Author: Tenneson Woolf

Thanks to Meg Wheatley for forwarding this, an 18-minute Ted Talk by Sam Daley. He is a musician that at a young age awakened to broader purpose in the world. For him, ending global poverty. He speaks some of purpose and pitfalls in this journey.

The reference to “profound distortion” is one that grabs me. He shares about “standing by as millions starve locally while we’ve developed technology to aim a missile over the polar ice cap and strike within 100 feet of a target.” Rather than referencing this as innovation, he references the “profound distortion” of the purpose of human beings on the planet.

Glad to have listened / watched this today. It awakens me further in this day. And strengthens a similar message that showed up in a dream for me last night.

Last week, Steve Ryman, Teresa Posakony, and I teamed up to work again with a growing network in Klamath county. Steve and I hosted on site with our friend and colleague Bob Marsalli.

There is a movement beginning in Klamath County. A movement of citizens. Of community leaders. Of health care professionals. People committed to exploring a next level community and inquiry-based approach to sustainable health in the county. What began as one individual, Bob Marsalli (CEO, Klamath Health Partnership) wanting to connect health care leaders into a different way of collaborating, grew into a collaboration that included local colleague Wendy Warren, process design support from Steve, Teresa Posakony, and myself, grant resources through the Office of Rural Health Policy, a core leadership team of eight, and later fourteen, supporting the approach.

We work from a Berkana principle, “whatever the problem, community is the answer.” June 24, 2010 was a day dedicated to working as community with 34 people from Klamath County. To improve health and access to health services in the county. To be a community learning together, building relationships, and taking on projects. To work together using tested social technologies on key questions with community stakeholders.

We worked as a group on eight areas of this rural network development, including next steps for the core team.

1. Welcome and Context
2. Need and Purpose — What is the curiosity that brought you here?
3. Community Strengths — What is already working well?
4. Strategic Assessing — What needs to change?
5. Working Groups — What needs to be explored and offered for the network to thrive?
6. Commitments — What do you feel passion about doing with / for this network?
7. Expanding the Community — Who needs to join us at the next level for this to be successful?
8. Steps for Core Team (next six months) — What is next? How can we build on today to further support the emergence of Klamath County’s rural health network?

What I like most about this is that it is growing into a network seeing itself. The sparks of possibility are being seen together. People want to work together. They want to find ways to pioneer together. Add to this an architecture for change, which we are offering, and the possible grows from a dream into the absolute practical.

Invitation — Thanks Bob Marsalli
A few photos from the day.
Klamath Herald and News Forum Page
Executive Summary
Report

Thank you to the group of 46 that gathered at Star of the North Retreat Center in St. Albert, Alberta, just north of Edmonton, June 6-9, 2010. Thank you to local hosts, Mary Johnson, Chantal Normand, and Corrina Chetley-Irwin. Thank you to callers of a February 2010 Art of Hosting in Edmonton, Beth Sanders, Marg Sanders, Hugh Sanders. Gratitude for the space of a community in deep learning and applied practice. The learning and experience is lasting and lovely.

A few harvest offerings and collections with thanks from other participants:

Invitation — For the training (also, shorter one-page invitation)

Photos — A few of people, phrases, and flipcharts

Video — Social Movement through two days of learning (thanks Joanne Delmonico)

Blog Post — on Minimal Structure and Practice for a Community of Practice

Blog Post — on 12 Principles for Creating Healthy Community Change

Last week I was in Edmonton, Alberta. It is my hometown. It was the second time I have co-hosted an Art of Hosting training there in the last four months. I find it fascinating to observe hometown culture, now through my eyes of having lived and traveled in several places for many years.

One of the Open Space sessions I joined was on the third day, focussed on growing a community of practice in Northern Alberta. About 12 people gathered. What I saw was people interested in carrying forward the learning, working, and relationships that were being created at this training. There was real hunger. And even more, a sense of real possibility. Powerful, yet simple. I love it when this moment arrives.

Of course there are many choices of how to do that. I was happy to share some of what I have seen working and offer a few inspirations on minimal structure and practice. In the spirit of “minimal elegance” as I’ve often heard from Juanita Brown, Tom Hurley, and David Isaacs at The World Cafe.

As Minimal Structure…

1. Meet Monthly for an Evening: A couple of hours together. First to explore what is possible in a deliberate community of practice, what people yearn for. And then later to move into sharing work together. An evening on which the focus is someone’s particular project. Listen and learn as friends and colleagues. Offer help. No doubt, gain a few insights that apply to other projects.
2. Meet Quarterly for a Broader Community Share: A half day or six hours together. Enough to hear more from many people and to share some of the journey of current projects. Enough to be reflective with each other about knowns and unknowns. Enough to be in inquiry together about underlying patterns of hosting as it is showing up in projects and in the community.
3. Meet Annually as a Full Learning Village: Come together for 3-4 days in the pattern of the Art of Hosting. To add to the energy that is there. To welcome new people in. To bring colleagues or clients. To drink deeply from the place of community in learning.

As Minimal Practice for Monthly Gatherings…

1. Check-In: Practice the principle of slowing down to speed up. Of story-telling with each other. Of inviting the energy of possibility.
2. Rotate Leadership: Though it typically takes a couple of people to steward initial monthly meetings, support immediately the group creation. Just take turns. Similarly for quarterly learning gatherings. With annual learning villages, bring in an Art of Hosting stewards team. And grow / practice together so that the local community gains more of the capacity to host the whole of such a gathering.
3. Focus on Work: I’ve noticed that initially, people are very happy just to get together and renew aquaintances. This isn’t minor. I find many of us need support in working from a different pattern. At some point, however, most want to move into work together. Or just learn about applied practice together. To give a group the space to share a project (or design, or meeting format, or wild idea…) is simply the invitation to be wise. I’m delighted when people notice who they can experiment with working together.
4. Meet in Circle: As the group grows it can be moved into additional formats. But practicing meeting in circle is just the best way I know to create a deep center. It’s the kind of center that doesn’t require coercive invitations. People come because it helps them go to the deeper place individually and together. And because it helps them in their needs.
5. Check-Out: Seal the time together with deliberateness. Honor the difference between the social space and this deep listening space. A simple question works: What are you leaving with? Or, what has been the gift of the time together for you?
6. Stay Simple: Have the courage to be simple. In the places you choose to meet. In the preparation. Rely on the fundamental resource of human beings turning to one another.

Thanks to Corinna, Chantal, Mary, and all that joined this conversation, both from Edmonton and from Calgary. It was a gift for me to feel a simplicity and clarity that feels like a massive container for good work and capacity-growing. These very qualities of a culture — simplicity, clarity, container, good work, community — they are, in fact, home, wherever that shows up geographically.