Serving, Fixing, and Helping

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Recently I (virtually) met Cory who heads up the Action Hero Network. He sent this out to us from the facebook group.

In the Service of Life

Serving is different from helping.
Helping incurs debt. But serving, like healing, is mutual.
Serving is also different from fixing. There is distance
between ourselves and whatever or whomever we are fixing.
Fixing is a form of judgement. All judgement creates
distance, a disconnection, an experience of difference.
If helping is an experience of strength, fixing is an
experience of mastery and expertise.
Service on the other hand, is an experience of mastery,
surrender, and awe. We cannot serve at a distance.
We can only serve that to which we are profoundly connected,
that which we are willing to touch.
We serve life not because it is broken, but because it is holy.

Adapted from Rachel Naomi Remen

(found on Argon’s page: http://people.tribe.net/argonvancouver )

Indeed. I like this description very much. It resonates deeply with the way I was trained to think with coaching and trained to see philanthropy. (Yes, I know that is not at all what most people would assume philanthropy is–but let us hope for a transformation in this direction where serving is the form of contribution.)

Field Building? What is that?

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Social network analysis reveals the nodes and their connections. Yes. “The nodes in the network are the people and groups while the links show relationships or flows between the nodes.” Great. What about the things that support the nodes and their ability to make connections. This is the field of the network, and it functions as an energetic even magnetic space that impacts the network in profound ways. We are defined not only by the positive space of our presence and the relationships we bear to each other, but also the space between us, the “negative space” referred to in art class.

If you want to change the configuration of the social network map, changing behavior is one avenue, but it is often difficult to encourage and enforce. Another option is to change the environment. It can be easier, perhaps, to find levers for change in this layer.

So when I talk about field-building, I am talking about that space–the environment of the network. Created by convening events, participating in dialogs, creating avenues to disperse messages, refining the language and frames of the network and its purpose.

Ornet.com network image

World We Want revisited

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Over at the World We Want blog last year, I responded to a post with an essay on the World I Want. It received feedback.

I want to revisit that. Draft 2.

What is your vision of a better world?

Many revolutions converging to create a world with more honor, respect, and ecological/systems awareness.

What converges?

Convergence of improvements for global health. The eradication of major diseases. Small Pox down, Polio close, Measles next, then each one or even many simultaneously. And more and more of this being achieved by organizations working together as a global health community using more and more complex and responsive information tools. More safe drinking water made available through coordinated efforts using community-labor and resources along with global data tracking and local/global teams which share and transfer expertise. We begin to take care of the bottom of the Maslow pyramid for all people. Put a bottom under it so all people do really and truly have a chance to have dignity and health.

Increased transparency of our resources above and beyond money to “grow ours” rather than “grow mine” including:

    • WEB 2.5—mass communication facilitated by servant leaders and centered on user-collaboration, tapping into collective intelligence. The many edges all empowered by mediums of information conveyance to speak across traditional boundaries and be honored in a customized user-driven fashion. Power to the edges, baby!
      Social Network Analysis—beginning to map and value the actual relationships that exist between us rather than the relationships placed on us by org charts. Moving forward to show relationships between people, organizations, affiliations, interests and passions. Deep and rich visualizations that empower connection and uplift action.
      Community Asset Mapping—tapping into the greater wealth of our communities—our connections, the resources we can bring to bear. Going beyond money to do more and see clearly, visually, what is available so making intentional choices is easier. Tapping into multiple forms of resources, inciting flows, and creating and empowering “currents” for systemic flows.
      Open Source—community working together producing property for the commons and changing the model for developing intellectual material. Let me repeat, producing property for the commons, particularly infrastructure that empowers honorable markets.
      Volunteerism on the rise as more and more boomers get back to their ideals. Retirement shifts from retiring/resting from work and community to become a meaning-making phase. It becomes about giving/contributing while supported by financial independence. It allows the vast intellectual and social wealth of the Boomers to be reused and shared through extensive volunteer and community efforts.
      The Organic Movement and other ecologically sensitive movements growing in popularity. People more and more realize the cause and effect relationships of their consumption and for their own health and the health of the world make different more thrivable choices.
      The rise and flourishing of our neglected gift economy via increased information sharing, matchmaking of needs with resources, and spiritual sense of oneness promoted by globalization in the best sense. Think Blessed Unrest and Wiser Earth.

    • What are the conditions needed to realize it?

    That the converging efforts find support and common cause and so unite and reinforce each other bringing together multiple upward spirals to change the overall flow of our culture.

    What are the obstacles?

    • Old thinking which focuses too much on immediate needs, “get me mine” thinking.
      Fear and scarcity thinking.
      Old established systems slow to change.
      Over-focus on band-aid efforts like micro-lending or over-glorification of system-reinforcing work that plays itself like change such as the Grameen Bank (which perpetuates debt-based systems).
      Delays in seeing the power of unity as each groups scrambles for funding, investors, audience, or attention. Competition instead of collaboration. Delay in seeing or valuing persistently our common cause.

    • Based on your experience, what parts of the vision are realistic and what ideas, strategies and plans can make it so?

    My vision is not only realistic; it is already in motion. The main question is about timing. How soon will we change? How many of us need to have an awakening in order to tip the change?

    I partner, as I can, with those who are doing everything they can to enable the dawning of a new age of thrivability, respect, honor, and ecological/systemic awareness. I spread the word to you, and you pass it on. If it is a message people are ready for, it will spread virally far and wide. If not, we re-work the message, lay more groundwork, develop more tools, share more information, and reach out to more hearts.

    I believe…
    I have a dream…
    I hope….
    that we believe
    and we have a shared dream…

    Being Web 2.0

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    It is not about the tools! It is about being organic, distributed, and discerning. It is about emergence and collaboration.

    Organic not controlling. Web 2.0 is not about controlling. Organic and Emerging, yes. Directing possibly. Controlling, no. Anything that hopes to limit, contain, own, restrict, or control is not, at its essence, web 2.0 regardless of the technology it uses.

    Distributed not centralized.     Much like controlling, is centralizing. Power at the edges baby! Network theory. Distributed systems. Not only is this a more powerful way of structuring information, it builds trust in participants. I mean mashups and widgets rather than facebook apps, people.

    Discerning not divisive. Web 2.0 is not about creating us and them dichotomies. It is not divisive distinctions: men v women. White::black. The global north::The global south. It is about commonality. And that can require us to discern differences, but the focus is on finding what do we have in common rather than what we are different. How can we connect and share with others? What can we share with? How can we create trusting relationships for sharing in a global conversation space? Who am I and who are we?

    Being Web 2.0 is facilitated by tools. Definitely. But it isn’t merely using the tools. It is much more. It is part of our evolution toward collective consciousness.

    Curiosity!

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    Listening seems really important. But to go beyond that and be actively listening there need to be a spark of curiosity.

    To go beyond hearing what someone has to say and be engaged in discovering them and their ideas–that reveals several things about both parties. First, that you really care and honor them as a person, which frees people to share. Second, that you have connection to what they have to say–that you see value in knowing what they are offering. Third, that you see potential of learning from them and opportunity to co-create together. Forth, that you are interested in exploring with them.

    Many dialogs really are monologues cross-spoken. If someone holds in their mind what they want to say, what they want to get across, what they want to argue, what they want to push as an agenda…then the conversation isn’t really a conversation. Be co-creative in your conversations and display a good dose of curiosity.

    When I went through training as a coach, one of the first exercises we did was to give advice to our partner. The second exercise was to listen. I noticed two very important things. One, that the person I listened to seemed very capable of creating their own solutions. Second, the person I listened to was energized more by being listened to then by the advice. Since then, over and over, I have witnessed the power of being curious and listening actively and deeply as it activates the creative resourcefulness in people. More than that, they seem more likely to follow through on their own ideas and solutions than on any advice I would give.

    It does take some stepping back…it requires the listener to give up the idea that they have the right answer. Be curious, the person you are talking to deserves the opportunity to create solutions for themselves. What is that? Listen for it. Be curious. And you might learn something wonderful and unexpected. I have.

    But don’t just take my word for it, check out these benefits of active listening from an expert:

    • Sometimes a person just needs to be heard and acknowledged before the person is willing to consider an alternative or soften his /her position.
      It is often easier for a person to listen to and consider the other’s position when that person knows the other is listening and considering his/her position.
      It helps people to spot the flaws in their reasoning when they hear it played back without criticism.
      It also helps identify areas of agreement so the areas of disagreement are put in perspective and are diminished rather than magnified.
      Reflecting back what we hear each other say helps give each a chance to become aware of the different levels that are going on below the surface. This helps to bring things into the open where they can be more readily resolved.
      If we accurately understand the other person’s view, we can be more effective in helping the person see the flaws in his/her position.
      If we listen so we can accurately understand the other’s view, we can also be more effective in discovering the flaws in our own position.

    • KINS and Growing a Field

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    Looking over Capital Missions Companies, Key Initiator Network Strategy (KINS), I have many points of agreement about the principles behind the strategies. I believe

    • that we are all one
    • that there are key laws of nature including distributed intelligence and emergence which we can learn from
    • that there is strength in weak ties
    • that peer-to-peer relationship offer great power
    • that abundance, generosity, and trust figure strongly in our evolution

    And we do need resource efficient ways to make large social change. So this is my spin and twist on what I understand about KINS.

    Spreading behaviors path of 5

    1. Establish credibility. To make network change, change agents require credibility. Susan answers the credibility issue by asking for powerful high-status actors. I would say, sure those help. High-status is one way of being credible; it is not the only way.

    2. Encourage Inter-organizational Networks. Professionalization and inter-organizational networks act as sources for spreading the behavior through a network of common interest. There need to be paths in the network for connections to spread behaviors.

    3. Fosters powerful models. Modeling innovative behavior can lead to the spread of that behavior. Lead by example. This can be reflexive A<-=->B or mimentic A–>B

    4. Focus on commonality. Susan asserts that the spread happens through actors in similar structural positions. I prefer to broaden that: it spreads through actors who have something, anything that they know to be in common. The common trait between A and B need not be the common trait in B and C. There may be a propensity for dispersal of behaviors at a structural peer level, but it is not a requirement or limitation.

    5. Emerge effective collective action. Open space for mobilization and coordination of community of individuals and organization around a common cause.

    Agreed: “Homogeneous interests, a sense of shared identity, and dense social networks increase a group’s ability to mobilize its resources.”

    So that is how I am understanding and reframing what I understand of KINS.

    However, this does not speak to how to create homogenous interests, shared sense of identity, nor dense social networks. How do we do that?

    All over the place and focus

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    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.

    Endings and Beginnings

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    With Omidyar.net soon to close the doors piled on top of my frustration at the lack of self-governance and community-nurturing practices, I am looking for new homes. Have been looking around for a few months.

    Never going to MySpace…no way, too cluttery, and too little community feel.
    Second Life…went there…but it seems my computer can’t crunch the info…waiting to get a new one…but I am not sensing that SL is good for project management. Created profile: Yes Bright.
    Tribe…seems interesting, but it just didn’t resonate with me. Created profile.
    Facebook…ummm, has some interesting tools, but I quickly got overrun by friends asking me to add applications, and I wondered if conversation was really at the heart of it or if it was something that happened on the side…too profile based. Created and maintain profile for the sake of advocacy.
    Ning…have a profile there, created a closed community for a philanthropy-related project, nice use of tools and such, but I hear it gets more frustrating the more you get into it…good for the surface work and not so good for building visibility. Created profile and group.
    Zaadz…well I went there moons ago, bounced around, found way too much fluff, although the site arrangement was fun and interesting….more focused on conversations…why don’t they have the super nifty conversation tracking tools of Onet?…Created and sorta maintain profile. Thinking of deleting everything I can now that they got bought out.
    Linked In…well I have been there a long time, but the only thing I do there is connect to people…and that seems pretty dull. I want conversation, innovation, and better world building! Created and maintain profile.
    Razoo seems interesting…does have more of the project management tools that I had wanted at onet and seems to bring people together and balance profile and action…I am still checking it out…will see what population emerges there and if they really mean action and have some good intellectual capacity. They do seem to have a more advanced reputation tool, which I am excited to see.Created profile, joined groups and causes, started cause.

    For the most part, I suspect I will be hanging out more here and at nurture.wagn.org or at the transition and beyond wagon for onet members at o.wagn.org.

    You can also find me at AboutUs.org or transitioner.org…and probably a dozen places I am forgetting today as the search has been long and involved!

    Community Management

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    I was over at Fast Wonder today, and Dawn has a great list of roles for a community manager to play. I find it interesting how languages of different groups play a part in how we describe things. I agree with her role descriptions as things we need in community, with my background, however, I describe them differently or focus on different concerns.

    She specifically mentions: ongoing facilitation, content creation, evangelism, and community evolution.

    I replied to her post:

    Wonderful role descriptions. I also find it critical that the manager model the behavior you want in the community. An effective community manager understands the boundaries of that specific community and will take fire to defend those boundaries.

    And a piece of evangelism and facilitation is letting people know where opportunities for connection are–which I think you are calling cat herding. Good “Network Weaving” is helpful to tighten the space between nodes/participants. It also helps so people don’t miss content that interests them (lower threshold to participation).

    You speak of content creation and evolution, and this to me is part of the flow of community. Creating flow to encourage participation, uplift visibility, and encourage activity whether through conversations, practices, or tools. What flows do you want to enable and what, as community manager, can you do to encourage them. (And conversely what flows do you want to discourage too.)

    What do you think the role of a community manager includes? And in what context?

    Network to Communities: the evolution of omidyar.net

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    If you are not already familiar, omidyar.net/home/ has been an active online community sine July 04. It was created and opened up by Omidyar Network LLC, tracing back to Pierre Omidyar of Ebay fame. The purpose of the network space was to help more and more people discover their power to make good things happen. This attracted a particular crowd interested in making the world a better place, some through entrepreneurship, some through tools, and other opportunities. And this network, with some 100-200 active engaged users and nearly 20,000 sign ons is being bumped off the platform. The hope or strategy perhaps is to foster communities of purpose to move beyond the limitations of the network and the platform to scale up and out more good things.

    There is much I can say about this network, having been a highly active member for several years. I can speak to the philanthropy on and from and to the network. But that belongs in another topic space. What I want to address here is the movement from network to community. What distinguishes a network from a community? What are the advantages of a network? What are the advantages of a community? What are the disadvantages of each?

    I have some answers of my own. And I would love to brainstorm this with others (you) as well.

    My sense is that a network is a grouping of people through loose or weak affiliation. And that affiliation may not be the same across all relationships. As has been noted in network theory there is a great strength in weak ties. I consider a community to be a more densely woven connection of people who are joined by purpose or interest. You may not realize the scope of your network(s), but you likely know the scope of your community. There is a greater sense of self-awareness of the group within community. In fact that awareness is part of the distinguishing characteristics, in my mind. To know itself. To know what it holds in common.

    I very much look forward to seeing how the network on omidyar.net/home/ moves to new spaces and creates communities (or not) in the coming months. And I am eager to understand how others see both the evolution and the community/network distinction.