Don’t finish that!

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I have the sense that there are lots of people doing really great work…but they want to get it to a finished point before sharing it. Really? Sure about that?

In the age of participatory, nay, collaborative culture, as soon as something is finished it can’t be collaborative. If you want other people pitching in to make an idea work, software better, or actions more impactful…don’t dictate what should happen and push out what has been finished. Open with curiosity. Share vision and motivation…share ideas as rough sketches for group discussion. Collaboration doesn’t work as well if comes off as “I made this, now will you implement it?” *

Collaboration works better as “I had an idea, what would you do…? or would you help me figure out…?” And it can really work well with a bit of acknowledgment like, “You are such a whiz kid at x, and I was working on this idea related to that….could you help me think it through?” or “You are so well connected in z neighborhood/network, I would like to vision there. How do you think that could work?” So I encourage those of us in collaboration to stop finishing things. Let documents come alive–living documents invite collaboration… Let ideas and actions live.

*This worked better in pyramidal structures where authority or perceived authority can push things to happen. In collaborative culture, work is accomplished by attraction–the pull of an idea, person, thing, or vision. And the key to get in the door of collaboration is invitation. Don’t invite people to a party that is finished.

Collaborative Organization

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For now, see the image…I had a delightful insight this morning…and I will get around to explaining it. This is the placeholder for now. 🙂

Collaborative Network image

It might be no surprise that organizations can collaborate this way. Many already do. However, what I see collective intelligence efforts doing creates the hub and spoke network shape. Being intentional about creating collaborative organization at face to face events and collaborations seems valuable to me. Furthermore, processes like Open Space, to a great degree, enable this form of collaborative organization. However, until we deeply celebrate the roll of butterflies and bees….we aren’t truly capturing the intelligence between sessions in a powerful, useful way.

More to come…

Leadership is so last century…

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I was having a delightful conversation with the amazing and insightful Jack Ricchiuto last night. Whenever I speak with him, I feel compelled to take fastidious notes because the gems of wisdom pour from him as if he was Rumpelstiltskin weaving gold from hay. He spoke of moving from leadership of individuals to the small group as the core essential unit. And it struck me immediately as very insightful…I was so ready for that nugget of wisdom!

So this is why I am thinking this shift is valuable. And I would love to hear your thinking on this issue, since I am still piecing it together.

When we focus on leaders, we put our attention on their role and performance. It is dis-empowering to the other vital players in a group. Each member of a group is important whether they are the nurturers who support the best coming from all or the harvesters which synthesize and bring the gems forward….or the critics who help refine the ideas…or the clown which makes it fun and full of laughter…or any number of other archetypes that come into play. Sometimes these characteristics are multiple in one person, sometimes they are shared across many. However, focusing on the leader dissipates attention away from the system dynamics at play in a group.

For too long we have privileged the voice of the group, the instigator, the dictator… Or worse, we have pretended that the pyramidal structures work with “leaders” at the top rather than collaborators throughout.

And improving the output of the group by working on the leader in particular is like treating your toe pain without considering your whole body (and that if you held a different posture, the pain would go away). Move away from group pain by: focusing on the positive–the strengths of each collaborator, the dream the group has passion for, the small accountable next step of action, and people needed for the collaboration to be fruitful. Jack and his partner have a whole process for it. 🙂

Change–We are it!

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So I know I have been writing mostly about politics and issues lately. I apologize for not being more focused on nurturing. Part of it might be that I am working on the nurturing ideas on the thrivability blog. Part of it might be that I have been doing more than talking lately. And part of it might be that now seems like a critical political time. I promise to get back to nurturing social change in a more targeted sense…but first, this passionate post about Change.

Several posts ago I argued for Gore to be president. And I do love how he is coming forward in the world to strongly and clearly push for change. However, I must accept that he isn’t going for the presidency…so who am I stuck with? I decided against Hillary…over many months, but it was really clear to me when I saw a friend’s facebook “what am I doing” that said “Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton” and it hit me like a lumber truck. Yikes, I DON’T want more of that pattern! So I started looking at this Obama character more. I remembered when he became senator and there was talk years ago that he had the charisma to go for the presidency in 08. And here we are.

I saw more friends jumping on the Obama wagon, and I raised an eyebrow. Really? Hmmm, I wonder why. Then a friend emailed his speech in Atlanta…and I saw the “Yes We Can” video….and I started to wonder. Do we really have a potential candidate that has some morals? Some aspirations for unity and change? Some hope? Really? I dared not hope. But I did start to sign on–Obama became my choice.

But it really struck me hard, and I become convinced last week. Not because of the great winning streak or the videos and media around the guy. No, I became convinced when I spoke with my cousin. She is a precinct captain for Obama. Obviously she is a fan, and her explanation of politics likely biased by her preference. No matter, the story she told me is what moved me. She told of going to an event for Obama a year ago. And while it is usually a white, middle to upper class, college-educated, and older crowd that gets involved in pushing a campaign…she said the people showing up to work towards Obama for president came from many classes, races, and ages. And she said when she went to an event to offer herself as precinct captain, she saw again–a strong turnout from a very mixed audience. She talked about meeting people who had never voted, and they were now–not just registering to vote–they were volunteering to campaign. There is a giant awakening–the grassroots push for change.

And I walked away from that conversation with hope in my heart. Might the mighty sleeping beast of American engagement across race, class, age, sex, and religion be waking up to take back control. Might things have become so astonishingly bad in the last 8-20 years, that we as a country are ready to participate in democracy because we finally recognize we each have skin in the game?

Americans have too long been voting on party lines and against their own self-interest. Republicans have too long been manipulating the polls. It is time to show in great and magnificent numbers that we clearly want change. Let there be no doubt about numbers this year. Let us voice in unison our call and support for major shifting of politics here. Let us shout to the world that we, as a people, want to re-engage in the world as servant leaders for uplift.

MacArthur announces Digital Media and Learning awardees

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Great to see the list of winners. I helped several friends with their application. Unfortunately they are not on the list. However, the projects listed appear to be strong and valuable.

Projects like Fractor are both innovative and potentially powerful. Fractor links news stories to opportunities to take action. Don’t just read the news, do something about it. 🙂 Hypercities would be wise to connect to Global Lives (who applied but didn’t win). Global Lives has the digital storytelling that Hypercities needs to be successful.

Networking Grassroots Knowledge Globally would do well to connect up with the existing Catalytic Communities (of which I am a board member) to get a headstart on collecting successful community-led initiatives.

Social Media Virtual Classroom. Go Howard! I continue to be pleased with the initiatives and ideas he puts out there.

And YouthActionNet Marketplace looks interesting, especially for all my friends interested in empowering young people to get into social entrepreneurship. I do wonder how something like this can connect with the new expanding Catalytic Communities community solutions database.

Yeah! Great to see all these projects full of good intention. I look forward to seeing the progress of each.

Speech? Press? Free?

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BBC:

A controversial website that allows whistle-blowers to anonymously post government and corporate documents has been taken offline in the US.

Wikileaks.org, as it is known, was cut off from the internet following a California court ruling, the site says.

Here’s how the homepage looks now. Background on Wikileaks at Wikipedia. Slashdot reports that Wikileaks also sustained a fire and a denial of service attack. The domain name of Wikileaks is offline, but the site has been mirrored. Fascinating to see the interaction of whistleblowers, courts, and in this case a bank for the ultra-rich allegedly supporting tax evasion and money laundering.

More from Wry Things here.
(This text pulled from www.gifthub.org, thank you Phil for the short version.)

Disturbing and Amazing

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I received an IM today from a good friend in Africa. Amazing and delightful to have this communication open. How incredibly stunning to me that we can instant message across the world, especially into places in Africa. Like Chad. What is deeply disturbing and also amazing is that he was IM-ing me as he was boarding a bus. They are being evacuated. He doesn’t know where he will be tomorrow–but it won’t likely be Chad. He won’t be there, the good doctor, tending to the refugees and teaching medicine.

It seems so very far away. And yet, a piece of my heart is with my friend, listening to gunfire.

He is with StopGenocideNow, I hope. He mentions the hotel that I know StopGenocideNow filmed at.

Please send warm and positive energy to our brothers and sisters in Chad. Send love and goodness to my friend as he and our StopGenocideNow team luckily get extracted.

Its the Economy…

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I have a love/hate relationship with the news. I have gone through rabid phases of consuming news, especially around politics as well as long droughts of news-less life. And I have to say the news-less life is far more pleasant. Significant news still gets to me, but my nerves remained untroubled by the daily portrait of murder, war, and fear-mongering. Besides, I have a strong and growing distrust of major media.

All that aside, I am reading the news again. One might say with the house for sale that I have good reason to pay attention to shifts in the economy that might impact my sale. And there is that. One can also say that since I don’t provide a vital service that covers the bottom of the maslow for folks, that if a depression hits, my work is likely to be impacted. Another could point out that as a change agent for social justice, shifts in economic possibility directly relate to changes that can be possible.

There are clearly many motivations which draw me to take a look at the news, specifically around the economy. What will a recession or even a depression mean? Why do we live in a world where there is only this work toward growth–infinite growth? Do people see that our financial systems are a construct, and that construct destroys us, our communities, and our potential in the future? What will the consequences of an economic downturn be? Will that reduce our consumerism more than green values do? Will we learn to recycle and reuse the way our predecessors did in the depression? And we all know that who really suffers in down cycles are the poor and lower middle class. Will the people in the bottom half of our economic spectrum recognize that republicans are making the government bigger and work against public interest–and consequently revolt?

I highly doubt we have ever, in all the history of the US, had a worse president and oval office than we have now. And while some may wait on the edge of their seats for the next president to come in…I think the destruction is not yet over. And so the pendulum swings wide and high…and I can only hope that the worse it gets now will mean the better it will be able to be later. I am usually one to see many sides of a situation, but this economic crisis feels like one more solid reason to hold conviction about how destructive our current leaders are.

I used to scoff at conspiracy theorists. Now I think there is no evil to which King George et co would not sink to, no life they would not sacrifice, no principle of our founding tenets they hold dear, and no care for anyone outside themselves. And the whole of our government is complicit in their terrorist, imperial, and tyrannical deeds as long as impeachment is not in process. MMMM, what would impeachment do for the economy?

Thrivability

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So I started another blog…
..because this one to me is more about me and what I want to see, do, be, and make happen and reflect on. The new one can include other bloggers and focuses narrowly on thrivability.

Here you go–I intend to document my explorations, discoveries, reflections and those of my collaborators on http://thriveability.wordpress.com/. Thanks! And may you flourish in 08.

I have had too many conversations about climate change and the impending chaos of our unknown future to not take significant action toward thrivability. This year. There is no time to lose, we lost it already. I suspect the blogs will have some cross-over between them. If you are interested in thrivability (or interested in sustainability and want to know what thrivability is)…comment here and let’s connect, share, grow together.