Radical Transitions is the companion of Instructions from the Cook, a new book by George Nemeth and Jack Ricchiuto about conversations that build community. More info at www.IntentionalModel.com
Archive for November, 2007
Not sure if Ed Morrison’s taken a look at this blog or the wiki, but he’s another practitioner who’s work can be described by AIM. These are comments from a post on my blog. From Jack Ricchiuto:
What is it, Ed, that distinguishes other regions and leaders who are further ahead in green policies and structures? Are they more knowledgeable about green, are they more connected to the green professionals in the community, do they have more of a personal passion for things green? Or something else? I ask because you have a perspective on other regions that many others don’t have here in this region. Most importantly, when I happen to have the attention of a policy maker here, or someone in their first circle, what can I say or ask that can shift consciousness?
Ed Morrison replies:
Jack, thanks for the question. As usual, you have provoked me to think.I would characterize the difference in regions as “the capacity to act”. Regions that are moving ahead with renewal have found the capacity to act. The capacity to act emerges from a widely shared responsibility to act and a an equally shared commitment to collaborate.
We’re all familiar with the “incapacity to act”. Organizations, communities, regions get stuck. Issues never seem to get resolved. Plans, often elaborate, get made but implementation fails. Action rarely follows. Worse still, we lose track of our priorities, and no one is quite able to explain why plans “sit on the shelf”.
The incapacity to act is characterized by several patterns. They include denial (we don’t have a problem), procrastination (this issue is not so important), suppression (the problem exists, but people are not able to share in finding solutions), complacency (leaders recognize the problem, but nobody believes it will change, so nothing is done), confusion (leaders are unable to pick among many competing priorities), blame (we tried our best, but someone else undercut our efforts)…
What questions are you asking that provoke transitions?
Everyone talks about building community. What’s interesting is what does and doesn’t build community. Our experience is that we build community any time we engage each other in conversations about dreams, small acts, gifts, and invitations (see the Intentional Model for more details). We prevent community any time we engage each other in shadow conversations about grievances, consensus, deficiencies, and blame.
In this sense, building community happens in the process of how things happen. So does the building of a new business, school, program, or event build community? It depends on the kinds of conversations we have in the process.
From these four observations:
1/ Until a community learns how to have new conversations together, it will act in fragmented ways
2/ Fragmentation is the source of most issues we call “problems” in a community
3/ New conversations do not depend on politics or economics, but rather on the willingness of people to have new conversations
4/ Conversations that create a new future together are conversations about our dreams, small acts, our gifts, and invitations
Questions emerge:
What are the old conversations in this community that have been unproductive or fragmenting for the community?
Why do you think these conversations have lacked power?
Who else’s dreams and gifts in the community have also not been engaged by these conversations?
Where is your community at discussing these questions?
On his blog, Jack Ricchiuto writes:
Voting is at best a surrogate for direct engagement in one’s community. When I vote for a specific public action, like giving money to a school system, I am not taking a direct part in that action. I am voting to have someone else do that for me, holding someone else accountable for the choices I and a majority of my neighbors make. They are a surrogate to my engagement. I am not going to a school of my choice and giving my money to a teacher, custodian, or coach for a specific project that I have passion about. The surrogates who execute the intentions of a majority of my neighbors mediate a task I never personally engage in…
If you choose not to engage in community, do it intentionally, but don’t misconstrue casting a vote for an idea as taking action. It’s not.
One of the reasons why we’re featuring “recipes” in the book is that many communities need a jump start in creativity. It’s not that they lack the ability to be creative. It’s that their individual and collective capacity for creativity has been hidden beneath a problem orientation to everything and everyone.
Each recipe suggests new combinations of gifts, assets, and opportunities. Like combining a local company work team, a group of seniors, a small flock of grade schoolers, a master gardener, and a vacant property the city is willing to sell for a dollar.
Recipes are essential for reminding people of their innate neurophysiological capacity to make random and new connections that lead to social innovations.
One of the ways we experience and build community is on the web where the dynamics change when geography is no longer a constraint to the footprints of our communities.
The “Thinking The Box” blog raises interesting and important questions about the role and dynamics of trust in the practice of digital community. It speaks to the truth that trust is always the basis of any dimension and possibility of community. When trust exists, dreaming and small acts together that engage gifts becomes possible.
A number of questions regarding trust in the digital age:
- In the new world of internet communication how do people build trust?
- If I am in email communication with you how do you come to build a collaborative relationship with me?
- If you are a blogger, how do your readers come to a position on being able to act on or respond to your comments?
- There seems to be great promotion about how all in the economy eventually will be handled digitally. Will things move faster when there is some physical interface…?
Visit Dennis’ blog for the full list.
Our journey leading up to An Intentional Model (AIM) began about 5 years ago when G and I met at a planning meeting for a local gathering on building community across professional sectors. Since then we’ve heard countless stories off line and on, and this year had the amazing good fortune to discover Peter Block’s work called “A Small Group” on which our model is based.
What we think is most compelling is that it describes how communities have always been built since the beginning of time. In this sense, the model doesn’t propose a model that requires validation or the test of time and experience because it’s already thrived for the past 50,000 years.
People invite each other to dream in ways that engages their gifts in small acts. The biggest truths are often the simplest.
Jack posted something to his blog that illustrates AIM on different levels: it’s about conversations, small acts, inviting participation, being engaging. This is an excerpt from a flight chat with a seat mate who joins neighbors in regular small acts of connecting people in his SanFrancisco community. They were talking about the Kerouac stories of natural communities a couple generations ago.
I started to say, “Well, you know this year is the 50th year of …” he [Bob, a San Franciscan electrician] finished with “Yea, On The Road … Kerouac”, leading to another hour of recounting the rich tapestry there. The routine he and some of his neighbors have is once a week or so, they’ll set a bench out front of their home near the Mission District and drink wine, offering to anyone who shows up. It is magic in bringing people out of their houses and into community. No surprise that he is one of the entrepreneurial members of a thriving non-profit board…
Neighborly Benchwarming is a great example of something we’re including in the book—Recipes for building community. It’s one of the areas Jack and I are looking for your ideas on. If you have any tips or techniques on creating community that we could include (with attribution of course), please email them to us, or leave them in a comment below.
Where to begin? Jack Ricchiuto and I began talking about what has become An Intentional Model of Building Community in the fall of 2006. It was in the Summer of 2007 when it started taking the form for a book—Radical Transitions.
The crux of our model for me is that we’ve all been in meetings that tend to get stuck in one of the four conversations. Even worse, they reach an impasse because they deteriorate into a shadow conversation. When that happens, how do you get back on track?
Our proposal is that if you have the right process to begin with, it’s easy to keep the momentum going—driving the conversation ultimately to small acts. I’ll give you an example. This blog (and its companion wiki) were the direct results of the first workshop Jack and I did. He blogged about it on JackZen.com here, and I expanded on it at my blog.
One of the things we learned is to be very explicit with the narrative for the model. From the example above, here are the four “conversations” that resulted in the small act of having a wiki and a blog:
What would you love to be possible?
We’d like to be able to share these ideas with others and have them respond with their feedback. Since the book is based on stories and recipes, we’d like to have others be able to contribute theirs.
What talents and assets are we each bringing?
I’m bringing my skill and experience setting up wikis and blogs, as well as an excellent hosting company that’s responsive when I request domains set up. Jack has been creating graphs and has written plenty of content so we can start building pages immediately.
What can we get started on a small scale?
The smallest scale is one site with one page. With the right platform, Jack and I can collaborate wherever we are at anytime. A blog starts with one post.
Who else should we invite to the table?
Anyone with a story to tell about intentionally building community. Our framework is descriptive, not perscriptive. Both of us know many people who do this sort of work—let’s invite the to tell their stories of dreams, gifts, invitations, and small acts.
So as you watch this space, expect to see more examples, more invitations to kick the tires of AIM, but most importantly help us identify great groups to include in the book!
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