I’m gearing up for a new season of “strategic planning” projects with a new sense of what the process might mean when we’re being intellectually honest with ourselves about the future.
The truth about the future is that it’s uncertain. It’s uncertain because our knowledge is alway imperfect, because we’re taking actions that will always have non-linear ripples of consequences, and people we will never meet will take actions that will impact us in non-linear ways.
When I wrote “Project Zen” a few years ago, I defined planning as preparation. But how do we become prepared for an uncertain future? Here are a few questions that help.
What matters to us?
What potential future changes could occur that we wouldn’t cause?
What potential future changes could occur that our actions could cause?
What is the percentage of un/certainty for each?
Who might have more certainty or certainty before we would?
What do we want to invest in being prepared for?
So what does planning look like for an uncertain future? It’s dreaming and translating dreams into small acts that we can commit to in the present. These questions help enrich the conversation. At the end of the day, intellectually honest planning does not produce a binder of anything. Only commitments to dreams and small acts.
In a conversation with friend and Radical Transitions recipe contributor, Linda Fabe, in Cincinnati last weekend, she inspired a possible distinction about the 4 conversations in the intentional mode we’re working with. Since shadow conversations are the “old” conversations that divided communities, the 4 conversations are the “new” conversations designed to build community. I like the distinction because of its elegant reminder of how focus makes the difference. Even this meta-conversation implies how the old conversations about money, allies, and power do not have the possibility that focus has in engaging the gifts of the community.
In light of many recent conversations, I’m now renaming some of the shadow conversations, particularly the “Consensus” conversation to the “Postponement” conversation. This is the conversation where we ask the question, “What permissions and agreements do we need?” It’s the conversation of postponements of what’s possible.
Posted a handful of Frequently Asked Questions on the Intentional Model site.
The question include:
Is the model for grassroots or institutional efforts?
How small should small acts be?
How does the model help us get to scale and speed?
What kind of community leadership does the model require?
What’s the role of ideas in the model?
How much funding does the model require?
When a community is vital, 5 kinds of connections occur. People know each other, look out for each other, connect each other, barter with each other, and engage each other.
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.
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