Truth and the dance of fact and story (Sense-Making Part 7)
Facts ground us in reality. Stories ground us in meaning. The two together can produce powerful guidance, what we call “truth”. But …
To Fix, Improve, and Transform Democracy
Democracy is in trouble around the world. Thankfully, we see many creative responses emerging to meet that challenge. Among other initiatives, the …
Creative Participation of the Whole – a North Star concept
What does it mean to engage the creative participation of the whole? That aspiration is both simpler and more complex than it …
Can problem-solving itself be problematic? (Sense-making, Part 6)
This essay is largely a critique of how we tend to focus on problem-solving to address any undesirable situation. However, as I’ve …
Large-scale collective sense-making processes (Sense-making – Part 5)
I’ve long advocated the use of multiple processes in public and stakeholder engagements so that synergies among them can be tapped. Recently …
Making Democracies Worthy of the Name… and More
Democracy is rule of, by and for the people. There are many ways to try doing that. This message looks at a …
vTaiwan – A Glimpse of Open Source Open Space Government (Part 1)
Here’s a fascinating introduction to one of the most remarkably co-intelligent experiments in governance happening on the planet today. More to follow…. …
The wisdom of the fringes?
Counterintuitively, the highest evolutionary wisdom lies on the fringes of business as usual. The fringes are fringes because they are different, dissident, …
Transforming Occupy’s challenge into transformation and innovative self-organization
Two weeks ago I had an intense conversation with a colleague working with a local Occupy community. A small faction had recently done a protest that – although physically nonviolent – was not verbally, spiritually, or strategically nonviolent. The…
#Occupy Open Space Activities
Catalyzed by the meteoric rise of Occupy Wall Street into public notice and discourse, outsiders are connecting the dots between their pet issues and OWS’s focus on “the unchecked power of Wall Street speculators and corporations”. Many are urging…