Category: Uncategorized

Once Upon a Time I Wrote a Thing

Screenshot of Nancy's paper from 2006 on the Knowledge Tree publication.

A recent email from the wonderful Alan Levine (a.k.a. cogdog, with his still-vibrant CogDogBlog) reminded me that once upon a time, I wrote a thing. What feels like forever-ago in 2006.

Thanks to the Wayback Machine, it can still be read. I was optimistic about online communities then. I don’t recall if term “social media” had ascended yet. It was after the first Internet bust and into the second bubble, where things were beginning to shift toward what I now recognize as full on commodification. Most of us hadn’t yet realized we, and and our digital traces, were turning into products for businesses to sell.

But I was still hopeful because of the amazing people I met. First there was the incredible Northern Voice blogging confab in Vancouver, BC. I connected to a fabulous network of folks in education who were experimenting with tech, specifically blogs. They were young, excited and our conversations about online community (me) and blogging communities (them) intersected with a glorious BANG! We floated ideas of any stripe, outrageous or not. We shared openly.

Eventually, I wrote about it.

Online community has been an important part of the Internet, mainly forming around email lists, bulletin boards and forums. In recent years, the ascendancy of blogs has introduced a new platform for communities. This article looks at some of the emerging patterns of blog based communities and raises some questions for their strategic application.

If you want, you can read it —>whiteDownload

Community continues to be reshaped by not just technology, but society, climate change, positive and negative groups of people. And, in the end, it is fundamentally about connecting, not just consuming content. I try to stay positive! What about you?

Spreading Liberating Structures: Exposure AND Practice

Community Room signage at the La Conner Swinomish Library in English and Lushootseed.

I hung out yesterday with Keith McCandless, Stefan Morales and his team along with a cohort of new Liberating Structures (LS) users. The highlight of our hour together was the New Users Fishbowl, where we heard about the good, the bad, the ugly and the lovely of three folks using their new LS learning. One person, working in the the jungles of Costa Rica, had never facilitated. This was her first facilitation training! She just grabbed on to a handful of structures, crafted her agenda or “string,” and successfully led her meeting. And got results! Just do it! Just PRACTICE! (Oh, I would love to share the video of her telling the story. Maybe that can happen! Maybe I can follow up and interview her!)

Yes, and…

When I shared my GOOD and LOVELY of LS, I spoke about the social container, the community, that holds the LS practice as it is used and evolves. I’m committed to the idea that using LS happens in the context of social learning, in social learning spaces; learning with and from each other, and making sense as we practice together. (Side note: See Bev and Etienne Wenger-Trayner et. al.’s new Communities of Practice Guidebook. )

Keith, as one of the LS co-founders, is deeply committed to its spread. That commitment is reflected in the care with which he and his co-founder, Henri Lipmanowicz crafted the instructions for each structure so that anyone could read, pick it up and run with it. The idea that this is so simple and clear as expressed in writing, you are ready. I am less sanguine about that (sorry, Keith!)

For the of auto-didacts and the intrinsically or experientially confident, this works. For the rest of us, there is much that comes between the idea that “hey, this is cool and will improve our group interactions and work” and actually DOING it. Doing it in the face of being a new-bee. Doing it in the face of those who resist how LS distributes power to everyone in the room. Doing it in the (mistake) belief that if I don’t do this perfectly this will be a disaster. (A.k.a, looking foolish, or learning while failing forward!) Doing it before we have internalized our own sense of agency to use the structures. Believing before seeing.

When we try together; practice together; debrief together after practicing alone, the value of our LS work becomes visible. We hold both our “beginners mind” and our “seasoned practitioner” experience hand in hand. We benefit from the multiple perspectives of our fellow practitioners — “you did WHAT? WAAAY COOL!” In Stefan’s workshop, even the new-bee is encouraged. Again, drawing on Bev and Etienne and their book, Learning to Make a Difference, comes this idea of identity as a source of agency.

…have learned or internalized that they can’t make a difference³ or that the chances of success are so low it’s not worth trying. The risks may outweigh even the effort of imagining possible benefits. People from vulnerable social groups are often disenfranchised from resources and some have adapted their expectations to align with the status quo.” And many participants are likely to fall somewhere in between. Learning to make a difference often has to start with developing an identity from which to envision the possibility of making a difference.

Even if participants have a foundation of confidence to consider trying to make a difference, we are not assuming that this is a simple, straight- forward intention – that caring to make a difference is free of ambivalence, tensions, or contradictions. For instance, there may be a disturbing gap between what an organization expects and what participants think is important. There may also be disagreements among participants. When caring to make a difference is viewed as part of the lived experience of people, it inherits all the complexity and forces of the social world in which people are embedded. Learning to make a difference brings this complexity into focus: it includes learning to navigate external demands, contradictions, tensions, and ambivalence.

Learning to Make a Difference Etienne Wenger-Trayner and Beverly Wenger-Trayner

The spread of a Liberating Structures practice is the dance between exposure to the content and the practice using LS. It is, to use the Wenger-Trayner’s words, “developing an identity from which to envision the possibility of making a difference.”

Liberating Structures aspire to be of use to those making a difference. The container for this aspiration, for the spread of LS, of this social learning, is the community of LS practitioners. LS is great stuff. It’s practitioners are an amazing, diverse collection of co-learners. AND, LS needs it’s various social learning spaces to spread far, wide, lovingly, and successfully.

Lying Fallow: Space for purpose to dance with creative destruction

picture of blueberry fields in the Fall after harvest with small tree in foreground and blue skies.

So much has been written about the stresses and upheavals of the pandemic. I am saturated and, if f truth be told, I’m mostly avoiding reading these things. (My solution? Bookmarked a ton of them to ‘read later!” Ha!)

On one hand, the changes we’ve had to make have both punished us and created new insights, practices and opportunities. On the other hand, we are so friggen worn out, that reflecting and acting on those insights seems to be a dream at best.

For me the call is to lie fallow. To rest my mind and my body. This is nothing novel: I am not alone. Like a piece of precious farmland, there was need for recovery. No disturbing the soil and all its amazing underground microbes and insects, making the soil appear at rest, while still vibrantly alive.

I realized I was REALLY worn out and took the summer off to make some space. My pull towards letting my professional work lie fallow for a while was to understand what I want to say “yes” to in the future. Reorient my purpose, maybe even hone it down a bit.

It felt good. Then the Summer spilled into the Fall and then Winter and I was still on pause. I had no pull to return to my previous pace. I started playing around by saying I was on sabbatical, but that has an academic connotation to it. And, at age 63 and as someone who HAS saved for retirement, I could not exclude the possibility that I was done with being a more-than-full-time-workaholic consultant. Who knows? It is an open question.

What has emerged is that this resting period is a dance between listening for my purpose, and a good dose of creative destruction – that space of stopping things, of purposely destroying things to understand something deeper than a well-honed practice of my professional work. Sure, I can facilitate. Sure, I can help with deep strategic work. But what is happening at a deeper level? Is the work actually changing anything? Getting something significant done? Or is it just more consultant process? Stopping became a recurrent theme.

For a long time I’ve resisted the call to lie fallow. First there was the scarcity mindset (“I have to keep earning!” “If I stop, I will disappear!”) Then the pandemic produced a surge of need around warm, human electronic mediated connection and work. We all responded. Now those skills that I’ve honed since the late 90’s are well distributed. There are many wonderful, particularly YOUNGER practitioners to whom people can turn.

Now I have said “YES” to a rest. It is already paying me back.

  1. I am getting more and, more restful, rest. I was exhausted more than I understood. Rest lets my brain notice more, reflect versus react. I became a huge grouch these past 18 months and the grouch is taking a break. I am being a better grandmother/primary adult for my grandkids. I am ready for reaching out to others again.
  2. I am not interested in doing “more of the same.” I’ll leave that to others. Creative destruction at work. I know it is hard for me to say no. I worry about the unintended consequences of saying no. But I’m committed!
  3. If I am to say yes to work, it needs to be in a space of expansive learning. I want work with a potential for substantive change (at any scale – small is good!) not just band aids or one-offs. And it has to be with people who bring joy to the work, and we feel this pull to work together.

That last one goes to purpose. What do I want to plant in my fallow field? In the spaciousness of that field, I need to cultivate a better understanding what I mean by “a space of expansive learning,” “substantive change,” and the “who I want to work with.”

One thing that I’ve learned more deeply over the pandemic months is to ask myself “how will I know if I am making progress on my purpose?” What indicators will help me reflect, notice and iteratively move forward?

There are a bunch of things that I’m now turning to/revisiting to make progress on my purpose. “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer. “Learning to Make a Difference” by Bev and Etienne Wenger-Trayner. “Initiating and Inviting Generative Change: entry and contracting for emergent outcomes in results driven organizations” by Tova Averbuch. “Burnout: the Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle” by Amelia and Emily Nagoski. Browsing is probably a better word than reading. Like wind blowing across the fallow fields. I’m building a list of people I want to reach out to when the field is ready to be planted.

What is happening to your fields? Join a conversation Acute Incite is hosting about pausing on March 28th – details here. And look for a follow up post with some broader reflections on how we work, how we might rethink work interspersed with fallow periods.

Monday Video: exercises for tendonitis and carpal tunnel

Here is an evergreen draft resurrected from obscurity. A long time ago I used to post useful or interesting videos on Mondays. The habit didn’t stick and this one from 2008 is still useful!!

This is what I love about the web. Someone learns something they find useful, then they share it! YouTube – video podcast – exercises for tendonitis and carpal tunnel from David Kuckhermann

Yup, I’m Still Here…

I logged on to my blog dashboard today only to be reminded I have not blogged since the end of May, 2020. Pandemics do strange things. I have been keeping more notes in paper notebooks with the intention of blogging, but life seems to lead me away from my keyboard more than towards it. After hours of Zoom meetings, I want to step away from the machine. That does NOT reduce the value of blogging, learning, thinking and practicing in public. To that end I am going to try and post one post per month. I’ll do a make up for January. I promise. (HOLD me to this, ok?)

And you? Are you still here? How are you doing? The comments are open for YOU!

Stringing our stories…