Category: Edited

You know how some learning friendships and colleagueships are so bounteous that having a journal nearby and pen in hand are utterly essential? The ones where you want to catch the ideas because they are good ones. This is the kind of learning relationship I feel with two friends and colleagues in New Zealand. Glen Lauder is a long-time friend, met first at an Art of Hosting training near Boston. He is a facilitator rich with insight, imagination, fierceness of purpose, clarity, and generous heart. Phillip Barker is similar. A gifted co-thinker and younger social entrepreneur. Inspiring. Honest. Gentle. Fierce.

Together we have committed to a deliberateness in learning, exploring, harvesting, and offering. Linking together these home bases (me in Utah, Glen and Phillip in Richmond and Nelson respectively, on New Zealand’s south island and Tasman Bay — it may not remain “Utasman,” but it is how I playfully think of it now).

Yesterday was the first of what will be several regular skype calls in the next year. For this time it was Glen and me. It had the feeling of starting to nibble at content and process of something very important. Bites that nourished and called forth my appetite for more. Insights that come in the company of friends. The beginnings of content and format that will feed the work that we offer together and individually (writing, coaching, workshops, programs, exploratory dialogues).

Some of this is here (my journal and pen were well used). Glen’s question, for example, “What are the qualities that bring aliveness into dialogue every day?” stayed with me as we shared stories of dialogues that have been flat, or stayed at a superficial level. We shared stories of dialogues that have popped also. Into what feels like a new kind of consciousness, accessible to all that are present. The way that showing up with full attention and presence (or intending / practicing this) births a new entity. A new organism that is the constellation of people in heart, mind, and more. It is the kind of work that Otto Scharmer gives much attention to, “presencing the future.” What if dialogue were a means of birthing a future as a living entity? I do think of dialogue this way.

Cheers to these beginnings — more to come.

You know how some things take on a momentum and movement that nobody planned on. They way that the group spirit becomes a defining identity that was more than anyone imagined. It is inspiring to me to see what is happening in this light on Wall Street and in other “Occupy” locations around the world. I hear it as a call to stop the patterns of unexamined, unsustainable growth and greed. I don’t know the answers. These are deep issues. The dialogue feels very important.

Below are some helpful insights from friend and colleague Tom Atlee. His full post on this topic is on his website.

“So I realized: OF COURSE Occupy Wall Street doesn’t have “demands.” Demonstrations and protests have demands. But although O.W.S. LOOKS like a protest and a demonstration (and occasionally turns into one), it is actually something more, something else: It is a passionate community of inquiry acting itself out as an archetypal improvisational street theater performance embodying, in one hand, people’s longings for the world as it could be and, in the other, their intense frustrations with the world as it is. These longings and frustrations reside in the whole society, not just in the occupiers. The occupiers are behaving and reaching out in ways that release and activate those suppressed transformational energies all over the country and world. (Arny and Amy Mindell call such archetypal energies “timespirits” after “Zeitgeist”, the spirit of the times.) To think of Occupation Wall Street as primarily a demonstration or protest misses the profound novelty and power of what they are doing. All of us – they and we – are figuring out what it is they are doing as they do it. They are kinda building the road as they travel.”

I know that many of us are asked this question. I know that many of us continue to explore the practices of participation as well as the underlaying principles. It’s good and essential learning.

What follows is an email exchange prompted by an Art of Hosting friend and colleague in Australia, Stephen Duns. Stephen shares the question asked by his client. Some of us responded, including another friend and colleague in Ohio, Phil Cass, CEO of the Columbus Medical Association Foundation. Phil’s words were like gold to me. Simple. To the point. Well-named. Shared here with permission.

From Stephen:
“What are the critical things that have to be in place to make this approach work? For example do we need buy-in from the top? And how would we know if it wouldn’t work in our place? What things will make this not work?”

From Phil:
“So here is my perspective. As I expressed when we all were together. I believe “Living Systems” just are and that is what is really happening all of the time in all organizations. If I’m right about this then the next part of the theory for me is that the Art of Participatory Leadership is a set of practices that support and amplify what is best of the living system network paradigm because they fit with the nature of living systems. They are a natural fit.

So when does this not work and does the top need to buy in? My sense is that participatory processes can begin anywhere in an organization and probably be sustained if top leadership isn’t threatened by them. So my little team or our division can implement and have success without top leadership buy in as long as top leadership doesn’t put a stop to it. What can happen in this situation is that the small unit meets with success and gets noticed and then others become interested and it spreads. Top management in this positive scenario sees it, becomes curious and eventually sees the benefit for the whole organization. I do believe that there must be top buy in or this won’t become the  organizational paradigm. I have long felt that organizations as a whole don’t achieve levels of consciousness beyond the level of consciousness held by its top leadership. This doesn’t mean that individuals in the organization can’t achieve levels of consciousness that surpass that of its leaders but the organization as a whole doesn’t.

Because participatory leadership is a magnifier of living systems and we as human beings are inherently part of those systems, theoretically it should have some appeal to all humans once we can get through to that human level of understanding about what organizations really are. The people that I find hardest to deal with in this regard are those who believe that only the objective or measurable is real. People who hold the belief that if it can’t be measured it doesn’t exist struggle with these approaches. They tend to be resistant to the notion that objectivity is a human construct and that what they hold about objectivity is a myth in and of itself.  Every time I have run into these folks they struggle with it. Ironically, the really good scientists get this in a minute. They have to live with quantum theory. The other people I find struggle with this are people who have been badly damaged in relationships and because of that feel the need to control their environments for fear of being hurt again. These processes can be very threatening to them. If top leadership buys in eventually others will come along or sort themselves out (or be sorted out).

Just my thoughts-great question.”

Some amazing happenings in New York, gatherings of ordinary citizens. The world is changing. These kinds of gatherings are expressions of a new consciousness, a new expectation. “We the people finding our voice.”

Below is from my friends, Tom Atlee and NCDD.

“NCDDers in NYC might find the occupier community (they call themselves “Occupy Wall Street”) a challenging, exciting context to work in.  Process is being evolved on the spot.  The occupiers were using a traditional consensus process, but the police forbade microphones.  So they developed a fascinating “human microphone” system where the speaker says a few words and the crowd repeats what was said (which allows those in the back to hear). (You can watch all this on streaming videos!)  But that increases the already extensive time needed for consensus (checking for concerns, etc.), so the police have started issuing demands that must be met within 5-15 minutes, which the crowd can’t respond to fast enough without formal leaders, which they don’t want.  The evolutionary pressures to develop new forms are intense.  What comes out of that could be very good, very bad, or something else…

If you/we want to do something more planned, best to start now planning for the parallel occupation of Washington DC by hundreds/thousands of progressive protesters that is about to hit the city on Oct 6 http://october2011.org.

For info on Occupy Wall Street, here’s some fascinating links:

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/7468-occupy-wall-street-take-the-bull-by-the-horns
http://www.readersupportednews.org/off-site-opinion-section/64-64/7564-the-whole-world-is-watching-nonviolence-at-liberty-plaza
http://www.truth-out.org/occupywallstreet-more-hashtag-its-revolution-formation/1316784846
http://www.rawstory.com/rawreplay/2011/09/chris-hedges-occupy-wall-street-is-where-the-hope-of-america-lies/
http://irregulartimes.com/index.php/archives/2011/09/20/police-occupy-wall-street-9-20-2011/
http://thiscantbehappening.net/node/785