All over the place and focus

by

I suppose to some people my interests appear to be all over the place: philanthropy, currencies, technology, visualization, mapping, marketing, coaching, leadership, process arts, community development, art, creativity, and some other issues too like globalization, the bottom of the pyramid, social entrepreneurship, etc. And most of these areas I have enough understanding to listen and ask good questions…but not enough to debate academically on the finer points or the history. Coaching might be the exception. Maybe. I am not a specialist. And some say it is a world where we ought to be specialized. I don’t know about that. I think it is a world where we ought to connect and have engaging conversations.

Sometimes, in our lives, we find the varied paths we lead all connecting down the road somewhere. All this leads together…

How? Field building. I will post soon a longer explanation of field building, along with some tidbits of conversation and great links for those who are interested. For now, let me simply explain that field building is the conscious collective development of a network of purpose (both the nodes and the space between the nodes). And I see this as being critical for our evolution. We need to adapt to survive and for the planet to survive. We need to understand our world in more useful and appropriate ways. And all these interests of mine lead back to the many tools, processes, and systems that play a role in field building. An example–Social Network Analysis is an emerging field…It is defining itself, the practices, examining what distinctions are valuable and which are not. It changes how organizations work, and values human connection. It requires message management for maintaining a cohesive set of meaningful terms. It requires leadership to grow the edges and community to build the depths. It takes funding and marketing to keep thriving. It takes mapping and visualization to track and analyze itself. Other examples are Digital Media and Education, Currencies/Flows, and Thrivability (next evolution of sustainability). Sometimes fields are in transition too, like the work we are doing in Philanthropy to democratize giving, promote giving while living, encourage micro-philanthropy, etc.

We need to change our world, to understand it in new ways, to work in new ways. I see my work as building fields that help with that process. And why? It comes back to my core purpose–to help people transform their lives and live with passionate purpose.