Archive for the 'An Intentional Model' Category

Reaching out to my network

Published by George Nemeth on April 7, 2008 in An Intentional Model and Recipes. 0 Comments

Jack writes on his blog regarding Instructions from The Cook:

The start of AA was a small act realizing a big dream. Two men started by helping two other men toward recovery and today million of lives are transformed by the community they built. If you have examples you know of or have been a part of, send them to us. The book, that will be titled “Instructions From The Cook: Recipes for Building Community” will feature descriptions, implications, and applications of a community building model around these recipes.

View the Intentional Model Recipes here. Email your recipes to recipes@radicaltransitions.net. You can also leave them here in a comment.

Power of small acts

Published by Jack Ricchiuto on January 27, 2008 in An Intentional Model. 1 Comment

People continue to be amazed by the power of small acts as realizations of dreams. They’re empowering antidotes to shadow conversations about scale and speed, which are postponements of small acts. The irony of these postponement conversations is that talk about scale and speed sound important and worthy of attention and action. In fact, large acts of scale and speed often only engage the tangible asset wealthy few. Small acts democratize communities where assets run the gamut from very tangible to the very intangible.

Trust in communities digital

Published by Jack Ricchiuto on November 10, 2007 in An Intentional Model. 0 Comments

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.

A descriptive model

Published by Jack Ricchiuto on November 9, 2007 in An Intentional Model. 2 Comments

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.

Begin

Published by George Nemeth on November 7, 2007 in An Intentional Model. 0 Comments

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!