Professional Practice – Page 5

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I have been writing here forwhile, as well as in unpublished places.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.

Important Questions Stop You in Your Tracks

My brother asked me over the weekend what the goal of my business was.It was Sunday afternoon and I didn’t have the jam for a tough conversation so I begged off.But since I didn’t want to answer it, I knew it was a question worth spending some time with.Alas – what is the goal of my business?

POPULUS exists an infrastructure for me to do the work I want to do.As a legal entity for accounting purposes, as an entity to engage in contracts with clients and partners, and as a name and image that reflects what I believe about people and communities.In a strict sense, that is all it is.It doesn’t have a goal of its own separate from me, because I am the sole owner.POPULUS is a means for me to do my work.

So the next question is: what is the goal of my work? I aim to support people who see a whole new possibility about how humans can work together to meet and adapt to the challenges communities face.I create the conditions for people to see new possibilities and take bold, innovative and sustained action to make those possibilities possible. I do this work in collaboration with others, always modeling collaborative conversation.The nature of this work shifts from conversation to conversation, from situation to situation, intentionally responsive to the conditions at hand.While there are common ingredients everywhere I go, there is no hard and fast recipe.(Another big question for another blog – what are the ingredients?)

My perfect clients and collaborators see possibilities and recognize that we need to engage each other in different ways to get there. Sometimes the path is clear, sometimes confusing and muddy, but the quality of what we do on and with the path is key; they know that they wish to create opportunities for learning, and that quality conversation will support them in seeing and taking action toward new possibilities.

My intention is to co-create, with clients and collaborators, the conditions for people to get the best from themselves.There is not a clear, linear path to do this, so this work is messy and confusing at times.The truth is, it is challenging for me to articulate this work, yet my clients, collaborators and I find that we speak the same language in non-traditional ways.There is no list of credentials, or competencies.It is visceral,experiencial and even intuitive.Rather than a checklist of skills, it is a way of being with self and others. It is unconventional work to remind us of what we already know – how to listen to each other.

The quality of everything we do turns on the quality of our conversations.Everywhere I go, I aim to host myself and others well.And learning to ask – and receive – questions that stop us in our tracks.

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.

Elect a President

There is an election for my professional association, the Alberta Association of the Canadian Institute of Planners. I have put my name forward as candidate for the position of president-elect. The successful candidate will serve one year as president elect, 2 years as president, and 2 years as past president serving as AACIP’s representative to the Canadian Institute of Planners. This is a significant commitment to the profession, one that asks me to consider completely why I would wish to take this role on for the profession.

As I look back at what really interests me about the planning profession, it is about how we as a collective are in a position to support our communities as they strive to thrive. We are in service to something far larger than our individual jobs, or even the planning profession. Collectively, we work in service to the fullness of community. To best do that, we need to continue the evolution of our professional association while holding two distinct priorities: the development of our profession as technicians and effective practitioners, and the development of the health of our communities. This involves a new era of professional practice where we acknowledge that we offer so much more than technical services to communities, or technical learning opportunities for ourselves.

The October 2010 AACIP conference is focusing on 2 questions: What if we are not planning to survive? And who is planning our future anyway? These questions can relate to both our professional membership, as well as our communities. As a profession, we need to explore these questions – among ourselves and with our communities – in order to fully respond to what we are called to do. It is time for us to notice what we, ourselves, are planning for and what we need to do to get there.

As I reflect about why I put myself forward in this way, the answer I keep coming back to is about my passion for the development of our professional practice that is in tune with what our communities need from us. I see I have a role to play in this. So, for your consideration:

The skills I offer for my colleagues’ consideration:

Executive leadership – senior leader in municipal/regional government, University Board of Governors, numerous community boards
Effective resource management – $17 M operating and $250M capital budgets
Strategic leadership focus amidst competing demands
Strategic alliances and relationships with government, stakeholders, and other professions
Appropriate balance between confrontation, cooperation, and collaboration
Meaningful processes for conversation – between ourselves, our professional colleagues and our communities

The platform I offer for my colleagues’ consideration:

A leader these days needs to be a host – one who convenes diversity; who convenes all viewpoints in creative processes where our mutual intelligence can come forth. ~ Margaret Wheatley

Without collective intelligence and wise, effective action, the future of our organizations, our communities, and our planet remain imperiled. ~ Thomas J. Hurley and Juanita Brown

After 50 years, AACIP is transitioning into something new: the Alberta Professional Planners Institute (APPI). Along with the name, the planning landscape has changed as well: now over 800 members, a diverse collective practice, and communities facing complex economic, social, ecological and governance challenges. Under the legislation creating APPI, the profession now has an explicit relationship with the public interest.

For the next 50 years, the world will continue to change. To be effectively in service to our communities, it is time to engage with each other and the larger community to ponder the following questions:

What is the public interest? What is APPI’s relationship with the public? What could it be?
How can the collective voice of APPI serve the public interest?
What skills do APPI members need to support the communities we serve?
How can APPI collaborate with other organizations to serve both its members and the public?
What values are at the core of our work?
What is our unique service to the public?
What are the emerging qualities of a new standard of professional practice?

Please cast your ballot.

Brake a Leg [sic]

Our Celebratory Cake Last night was the last night of my acting class, so it was “performance night.” We put our scenes on stage at the Citadel. Four things jump out at me as I reflect on the evening:

“You look like you want to do something with the gloves. Follow your impulse.” These were our instructor’s words to one of my mates as we were going through our scenes one last time before we hit the stage. It can be a big leap to trust our instincts in this rational world, but it is our instincts that take us to a creative place where new possibilities arise. We have a choice to make about where and when we let our impulse out.

I’ve got a hunger

Twisting my stomach into knots

That my tongue has tied off

My brain’s repeating

‘If you’ve got an impulse let it out’

But they never make it past my mouth.

“The Sound of Settling,” Death Cab for Cutie

Perhaps it isn’t my brain that keeps me back – it may well know I should let my impulse out, but there is something deeper within that I need to pay attention to. As I contemplate my work in conversational leadership, I will ponder these questions for a while:

What am I hungry for?

If I truly notice that, what is my impulse about how to let it out?

What keeps me back from what I truly offer our craft and the world?

No matter how well you know your lines, you need to grasp the plot or you’re sunk.And your mate with you. There was a moment in my scene last night when I lost my line. Stuck. I drew a blank. It didn’t matter that my mate and I had nailed them many times before. Somehow I just lost track, and when I look back I can’t quite explain why. It just happened. We tossed a few lines in that “went with the plot” for a bit. It was shakey for a bit, for both of us sitting there in the bright lights, but my mate didn’t panic, neither did I, and we trusted we would find our way. We did. He threw me a word that got me back on track and all was good.Even when you know something well, you know it works, the recipe is never the same every time. Everytime the circumstances are different. In conversation or theatre, there is no silver bullet/cookie cutter.
There are people rooting for you, even if you can’t see them.Often on the theatre stage, the lights are in your eyes and you can’t see the audience. You can’t tell if they are legion or few – except for the sounds they make. Even if you could see them, by and large to don’t know who they are.In the case of last night, it was a modest audience: our class mates, our instructor/director, the lighting guy, Citadel staff and a few people class mates brought to the event.Out front, I have a choice to make about how to proceed: trust that everyone is critically watching your every move, or trust that they want you to play a part in something wonderful happening. My choice about what I trust has an impact on what I will do and how I go about doing it. Do I believe in the worst or do I believe in the best? If I lose my lines, which plot do I want to draw on to carry me through?
Brake a leg. Even the Safeway cake writer can’t get everything right. Nobody can. And the cake tastes just fine. How much of what I worry about is just icing on the cake? (Like the numbering in this blog…)

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?

The Art of Professional Practice

I have an addiction confession: I watch all episodes of So You Think You Can Dance that I can find on TV. What pulls me in time after time are the magical moments when the dancers pour themselves completely into their craft. In these instances, I don’t have to rely on the discerning eye of the judges to notice that something special has happened. Even I, who trained as a dancer only for a few months when I was 4, can tell the difference.

In these moments, the dancers, who are already noticeably amazing, find a sweet spot. Jean Marc Genereaux, one of the Canadian judges, refers to it as “the pocket”. Mary Murphy will put you on the coveted “hot tomale train”. L’il C will say that the performance was “buck”. Invariably, in these spectacular moments the judges are in awe of the commitment the dancers make. And from time to time, another descriptive word is used: “professional”. And in the context of all the other descriptions, we can see that professional performance has a little “extra”, it is a notch above the rest.

I have been exploring with two professions, city planners and educators, how we go about our work and what we notice when we our work is getting unexpected, wonderful results. They notice that their own behaviour is unusual in these cases – they seek and embrace challenges, they are aware of strenghths and weaknesses (own and others), they look for opportunities, and place trust in others. This sounds remarkably like the comments the judges make of the dancers. If they shy from what a choreographer is asking them to do, the performance will be flat. They, as well as their choreographer, builds on their strengths to make a wonderful performance. The dancers that stand out look for opportunities to add their own flavour to the choreography – they “make it their own.” Finally, the dancers that stand out fundamentally trust others for their own success: their choreographer, their partner(s), wardrobe and set design people, producers, judges, audience, etc.

So what does this offer those of us working in the “professions”, whether city planners, lawyers, health professionals, engineers, teachers, landscape architects, social workers or geologists? I offer some questions that I am exploring about professional practice:

Do we seek the risks of new challenges?
Do we willingly exposing ourselves to feedback, trusting its truth and value to our personal growth?
Do we look for opportunities to inject our personal desires into our work?
Do we know what it feels like to be in the pocket? Do we notice if we get different results when in the pocket?
What is the commitment we are making to the work we are doing?

Embedded in all this is a chicken and egg scenario – do I/we become “professional” from learning, or do I/we learn from being “professional”? I look forward to exploring how the art of conversation will serve the art of professional practice.

Leadership in Education

We (Marg and Hugh and I) are at the Village at Pigeon Lake hosting a conversation with Alberta educators around leadership in education. Here is the harvest from yesterday’s discussion:

What brought us here

An off road learning experience

In a complex web of challenge

Energized by possibility

In communities of learning

We collect expertise

Everywhere

And ask

What does leadership look like as a practice

For me

For us

Leading new projects

With no road map

Messy moving forward

Seeking confidence

Feeling stretched

Effectively handling hats

It’s about kids

What they learn and

How they learn

There is something about

Atmospheric reflection

Positive permeation

Sharing, reflecting, learning

I left what I knew in and out

From theory to practice

With lots to talk about

Professional development

Is also cultivating

The expertise in the room

The stories where we see transformation

In learning

With transformative questions

My gifts

The kids’ smiles every day

Energize me and in return

I energize them

I make places for trust

Selfless and safe spaces

For the all of everyone

For people no matter what

They have to say

I provide unconditional love

Nurturing no matter what

With warm and inviting dedication

Deeply

I am in the right place at the right time

Knowing it will come

Generating dedication, faith

Everyone celebrating

The challenge and the learning

I accept myself as I am

I no longer trade these in for weakness

What I do not have someone else will

What I have no one else will have

Patterns in learning

We all have roadblocks

And leaders who support us

Look out for us

The struggle is something to work through

And we move through

Learning through

Continuously

With necessary tension

With others we meet

Forks in the road

To find extraordinary in the ordinary

When the child comes first

When learning comes first

With questions…

What will I be when I grow up?

Where are the open doors?

Fearless Planning Practice in Service of Community

Over the last few weeks I have been working with colleagues who have chosen to put themselves and their work out into the community in an unusual way.They have openly asked the public, stakeholders, and their peers to scrutinize their work.Moreover, they have the intention to let their work be changed (and take longer to get to their political masters) by what they hear in conversation with these folks.

The City of St. Albert is seeking a new way to develop its physical environment.Instead of conventional methods and densities that are not fiscally, socially or environmentally sustainable, they are aiming to create a place that puts people, and design for people, first.They are seeking a new win-win-win.But to do this, they recognize that they have to get there without using the traditional methods.They have to be willing to ask for help.They have to accept (and tell others) that they do not have all the answers.This is not a usual practice for municipal staff.But it is a good practice.

The other good practice is to take the risk to propose something different – to get a new result you have to try new ways of doing things.For St. Albert, it is a hybrid of conventional and form-based zoning, to be found in their draft Form-Based Zoning Regulations, a document quite different from what people (planners, developers, citizens, builders and politicians) are used to using to guide development.

St. Albert invited the wisdom of the people that will be using the document, external to the City of St. Albert, to test how it will work.Does it make sense?Does it contribute to improving quality of life for residents? Planners, engineers, technicians, a land owner and developer, a landscape architect, and a builder, rolled up their sleeves. St. Albert’s next endeavour – pull in the stakeholders with whom they need more conversation. Though counterintuitive, their intention to be willing to change will get them far.

Change, of course, is difficult, and the jury is still out on whether the initiative will fly. Whether it will be practical and marketable.Whether the political will is in place to allow change to occur.What is meaningful here, is that staff have taken the risk to create something new.They have also taken the risk to seek conversation about what they are doing.Their intention is to prepare for Council and the community the best tools to ensure quality of life for their residents.To do this, they balance their ‘expert’ role with acceptance that they do not have all the answers.They expect their work to be changed, and being open to criticism, without fighting it, is fearless.This is essential to a meaningful professional practice, and they embrace this.

More information about St. Albert’s initiative can be found at – http://www.stalbert.ca/smart-growth.

Design to Plan, Plan to Design

Last night I moderated a public session on behalf of the University of Alberta City Region Studies Centre. The speakers were George Crandall and Don Arambula, and architect and landscape architect from the firm Crandall Arambula out of Portland, Oregon. The topic – Regional Transportation: Lessons from Portland.

Regional planning is regional planning, wherever it occurs. And there are some lessons for Alberta’s Capital Region and the government of Alberta. The lessons I drew out for Capital Region planning as well as the Land Use Framework:

There is a place for provincial government to ensure that local governments are not only cooperating, but ensuring that they are producing a plan that is useful in the end. This means what is “useful” needs to be well defined.
Creating a growth management plan is not about just creating a plan, it is about creating ownership for a plan. This occurs by working with the public. Not just polls and workshops, but engagement where people roll up their sleeves and have an impact on the outcome. Particularly if this process marries the interests of builders and developers (ie practicality) and citizens.
Mechanisms to make a regional plan a reality are essential. It is not enough to have a big plan and leave it up to local governments to implement. Sample mechanism – public transportation authority, regional waste disposal strategies, regional land use design expectations and authority.
Clear implementation plans and commitments are as much as the plan itself. This implementation must factor in design front and centre to ensure the product created is what is desired. A design purpose is front and center.
In times of growth, we rely on Silver Bullets, to “just get us through”. What we need is an overall plan. That plan, must indicate what is to happen where.
A plan that indicates what will happen where clearly delineates priorities for public infrastructure investment – best use of tax dollars.
A plan that indicates what will happen where offers predictability and stability for developers and builders. This will work well for some, and not well for others, but the direction must hold.
It all revolves around great political intrigue – the creation of any plan is necessarily messy. If it isn’t tough to create, then that is a sign that it isn’t the right plan.
Imagine a jigsaw puzzle – each piece comes with a shape and a piece of the picture – is that clearly articulated for each piece of the region, or will it be for each region of the province?

In the end, we must design planning processes with the above expectations. Then we must plan to work in design to make it work.

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Tag: Professional Practice