Holding On

By Curtis Ogden

The Way It Is

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

~ William Stafford ~

Over the past couple of days, while co-offering IISC’s The Masterful Trainer course to a group of remarkable and committed individuals in the social sectors, I was struck time and time again by the endless growth opportunities that training provides the trainer (or at least this trainer). While this came up explicitly a few times in group conversation, there was another private one raging inside my head.

The older I get, the more room there seems to be for self-doubt and second guessing. I recall the interview I read a few years back with the musician Sting, in which he said that while on the one hand with age he gets more nuanced and accomplished in his craft, on the other hand the less confident he becomes. This can seem quite counterintuitive, at least given some of the myths that swirl around out there about the correlation between wisdom and experience. Of course, you don’t have to read much spiritual or psychological literature to realize that wisdom is not an absence of fear or doubt, but rather a full embrace of these, along with an ability to avoid being pulled under.

Intellectually I get this. Feeling it, actually entering into the fray, is another thing all together. Indeed, the challenges can appear formidable. As your awareness grows of the seemingly endless number of routes to take in creating an experience for others, how do you make choices, remain steadfast enough in your selection not to waver, and then be open to adjusting when and if you realize another route is better? How do you enter a space understanding that participants may project things onto you that have nothing to do with you or the moment you collectively inhabit, without shrinking or calling them out? How do you pay close enough attention to body language and facial expressions as indications of participant needs without taking them personally and becoming distracted? How can you do any and all of this while remembering who you are and remaining true to yourself?

How do you locate and hold onto that elusive, seemingly delicate, yet abiding thread?

That is the work.

Values Stimulus

By Curtis Ogden

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of hearing and talking with Juan Williams, the accomplished journalist, writer, and producer. The opportunity arose because my father-in-law helps to organize a Celebrated Speaker Series in Vero Beach, Florida for which Mr. Williams was the scheduled presenter while my wife, daughter and I were on our annual spring break pilgrimage south.

During his talk, Williams engaged the audience in an exercise where he invited us to imagine a somewhat flustered eighty-something African-American man bursting into the conference hall claiming to be Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The self-proclaimed Dr. King comes to find a seat next to you (or me) and starts a lively conversation about what is going on, or has been going on since he was last seen in public. Having helped us to work through our disbelief that this man is who he said he is, Williams went on to illustrate a conversation with this visitor about all of the advances that had occurred since King's (supposed) assassination on the front of race. Much to be celebrated here, acknowledges the good Reverend Doctor. Then the conversation turns to poverty, including mention of the fact that today's poverty rate in the US is the same that it was in King's day, and outrageously high for children of color. On next to violence, to television (with King flipping through hundreds of available cable channels), to pop culture, to single parent households. What started as a celebratory conversation about progress, ends with Dr. King completely distraught and in tears over the depths to which this country has apparently stooped.

Williams' talk was very effective in both content and delivery in challenging any complacency that we listeners might have had about progress in this country, and indeed around the world, on the fronts of race, poverty, peace making, and community building. During the car ride to drop him off at the airport, I asked Williams, based on all that he has seen and heard in his travels, what he saw as the major challenge moving forward. His simple answer was, "We have to move to shared values." He made it clear that he was not talking about liberal or conservative values - after all, he splits his time between NPR and FOX. It really comes down to grounding ourselves in some deeper human truths and commitments that have lost their grip in our world.

A few weeks later I heard a sermon by one of my favorite preachers, the Reverend Roger Paine of the First Parish in Lincoln, that featured the research of Dr. Jonathan Haight at the University of Virginia. Dr. Haight, a psychologist, has done research on the nature and source of moral values, and claims that there are five moral rules that are shared around the globe - care, fairness, loyalty, respect for authority, and sanctity (note the mixture of what might be considered liberal and conservative values). Haight claims that these values have historically served the function of promoting common good over and against selfishness. Clearly these values, if they are ingrained, have been overridden by other forces - rampant individualism, greed, addiction to titillation, and an overwhelming lack of responsibility. It seems that there has been a dramatic disconnect or distancing from our deeper roots, and that we are in the midst of a clear wake-up call to remember who we are and what is in our best interest.

Visions of Dr. King, our genes, and a global financial crisis (oh my); all reminding us that in the end we can't get something for nothing, or perhaps that we get what we pay for. So what will bring us fully back to our senses? A depression, through which we will have no choice but to turn to one another? A global environmental catastrophe? A messianic return of some kind? Or perhaps a new story that we start telling ourselves now and share widely that deep down we know the way forward is not the way we have been living. That nature, including our own, has a wisdom that merits much closer attention.

To the talk about and rush to build our financial foundation, I repeat (reTweet?) these welcome words of Roger Paine - "The stimulus package I propose is the re-claiming of our character, as individuals and as a nation."

Earth Holders

By Curtis Ogden

Last week I came across this passage in Thich Nhat Hanh's The World We Have.

"The Lotus Sutra mentions the name of a special bodhisattva - Dharanimdhara, or Earth Holder - as someone who preserves and protects the Earth. Earth Holder is the energy that is holding us together as an organism. She is a kind of engineer or architect whose task is to create space for us to live in, to build bridges for us to cross from one side to the other, to construct roads so that we can go to the people we love. Her task is to further communication between human beings and the other species and to protect the environment. . . . Although Earth Holder Bodhisattva is mentioned in the Lotus Sutra, she doesn't have a chapter of her own. We should recognize this bodhisattva in order to collaborate with her. We should all help to create a new chapter for her . . . ."

I really like this image of Dharanimdhara as a guide and goal for leadership geared towards the sustainable future we are being called to bring to life. There are interesting connections here to both the leadership approach that IISC has embodied since its inception, as well as the consulting approach that we and kindred spirits promote. Often, in acting as collaborative consultants, we are asked to "hold the center," to provide a reassuring centripetal force to balance out centrifugal tendencies that can arise due to conflict, impatience, skepticism, fatigue, and other forces. We do this not simply through connective facilitation, but the careful design of spaces that encourage people to come together, stay together, create together. We are, in Peter Block's language, "social architects." Or in David Orr's lexicon, we are "designers for life." Our essential task is to construct gatherings that tap the generative, generous, and ingenious energies of those who are involved.

When we link this to the spirit of Dharanimdhara, there is a clear call for a more synergistic approach to leadership, for fitting the way we lead to larger contexts (both cultural and biological), with a mind not simply for being productive or efficient, but ultimately healthy. The root of the word health is "whole." How can we move forward in our daily actions in a spirit of wholeness, of holding the whole, so that we do not wreak irreparable havoc upon the planet and ourselves?

We are seeing the development and application of new tools that will certainly help us in gaining a deeper appreciation of and sensitivity to the big picture - network mapping, systems analysis, Web 2.0 gizmos. These are great intellectual aids. But are these enough to inspire action? Ultimately it seems that the trigger will come from something beyond the intellect - a more visceral, intuitive place. Wisdom. For that we require direct (not virtual) experience, time to listen, space to reconnect. Perhaps this is the hidden blessing of our economic slowdown. As we are given this chance to take a collective breath, how are we responding?

Collaborate?

By Curtis Ogden

Collaboration. We keep hearing the word in these troubled times, even in the echoes of history. I just stumbled across this quote from Charles Darwin - "In the long history of humankind, those who learn to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed." All well and good, but what on Earth does it mean to collaborate?

At a recent training with some of Boston's brightest nonprofit leaders, my colleague and I heard once again the call to collaborate. One person spoke up and said, "We always say this, but if you look at our track record of collaboration, it is dismal. Do we really want to do this? Do we even know what we are talking about?" I came away thinking that while people may have a general (and rightful) sense that they need to work better together, they are uncertain and halting about how they should proceed.

Clearly collaboration has numerous forms and potential outcomes. Perhaps it is best to work backwards. What is it that we are attempting to do by collaborating? Build community/relationships? Be more efficient? Come up with better solutions to the complex problems we face? Become engines of innovation? Achieve greater scale and reach? Mitigate risk? Depending upon our desired outcome(s) there can be very different ways of proceeding. To build community . . . create opportunities, media, and ample time for people to connect, share, get to know one another, find common ground. To be more efficient, focus on more structured processes to build agreements and ways of strategically and creatively sharing resources (whether that is back office functions or swapping services). To address complexity, create open space, foster dissent, or decentralize participants electronically to then post and build upon ideas in a centralized workplace in pursuit of the very best solution. To innovate, make sure to bring cognitively diverse thinkers together. To extend reach, think carefully about how to bring together and knit networks with known hubs/connectors. To mitigate risk, be transparent and intentional about who you bring together, how you bring them together, and what you intend to accomplish.

Of course, there is much overlap between these goals and processes, and yet we also see much confusion about what works best in what situations. Overall, it seems we would all be well served by being more nuanced about what we mean by and expect of collaboration. The conversation continues . . .

The Corporation

By Curtis Ogden

The other night I watched The Corporation, a film that I had both been wanting to watch and avoiding. It certainly delivered as a powerful, provocative, and disturbing piece. I was left with many feelings and ultimately with the renewed awareness of the risk we run of blindly serving the institutions we create to serve us.

In the film, we are shown an extreme in the relentless pursuit of profit and market share that usurps virtually every other drive. Originally charters were granted to corporations by government provided that these companies met certain guidelines. Since then some of these creations, not unlike Frankenstein, have taken on a life of their own, overturned restrictions, and overthrown their masters. At their extreme, these growth-obsessed bodies are nothing short of cancers that seek to overtake every other organism in their midst. And they are clever, ever so clever, at co-opting the minds and skills of talented and otherwise decent people to serve their needs, convincing them that “moving product” is more important than protecting basic life support systems or preventing them from seeing the consequences of their actions.

To be clear, we are all susceptible to such shortsightedness, and collectively we can ill afford to fall asleep at the wheel. Media and marketing are so pervasive that we require extraordinary resolve and intention to listen to our own truths and those of the aching environment. Contrary to the misguided messages that are conveyed to us about patriotism and productivity, this may be our greatest act of courage -- to create a viable new story of what it means to be a good citizen (and a good steward) and to uphold the intrinsic value of life in the face of forces that only want to see it become a commodity.

It is a careful balance to strike between creating organizations to further our goals and potential without allowing these structures to constrain or subvert us. And we are certainly not immune to the risks in the nonprofit sector, where there are countless examples of mistaking organizational development for mission realization. What is it then that calls us back to ourselves, our original intents, and to the larger picture? How do we keep ourselves accountable? Perhaps a good starting place is to attempt to stay connected, keep ourselves open, and remember that we are characters in stories of our own making.