I’m enjoying teaching an advanced symposium this semester on applying Process Work at the Process Work Institute. We’re looking at the challenges of the so-called Wanderjarhe – the post training phase of developing mastery and becoming a craftsperson. In the Medieval European tradition once the apprenticeship was completed, in order for the apprentice to become a craftsman he had to gain experience moving from one town to the other, applying his skills in different settings, and under different craftsmen. This became a very crucial part of the development of the craftsperson.

Fast forward a few centuries, and the still need remains, but the traditions have changed. Moving from mastery of (often theoretical) knowledge to mastery of craft takes a long time. In some professions the route is straightforward: you gain an entry level position and work your way up. But if people go into private practice or consulting, or become sole proprietors of a professional service business like counseling, coaching, psychotherapy, or facilitating, it’s a more circuitous route. In a way, it’s a start-up. But where a tech start up requires a big infusion of cash, starting up a business that is your own professional service requires a big infusion of, well, other things. Here are some of the things we’ve been discussing in class. These are true for anyone starting their own business, non-profit, association, or pursuing a cause. Continue Reading…

I’ve been a bit absent. I was offline and away for a week on Cycle Oregon. I didn’t realize that while I was on a break, my website took one as well. While I was happily pedaling along, offline and out of touch, my website was shut down because of a security breach. My emails bounced for a couple of days before I found out about it. And when I did, there wasn’t much I could do. That was just the beginning of a week of woes. On the way home, an inattentive gas attendant put unleaded gas into my diesel tank, and 30 miles later my Jetta politely but firmly informed me it would not run on unleaded gasoline. We had to be towed 90 miles into Portland, and my car took a few days to fix, could have been a lot worse.

So, I am back, so is my website, my car is back in service. But it’s good to be reminded by what fragile threads are lives are kept together. In my case, it wasn’t very essential things that fell apart; annoying, but basically not harmful. It could have been much worse.

Having my website go down also made me mindful of and appreciative for you readers who follow this blog, and those who occasionally peak in. Thank you. You make the discussion richer, and make writing a more enjoyable task.

I have a few posts I’m working on, and look forward to getting back in action soon!

Atul Gawande, in an article for The New Yorker, writing about the soaring cost of health care, looks at the role dying and the terminally ill play in those costs:

Twenty-five per cent of all Medicare spending is for the five per cent of patients who are in their final year of life, and most of that money goes for care in their last couple of months which is of little apparent benefit. … In the past few decades, medical science has rendered obsolete centuries of experience, tradition, and language about our mortality, and created a new difficulty for mankind: how to die.Technology sustains our organs until we are well past the point of awareness and coherence.

Death is the enemy. Though it’s not just death in the literal sense. Admitting defeat can be hard, and refusing to give up can cost us dearly. Whether the President or Congress continues to escalate a war in the hopes of finally turning it around, or someone stays in a troubled relationship in the hopes that things might just get better, it’s not easy to raise the white flag. Continue Reading…

In the wake of the recent G20 in Toronto, my friend Annahid and I were talking about the state of social change movements today. Annahid has been on the front lines of social change her whole life, and is founder and senior partner of Anima Leadership Institute in Toronto, which offers leadership programs for individuals, teams and organizations in support of transformative change, so she’s got a pretty good perspective on the movement. She was disheartened by what she saw as the same old divisive rhetoric, and the tendency to “battle might with right.” In an email exchange, she wrote, “the complexity of our current environments and systems means that no one individual or group can possibly have all the answers required. Our strategies and solutions instead must innovate in their ability to integrate different perspectives and knowledge.”

Annahid is hosting a series of talks on Animating Social Change, and asked me to speak about Deep Democracy. What social change innovation does Deep Democracy offer, she asked? Not so easy to say as I first thought, I discovered. Is it the creative techniques for working with conflict? The teleological view of disturbance and conflict? The embrace of non-consensual experiences? The way it views marginalization as both an inner and outer process? All yes, but something else, something’s missing. Then it occurred to me, Deep Democracy is not just an innovation, but a disruptive innovation. Clayton M. Christensen, in his book The Innovator’s Dilemma, differentiated between sustaining and disruptive innovations. He describes disruptive innovations as ones that improve a product or service in ways that the market does not expect. Deep Democracy is disruptive because it puts individual development back in the center of the conversation on systemic change. The split between inner and outer, personal and political is radically revisioned in Deep Democracy. Here’s how I see Deep Democracy’s disruptive innovation: Continue Reading…

Last March I posted The Reading Roundup. I got a lot of comments and suggestions from readers, and so I’d like to make this a regular feature, perhaps once a quarter, provided I’ve actually read enough.

So, here is a list of some books I’ve enjoyed since the last Roundup, though a few which I forgot to include in the last list. As I did with the first Round Up, I’m including here where and how I came across the book. And, still, all non-fiction. Not sure what that means. Except that there’s an awful lot of good non-fiction out there. Continue Reading…

In his blog post early this week, The More Leaders Make, The Meaner They Get, Scott Berinato reports on research by Sreedhari Desai on whether sky-high pay leads to worse treatment of workers. According to Desai’s study, the answer is yes:

Increasing executive compensation results in executives behaving meanly toward those lower down the hierarchy.

Chalk one up for Lord Acton. But is it money that makes leaders meaner? Or the power connected to money? While Desai’s research shows a correlation between high pay and mean behavior, it doesn’t establish a cause between the two. Desai’s research suggests that money is an insulator. It shields leaders from the results of their actions. Continue Reading…

I wrote recently about the polarizing tone of civil discourse, and find Michael Sandel’s recent TED talk on The Lost Art of Democratic Debate encouraging. Sandel, professor of political philosophy at Harvard, looks at the essence and moral questions that underlie issues, and believes that bringing our deeply held moral convictions into debate will add to the quality of our civil discourse, contrary to popular belief which holds we have to shy away from the deep feelings and convictions we have.

In a post-game interview, L.A. Laker Ron Artest thanks his psychiatrist for helping him relax under the intense pressure of the playoffs.

First reactions to his comments were critical, yet when players thank God or Jesus for help, which they often do, I rarely hear criticism about that.

In my mind, the two are not not that different – both offer a vantage point, a detached perspective from which to handle the extreme stress and pressure of the situation. In fact, I think it would be great to hear more from athletes, politicians, leaders, and others working under fire: what do they turn to for support to help them stay awake and useful under such immense stress?

There’s been an explosion of reality TV contests –  the Next Big Whatever Star. While the chance to become a celebrity lures contestants, I think it’s the grueling rite of passage that lures viewers. Last month we had exams at the Process Work Institute, which were fairly intense 3 day affairs, with 5 different exams per student. It’s interesting that in the adult education field that I’m in, exams are controversial and their value suspect. And yet, there’s this fascination in watching these demanding and punishing contests.

Over the 20+ years we have been training people in Process-oriented psychology and group facilitation, we have gone back and forth between pass/fail exams in some form and a non-pass/fail system of using gates or benchmarks to pass through one phase to another. It seems every couple of years or so, we debate getting rid of exams. They’re an arcane gate-keeping system that does little to foster or measure real growth in knowledge, skills and ability. And yet we come back to them in some form or other. I think, beyond the test of skills and abilities, they offer an opportunity par excellence to stretch beyond oneself, and for that reason, they are hard to abolish. Continue Reading…

A friend posted this great video clip of Viktor Frankl on Facebook. What an extraordinary man he was, and what a treat to see him in action.

Frankl’s analogy of learning to fly and how he learned to aim ‘north’ to arrive at his destination, reminded me of my high school yearbook quote. In the 70s, it was fashionable to put a quote underneath your photo. Most classmates had rock lyrics, like, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” but I was captivated by a line from a Robert Browning poem, “Ah, but a man’s reach must exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?” Continue Reading…