Category: archives

From the Archives: Planting Trees, Investing in Ecosystems

From the blog draft archives 2014. This one is posted as written in 2014…

You know that feeling when ideas keep converging? It has been happening to me lately. And the central theme that shows up for me is investment — investment in people, communities, ecosystems, organizations.  There is too much for one post, so let me start by planting a few seeds in your mental garden.

Looking up the twisted trunks of a 100 year old big leaf maple tree with blue sky behind. No leaves.

Last week on our beloved Seattle Farm Coop email list (yes, an urban farm coop!) there was a discussion on native plants.  Why they are valuable. How to grow them. Then this post came in from Emily (used with permission .  The emphasis in bold and clarifications in italics are mine  because things lose context out of context!):

Oh Elder…we appreciate you! (referring to elderberry)

Yes on Burnt Ridge (a Western Washington plant nursery)! Their site makes notes on fruiting plants for shade
For seeds couldn’t say enough beautiful things about Horizon Herbs. http://www.horizonherbs.com/. They have varieties of Elderberry seeds. I started some seeds this fall…red, blue and black…so we’ll see how they do. (sending them love now!) Will post on Market Days when plants start emerging from their rest. I can’t describe the feelings of starting trees from seed…but for me, they come from the most inside places. Unpredictably moving, significant, precious.
Emily

 In the whole message, she demonstrated appreciation and network connecting practices. Beautiful. But in that last sentence Emily caught, in her last sentence, what I SENSE about online communities and made me recall the early, deep and significant experiences I had online in the late 90’s and early 2000’s.  It was in the leap of faith to invest in people. Simply go for it.

I had time to do that in the “early days.” There wasn’t a profusion of options for online connections. No Facebook, Twitter, Google+. Mobile phones were for calls and maybe texts. So stepping into an online discussion board was not a fleeting moment, but a chunk of time I used to explore and deepen experiences and connections with others. I invested.

Today, it takes quite a bit of gardening to nurture an online community with deep roots and spreading boughs. It seems we are in an era, though, of rhizomes, instead of simply trees. Networks that spread like the amazing mycorrhizal fungi, the symbiotic association of fungus and roots. From Wikipedia (perhaps a mycorrhizal network itself in some ways)

Mycorrhizal networks (also known as common mycorrhizal networks – CMN) are underground hyphal networks created by mycorrhizal fungi that connect individual plants together and transfer water, carbon, and nutrients. The formation of these networks is context dependent, and can be influenced by soil fertility, resource availability, host or myco-symbiont genotype, disturbance and seasonal variation.[1]

So where do we invest when we are aware that we are operating in an ecosystem? This is now a driving question. Is it more than planting a tree seed that takes time to germinate and mature?

Then Sue Braiden posted the following on Facebook, spawning a wonderful response thread that criss-crossed between technology, sociology and many other juicy things. It hearkened so much to me that I asked for permission to post it on my blog as a guest post which went up earlier today.

An ecomuseum is a participatory approach to culture by definition. And their motto at the Ecomuseum of Santa Cruz is ‘a people will only preserve what they love and they will only love what they know’. The values of participation are encoded into their DNA, they are the very reason why the institution exists and they affect everything about the experience, from the language it uses to the way people experience it – the soul of the organisation.

(Can’t refind on FB… grrr)

EDITED NOTE: The list of links below were intended to inform the subsequent parts of this blog series. Clearly I never got around to drafting those. Clearly the passing of one of my idols/teachers, Pete Seger, crept into my train of thought.

“By sharing responsibility, you have the strength of numbers, diversity and company as well.”

This draft holds up all on its own. Still inspirational. Thank you Peter Miller!

He wrote, “By giving lunch some form and detail, you give it grace. By sharing the responsibility, you have the strength of numbers, diversity, and company as well.” Peter Miller

via For bookmonger, lunch is a doable feast | All You Can Eat | Seattle Times.

From the Archives: Knowing what to do. And what to stop.

Picture of a flip chart reading "Invite Creatve Destruction to enable innovation"
Invite Creative Destruction

Dang, it was fun to run into this draft from 2016 with links to three terrific posts that amplify something that has shown up in my work over and over again about the need to creatively destroy our patterns that conserve old ways of working that are no longer relevant in today’s (or tomorrow’s) world(s). And happily, all the posts are still online.

Time and again when working with clients where we’ve used Ecocycle Planning, the richest insights are what shows up in the “rigidity” and the “scarcity” traps (old image below- it used to be called “poverty trap” but there are racist roots there…) The rigidity trap helps us see what is no longer adding value and if we can move past that trap into creative destruction, we can clear away and make space for what is now possible. Too often organizations just add on new things (processes, projects, approaches, rules), layer after layer until we spend all our time ticking boxes with little to show for our time, energy (and peace of mind!)

Image of Ecocycle

The first from Simon Terry‘s blog archives, Killing the Golden Goose: From Waste to Potential focuses on the waste created in management that tries to conserve what is working, to the point of ignoring it is no longer working. It is a great read. With an interesting metaphor!

When managers focus on growing human potential to improve effectiveness, this growth mindset redefines the game and pushes changes in the other systems that define our modern organisations. Purpose and goals come first. Engagement is no longer an after thought. Experimentation is a core practice. Collaboration and cooperation are seen as human opportunities to work and not sources of waste & distraction. Volatility is embraced as a source of potential learning. Most importantly of all the new narrative respects and embraces the potential of all in organisations to lead and to contribute.

Killing the Golden Goose: From Waste to Potential, Simon Terry

The second from the fabulous Eugene Eric Kim on Principles for Effecting Change in Complex Social Systems. Eugene harkens back to a post from the wonderful Ruth Rominger “Effecting Change in Complex Social Systems” with Hilary Bradbury, Sissel Waage, and David Sibbet. Of the five principles Eugene refers to, one again tickles that creative destruction idea:

“Surface discontents, build capacity, and elevate expectations. Successful change emerges from dissatisfaction with current conditions, but also celebrates many small victories as well as personal learning, thereby continually building momentum for innovation toward a preferred future.“

Principles for Effecting Change in Complex Social Systems, Eugene Eric Kim

Finally, the inimitable Johnnie Moore ties this overwork (and useless work) to stress and what that destroys, all while chasing efficiencies in “Waste, potential and sticking your neck out.” Plus it links to Simon’s post. It’s all connected! And another fun metaphor.

I see many organisations struggling to get a quart of productivity into a pint pot of systems, under great stress to make savings and be more efficient. I’d suggest that as that stress rises, so does the number of management abstractions bandied about: people only feel safe to talk in general terms about things like “leadership” because if they got specific the whole stressed out deck of cards might come falling down. In these circumstances, meetings become a workaholic microcosm of the organisation – we fill the walls with masses of post-it notes as if this is the measure of the value of our conversations. We can talk in general terms about the need to “manage upwards”  or “creating a no-blame culture” but this actually becomes a way of avoiding actually doing it.

via Waste, potential and sticking your neck out | Johnnie Moore.

From the Draft Archives: Cultural Strangleholds

I cringe a bit at the title of this post from 2013, having gained a greater appreciation of the role of Jefferson in slavery and White supremacy, but get past the title. (See W.E.B. Du Bois quote at the bottom via the New York Times.) The post from Nirvana Cable is still terrific 9 years later.

Red dirt road winding through the hills of Rwanda with grass and scrub trees from 2013

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“At least Thomas Jefferson wasn’t afraid to write new code” — Transcending Culture — Medium.

It is my experience that the way culture has us in a total stranglehold is that we argue for—and from—our culture. Here in Kenya, I have engaged communities to examine whether or not their culture’s unwritten and largely unexamined social norms are capable of getting citizens where they say they want to go. We’re doing a deep dive into two social norms that we are calling The Culture of Silence (the legacy of oppression) and Wanting Something for Nothing (the legacy of aid).

By inquiring into the consequence of these norms—from the ground rules of inquiry—we are finding communities willing to transcend beliefs that have held them hostage and, once realized, they are free to co-create—negotiate—new social norms. We end up consciously working to create a new story, one that can be owned by everyone involved.

This is painstaking work, and we are finding that talking together to examine whether or not the current cultural norms will get the communities where everyone wants to go is the path. Now, the question is whether or not we will stay on the path when emotions get strong and we want to argue with each other rather than stay in negotiation.

“We must forget,” he writes, “that George Washington was a slave owner, or that Thomas Jefferson had mulatto children … and simply remember the things we regard as creditable and inspiring.” The difficulty with this approach, he continues, “is that history loses its value and incentive and example; it paints perfect men and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth.” Black Reconstruction,” “The Propaganda of History,” The Backlash Against C.R.T. Shows That Republicans Are Losing Ground https://nyti.ms/3gjK75f