Author: Tenneson Woolf

I’m learning a lot lately about translocal learning communities. Translocal learning communities are physical communities of place. The do the work locally. Yet they connect regionally. They learn globally. I just read a master’s thesis written by Aerin Dunford about this. Aerin is a friend and colleague who has been living in The Berkana Exchange, a collection of learning centers that are sharing their experiences, learnings, and questions with each other. These are around core areas of healthy community like sustainable food, schooling, upcycling, and more. Aerin’s paper sparked many ideas for me. Much learning as I think about some people that I am working with, including Ben Mates at the Hemmingway Foundation. He, I, the Center for Engaging Community, and a lovely team are creating a shape for a Sustainability Summit to be held in Salt Lake City in early October.

I love these gems from Aerin that inspire me to be in good dialogue with others around this. Good starting points.

Conditions for supporting healthy, sustainable community:
1. Walk at our own pace.
2. Support a healthy flow of information.
3. Co-create rituals and culture.
4. Commit to discipline and freedom in self-organization.
5. Practice.
6. Be together.
7. Trust and be authentic.
8. Be accepting.
9. Tell stories and hear them from others.

I also love this definition of emergence from Meg Wheatley and Myron Kellner Rogers: “the surprising capacity we discover only when we join together. New systems have properties that appear suddenly and mysteriously. Relationships change us, reveal us, evoke more from us. Only when we join with others do our gifts become visible, even to ourselves.” (From A Simpler Way)

And then these shared values, beliefs, and practices that grow out of much of the Berkana work I have known over the years.

Values

• rely on human goodness
• depend on diversity
• trust life’s capacity to self-organize in sustainable, interdependent systems
• live the worlds we want today
• make our path by walking

Beliefs

• the leaders we need are already here
• real change happens on the ground, in a community
• transformation becomes possible when the learning from local change is shared
• we have what we need
• turn to one another
• there are many, many ways

Practices

• foster a culture of reflective learning
• engage in hands-on practices
• look inward to understand how we work
• look outward to share what we are finding and to learn with others
• exchange our skills, knowledge, and practices
• gather physically on a regular basis

– Swarm Theory
Peter Miller
National Geographic, July 2007

– The Biology of Business: Love Expands Intelligence
Humberto Maturana and Pille Bunnell
Reflections (Society for Organizational Learning), Volume 1, Number 2

– Cafe to Go
The World Cafe Community

Sooo, many of us are working together. I feel connection to a broad community that wants to work well and learn well together. For me, this shows up in varied communities of pracitce. The Art of Hosting, the World Cafe network, the PeerSpirit network, the Open Space community. And in many individuals. Many of us are trying to answer questions about how to get the work done. How to work in collaboration? In complexity? Through the “yah, buts.” Here’s a thread that has much life for me now, drawing from all of the above, and many individuals, and the Appreciative Approach.

1. What is working? — In any system, something is working. To orient to this question is to witness some of the good. It honors the commitment of people, of teams, of communities and all of the imagining that has gone into the current state. It doesn’t require us to stay in that state. This in fact is part of the pattern to practice forward. Yesterday’s brilliant solutions can become today’s ugly problems — that’s what dynamic environments do. Noticing what is working gives us access to what we can build upon, or in some cases, see the underlying process that we need for the next new.

2. What is possible? — Oh, it does so much good to invite people to dream. To access that part of them, that innate part that so wants to create. Create solutions. Create definitions. Be adaptive. Be in collaboration. I have worked so often with the motto, slow down to speed up. Being in the question of what is possible creates the energy and clarity for speeding up to get to all of those good results that we so crave. Being in this question also reforms relationships. It moves us from what can be ruts of problem solving, of problems, into that more generative state of creation, of real time learning, begining wherever we are.

3. What do we choose? — Aren’t there always several choices. And many of them are good. To have no choice has always felt very unreal to me. An illusion. What obsession with speed and efficiency clokes. To reintroduce choice is to reintroduce the brilliance of our adaptiveness with each other. I often feel like there are 37 (or more) good choices. In good relationship, most of those will work well. Use our intution to commit to one of those with some time agreements. Perhaps for the next year or the next six months. The simple act of recalling choice activates so much hope in myself and in others.

4. Follow the spark of yes. — This is response to the question of how. It is in response to the question of who should be involved, where to start? This has a metaphysical feel. It should. It is a choice of organzing. Beyond are immense, heroic efforts to structure life, I have often felt and tried to practice following the spark of yes. People show up. Clarity of mind. Intuition — the things the heart can know that the mind can’t know. All of this takes a practice and can feel kind of funny because it breaks with many habits so highly honored in leadership practice. The legitmacy of the spark of yes comes from a bias of organizations as living systems, and as such, with capacity to self-organize. Order for free, as Meg Wheatley often says.

These are just brief blurbs. Each is a practice, a life practice. Each is best done in the company of others. Muck it up. Do it well. Forget. The way that most of life is. But also the way that most practices are. To initially learn a physical skill can be awkward, but then something that evolves into unconscious body memory. When taken seriously / playfully, I find they open the path, and a great choice of principle of what to organize around.

Thanks in particular, Teresa Posakony, Chris Corrigan, Peggy Holman, fabulous colearners and workshops leaders and community learners for these stirrings.

I love this simple story that hosting friend Muryah Baldwin shares. She speaks of the ever-growing parts of our work together. In this case, world cafes that gather a community and improve a drug rehabilitation program.

“My purpose for sharing this story at this time is to highlight the deepening fusion and connections that I am recognizing, between our work especially in AoH and TWC and to thank you for continuing my learning. I know that the scenario described is just one more example of experiences that we are all having in places around the world.

I just returned from working in Kalamazoo Michigan where I trained 30 enthusiastic citizens (judges, engineers, life coaches, business owners) as conversational hosts and who assisted me in hosting a large group of citizens at the Kalamazoo Farmers Market yesterday. In a program originally seeded by Fetzer and the Kellogg Foundation, The Drug Courts of Kalamazoo County have made a revolutionary shift in the way that they process drug use offenders. The court has shifted from simply penal system to a problem-solving resource for 1,500 recovered addict/criminals (over the past 10 years) who are now law abiding contributing citizens. Success rate in the program is high especially compared to drug-related criminal recidivism in general. This is a tremendous success story, from the mouths of deeply grateful recovered users.

Several courts across the country are now applying these principles by shifting their approach to a select population of “unintended abusers” not the hard core or violent, differentiating their sentencing options to also include recovery methods, mentoring and bridges back to becoming a NORC normal operating respectful citizen.. The now retired sheriff says it works because the collective of affiliated agents changed their perspective on what the courts are there to provide.

Saturday’s cafe table discussions was designed to take the principles used by the drug court to scale by addressing other immediate systems and situations in Kalamazoo. Citizens set the agenda by identifying next focus, opportunities and dilemmas. It was grand, with media coverage and about 75 people engaged in conversations resulting in rich observations and actionable ideas for moving forward, Attendees covered the scale from judges, sheriffs, mayor, professionals and other citizens across generations. The highlight came during the context setting , testimony from a bright light who fell from grace simply by trying something new. She drew tears with her story of going from rock bottom to a return to her intended life path all because she was given a chance as well as jail time. This set the tone for attacking “hard problems” with hope for success.

I had a blast. The proud town folks were ready, hungry for some way of moving forward (there is evidence that they are change agents) and TWC, introduced by Guillermina Hernandez-Gallegos at Fetzer – TWC Steward – became that bridge; they hit the ground running.

I am rambling………….all of this is to say that I noticed fundamental ways in which TWC/AoH complement to enrich my/our work. My attendance at AoH sharpened an agency for articulating/modeling for the conversational hosts the type of presence, posture, consciousness required to apply TWC principles and to “be a major embodiment of and for the environment they want to create.” This may have been particularly important as many of the learners were from the courts and law enforcement community (strong mindsets). In 3 hours they got it !!!!. The ‘father of the program’ and most engaged judge gave open testimony to the media and the crowd on Saturday of how TWC principles (he attended the training) provided a framework for understanding and repeating what they did well in the drug court without a map – just right hearts and minds. The 30 hosts are poised to become the local TWC community of practice supporting the anticipated conversations that have been stimulated

Gratefully, feeding the Field,
Muryah