Appreciative Inquiry National Network continue to work in the direction of our second national conference, using OpenSpaceTech, later this year. I facilitated last year’s conference and am waiting on meetings this month about this year.

Walked around London yesterday with Helen Payne, an old family friend. Along the way we stopped into Southwark Cathedral, which is the oldest gothic building in the city. Rebuilt in 1212 AD after a fire destroyed much of it. They’ve been using this plot of land for worship since 606 AD! Boggling for a north american mind, coming from a place where 1700’s is old.

Today am starting to wrap some mindspace around SmallChangeNews, wrestling with questions of showing vs. telling, local focus vs. global offering, personal action vs. community action, and wiki vs. blog. Boggle again, but finding a space of mutuality, where we can have and do all of these things.

Elsewhere, Spring seems to be back on again outside, so a few errands out in the sunshine. Fourteen cooking days left for me in the kitchen at Jamyang, but who’s counting? We cook lunch for 100 four days in a row this week, about twice normal maximum capacity. Will order something like $1500 of food tomorrow and then try to find places to store it all. Boggle.

Then home to Chicago to help facilitate the MeshAction finale of MeshForum, all about Networks and Networking. Check it out and join us if you can! No boggle here. Should be a very interesting place to be. And good to be back on home turf, even if briefly.

…see Jamyang Kitchen Manual and Open Space Practices for new progress in both.

Added a few recipes to the Manual I’m developing for the Kitchen, and came to some new clarity yesterday on these OpenSpacePractices. The first practice, Opening, turns out to be essentially about resting, as in letting down one’s guard, welcoming, embracing. The letting down is important, as it is the sensation of the practice. Working these others in the direction of sensation led me to consider invitation as naming… or maybe now I think, Clearing. Then, holding is really more the sensation of Cradling. It’s not holding firm, but simply providing a snug-enough platform from which new things can squirm and look into what they need to, what they choose. And then, the last practice may yet turn out to be Defending, though this has some negative connotations, so following the thread further leads to more a sensation of Generating. In Defending we take a position, generate a boundary, an energy that protects, a front. This seems to fit.

And then it’s important to notice that each practice is essentially the not doing of the one that comes before. Opening as not Defending or Generating, letting the guard down. Inviting and Clearing is a focusing that stops Opening and being Willing to accept any and everything, and begins the process of choosing and directing. That directing stops, resolves, in simply being there, Cradling, Holding, Hosting… unless something invades the space, or until an event comes to a close when a practitioner must either Defend against the invader, defend participants right to make their own choices, generate options for movement (like simply walking out of the room as an alternative to getting hooked in by the invader’s organizing and controlling), or at the end, generating a report. Finally, after taking the position, making the report, defending the space, the next step is to let down, rest, Open again…

I really like Chris Corrigan’s idea of a keynote facilitator. I could be one of those, or might just like to be a keynote consultant or manager, inviting and focusing attention on what’s most important in the everyday work. This is pretty close to how I like to work anyway, kicking things off over and over, setting the stage, and then disappearing in the sea of the work, with everyone else, and working with what’s important to them.

Thanks to Dave Pollard for his posting about the recent work on Open Space Practices kicked off by Chris Corrigan with Dave Stevenson. I’ve been slowly refining the descriptions of the practices and a two-day workshop design.

Hoping to get out to Seattle WA and Bowen Island BC in August or September to run the workshop with Chris and Dave. Will present a thimble-full of this in early April for a company here in London. Hoping there might yet be another opportunity for the full two-day workshop to run here in the UK before I leave in July.

John Mauldin’s weekly letter summarizes well the coming retirement crunch for the baby boomers. In short, perhaps 70% of all boomers will not have the money they think they need to retire on. Looks like a big wake-up call in the making, with implications for the entire global economy. His weekly letter finishes with a list from a book by Michael Masterson called “Automatic Wealth – the Six Steps to Financial Independence.”

It would be simple to say that from now on when I get a question about how one can become wealthy I will refer them to “Automatic Wealth.” But the book is more about than some formula for getting wealthy. It is to some degree a book about the philosophy of wealth and money, as well as the role it plays in our life.

The Eight Habits of Wealthy People

Michael recognizes that money is not the most important thing in life. As he notes, he knows a lot of rich people who are miserable. However, not having money is even more stressful. Money is simply a tool. And some people seem to have the knack for accumulating it. Masterson gives us eight habits of wealthy people.

A. Wealthy people work hard.
B. Wealthy people are good at what they do.
C. Wealthy people have multiple streams of income.
D. Wealthy people live in (relatively) inexpensive homes.
E. Wealthy people are moderate in spending.
F. Wealthy people are extraordinary at saving.
G. Wealthy people pay themselves first.
H. Wealthy people count their money.

Seems a pretty good list. Makes me wonder how it might be applied to being wealthy in ways other than financial. I’m especially intrigued with the implications of G, paying oneself first. How does that translate to other things? How does it relate or not relate to generosity. Can one be generous first and still become wealthy? Or does the giving necessarily happen after the money gathering? Worth noting, I think, that most of these, as habits, are more concerned with how we manage the flows of money, rather than how we manage the stocks. It’s these habits of flow that might be generalized to other kinds of flows in our lives. Seeing these as about flows rather than stocks leaves space for generosity, a flow of giving, as well. Though I’m still surprised that giving and generosity aren’t named more explicitly.

Fresh mowed grass here this morn. Won’t find that in Chicago, in March.

Got out running twice this week in shorts and a t-shirt in glorious London sun. You know what that means: the end of indoor kite-flying season!

These taken the night of my birthday a couple weeks ago. Don’t try this at home. [grin]

It’s the equinox today, I think, or close enough. Wake the neighbors, phone the kids… and go balance and egg on it’s end. Not one of those bumpy ones, either. Today is one of two days in the year that you can balance even smooth and pointy ones on their ends. We’ve had one standing up straight all morning on the kitchen counter, wondering how long before the planet tips enough to knock it over.