Shifting Fields of Attention

The planning for Leslie Creative Learning Cooperative has gone well. The visioning period went well. Last meeting we unhinged the structure and let things float for a period. We re-opened a number of variables that had been set in the first draft of the strategic plan. The meeting wrapped up and we had not come to any closure. I asked everyone to stay in the uncertainty until the next meeting, in order to see how the various options felt.

Last night we met again. I facilitated a process which I'm thinking of as a "Deep dive to I Am." We passed a talking stick and began with "When we left the meeting I felt... and since then I've been feeling...." I facilitated discerning thoughts from emotions. I held the intention and facilitated A) People going deeper in the U (Theory U) by personally admitting their fears, and B) Viewing themselves at responsible and accountable for starting a school, 3)Realizing that there were no external forces which were preventing us. By connecting to the universal emotion of fear people had a shared experience and were able to shift from field 1 and 2 to field 3: "Seeing myself as part of the whole."

Once people began sharing feelings of fear and disappointment they began experiencing care and compassion for each other. This raised the coherence of the field in such a tangilble way that it created safety. I then lead people to connect with their most creative and innovative self and pass the stick a round with this topic... "I know I can do this. I am ___. I am going to ___." Each individual made a number of commitements and assignments using "I am" at the beginningof each statement. Then I called out questions and prompted them to all reply "I am" again and again like drumbeats.

The purpose here was to allow it to really sink in that we were the only things stopping us and that we decide whether we succeed. It also made a cadence which shifted the field from care and compassion due to vulnerability, but rather hype and momentum for success. Next we passed the talking stick for a round on the topic "Right now I feel..." and saw the noticeable shift in emotions. By going into fear together we generated the fuel for our own reserection. People were excited, and appeared to have a new sense of ownership, clarity, and purpose.

I closed the circle and released the deeper space we'd been holding. We chatted about fundraising and enjoyed a lovely meal.

While I know that the field 3 awareness was fleeting, I also know that the more we operate from that space the easier it becomes to achieve levels 3 and 4.

Life Lessons from my Chickens

We're hatching chicks in an incubator upstairs. The first few emerged on Saturday, several came on Easter sunday, and a few more are considering today as their birthday. My little kids are quite smitten by the chicks and fascinated by the process.

I am learning a great deal about transformation and life by watching the process. One thing I notice is that I really had a sense of pride for and affinity with the first brave chick. She didn't have the most effective exit strategy... she pecked for a very long time and finally broke through. I'm not sure what part of my programming has conditioned me to think that being first is best. I'm considering how much this notion serves me and perhaps I'll let it go.

The second chick had a much more efficient liberation. She pecked in a sort of straight line until she'd completed a circle and then gracefully pushed the whole top of the egg right off. She didn't have to fight nearly as much as the first. Why do I appreciate the struggle of the first more than the efficiency and grace of the second?

We have two kinds of hens, brown ones and black ones. For some reason the first 5 chicks born were brown and the next 4 chicks born were black. The black ones all died their first night. We think that they got too hot under the lamp and too dehydrated. Maybe the 5 brown chicks - being several hours older and therefore stronger - bullied the black chicks and kept them from the water? We don't know.

All the eggs began their 21 day incubation at the same time. Today there are two eggs with beaks sticking out of them, and I can see the chicks are breathing, but they appear to have no motivation to break out. This is the most interesting lesson of all to me... I put the eggs in and did what I was obligated to do. I can't do anything else. I can't break the shells open and let the chicks out because they would be weak. They MUST struggle by themselves in order to build up the muscle strength and determination needed to survive.

It doesn't matter if I'm fearful, helpful, prayerful, or facilitative... each of those chicks has to make its own choice to fight out of it's shell or to simply die.

Like the school we're working to start. I've done what I can to guide the visioning and the strategic planning process. At our last meeting we agreed to re-open a number of the variables which had been pinned down in the first iteration of the strategic plan draft. Some of the possibilities included realizing something less than what we had dreamt. We even came face to face with the possibility of giving up altogether. I encouraged everyone to sit in the place of uncertainty which we created by re-opening the variables. I asked them to see what the various options feel like.

I hope that what emerges from this time of incubation is a fight to live, a fight to emerge from our shell and grow feathers so that one day Leslie Creative Learning Cooperative might fly. Creation is a tender and fragile process, yet it is infinite and constant. Even if all my chicks don't hatch there will always be more chickens. The seeds I plan and tend to may never bloom, but there will always be flowers. For this, I am grateful.

The Importance of Contracting Gracefully

I often find myself advocating a natural systems perspective for organizational development. I frequenly am heard saying that "effective organizations are flexible and organic". I just recently had an "ah ha" moment around this:

In organizations, expansion implies success and contraction implies failure. To my systems thinking mind, expansion and contraction are just opposite forces or directions and are neither good nor bad. Only our experience of a this shift in movement is good or bad.

In order for an organization to truly be flexible and organic it must be capable to both expand and contract in a graceful and nimble way. Scaling up to serve an increase in demand is mathematically no different than scaling down in times of decreased demand. Why should scaling up feel like success to the people involved while scaling down feels like failure?

An organization is not just a math and physics equation, and contraction is not just movement in the opposite direction of expansion. The numbers of positions, for example, represent people who are concerned with paying mortgages and putting children through college. How then, can the organization become graceful in contraction?

I certainly don't have all the answers for this. This post is about exploring the topic in hopes for taking some of the sting out of the experience of contraction, both for indviduals and the organizaton.

Let's look at an example from the Forest Service. The Forest Service Enterprise Program is a group of small intraprises, or internal businesses which serve agency units via a signed work order agreement. Enterprise units don't receive appropriated funds in the annual agency budget, but rather sell goods and services to traditional agency units in order to cover all their costs.

The health of the ~17 Enterprise units is bound together in the agency's accounting system. If an Enterprise unit does not cover its costs and accrues a deficit then the team may be disbanded. The employees of the disbanded unit are placed in other positions, or sometimes exit the agency altogether. One core strength of the Enterprise Program is its flexibility to help a National Forest, for example, scale up for a particular project and scale back down when the project is over. Within the culture of the Enterprise Program, expanding one's Enterprise unit by increasing the number of employees and increasing the revenue is a mark of success.

However, if a unit is unable to cover its expenses (for any number of reasons), then a deficit accrues, the unit is a candidate for being disbanded by the Enterprise Steering Committee, and the unit's employees are at jeopardy of loosing their positions.

In our culture, this disbandment is interpreted as a failure. The leader of the unit has invested much time and energy in attempting to create a successful venture. It is personally dramatic to realize that the venture is not sustainable. There is also a personal sense of failure for the indivudual employees, especially if they were engaged in working hard to "turn it around" for a number of months before the disbandment. (I have first hand experience with this, I'll write about it in a separate post). It is all quite painful.

But what if there were another context, another connotation for disbandment of an Enterprise? What if Enterprises with deficits were responsible for coming forward and recommending that they be disbanded, rather than living in fear of a heavy hand coming down on them? What if struggling Enterprises were seen as courageous and heroic for choosing their own disbandment? One success of Enterprise is that it is a choice-based organization. Individuals choose to start units, why shouldn't they choose to end them?

It should be seen as courageous because of the risk and uncertainty involved in volunteering to have your box erased from the org chart. It should be heroic because a struggling unit which drags on and on is only increasing the deficit which is actually a burden on the entire program due to the interconnections in the accounting system.

Could being viewed as courageous and heroic take some of the sting out of the experience for the individuals? I believe it would. That was my own experience. Would shifting our cultural connotation from "failure" to "heroism" facilitate a more graceful contraction? Afterall, if an organization is going to be flexible and organic, they must exhale as effectively as then inhale.

Creation or Destruction?

The world is transforming. Which is more important, creation or destruction? We're witnessing the collapse of several major corporations, organizations, economies, environments, ecosystems, etc.

Should we focus on the destruction we are witnessing? Should we try to mitigate, bail out, or slow down the crumble? OR should we focus on creating something new?

Any time I discover an either or question I attempt to answer it with "both". It's because I'm tired of the black and white polarity and duality of everything. I'm ready for grey areas... I'm ready for much less certainty and much more flexibility.

I just found someone else's answer to this question of Creation or Destruction... Otto Scharmer seems to be answering the question with "both" as well:

"The rise of the social space of emergence and creation is connected to the dying and transformation of (the) social space of destruction." (2007: page 45)

We can't create the world in an entirely new, healthy, and functional way unless we allow for the dysfunctional systems to collapse. We must balance our impulse to create with our acceptance of destruction.

The next question would be how to find this balance without becoming fearful. Stay tuned. As I explore this in my own transformative adventure I'll share what I discover.

Eureka! I did it!

Tonight I filed the name Leslie Creative Learning Cooperative, Inc. with the Arkansas Secretary of State. It was quite easy. Then I decided to check out their form for the "Articles of Incorporation." Low and behold it was a really simple form (how often does that happen in government?)! So, I filed that too. Then I completed the IRS form SS-4 to request our employer identification number. That one pager was also pretty easy since I filled one out about 4 years ago when we hired a nanny for our baby boy. (Funny, both times it has been about my kids!)

I could have faxed in the SS-4 right away, but I need my husband to sign it and he's already gone to bed.

Tomorrow we have our first public information meeting. I'm eager to find out how many people will attend. We posted an add in the Marshall Mountain Wave (our local paper). We also posted flyers around the county.

The idea for this school was born on 6/21/07 at a local Summer Solstice celebration. The four founding families have been meeting monthly ever since. I've played the role as facilitator, including leading the meetings. Laura Daly, the teacher/administrator, and I drafted the strategic plan and the bylaws. Both are still in draft form. We recently elected my husband, Steven Newby, to be the director and Jason Morriss to be treasurer. We have not yet filled the position of secretary, so I am acting in this role. I cannot assume the role permanently because I feel it is a conflict of interest to have two officers in one family. As soon as we expand to include new families we will have a more diverse pool of candidates for the final role.

I'm grateful and excited about how far we have come. The fact that these first 3 forms are completed is a HUGE deal to me. I also got pretty far into the f1023 which is the form to request designation from the IRS as a non-profit organization. The book I've been using as a guide said that the 1023 would take a minimum of 10 hours. At present I think that might be much less. Perhaps it's because we've already gotten so far in the strategic plan and bylaws. Some of the attachments to the form will be copied straight from passages in these two texts.

The book I'm using is great. It's called How to Form a Nonprofit Corporation.

A True American Hero

Mike Parker, the disabled vet in Indiana who called me with a proposal for a wood pellet manufacturing plant in order to create jobs and develop renewable energy, has impressed the heck out of me with his determination. Check out my earlier post, How Exactly Does One Participate with Government, to catch up on this story.

When Mike called me I sent a few emails around in the Forest Service to find out exactly with who he ought to speak. Within 2 emails I had caught up with Mike North, an Enterpriser with the Forest Service Enterprise known as TEAMS. It happens that Mike North works for the National Woody Biomass Coordinator. I'm not sure whether they've spoken with each other yet, but in the mean time, Mike Parker has been busy!

Mike fanagled himself an invitation to Philadelphia to participate in the Middle Class Task Force meeting hosted by Vice President Biden. He also got himself on C-Span a few days before driving to Philadelphia. Mike and I talked the evening before he left for Philadelphia. As I've mentioned in other posts, I feel so compelled to action by Obama's vision that I find I can't help but support Mike Parker. During our evening phone call I helped him craft an "elevator speech", write a question in case he got to ask one at the meeting, discover how to make business cards with his MS Works program, and gave him some techniques to help him stay calm and avoid being stressed or anxious.

He just never ceases to amaze me. Yesterday before the meeting in Philadelphia he got an email that the EPA had declined his proposal. (Somehow he'd gotten 20 minutes on the phone with the Director of Grants at EPA). At the meeting there was no opportunity to ask questions. In his frustration, as the meeting ended, Mike dove out toward Biden. He was quickly surrounded by secret service men, but he recovered and was able to speak directly with the Vice President! Mr. Biden took a copy of the email from the EPA (the one which declined the grant application) as well as taking down Mike's phone numbers.

Mike was elated today as he relived the tale. He said that even if his idea never goes anywhere, and even if they don't build the manufacturing plant in Andrews, IN -- a town which lost 4 factories over the recent past -- Mike is satisfied that he carried this vision as high as any man could... he carried his vision straight to the Vice President of the United States.

Mike Parker, you are my hero!

A Time of Extraordinary Change

I feel we're in a time of unprecidented change. My mom maintains that as every generation claims it's adult-hood it has the feeling that things are more intense and crucial than ever before. That makes sense to me, however, this seems different.

There are many stories and beliefs out there to describe what is happening on the earth today. Some people talk about Global Climate Change, some talk about the Apocalypse and the return of Jesus, some talk about 2012, some talk about Mayan or Hopi prophecies, some focus on the reality of economic recession. To me it doesn't so much matter whether we agree on WHY we're going through big changes, but rather that we learn to cooperate and support one another during the transformation.

What story do you tell yourself to explain your present experience of the world?

Every religion and spirituality I'm aware of teaches that it's right to love and share. Yet we still allow fear of other to create exceptions. "Love your neighbor, unless he's different, then you should nuke him." I don't feel like there's time for this any more. In these times of extraordinary change, we must count on the kindness of strangers in order to weather the storm.