Author: Tenneson Woolf

I have been in several conversation threads lately about these two topics. Lots of good questions being asked by people on the Art of Hosting list-serve — Can you use the Art of Hosting as a pattern for governance in organizations? Also, lots of good issues coming up with some of my local colleagues at the Salt Lake Center for Engaging Community (SLCEC) and in relation with friends in The Berkana Institute network — What is the difference between these two and in what circumstances would either be called for?

I think the reason this feels so compelling to me is that most of my work settings are in the context of networks. They are groups of people that are connected by a cause and purpose, yet most of them are free agents, if you will, trying to offer what they can when they can. Many of these people are the pioneers of the world, the social entrepreneurs that are helping experiments of the new come to form.

At SLCEC, my overall effort comes under the heading of “change, leadership, and dialogue.” We are an organization, an institution (that can do things that individuals can’t). However, none of us are salaried. What happens through the center is because one of us or a combination of us offers something. We imagine something. We create it. We offer it. We take the risk — that feels like old language here, but it serves to name some of the dynamic. Even with the organization in place, the things that get done are because some of us offer it. Some of this is assignment. However, by far, most of this is volunteered or expressed willingly to meet a need.

I recognize similar dynamics in The Berkana Institute network. And really all of the affiliations I am in where I can get my work done. Through the Art of Hosting global community, we get things done by people offering to do it for a season. With my closest working and teaching companions, we come up with ideas and then we work from principles of invitation and offering.

My Grandfather, now 94, would have related to a job. He worked 40 years or so at one company. He was defined by his job. And in that era, the organizational form that made sense was much more about rules, descriptions, policies, and governance. All of that is good. All of that is at play today.

However, the network as organizational form is much more in place today. Or the Community of Practice. These forms are not sustained by governance in the same way that the organization my Grandfather worked needed it to be. They are sustained by stewarding from particular shared agreements, values, and practices. Today, in many cases (most), we work without guaranteed funding (or cut budgets). WIthout clear org charts. Without rigid boundaries even. For me some of the words that help to explain that are self-organization, emergence, and living systems.

The point of all of this, aha for me, is that these old patterns of governance and policy and permission are not the essential patterns needed to get work done in so many of todays organizational forms. Networks call for extreme volunteerism, running wildly. If you have people who care, celebrate. If you have groups of people with so much heart that you can’t track all that is happening, enjoy that chaos. That’s a good problem to have. It is key to the new organizational forms of these days. Humans in networks call for and ask for heartfull engagement, peer leadership — not authoritarian blessings or disapprovals.

Governance. Know when to focus on this model. Use it when it helps. Stewardship. Know when to experiment with this. Stewardship may feel more messy. It’s easy to default to governance. But noticing how that default chokes the lifeline of a network — well, there is a skill set important for all of us to develop. Learn to work in the mass that is a network. And notice how much things have changed in how things get done, even within organizations. Now through communities, networks, groups of people that want to do some good in the world.

Quite exciting really.

Saturday I skied for the first time in about a year. And before that, for the first time in about five years. This time it was at a place called Stevens Pass, just north of Seattle. Lots and lots of powder. Lots of good remembering from my ski muscles, along with a few achy muscles at the end of the day. It takes a fair amount of work to get ready to ski. Sometimes to the point of wondering why I’m doing this. First run helps me to remember how much I love being out like that. Big open spaces. Fresh air. Movement of body in relation to the mountain.

I love learning through my body. And through play and exercise. It helps me remember important learnings that help me to understand more of the medium of facilitation and consciousness shifting that I’m in in all of my work. There were two particular points that I appreciated Saturday.

First, with all of that snow that continued all day, there were some places where visibility was really low. Though my preference by far is to see the hill, not being able to do so I find heightens my other senses. I had to feel the hill. In my legs. In my hips. Absorb what was coming not because I could see it in advance, but rather, feel it in the moment. This feels like one of those good capacities for leadership today. Feel it in the moment. Not everything can be tracked out front.

Second, was from listening to one of the ski instructors at the top of the run. This was a man that was teaching younger kids how to ski. He was telling them three things. One was how to grip their poles. Two was to bend their arms and the elbows keeping their hands in front of them. Three was the kicker, to lean down hill. Skiing isn’t to be met with a hesitancy. Easier said that done perhaps. It actually becomes easier in the learning and in the relearning later in life. You have to lean in to the piece that gives you movement. You have to lean into what sometimes you feel hesitant to do.

Well, good learnings at a lot of levels here. I’m glad to have had a great day skiing and to remember in my body these learnings.

This was shared recently from a friend of a friend with cancer. It matters to me in the specifics of that circumstance. It also matters to me as important message in this time of change. I find myself inviting from this tone.

Now is the time to know
That all that you do is sacred.

Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong
Were just a child’s training wheels
To be laid aside
When you can finally live
With veracity
And love.

…Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred.

This is the time
For you to deeply compute the impossibility
That there is anything
But Grace.

Now is the season to know
That everything you do
Is sacred.

Hafiz

It’s been a while since I compiled these. I’ve given my attention full on to hosting and calling a couple of events. And tweets are just the perfect landing place for some of those helpful bits of story and resources.

• RT @bobstilger: Announcing soft launch of The Transformation Institute, www.transform.org. Community / Business / Personal Transformation
• RT @NoeticOrg: The six core tenets of Worldview Literacy: bit.ly/eEalwm
• 300 Years of Fossil Fuels in 300 Seconds: Helpful story (youtu.be/cJ-J91SwP8w) from Post Carbon Institute (www.postcarbon.org)
• Appreciating @PeggyHolman sharing stories of Journalism That Matters that inspire Healthier Healthcare Systems next week in Utah.
• Readying for Healthier Healthcare Systems: Daring to Create Together What the Needed New Can Be — bit.ly/ykPk48
• From Seattle to Utah today. Grateful for a holiday. Continuing to learn the importance of rest in relation to ready.
• Returning from New Years near Mt Hood. Games, friends, food, play, rest. Outside looking like this: yfrog.com/obe73ytj
• RT @SMHoenig: We have become attached to our distorted way of seeing things & have not the courage to see way things really are. ~ Panditji