Part 3 – Nestworks – Page 18

Mark’s wicked 10 year old wisdom

A 10 year old friend of mine has nailed down the simplest way to grow as a person. I am fascinated by how simple this is – and how hard.

Mark made some errors on the soccer field last week, got put on the bench and got a “talking to” by the coach. Mark felt really bad and hurt – he made mistakes, which made him feel bad, and his coach told him in no uncertain terms that he had screwed up.

Mark and his mom had a challenging conversation about this. Here is Mark’s wicked wisdom:

1. If I do something right, I want to hear about it. I want to know what I am doing right.

2. If I do something wrong, I want to hear about it. I want to learn how to play the game better.

3. It is really hard to hear that I am doing something wrong but I want to hear it anyway.

4. At times, coaches are not so good at delivering a message. I have to look past that because I want to hear what s/he has to say.

The treadmill gets a bum rap

I surprised myself the other day while running on a treadmill. I have always thought of the treadmill as a metaphor for people who are stuck in the rut of working too hard and they can’t stop. It finally dawned on me: I can get on or off a treadmill any time AND I can choose how hard I work.

The treadmill is a wonderful metaphor for choice in our world. Whether thinking of the treadmill in the gym for humans, or the treadmill in the hampster cage, the same principles apply for physical fitness or my work/life fitness. They also apply to a community’s fitness:

I choose how fast, slow or steep I go. If the going is too slow or too fast, I can adjust. I can slow to a walking pace to relax, or I can bump up the pace to meet the needs of the moment. I am not required go full tilt all the time. I am also not required to slack. The choice is mine.
I choose how hard to work. I make decisions about how fast or how steep the work is, in alignment with my fitness goals. I recognize that if I work hard and fast all the time, I will not last as long as if I work hard and fast with breaks to slow down.
I choose when to get on or off the treadmill. When I want a good workout, or even a steady pace, I get on the treadmill. When I have had enough, I choose to get off and go for a snack.
I choose to seek feedback about myself. As I work, I can seek feedback about the toll the work is taking on me. I can take my pulse, or use the heart-rate monitor on the treadmill, to see if my work is too hard or too easy for my fitness goals. By welcoming feedback – especially from my own body – I will make better choices for me. If I don’t seek feedback, the treadmill may just throw me off.
To make the right choices for me, I need to have goals in mind. How fast, how hard, how steep, and when to get on/off are all connected to my fitness goals. Is there a big event I am ramping up for that requires harder work for a length of time? Will I need to allow myself a break after that? Are there other things happening in life that mean I should slow down? My choices and feedback are intertwined – my goals will determine the feedback I will seek, and the feedback may alter my goals in turn.
I choose the role a treadmill will play in my life. What are my fitness goals for my work life? What sort of workout do I need at this moment? How does this workout relate to by bigger goals further off in the distance – will it help me get there, or just tire me out?
(Note: running faster on the treadmill will not get me off the treadmill.)

The bottom line is this – while on a treadmill, I have a choice about how hard and how long I work. I can also make choices aligned with my goals and intentions. These principles apply to anyone, any organization or community: intention around pace, intensity, feedback, goals.

It’s up to me to do what I need to do to suit myself.

It’s up to us to do what we need to do to suit ourselves.

The gift of receiving

I have missed and overlooked a lesson that my kids are offering me every year: the gift of receiving. They are full of joy and trust and love. They are thrilled knowing this Christmas season they will receive gifts destined just for them. They are full of wonder and awe.

I realize I have been making an assumption my whole life that giving is hard to do. It can be hard, particularly when I give something we are attached to. It was hard as a kid, but as I have grown older, it gets easier to see that what I have to give is more precious to others than it is to me. What has gotten harder is receiving gifts from others.

Back to my kids – full of joy and trust and love when it comes to asking for receiving gifts. As an adult, I am noticing that it has become increasingly difficult to receive, let alone ask for, a gift. Receiving a gift – a compliment, a favour, a thank you, a gift – is fraught with emotion. A brush-off, suspicion, anxiety, fear, powerlessness, selfishness, vulnerability all take their turn.

Within me, receiving a gift feels like I am broadcasting weakness. How dare I reveal that I don’t have everything I need, that I am all together. I must put on a brave face no matter what. If I am sick or hurt, it is easy to rationalize welcoming help. But if I am physically well, then I had better not ask for anything. But this does not serve me or others well, in the end. Even the gifts I did not ask for, the ones that make be feel bad but are really in service to my own personal learning and growing. Those gifts that I realize much later that really were gifts, not torture.

At the bottom of all of this is my sense of self worth. The biggest gift I can give is to myself – the gift of receiving. I will be honest and reveal when my soul feels bad and ask for what I need. When I receive the gift of hard-to-hear feedback, I will receive it as a gift to be in better relationship with those around me. When the world says “no” I will take that as a sign that I am not needed there yet. When the world says “yes” I will take that as a sign to jump in the canoe and head down the stream.

Receiving gifts is tough, perhaps because it is closer to my heart and my sense of well-being. Far more personal, even threatening. But also far more rewarding. And more giving.

A parting note to self (via my friend Chris Corrigan) – it is hard to give if the gift is not received.

The gift of the sprained ankle

Sometimes you have to be hurt before you sit on the sidelines.

My outdoor soccer team decided this last summer that we would field a team for the indoor season. We love doing this together and so off we go into a new adventure.

The morning of Game 3 I took an unexpected and tumbling trip down the basement stairs and landed in the emergency room, and left with four staples in my head. I went to the game that night and watched from the bench. I support my team no matter what. Then on my first shift of Game 4 I got tangled with the opposing team’s keeper and hobbled off the field with a sprained ankle.

And so I am wondering what the Universe is telling me. It might be about soccer, or just the phenomenon of noticing when it’s time to take to the sidelines for a bit. A question from a couple of team mates startled me in the middle of Game 3: “are you in agony watching and not playing?” As I reflect on this, I notice that I wasn’t in agony. I didn’t even think of being in agony until it was mentioned. I couldn’t do anything about it, so I just watched and enjoyed my team’s efforts.

I have a feeling that the agony, however, is setting in around this ankle. Not only can I not play soccer for a while, I am required to keep it elevated. I can’t be physically active. I have to sit or lie down. This could well drive me nuts. It is not lost on me that also at risk, if I do not heal well, is skating, cross-country and downhill skiing. I love winter and I consider not being able to do these things agony.

But I am curious about what windows might be opening. One gal on my team has suggested I start doing other things to keep my fitness level up. I could do weights, and she advises that combined with the weight I have lost I could get quite ripped! There might be other physical activities that could serve as cross training for running and soccer, that might even improve my performance. Beyond the physical, I can spend additional time writing and doing things I like around home. I can find a balance of these things. Nothing is lost when I notice that other things are gained – I just have to be open to finding them.

So the conscious choice I make is to be on the sidelines enjoying my team’s games and friendship. The other choice I make is to receive the gift of the sprained ankle. I see opportunities to try new physical activities and reacquaint myself with quiet things to do at home and work. I am curious about other places where I need to step back into the sidelines and let others have a turn.

Bob Principles

I have a few friends who go by the name of Bob. They are wise, leaving me with short, simple and meaningful principles to live and experiement with. I have just come across the principles Bob Stilger works with that are worth sharing:

Every community is filled with leaders
Whatever the problem, community itself has the answers
We don’t have to wait for anyone. We have many resources with which to make things better now
We need a clear sense of direction AND we need to know the elegant, minimum next step
We proceed one step at a time, making the path by walking it
Local work evolves to create transformative social change when connected to similar work around the world

These principles are powerful in their simplicity. There is great possibility in our lives and work when we believe and recognize (in both the plural and singular) that:

We are leaders
We have the needed knowledge
We can act now
We choose direction
We make the path by walking it
We learn by connecting our local with the global

The choice: believe in ourselves or sabotage ourselves.

Here’s a link to more information about Bob and his work: http://resilientcommunities.org/?page_id=48

The Itch

My son was asking me last week about what to do about mosquito bites.He was wondering if there was a way to make them stop itching.Ironically, the only way to make a bite stop itching, is to NOT scratch it.For some reason, if you scratch it, it makes it more itchy.

So there is a choice to make, we decided.Leave it alone, as hard as it may be, and it will go away.Stratch it and expect it to get more and more itchy.

The questions I left our conversation with:

When would I/WE leave an itch alone?
What will I/WE find if I/WE scratch the itch on purpose?

I have been writing here forwhile, as well as in unpublished places. And I am writing to simply scratch and itch with the intention that it WILL get more itchy.It seems to be working.The more I contemplate questions about how I engage with others, and about how WE engage with each other, I can see more and more clearly (and simultaneously less clearly) that I have a growing itch about how humans relate with each other in response to the challenges our communities we face.

I scratch as a means to explore and learn.

City By Design

Edmonton's children: Where they live, where they learn (Share Edmonton) The Edmonton Journal’s Sarah O’Donnell and Edmonton programmer Mack Male, have painted a picture for Edmonton residents and decision makers about how our city is growing, especially in light of recent Edmonton Public Schools decisions to close inner city schools.

The article and mapping show us where young families are living, and by implication where schools are needed based on the numbers of children nearby. Using this logic, it makes perfect sense to close schools where there are fewer children. Need is based on numbers of children, no more no less. Families move to the suburbs and school trustees follow the families. It’s that simple.

Or is it? This conversation seems to make several assumptions. I offer several below to test if they are the assumptions we are using, and /or if we wish to consciously create a new set of assumptions. They drive how we build and adjust the city we live in, the city we are designing while living in it.

Assumption 1: Growth just happens. Growth happens where we choose to make it happen. Cities choose where growth will happen and has a legislative framework to guide growth. Ultimately, the decision makers are City Council. There are, however, many other decision makers that influence how and where we build: home buyers, developers and builders, school boards, health providers, realtors, etc. We spend a lot of time and energy designing and building infrastructure to accommodate us living in this place together, and it is not haphazard. It takes years (and decades) to plan for Anthony Henday, LRT routes, water and wastewater systems, electricity, gas and our extensive roadway system. We build all of this in the public eye. None of it “just happens.”

Assumption 2: We have unlimited funds for infrastructure now and in the future. We expand our city without contemplating the full costs of doing so. We let school buildings close. We let vacant land remain vacant when servicing infrastructure is near by. We let land, and all the utilities serving that land, remain underutilized. If we are not able to maintain our current infrastructure well now, how do we expect to do so in the future? City Hall, for example, faces huge capital and operating budget challenges, yet we continue to spread ourselves thin. We behave as if we have unlimited revenue now and in the future. Are our pockets (as taxpayers) that full?

Assumption 3: We need a lot of space from our neighbours. It seems that having oodles of space – in our yards and homes – drives Edmonton’s design. Why are we afraid of being close to other people? Or sharing park space instead of large private yards? What is behind this? What makes neighbours bad, especially if there are a lot of them? Perhaps the devil is not in the density, but in the design of how we build the buildings and the space around them. What if we built exciting spaces and ensured the services were on hand – like schools, LRT – to create viable neighbourhoods. Viable from a social, environmental and fiscal perspective. We have yet to really pay for all this space we are enjoying.

Assumption 4: School boards don’t build cities – City Hall does. Schools have an absolutely critical role to play in physically building cities – look at the schools and green spaces everywhere. They also play a key role in supporting the well-being of neighbourhoods. Schools are critical formal and informal gathering places that help make a neighbourhood healthy. A school board’s decisions are critical. They are not isolated from everyone else’s actions. Our city builders include school systems (secondary and postsecondary), health systems, energy and water systems, city hall, and our builders and developers. No one entity or initiative works completely in isolation – they all have a piece of the neighbourhood puzzle.

What if we switched those assumptions for the following principles in decision making at many scales (from citizen up to a large city network of organizations):

Use current infrastructure before building new
Create and design for exciting spaces where people want to spend time
Bring nature to the people and people to nature
Create and support a transportation system that moves people and goods efficiently (rather than the most cars/trucks efficiently)
Integrate the interests and dreams of citizens, community organizations, our city institutions and our city builders
Consider the cumulative costs of our city design choices – actively seek feedback on our choices

I suspect that these principles seem innocuous, but they are not when we have the feedback systems in place to truly understand if our actions are in line with our goals. The City of Edmonton, in creating and providing open source data, is providing a critical feedback loop for Edmontonians to understand how the city we are creating works. There are exciting conversations ahead in Edmonton’s future.

Our collective actions -as citizens, community organizations, school systems, business owners, city government, health providers, developers, builders, realtors, home buyers, etc. – create our city. Is it the one we want?

I wonder if the evidence shows that we are getting what we want, or if we are getting what “just happens.”

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/edmonton/schools+meet+suburbs+needs/3067140/story.html ttp://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/school+map/3056784/story.html

Corduroy, Bog and Ice

Of all the experiences a person has in 40 years of life, I wonder why a walk on the Cedar Bog Trail in Manitoba’s Bird’s Hill Provincial Park 18 years ago still sits in my mind.The sensation of walking froma hot, humid Manitoba summer day into a dark, cool forest of cedars left its mark deep inside me.

A month ago, after arriving in Winnipeg after a 13 hour drive and an evening of catching up with friends, our conversation shifted to how we were going to spend our time together over the course of our spring break visit.First up: the Cedar Bog Trail.It was calling me back.

The trail starts in aspen poplar forest, shifts to oak trees, then descends to boggy land full of cedar.The change in temperature was startling on a hot early spring day as we moved from the new sun on our bodies into cold and ice in the shade.The shock of cold – so quickly forgotten after a few warm spring days – reminded me of how quickly we acclimatize to new circumstances.I was also reminded of how the world sends us constant reminders of past circumstances, and how the past, the present and future are constantly being juggled.

In the bog, to make it passable, logs have been laid perpendicular to the path – a corduroy road.The quality of the corduroy is aged and suspect at this stage in the path’s life. Frozen, our passage was unhindered; thawed, our passage would have been arduous and messy since the corduroy logs themselves are now few and far between.I was thankful that the path was frozen. Corduroy logs up through the ice on Manitoba's Cedar Bog Trail. March 28, 2010

Just before we left the bog, we came across an area that was a large expanse of ice.In a few days the passage would be completely underwater.We “skated” on the ice, avoiding the ends of a couple of corduroy logs poking out of the ice and bog. Then we made our way out of the bog, back to the oak and aspen forests and back to Winnipeg, andeventuallyback to Edmonton.And the ends of old corduroy logs keep poking at me, prodding me to further make sense of the Cedar Bog Trail.

When thinking of the inadequate logs sticking through the ice I wrestled with two ways to look at this situation:

When the ice melts there will not be enough logs for the trail to be easily passable.I can see this clearly through the ice.People will be bogged down.
It is passable right now!Just skate over it. Deal with the problem later.

My default is the first.When I see a deeper problem that needs to be addressed I aim to solve it.I find it difficult to notice the things that can not be addressed right now – the things under the ice that just simply can not be solved right now.And don’t even need to be solved right now.And can not be solved right now. There is a time to just let things slip by, and I must ask:

Can and should it be solved now?
Is it my problem to solve?
Is it even a problem?
How can I equip myself appropriately?
Does this path need to be well tended?
Do all paths need to be well tended?

Even when I think I have left the old corduroy road behind, it keeps popping back up. In this trail, it pops up in my memory everytime I explore a forest.And in the road at our family place at the lake, pieces of the 90 year old corduroy road keep popping back up through decades of gravel and tar.

Mayday

One of my son’s favourite television shows is Mayday, chronicling the events leading to and resulting in airplane disasters – or in the case of a recent episode, what should have been a disaster.We found big lessons for the pilots of our communities, cities and towns.

In “Panic Over the Pacific” (Episode 6, Season 4), ChinaAirlines Flight 006 is bound for San Francisco.After an engine failure (one of four engines on a Boeing 747) that should cause no significant issues, the plane plunges 10 km in just 2 minutes.The undercarriage doors and horizontal stabilizers are ripped off the plane under the force of the plunge, yet the crew land the plane safely.By many accounts, they should not have been able to save the plane, then we find out that the plunge need not have happened in the first place.

The conclusion: the pilot caused the plunge by focusing on the one instrument that was telling him the plunge was starting and choosing not to believe it.Due to massive fatigue and jet lag, he was spatially disoriented and unable to simply adjust as needed to the engine failure.The investigators confirmed all instruments were in working order.All the pilot needed to do was look at the other instruments to see that the plunge was indeed beginning, disengage autopilot, and put his foot on a pedal.The corroborating evidence was on hand – as well as a simple solution.

The investigators offered two significant observations about this event that relate to the survival of humans on an airplane:

1.Focus on the “dashboard”, not one instrument. Attention to only one instrument – whether we believe it is right or wrong – provides us with only a sliver of information.A dashboard of instruments will send us more complete information and tell us if we are on the right track or not.Nothing is fully dependent on one instrument.

2.There is a reason why there is a human at the front of the plane. Autopilot is designed to solve the problems that we have come up with so far, but the creative human mind is needed when new problems arise that Autopilot can’t handle.In the case of our pilot over the Pacific Ocean, the pilot needed to intervene – just put a foot on a pedal.He didn’t, and they plunged to earth.

Compared to a human community, an airplane is a simple system.There is a chain of command and it is clear who is in charge.If we take a town, city, region, province, country, continent or even the planet, we can see that it is less clear who the pilot is – there are many.There are many destinations and modes of travel, but the investigators lessons still resonate and raise the following questions for a community of any scale in any setting:

1.What brings us together?What is important to us?

2.Who are we? Who has the power to get us to our destination?

3.What is our destination?What will it look like when we get there?

4.What are the wise ways to get to our destination?

5.What are diversity of skills and gifts we bring to get us there?

6.How do we knit all of the above together through the messy process of community?

In exploring the above, we find that there are many things that catch our attention; homelessness,residential densities, economic development opportunities, transportation and education systems, health care delivery, ecological impacts, parks and open spaces, opportunities for recreation, community development, energy generation, clean technologies, telecommunications, food security, urban design, emergency services, etc.There are many systems in place currently that monitor each of these.The question then is, are we watching all of them, or just one instrument like our pilot.Perhaps we do not all need to watch all of them, but we need to find ways and places to still do so.A collective sense of piloting is crucial to our survival.

This is ultimately about integrating pieces of information throughout a community system.It is about creating the time and places to connect the silos in our communities that look after the well-being of so much that makes our communities complete.A high school principal comes to mind who recently had a significant first experience: he was in the same room as people working for municipal and provincial government that were not in education.He pointed out immediately the value of this – they share interests, insights and information.How could this go further?What are the ways and places where we can attend to collectively noticing what the silos that serve us are noticing, so that we can share a common sense of direction?I offer the following:

1.Create the conditions for conversations that cross silos with the express purpose of noticing a larger picture and shared intention

2.Cultivate a common destination

3.Create a dashboard of instruments that monitor our progress to reach the destination

4.Create a culture of resilience and adaptability where change is welcome

In the case of our pilot above, his misjudgment was attributed to fatigue.I am curious about the frantic nature of work that seems so predominant these days.What are we missing by moving so fast?Are we noticing our instruments?Are we misreading them?Are we afraid of them?Are we mistakenly on autopilot? Do we have the right instruments?

How and when will we know if a Mayday call is legitimate or not?

Poking the Bear

I was describing to a friend last week about a tough situation in which I found myself recently.In room full of teachers, I told them that they appeared to have shut down on their own learning.Her response:ohhhhhh, you just poked the bear.

I have been wrestling with this bear now for several days.I hold a deep intention to cause no harm to the people with whom I live, work and volunteer.But this intention is not superficial. It is not just about protecting the people around me from harm; it is as much about noticing when I and the people around me may be causing harms to others.And with this in mind, I find myself often telling clients (and other people in my life) things they might not want to hear.

But in the spirit of doing not harm, my intention is to do this in a compassionate and direct way. As my Art of Hosting colleague Toke Moller put it, a dull knife through a tomato is an aggressive and harmful act.A sharp knife through the tomato is compassionate.This isn’t about cutting people up with nasty things to say.It is about providing honest feedback – whether to an individual or a group – that is in some way what they need to hear.What they need to hear, but not necessarily what they want to hear.

So my own personal wrestling with the bear is about being brave enough to be direct and honest, because once I have poked it, I have to be prepared for the consequences – it might take a swipe at me.It is this consideration that makes me think of timing options to poke the bear:

Right then and there – when it needs to be said
Later – when it is a better time
Never – just leave it be

As the bear pins me to the forest floor, I deliberate about what would have happened if nothing was said: nothing would have changed and teachers would teach rather than learn.If something was said later: nothing would have changed and teachers would teach rather than learn.Right then and there – the quality of the work that followed, and commitment to it, was significantly higher.The down side, I realize, is that people’s feelings were hurt because they were told something they didn’t want to hear.Some people were angry with the feedback.Some closed ranks and got defensive.Some said thank you – we needed to hear that.

The bear swiped around to protect itself. And in the end, I ask myself what it is protecting itself against, and the answer is astounding:learning.

I have slipped out from beneath the bear, for now, and I look it in the eyes.I will continue to poke the bear and give it feedback from time to time – always compassionately – because I trust that over time it will be received, constructively and positively, in ways I will never know as it makes its way through the wild world.

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Category: Part 3 – Nestworks