By Curtis Ogden
In an article in the most recent issue of The Nonprofit Quarterly, Margaret Wheatley speaks to the need for greater trust in the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors in order to move through the current challenging financial times as well as to address the complex social and environmental problems we collectively face (see “An Era of Powerful Possibility”). She writes that accountability measures prescribed by funders have often tended to place undue onus on nonprofit leadership and demand excessive reporting and unrealistic measurement systems from staff. In essence, she says that we have had our eyes on the wrong ball.
Instead, what the times indicate if anything is that we need to shift our attention to our own flawed thinking. What we suffer from most profoundly at this point in time is an acute case of uncertainty. What got us into this mess? What does the future hold? What should we be doing now? Our resulting and understandable anxiety can tend to push us into a mad search for answers, and even push us backwards to what we perceive having worked in the past, or worked in a particular situation. The unfortunate part of this reaction is that we can end up concocting or transferring simple or simplistic responses to complicated or complex situations, which inclines us towards mechanistic, overly controlled, expert-driven and ultimately irrelevant and damaging approaches.
A good example of this is the documented case of genetically engineered food in developing countries, intended to alleviate malnutrition. While perhaps well intentioned (and with respect to some parties there are questions about underlying virtue), this approach has not had an impact because it has applied a simple solution to a complex situation. As conservation biologist David Ehrenfeld has written (Becoming Good Ancestors), many people are hungry not because their rice lacks beta carotene, but because they lack a diverse diet. They are suffering from a lack of biodiversity, loss of traditional sustainable know-how and practice, and economic systems with perverse incentives. The blind drive towards genetically engineered mono-cropping not only misses the point, but can make matters worse for both people and planet.
So what are we to do? First of all, recognize that many if not most of the problems we face are systemic and complex in nature. They are both bigger than us and include us. This just might inspire a deeper sense of not only realism, but also humility and responsibility. From here we might recognize the deep call to reach out, to bridge boundaries, to get curious, to listen, to bring our experience and knowledge to the table with an abiding desire to be of service . . . and trust. We must trust one another, whether community member or funder or politician or “expert.” This would seem to be a core lesson from Obama’s strategy and ultimate victory. Trust is the basis of building effective networks. It is also a key lever in overcoming fear and triggering the kind of creativity we so desperately need. Perhaps our most important challenge is to apply this ethic of trust to the natural world, from which many of us are so alienated to the point of fear. If we do not successfully reacquaint ourselves with our very life support system, trust its wisdom, and listen to the warnings and important lessons it has to impart, well . . . then pass me that bowl of rice.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Friday, January 16, 2009
On Dave Brooks, Faith and Trust and Social Change
Wow! The secret is out! And it’s in the New York Times! David Brooks is breaking it down; Newtonian physics is not the end of the story. The industrial paradigm has broken down, we live in An Economy of Faith and Trust (this is the title of the piece!). Brooks boldly calls out the fantasy of control that we keep hoping will solve our problems, the ideas of “input to output” that dominate how we think about the world are being called into question. We have to shift from the complicated to the complex. (See David Snowden of Cognitive Edge, there are problems that are complicated where input to output is measured, and there are problems that are complex where you just can’t account for all the inputs – so what does that say about output?)
David Brooks applies similar logic to our economy and goes even further by saying “we must account for faith and trust.” There are lessons to be learned here for those of us who work for social change. “There is no outside” say Hardt & Negri and the Buddha, and so we are all in this mix, we are all influenced by the idea of homo-economicus and the paradigm that makes it possible. The social sector was born out of the same Newtonian paradigm that hopes to measure all inputs and outputs – and we are still seduced by it.
In the last 40 years alone, what was once a living and breathing organic movement became so institutionalized that we started to believe that it would be a business mindset of supposedly rigorous measures that would finally set us free. Today as the entire financial system breaks down the best we can do is look backwards and say that the forefathers of movement were right, capitalism will undo its own self – but what do we have to offer that is new? And what have we forgotten along the way?
The truth is that we lack as much faith and trust as the rest of them, fighting for grants, hoarding ideas and constraining ourselves. “People seek relationships more than money,” this is David Brooks in the New York Times, neither revolutionary nor new age, and if they get it why can’t we? This is what we have to be radical about, we have to drop the stuff and meetings that are overloading us, let them die with the dying while we seriously intensify our relationships to each other – connect in non-meeting space, get personal, get deep, get authentic, realize that we all want the same thing!
If you want to make people act like machines and steal most of their labor from them you build an oppressive organization, and this is what we’ve inherited oppressive organizations – system wide, the whole thing! Foundations, advocacy groups, service organizations, intermediaries, most coalitions and faith-based groups – all in the same paradigm. But when people are self-motivated, when they want to do something together, and the technology is there to do it, then we just have to cut the whole thing loose, not hold it back with our hopes for control.
By God we are the ones with heart, we have the competitive advantage on this one, we are the ones that want to go radical and this crisis is our chance. I think of my Rockwood year-long cohort and the economy of love that has now evolved among us – what else can we do with that? I think of the Boston non-meetings, of the effort to keep it real here at the Interaction Institute for Social Change, of the Gathering for Justice and it’s leaders telling me that they had built relationships together, that they have love and they have trust and they want to work with those. This, my friends is the raw material for movement, a paradigm shifts only as we step into the new – movement is not an election, it is social transformation. Let’s go!
Monday, December 29, 2008
Our Kids Killing Each Other
I don’t have a TV, and so I’ve been catching up on “The Wire” through Netflix. The stuff is in my head, it’s an overload of brilliant television, too much violence and a whole lot of reality. This is the place from which I open the papers today and learn what I already now – our kids are killing each other , Boston made the top 10, we are number 6 on the list. The shit is painful, and what’s even more frustrating is that there is nothing new to recommend. Papers are talking about the same old thing – “restoring police officers in the streets and creating social programs for poor youths.” Is that really what’s going to do it for us?
Look, maybe at some level these are things that will help, but the very best youth programs that I know can only serve a precious few, and by all means, let’s help these programs where we can. And cops, well, that’s a whole other story, I do watch the Wire after all, and before that, I knew about Foucault, power, and the dead end of “discipline and punish.” The “pragmatic” in me likes things like the “Shot Spotter” system, an acoustic technology that lets police rapidly intersect a shooter as soon as the weapon is fired. It works after the fact, but it gets to a perpetrator, but seriously now, is this the best we have? Feels like the opposite of a root cause.
We can talk about breakdowns in the family, racism, structural oppression, and a nation state that bails out bankers but lets its poor people die. We can talk about all of these things and we would be absolutely right, but our kids are still killing each other. There is something that is terribly counter-evolutionary about a society where kids kill one another, something feels terribly backward when locking up our kids becomes the state’s option – ask the folk at “The Gathering for Justice,” they can tell you what we are doing to our kids – I am blessed to work with them.
Truth is that I’m stumped by this one, grappling with it, feeling the pain of the whole thing, trying to open up and see what’s here, be bold in this search for something new. I’m seduced by Meg Wheatley’s proposition that “whatever the problem, community is the answer.” I’m moved by the idea that it has to be organic, and that there is little an outsider can do, be it state policy or charity. But in that little that we can do, we have to be incredibly precise, clear in our intention and unbelievably open to the fact that we don’t know.
I do know we have to stand with whoever is inside the thing, and trying to do something about it, trying to shift their own self first, not playing the name game first, the police game, the 501(c)3 game or the who is the best dressed pastor game. This has to happen somehow else. I’m going to keep messing with this one, stay with it as long as it takes, there is an answer somewhere and it has to do with heart, with authenticity and opportunity, appreciation, innovation, connection, it has to do with a willingness to truly take the time, it has to do with the fact that this thing we are looking at is not outside of our selves, this shit is real, and that’s how it hurts.
Look, maybe at some level these are things that will help, but the very best youth programs that I know can only serve a precious few, and by all means, let’s help these programs where we can. And cops, well, that’s a whole other story, I do watch the Wire after all, and before that, I knew about Foucault, power, and the dead end of “discipline and punish.” The “pragmatic” in me likes things like the “Shot Spotter” system, an acoustic technology that lets police rapidly intersect a shooter as soon as the weapon is fired. It works after the fact, but it gets to a perpetrator, but seriously now, is this the best we have? Feels like the opposite of a root cause.
We can talk about breakdowns in the family, racism, structural oppression, and a nation state that bails out bankers but lets its poor people die. We can talk about all of these things and we would be absolutely right, but our kids are still killing each other. There is something that is terribly counter-evolutionary about a society where kids kill one another, something feels terribly backward when locking up our kids becomes the state’s option – ask the folk at “The Gathering for Justice,” they can tell you what we are doing to our kids – I am blessed to work with them.
Truth is that I’m stumped by this one, grappling with it, feeling the pain of the whole thing, trying to open up and see what’s here, be bold in this search for something new. I’m seduced by Meg Wheatley’s proposition that “whatever the problem, community is the answer.” I’m moved by the idea that it has to be organic, and that there is little an outsider can do, be it state policy or charity. But in that little that we can do, we have to be incredibly precise, clear in our intention and unbelievably open to the fact that we don’t know.
I do know we have to stand with whoever is inside the thing, and trying to do something about it, trying to shift their own self first, not playing the name game first, the police game, the 501(c)3 game or the who is the best dressed pastor game. This has to happen somehow else. I’m going to keep messing with this one, stay with it as long as it takes, there is an answer somewhere and it has to do with heart, with authenticity and opportunity, appreciation, innovation, connection, it has to do with a willingness to truly take the time, it has to do with the fact that this thing we are looking at is not outside of our selves, this shit is real, and that’s how it hurts.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Pecha Kucha Night
Last night I went to “Pecha Kucha” night, sponsored by AIGA, the professional association for design and I am left full of insights and ideas about the possibilities of this format. Here is a bit on “Pecha Kucha” from Wikipedia –
“The idea behind Pecha Kucha is to keep presentations concise, the interest level up and to have many presenters sharing their ideas within the course of one night. Therefore the 20x20 Pecha Kucha format was created: each presenter is allowed a slideshow of 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds. This results in a total presentation time of 6 minutes 40 seconds on a stage before the next presenter is up. Each event usually has 14 presenters. Presenters (and much of the audience) are usually from the design, architecture, photography, art and creative fields, but recently it has also stretched over to academia and the business world.”
So I’m left wondering, what if we could have a “Pecha Kucha” Night for social innovators, or one on “social technologies” ranging from online practices to group processes? What if IISC used “Pecha Kucha” formats for the learning labs that we design?
But what if we thought beyond a “Pecha Kucha” event and created tight, exciting “Pecha Kucha” presentation as a sort of framing question to set off a circle, dialogue or world café process? We could even bring this technique into the political realm, what if the Arroyo campaign collaboratively developed a presentation that became part of his stump speech?
More ideas come from here, this is a cool presentation format, how could they be combined with “youtube” or “podcasting?” Part of the obstacle to this is how long it takes to find the right images, or to rightsize the videos or podcasts for the limited attention span of our day. So I am wondering about what types of partnerships we could build. I suspect that there are enough creative people out there who could voluntarily help with the editing of such presentations.
How do we crowdsource part of this work? Are there partnerships we could be making with design and architecture schools and associations? Do we not have plenty opportunities for people to jump into and do a little bit of social change work? Would not the aggregate of many small contributions make for a number of very good things? Does this sound promising? Could we not problem solve together about ways to catalyze this sort of creative intervention? What ideas do you have?
“The idea behind Pecha Kucha is to keep presentations concise, the interest level up and to have many presenters sharing their ideas within the course of one night. Therefore the 20x20 Pecha Kucha format was created: each presenter is allowed a slideshow of 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds. This results in a total presentation time of 6 minutes 40 seconds on a stage before the next presenter is up. Each event usually has 14 presenters. Presenters (and much of the audience) are usually from the design, architecture, photography, art and creative fields, but recently it has also stretched over to academia and the business world.”
So I’m left wondering, what if we could have a “Pecha Kucha” Night for social innovators, or one on “social technologies” ranging from online practices to group processes? What if IISC used “Pecha Kucha” formats for the learning labs that we design?
But what if we thought beyond a “Pecha Kucha” event and created tight, exciting “Pecha Kucha” presentation as a sort of framing question to set off a circle, dialogue or world café process? We could even bring this technique into the political realm, what if the Arroyo campaign collaboratively developed a presentation that became part of his stump speech?
More ideas come from here, this is a cool presentation format, how could they be combined with “youtube” or “podcasting?” Part of the obstacle to this is how long it takes to find the right images, or to rightsize the videos or podcasts for the limited attention span of our day. So I am wondering about what types of partnerships we could build. I suspect that there are enough creative people out there who could voluntarily help with the editing of such presentations.
How do we crowdsource part of this work? Are there partnerships we could be making with design and architecture schools and associations? Do we not have plenty opportunities for people to jump into and do a little bit of social change work? Would not the aggregate of many small contributions make for a number of very good things? Does this sound promising? Could we not problem solve together about ways to catalyze this sort of creative intervention? What ideas do you have?
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Listening to the Growing Edges
By Curtis Ogden
Scientists and spiritual leaders are both saying it, “Go to the edges.” That’s where new life, hope, and innovation resides. As our institutions and old worldviews crumble, we are called to look to the edges where ingenious adaptations are always happening. We know this is true of ecosystems. When the core is dying, something else is happening at the boundaries where there is greater resilience. When winter hits and all is withered on the surface, something else is beginning to stir underground, sending out new shoots and establishing new roots.
At a meeting with a school system today, participants acknowledged that they are still operating out of an industrial model whose time has long since passed. But this does not mean that there aren’t pockets of vibrancy and innovation. These are found at the edges of the bold experiments and adaptive efforts of teachers and students that often go undocumented. I heard a middle school teacher say, “Ask the teachers about what innovations are already happening in and beyond their classrooms. Just because they have not spread throughout the system does not invalidate them. Teachers have so many creative ideas, so much more that they would like to be able to do that they feel they cannot given institutional constraints.” The call is clearly to follow the energy, give it attention, nurture it, let it be the guide. Then let the structures adjust to accommodate (not assimilate) this energy. Let form follow function . . .
This is what a colleague recently said about the cutting edge of innovation for visual artists - “It’s all about crossing the boundaries of media. You don’t say that you are going to be a sculptor. Instead you start with an idea and let that lead you. Everything is on the table.”
I put this question to our organization, community, country, and world. What is/are our edge/s? What is becoming manifest there? What are those manifestations telling us? Where might they take us? What might they make of us?
Scientists and spiritual leaders are both saying it, “Go to the edges.” That’s where new life, hope, and innovation resides. As our institutions and old worldviews crumble, we are called to look to the edges where ingenious adaptations are always happening. We know this is true of ecosystems. When the core is dying, something else is happening at the boundaries where there is greater resilience. When winter hits and all is withered on the surface, something else is beginning to stir underground, sending out new shoots and establishing new roots.
At a meeting with a school system today, participants acknowledged that they are still operating out of an industrial model whose time has long since passed. But this does not mean that there aren’t pockets of vibrancy and innovation. These are found at the edges of the bold experiments and adaptive efforts of teachers and students that often go undocumented. I heard a middle school teacher say, “Ask the teachers about what innovations are already happening in and beyond their classrooms. Just because they have not spread throughout the system does not invalidate them. Teachers have so many creative ideas, so much more that they would like to be able to do that they feel they cannot given institutional constraints.” The call is clearly to follow the energy, give it attention, nurture it, let it be the guide. Then let the structures adjust to accommodate (not assimilate) this energy. Let form follow function . . .
This is what a colleague recently said about the cutting edge of innovation for visual artists - “It’s all about crossing the boundaries of media. You don’t say that you are going to be a sculptor. Instead you start with an idea and let that lead you. Everything is on the table.”
I put this question to our organization, community, country, and world. What is/are our edge/s? What is becoming manifest there? What are those manifestations telling us? Where might they take us? What might they make of us?
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Tao of Leadership
By Curtis Ogden
Today's sermon at church was about leadership. Not so surprising given the election is 10 days away. And yet the message was one that continues this theme that I am hearing in many different circles. The leadership we need in these times is rooted in humility, curiosity, and in a genuine desire to join with others. This is really so counter-cultural in mainstream America. It isn't that we haven't been hearing for years the importance of being a good team player. It's just that the practice has not really been rewarded. And so now we sit alone in a corner with the rest of the world glaring at us, or increasingly ignoring us, and yet still we hear from certain politicians and presidential wanna-bes that we can restore our standing in the world as THE leader. We, or some of us, just do not get it!
At a meeting of Ford Foundation grantees last week, one German-born gentleman said that it is time for the US to understand and embrace its role as a PARTNER on the global stage, and that if we come of of this election cycle swinging like the leaders we so often strive to be, the rest of the world is going to "collectively puke." We have seemingly so long been stuck in adolescence, you can understand the collective groan from Old Europe, and even older cultures around the globe.
The preacher said that the great challenge of our time is to "see the whole of it." To this end we must do whatever it takes. Stop pretending that we are special, inquire, be ready to work in any setting, cross boundaries, let go, challenge others respectfully, and commit to something that nurtures our inner strength and sense of balance. And for God's sake, get over ourselves and our long standing leadership fetish.
Today's sermon at church was about leadership. Not so surprising given the election is 10 days away. And yet the message was one that continues this theme that I am hearing in many different circles. The leadership we need in these times is rooted in humility, curiosity, and in a genuine desire to join with others. This is really so counter-cultural in mainstream America. It isn't that we haven't been hearing for years the importance of being a good team player. It's just that the practice has not really been rewarded. And so now we sit alone in a corner with the rest of the world glaring at us, or increasingly ignoring us, and yet still we hear from certain politicians and presidential wanna-bes that we can restore our standing in the world as THE leader. We, or some of us, just do not get it!
At a meeting of Ford Foundation grantees last week, one German-born gentleman said that it is time for the US to understand and embrace its role as a PARTNER on the global stage, and that if we come of of this election cycle swinging like the leaders we so often strive to be, the rest of the world is going to "collectively puke." We have seemingly so long been stuck in adolescence, you can understand the collective groan from Old Europe, and even older cultures around the globe.
The preacher said that the great challenge of our time is to "see the whole of it." To this end we must do whatever it takes. Stop pretending that we are special, inquire, be ready to work in any setting, cross boundaries, let go, challenge others respectfully, and commit to something that nurtures our inner strength and sense of balance. And for God's sake, get over ourselves and our long standing leadership fetish.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Living Organizations in Turbulent Times
By Curtis Ogden
While reading the book The Living Company on the train to Philadelphia, a number of things came up for me as I think about IISC’s (and other nonprofit organizations') internal and external world and work and future . . . . Arie de Geus has long written from the premise that organizations are living beings residing in, interacting with, and being shaped by ecosystems, and not isolated machines that can simply be engineered to do what we want them to do. mIf we share his view, this has implications for the way that organizations might think about themselves and act.
de Geus writes that the most successful/resilient organizations (living systems) are open to and aware of their environments; tolerant of “experimentation, outliers and eccentricity”; and cohesive (there is an awareness that all members are a part of something that is shared and there is a shared commitment to that something). Furthermore, resilience (surviving and thriving - which is the basic imperative of all life) is built upon the commitment and ability of organizations to embody a diversity and spectrum of perspectives and skills that can create more options in terms of potential responses to external circumstance. Think "border habitats" where life is often at its most resilient, as species adapt to function in more than one ecosystem.
de Geus goes on to suggest that “planning” is really not an effective approach for determining future direction for organizations as living systems, because it is overly mechanistic, does not map onto the complex realities in which we live, looks too much to the past with a problem-solving lens, and often puts all eggs in one basket in terms of a strategic course of action. A much better approach is to engage in a “playful” organic creation of different scenarios for the future and a loose plan of action for each so that the organization can be appropriately proactive and responsive.
Innovations (and therefore adaptability) come from living systems that have the space for said innovations to occur (time to think, reflect, restore), communication channels for sharing these innovations , and a tendency to "flock" (breaking out of isolation and using the channels).
As we enter into ever more turbulent times, this raises some questions for me about life at IISC and the organizations we serve:
While reading the book The Living Company on the train to Philadelphia, a number of things came up for me as I think about IISC’s (and other nonprofit organizations') internal and external world and work and future . . . . Arie de Geus has long written from the premise that organizations are living beings residing in, interacting with, and being shaped by ecosystems, and not isolated machines that can simply be engineered to do what we want them to do. mIf we share his view, this has implications for the way that organizations might think about themselves and act.
de Geus writes that the most successful/resilient organizations (living systems) are open to and aware of their environments; tolerant of “experimentation, outliers and eccentricity”; and cohesive (there is an awareness that all members are a part of something that is shared and there is a shared commitment to that something). Furthermore, resilience (surviving and thriving - which is the basic imperative of all life) is built upon the commitment and ability of organizations to embody a diversity and spectrum of perspectives and skills that can create more options in terms of potential responses to external circumstance. Think "border habitats" where life is often at its most resilient, as species adapt to function in more than one ecosystem.
de Geus goes on to suggest that “planning” is really not an effective approach for determining future direction for organizations as living systems, because it is overly mechanistic, does not map onto the complex realities in which we live, looks too much to the past with a problem-solving lens, and often puts all eggs in one basket in terms of a strategic course of action. A much better approach is to engage in a “playful” organic creation of different scenarios for the future and a loose plan of action for each so that the organization can be appropriately proactive and responsive.
Innovations (and therefore adaptability) come from living systems that have the space for said innovations to occur (time to think, reflect, restore), communication channels for sharing these innovations , and a tendency to "flock" (breaking out of isolation and using the channels).
As we enter into ever more turbulent times, this raises some questions for me about life at IISC and the organizations we serve:
- Should strategic planning shift to more scenario planning exercises?
- How much cohesion do we and our clients really have internally, and how might this be built through networks?
- To what degree are we all ensuring that we embody adaptive diversity (internally and through our networks) in terms of perspectives and skills?
- How can we make sure that we respond to turbulence with a commitment to continued experimentation as opposed to going back to something known (and potentially stale/irrelevant)?
- Do we have the right structures for “flocking” to ensure that innovations spread and are truly shared?
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