What else have you learned--and what else have we learned-- thatyou feeladds real value to our work?
Collaborative Notes
Mike: There are already millions of people working on these problems throughout the world. To that extent...they are hooked together and we are hooked in as well.
Heather: What I have been learning is I don't have a theory of change that explains my direct experience of change happening. I have been working on these issues for over 40 years. I am in the process of learning is...assumptions I didn't know I had that I didn't know I had...I know what is happening...I really have no clue of what is happening in the realm of whole system's change. I can make up a story...carbon footprints, statistics on wealth distribution, but something else is going on that I don't understand. The problems are so complex, so totally and completely interconnected/interdependent and co-arising...and the patterns of human behavior that have brought us to"This Place" have been playing out over hundreds, even thousands, of years don't understand.
Nancy: That is central. In the last conversation we were talking about how to framing questions for people to more fully engage people with these issues. What are nice people doing something here like this? To surface our assumptions and to make up a change model...what makes us human and why do we do so many things that are against our interests. We also need to come grips to a more spiritual level as well. POlitics for the broken hearted(Parker Palmer) - a workshop he put on. We need to come to grips with that.
Making sense of the tension between top/down and bottom/up approaches. At some point have to be willing to acknowledge the importance of"some sense of meaning"...and figure out...have some sense of agreement around...how to move forward.
Experiment with notion that we only have to agree"enough" to act in concert to accomplish something. In course of doing things together unexpected transformation happens...is an outcome...
Learning that the best I can do going forward with intention to leave a better future for my progeny is to show up with as open a heart and mind as possible...it's in the conversations themselves that the shifts will happen and the co-creativity towards the future we would like to see happens on its own...
Ben: Lots of process level learnings with HackPad - things that we didn't try...a general principle - to put more time in the invitation and welcoming process and perhaps a little less in building the containing...letting the container be a co-creative process with the participants. The participants have ownership. Especially hard in a virtual space. We need to be a visible hosting process, but helping the participants to realize they are co-creating space...help people be in small groups for live conversations...adds a whole new dimension of this. Appreciative interviews. This would be a great way to start a conference such as this. I got a hit on where and when to do such an appreciative interview. Discovery phase...part of Appreciative Inquiry...interview around what's working/energizing people from past experience, current work and future vision...
Heather: Experimenting with trust. Used to feel I had to trust people in the group before I could take action. I have been questioning that assumption. Maybe I need to discover to be in the world where trusting everyone around me isn't a requirement for me to do something with them. What this brings up, can I increase my bravery to do, blah, blah, blah.
Linda: "Feel the Fear, and Do it Anyways" Sue Jeffers...a book.
Moving from Otto's"Ego-awareness to Eco-awareness...seems like the general movement we are trying to make(Linda).
Heather: Our beautiful world is in a death throe....some parts of myself need to die as well, in order to allow the parts or me that can enable a most positive impact to come forward.... This thing about our relationship to death that is going on here for me. I don't want to talk about it. I don't like the way it feels. Fear of the unknown. Ego to eco transformation ala Otto Scharmer.
Nancy: We know that as things change as they need to and we will find ourselves in very different places. With the technology, there is a different feel about what can be said and what can't...this might give us more courage.
Appreciative Inquiry that could happen more early on is a good insight. People need to ground themselves in the content...to learn more...for example, if we had Tom early on, explaining more what was on his mind and what his personal relationship with his inquiry was, people might have found as ungrounded. And, then moving into the HackPad...might have made it easier to orient people.
Ben: I have learned to trust the group more and less need for me needing to push things so hard...