It's about time I stop pretending there's nothing wrong. If you're a regular reader of How to Save the World
you've certainly sensed from my writing that something's amiss -- my
writing is shorter, disjointed, unfocused, just not all there. My
patient colleagues on our AHA! The Discovery & Learning Centre
project must be ready to give up on me. I owe considered responses to
thoughtful e-mails from 127 readers dating back six weeks, and have not
participated in the dialogue in the comments threads of my weblog for
eight weeks. Anita, to whom I owe everything, is justifiably angry at
me, and worried about my mental health. And many of the daily and
weekly chores I'd trained myself to do diligently, and found
surprisingly therapeutic, lie neglected and undone. Whatever is the
opposite of having one's shit together, whatever is the opposite of paying attention, that's me.
I say this not as a prelude to an important announcement, nor
as a request for advice, or even as the pretext for offering some
excuse. I say this just to let you know I'm aware of it, and I know
you're aware of it, and I'm sorry I have been so irresponsible to you
all. This article is about where I'm at and what I'm thinking. This is
my written 'thinking out loud' way of rocking the vehicle of my life
back and forth in the attempt to get it unstuck.
I was always impressed at Neil Young's ability to capture the essence
of our humanness and the reasons for our behaviour in a handful of
words, and these days I keep hearing these words of his in my head: "I
am a child. I last a while". I have no stamina. I get interested in
things and get wrapped up in them for awhile and then my interest flags
and I do something else for awhile. I don't abandon things (though
that's probably how others see it), I just put them aside, and usually
take them up again later with just as much intensity. When I wrote the article about the importance of Doing One or Two Things Really Well (Believe in yourself, Find 1-2 things you're passionate about, Hone your skills, Stop doing other distracting things, Show others how good you are, Trust your instincts to guide you), I was trying to provoke and teach myself
that very valuable advice, but I often do not take my own advice. I've
stopped beating myself up for this, and accepted that that's just the
way I am. Just because you know just what to do, doesn't mean you're
going to do it.
I've been doing some early thinking about several subjects and
projects, and I'm not far enough along to write anything polished about
them, but I thought I'd tell you about them anyway. Maybe thinking out
loud will get me unstuck. Maybe it will get some of you unstuck.
AHA!
First, I want to talk about AHA!. I've changed direction
on this so often that I've practically paralyzed my thinking on it, and
in the process driven to distraction the online colleagues who have
been so helpful in incubating the concept. Here is the essence of the
idea:
- Its objective is to explore and discover approaches to
complex issues, from global warming and violence and poverty in the
Mideast to the dysfunction and lack of innovation in large
organization. We know that complex issues can't be addressed using the
old merely-complicated approaches (like systems thinking,
reengineering, cause-and-effect analysis, etc.), and in fact the group
that is most enthusiastic about AHA! are disgruntled consultants
(mostly my age and older, some retired) who are fed up with using
approaches that sell well but just don't work -- three years later you
look back at the project you poured so much sweat into and nothing has
really changed. AHA! implements Einstein's advice that we won't solve
problems using the same kind of thinking that gave rise to them.
Complexity theory is new and largely untested in this area but there
are some fascinating and powerful techniques (open space, tipping
points, narrative and storytelling, probe/sense/respond, conversations,
appreciative inquiry, empowered autopoiesis, collaboration, mindmapping
and concept mapping, passion bounded by responsibility, the
gift/generosity/support economy, pattern recognition, improv, the
wisdom of crowds and the four practices, all of which I've written
about in these pages) that seem well-suited to support a complex
adaptive system 'discovery-and-learning based' methodology.
- We've identified a group of people who we think have the
experience, knowledge, motivation and collective skill to develop this
methodology, and put together (but not sent) an open space invitation
(taking our own medicine) to attract them to come together for either
or both of two sessions to co-develop it. A lot depends on who comes to
these sessions, and I'm stalled on this point -- before we can hope to
get the world's greatest minds working on this, we need to build
momentum and recognition, but we need those minds to develop it
effectively in the first place, and we need their reputation to attract
others. My partners tell me "just start!" and they are of course right,
but thanks to my not having my act together we're still not started.
I/we have a lot to learn about invitation.
- Everything we develop will be open source and creative
commons licensed. We may charge for-profit organizations to help them
apply the methodology, but only for the purpose of funding sessions to
use the methodology to solve the world's most intractable problems for
free. The business model here (how we make money, which we all have to
care about to some degree unless we're independently wealthy) is to
earn money around the edges
of AHA! -- If this works as well as we think it might, those of us who
are truly expert in applying it might well get some lucrative offers to
talk about it, to teach people how to use it, to develop spin-offs etc.
But it will not be proprietary.
I give my colleagues, especially Dave Davison, Rob Paterson, Chris
Corrigan and Dave Snowden, 90% of the credit for this idea, which is
brilliant, important and truly inspired. But an idea is only an idea,
and implementation is everything. So what's the matter with me that I'm
not getting on with it?
Six weeks ago Dave Davison sent me a note with the chart above, taken from this wonderful article called The Inviting Organization
by Open Space pioneer Michael Herman. The chart is now pasted on my
Getting Things Done list under my daily reminders of what's important.
It seems to me that our answers to the four questions he asks: Why do I
work? (passion/purpose), What do I make? (action/responsibility), Where
should we go? (culture/story) and How do we get there?
(structure/systems) largely define us as individuals and peoples.
Herman quotes Angeles Arrien from her book The Four-Fold Way on how to answer those questions: show up, pay attention to what has heart and meaning, speak your truth, and let it go. To some extent AHA! aspires to be the vehicle that will enable us to do so more powerfully and more effectively.
The Importance of Self-Esteem
A while ago Chris Corrigan was kind enough to send me some notes he had taken from a presentation by Lakota leader Martin Brokenleg.
The presentation was about reclaiming youth at risk, but its lessons
are lessons for all of us. Here are a few of the key ones:
- The self-esteem that makes us healthy and productive
members of society stems from four traits: Belonging (your significance
as a member of communities and through relationships with others),
Mastery (becoming extremely competent at something, not through
competition but by learning from role models), Independence (the
personal power that comes from knowing that you can do things for
yourself), and Generosity (the virtue of unselfishness and the
self-worth that comes from helping others). Whales, ravens, eagles and
wolves are the respective totem symbols for these four traits. As we
get older, Belonging leads to Attachment, Mastery leads to Achievement,
Independence leads to Autonomy, and Generosity leads to Altruism. This
is what maturity is about. (Suddenly I feel very immature.)
- Rather than using punishments, laws and other barriers, we
can keep peace in society far more effectively by creating resiliency
in people. We can do that by stressing the positive (rewards and
appreciation for things people do that are healthy and helpful, rather
than deterrence and punishment for destructive acts), by addressing the
environment that causes behaviour rather than just the behaviour, by
preventing rather than fixing problems, and by promoting and
participating in activities that unify us and stress collaboration and
cooperation rather than conflict and competition.
- When you create a society that says children don't matter, you create a society that says people don't matter.
- Education is about creating capacity and expanding choices,
not developing skill. It's about learning responsibility, not behaviour.
- Restorative justice has a recidivism rate ten times lower than incarceration and punitive justice systems.
- The need to belong is so strong that if we can't find
healthy, constructive, inclusive places and groups to belong to, we
will choose unhealthy, destructive, exclusive ones and pick up their
behaviours (gangs, snobs, addicts).
- The need to learn to do things yourself is behind much
'terrible twos' behaviour and teenage rebellion (and perhaps mid-life
crisis).
- The love of learning is natural, and if someone doesn't
want to learn, the problem is in the environment, not the person.
Learning needs to provide a sense of accomplishment.
- Neither authoritarian nor passive parenting approaches
work. Only the nurturing approach -- parent as coach and cheerleader --
works.
This is so utterly different from the way that we are raised today it
is startling. We are taught to get self-esteem by winning, by
competing, by overcoming obstacles through struggle
dammit. How warped is that when we can get it more easily, more
positively, more healthily through social, cooperative means? But
instead we are taught to get self-esteem by rugged individual effort,
and we measure it by our power over others, and by what we possess.
A belief system that finds no tension or conflict between belonging and
independence, no incompatibility between attachment and autonomy, is
one that is vastly beyond the sophistication of our 'modern' civilized
belief systems. How much we have unlearned!
Mars and Venus
Lately I have been listening to a lot of music until late
into the night, and almost all the music I've chosen to listen to is by
women composers: Sarah McLachlan, Trespassers William, Michelle Branch,
Sheryl Crow, Toby Lightman, Frou Frou, Alanis Morrissette, Jann Arden,
Barlow Girl, Hope Sandoval and many others. I am led to understand that
these tastes are very unusual for a guy in his fifties. And I confess
that when I read the lyrics to many of the songs from these composers
they aren't very, well, substantial.
Looking back at my postings on this blog almost all the song lyrics
I've cited have been by male composers. And my friends Rayne and Aleah
have pointed out that almost all the books I've recommended are also by
male writers.
I've concluded that this has a lot to do with the very different ways
in which women and men communicate. Since men have hogged most of the
power since the dawn of civilization, it wouldn't surprise me if most
languages are skewed in favour of male communication styles, and their
preferred subjects. So perhaps that explains why a lot of songs by
brilliant women songwriters are kind of spare on words and rich in
tones, harmonies and expression. Most of the emotion in music (and in
conversation) is conveyed by those qualities anyway, not by the words.
And I confess that when I study the lyrics of women composers I have to
admit (a) they don't seem to be about what I thought the music was about, and (b) I really don't understand what they're singing about. But it doesn't matter -- I love the music, I find it transporting, I connect
with it in ways that I rarely connect with the music of male composers
(exceptions: music by African and Latin American male musicians, male
instrumentalists and a few guys like James Taylor and Neil Young). When
Sarah sings "Elsewhere" or Michelle sings "One of These Days" or Sheryl
sings "Light in Your Eyes" or Trespassers sing "In a Song" I am carried
away, my eyes fill with tears, and somehow I understand.
Of course I do not. What is
really scary is that this "illusion that communication has really
occurred" (as Shaw put it) may actually be far more pervasive than just
our (mis-)reading of music. It may be that almost none of what we think
we are communicating, beyond the simplest and most unambiguous
information, is actually understood by anyone else. In fact the tone
and the body language and all the chemical messages flying between our
bodies when we converse, and all the repetition that to a third party
must seem almost comical, may all be necessary to stand even a 1%
chance that 1% of the intended meaning of what we were trying to
communicate was actually conveyed. And in communications between males
and females that percentage is perhaps even lower. How else can we
explain how it is the people we love, people with whom we share so many
hours and experiences and even bodily fluids, can have such atrocious
and inexplicable taste in music?
There's a commercial out now for (I think) Right Guard men's body spray
(whatever the hell that is) that depicts a woman talking rapturously
with another woman about how much she loves the clown practicing his
horrific guitar-playing (or in another commercial, he's making goofy
noises with his buddies watching a sports event) in the next room. This
passion is triggered entirely by how his body spray reminds her of her
favourite moments with him in the past (shown as balloon flashbacks in
the commercial, from a perspective of memory only a women would have).
I think it's a brilliant commercial, even if it's a little too close to
the truth for comfort.
Now I guess I need to figure out what 'body spray' is. Deodorant for
places that don't smell? Perfume that goes for quantity over quality?
. . . . .
Well, I guess that brings this strange apology to an end. I will try to
be more responsible in future, and I hope you won't give up on me. My
heart's in the right place, my head is full of very interesting and
potent ideas. If only the rest of me could get in step, maybe I could
actually get somewhere.
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4:18:34 PM 
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
