Getting to the point
One of the paintings I was keen to see on a visit to the Art Institute of Chicago was Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat, the French Pointillist painter. This is the work that inspired Stephen Sondheim to write the musical, Sunday in the Park with George.
Thanks to The History Blog, I noticed this. To commemorate the 125th Anniversary of the painting the Institute has an adopt a dot fund raiser. It’s such a creative idea to enable as many people as possible to support such great collections and keep them accessible to us all.
Lynn Walsh – workshop and meeting facilitator – Sydney
Food glorious food – Shanghai
Shanghai has its own particular cuisine which you can enjoy as ‘fast food’ or fine dining. Some of the delights in this selection from our week in Shanghai include tea leaf smoked egg with caviar, braised Shanghai cabbage and black mushrooms, Shanghai dumplings, camphor smoked duck and clams in savoury custard. The dumpling meal (bottom right hand corner) was A$7 for two and included a bottle of beer between us. The most expensive meal (on our last night) was at Ye Shanghai and cost A$70 for two with a bottle of Californian Zinfandel.
Shanghai is hosting Expo 2010 from May to October. The city centre will be alive with a renewed Bund promenade enhancing its already modern architecture and infrastructure. Worth a revisit I reckon.
Where less is more – AFN 2009 reflections
I want to practise Open Space Technology more and more in my facilitation work. The principles are beautifully simple. It’s not just another technique with rules. It requires a shift from old facilitation think to something more (or less). The best way to understand how open space works is to experience it. Here are the four principles.
1. Whoever comes are the right people.
2. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have
3. Whenever it starts is the right time
4. When it’s over, it’s over
In addition, there’s the law of mobility. If you feel that you’re not adding value or learning anything in the conversation you have joined, go somewhere you can.
For Brendan McKeague and Father Brian Bainbridge Open Space is in their bones. Their workshop opened space for questions around self-organising. I’ve captured my take aways from Brendan and Brian’s workshop in this wordle.
Lynn Walsh – workshop and meeting facilitator – Sydney
I was saddened to learn that Father Brian Bainbridge passed away on 2 February. I met him at the Nelson AFN Conference 2009. I am grateful for one wonderful conversation with him. I am sad for those who knew Fr Brian well. It took a small period of time with him to know that he will be greatly missed.
Collaboration and diversity – thoughts from a Sam Kaner workshop
Last week I attended a workshop run by Sam Kaner at the Australasian Facilitators Network conference at Nelson in New Zealand. The 2 day workshop was entitled Designing and Facilitating Complex Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration. As I have a well-thumbed copy of The Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making, I was excited to explore the theory (and the practice) more.
I was not disappointed. Of all of the material, knowledge and wisdom shared with and among the 30 people in the room, here’s what I’m thinking about most right now.
1. Every group is diverse. Each person in a group has a piece of the truth. The moment people come into a space and are asked to collaborate and think together it sets up a dilemma. Collaboration leads to contradiction. It is not an easy co-existence.
2. Working with diversity creates an underlying tension. The tension is around finding a balance between an outcome or output that a client may expect and the quality of thinking that could create something deeper such as a sustainable transformation. Whichever side you err on as a facilitator, the need for the other will not go away.
3. “Fast thinkers in an oral tradition carry the load for the group”. This statement really struck a chord. It goes to the equality of participation, making time for all thinking to emerge, for dialogue about hard stuff and for gently drawing out perspectives and positions held.
4. “It depends”. The answer to many questions in the workshop began with this sentence. I loved that it did. Remember the diversity thing? There are many elements to take into consideration. No group and no group gathering is ever the same. There are no right or absolute answers.
- Below is my representation of Sam’s model of divergent and convergent thinking. There is much more to learn by delving deeper into its complexities. The model includes a Groan Zone – the bit that often comes after divergent thinking of a group and before group thoughts converge (or not). I feel a future post coming on. One about navigating slowly through the Groan Zone.
Lynn Walsh – workshop and meeting facilitator – Sydney
