My Integral City colleagues and I are offering an unconference within a conference – the coming Integral Theory Conference in San Francisco this summer. Here’s a bit of poem I caught this week when we circled up to work together.
A playful invitation
to kosmic playmates
to close the distance
to discern the direction
of momentum in place
to co-create a centering space
that nourishes the
flow of relating
at scale
A poem caught while meeting with colleagues as we support a city embarking on a visioning process for a city and a surrounding First Nation. The above is the work we are sensing into.
After hours and hours of listening to the public – and answering tough questions – during a series of public engagement events, my client took a few moments to hear what they heard. It was powerful.
My client is an organization at the beginning of a multi-year negotiation process with another organization. Caught in the middle are a number of citizens that will be directly affected by how this shakes out. After a series of meetings with the affected citizens, my client pulled together all staff involved in the engagements to debrief. The objective of our debrief was simple – to pause and hear what we heard over the last month.
We took the first 15 minutes of our hour-long meeting to pass a talking piece around the table, allowing each of the 15 of us to notice our response to this question.
With all that you have heard, what is resonating in you?
Here’s what they noticed:
Citizens are searching for a place for their voice to be heard
Citizens are searching for a place in the decision making
Citizens are confused by mixed messages
Citizens want to know how the proposal will affect them personally
There are many voices among citizens – they are not unified
There are varied reactions to the proposal; for some it’s a threat, for others an opportunity
They moved past the information collected, and they moved past the process used to collect the information. They discerned the undercurrents of the work they are doing.
The process underway is complicated and complex and will take years, the result of which is uncertainty and confusion. Most importantly, they recognized that their work affects peoples’ lives in real ways.
Here’s what they noticed about themselves:
We are here to serve citizens
“Us vs. Them” does not serve us – or citizens
As an organization, we need to step up
When threatened, it is hard to listen
We need to demonstrate that we care. Saying it is not enough
We have a lot of work to do internally to ensure we can deliver what we say we will deliver
They learned to take a few steps in others’ shoes, and they let those steps change how they dance with others. Wonderful.
Our cities are transforming, and so is the role of planners in the midst of this transformation.
Last month, I hosted a conversation at the Canadian Association of Planning Students annual conference about transformations, to give them an opportunity to dig into what they know and see. Here’s what we found.
We are transforming into organizers. We think of planning as a linear, mechanistic activity but cities don’t work that way. What’s coming is a new social habitat, so we played with this idea using a World Cafe, using these new operating principles:
Create places for you and others to experiment
Know and trust that the transformation never ends – it’s a never-ending quest
Cities will forever learn and adapt, and they will only learn and grow as much as we – the component parts – learn and grow
What is the best stuff happening in our cities? What are we transforming into?
There’s great stuff underway in our cities and we are transforming into cities that are about people. We are paying more attention to public spaces, to diversity, to our cultures. We celebrate with food and festivals. There is a shift underway, where we share more. Technology and social media are changing how we look at our cities and planners. Everything is more visible.
And we face significant challenges.
What are the challenges we face? What are our vulnerabilities?
When we resist change, we are at our most vulnerable. We are lured by convenience. Small thinking and lack of vision make us vulnerable. We feel the pressure to do it “right,” yet it is not possible to know what is coming. We grapple with the unknown. The choices we make matter. The leadership we create and support matters.
There is a way through.
What role do you want to play to move through these vulnerabilities?
Look at the whole. Grasp a vision and keep it in mind. It’s not about sacrifice, its about choice, and choosing to be informed and to inform. It’s about facilitating understanding, so that we can hold and consider new possibilities. Its about respecting and honouring roles and responsibilities, but also challenging them to see and pursue new possibilities. It’s about improvement.
We have no idea what we are transforming into. We just know that its underway. And we can transform into what works for us, or what does not. The only way we’ll get what we want is if we choose to engage with the transformation.
What transformations are taking place that you wish to nourish?
_____ _____ _____
This post is a wee bit of the book I am working on, while I am working on it. Here are some plot helpers of Nest City – The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities:
When Pam Moody was elected mayor of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia 15 months ago, she was inundated with demands to fix things: “The town should do this, you should do that.” She could see the difference between a pity party in a struggling town, and a town that stood up to look after what needed to be done. Her response:
YOU ARE THE TOWN
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Jim Mustard, deputy warden of the County of Inverness, Nova Scotia, is driven by his passion for children. His passion has led to an exploration of early childhood development and how our brains develop because we spend time together. In our communities, he sees lost opportunities for us to grow and develop when we place experts at the front of the room and we remain alone and in silos. We are not creating new structures in our brains to build connections with each other that will allow us to be more resilient – and create communities that serve us in the best ways possible. We don’t talk about what binds us – we sit and listen.
______
Paul McNeil, publisher of Island Press Ltd. followed his passion to create a place for Atlantic Canada’s rural communities to find local solutions. He brought people like Pam and Jim to Georgetown, Prince Edward Island, to tell stories and notice what works. They did not sit and listen to a few experts; they explored the stories in the room and they are changing the face of rural communities.
______
I met Pam, Jim and Paul as moderator for a session at this week’s Federation of Canadian Municipalities’ Sustainable Communities Conference and Trade Show in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. To replicate the Georgetown Experience, which was all about connecting people and supporting the development of new relationships, we began with their quick story of Georgetown, then we asked everyone in the room to dig into the panel’s stories and tease out the story behind the story.
Our little FCM community built connections with each other they would not have if we would have stayed in the “sage on the stage” pattern. They also proved that there is significant expertise everywhere in the room – in the community.
When citizens are engaging themselves, here’s what’s happening, according to our pop-up community:
Bring your best self – leave the negative at the door
Tell stories
Pursue unusual partnerships
Take action – don’t worry about the specifics
Trust that people want to contribute
Trust that people want to take responsibility
Offer minimal structure
Practice working with each other – commit to meeting more than once
Get together – bust the silos
Pause to look at what’s really going on, the macro
_____
As Pam, Jim and Paul reflected on the session, they all noticed that people are started for leadership, but its not leadership from elected officials thats missing. Its the leadership of people standing up to say:
I CAN. WE CAN.
_____
What work is your community calling to you to do?
Only you hold yourself back.
_____ _____ _____
This post is a wee bit of the book I am working on, while I am working on it. Here are some plot helpers of Nest City – The Human Drive to Thrive in Cities:
Ever notice how when something is on your mind, more of it comes to you?
I was looking forward to the start of a big meeting in Winnipeg last weekend, where we were bringing people together from across Canada to chart out a new path for a national organization. I knew we were going to sit in a circle to start our meeting, and the day before we started, as I was walking through Winnipeg to get to our meeting place at The Forks, I noticed circles everywhere I went.
It felt like Winnipeg – and The Forks – was getting ready to host leaders from across the continent, a role this place, where the Red and Assiniboine Rivers meet, has played for over 6000 years. I also felt Winnipeg was helping me circle up with my Self, and the place in which we were meeting, to prepare.
As a shape in which to have a conversation, the circle allows us to more fully see and hear each other.