Updates from October, 2013 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Eugene Eric Kim 2:57 pm on October 21, 2013 Permalink |
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    Here’s my writeup about the power workout from the previous bootcamp. It includes the video I mentioned last week on power poses from Amy Cuddy:

    http://changemakerbootcamp.com/2013/07/02/observations-on-power-dynamics/

    It’s interesting to compare the reactions to 12 Angry Men of the last set of bootcampers to the current set. Fodder for a future conversation (and blog post)!

     
  • Jessica 6:58 am on October 21, 2013 Permalink |  

    Power session 

    A huge thank you to Eugene and Brookings for posting power-related references. I’m looking into it! I’ve included below a handful of my reflections on the subject and session:

    • I appreciated Dana’s comments on her appreciation of a session on power that started with what we intrinsically know about power. At the same time, I personally found it more difficult to speak and write about power without having a baseline understanding of the terms, and am looking forward to reading more about the topic. I guess I’m one of those people who likes pre-reads before practice:-)
    • I loved the practice of asking folks what makes them feel powerful and then dissecting–and sharing–the elements that make up a powerful experience. In our small group, we heard things as varied as feeling physically strong, overcoming physical weakness, and facilitation.
    • Using classical and contemporary videos to learn about power was brilliant. I’d love an opportunity to analyze our own videos as well.
    • Since our last Bootcamp I had a deep, difficult, and somewhat abrasive 30 minute phone conversation with a white 60 year old tenured super smart professor about business school. Details aside, the conversation left me feeling self-conscious and confused. Nearly in tears, I asked myself: In 10 years, would I be able to better hold my own in a conversation with this man or another like him? Last week we touched on how to recognize power differentials–the symptoms… I’d like to go into how one trains him or herself to better handle these situations…

    Really looking forward to our next session.

    Jess

     
    • Eugene Eric Kim 2:52 pm on October 21, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Thanks for sharing your insightful and intimate reflection, Jess!

      You’re the second of my bootcampers (@renee being the other) to request some sort of framework before the practice. I get the desire and also the learning style, and I’m constantly evaluating when this is most appropriate. I had a workout at my last bootcamp that absolutely needed it and ended up flopping because I didn’t provide it. (Do-over coming soon!)

      For the power workout, I’m still feeling comfortable not providing it up-front, although I will continue to monitor this. I don’t mind people feeling discomfort, because that’s when learning happens, and it’s a useful competency to practice. Your third bullet helps validate that for me. However, I also appreciate it when you share that discomfort, as there’s a fine balance in how much or how little you want people to be experiencing.

      I’ll share the video from this group so that you can do the analysis if you’d like.

      Finally, thank you so much for sharing the story about your phone conversation. We have a “difficult conversations” workout coming up, and so you’ll be able to examine this question in a very real way very soon!

  • Eugene Eric Kim 10:54 pm on October 19, 2013 Permalink |
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    This isn’t the favorite thing I’ve read by Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert), but there’s a section of the article that sort of reminds me of @eugenechan’s personal project of going from a task-orientation to a process-orientation:

    http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304626104579121813075903866

    Throughout my career I’ve had my antennae up, looking for examples of people who use systems as opposed to goals. In most cases, as far as I can tell, the people who use systems do better. The systems-driven people have found a way to look at the familiar in new and more useful ways.

    To put it bluntly, goals are for losers. That’s literally true most of the time. For example, if your goal is to lose 10 pounds, you will spend every moment until you reach the goal—if you reach it at all—feeling as if you were short of your goal. In other words, goal-oriented people exist in a state of nearly continuous failure that they hope will be temporary.

    If you achieve your goal, you celebrate and feel terrific, but only until you realize that you just lost the thing that gave you purpose and direction. Your options are to feel empty and useless, perhaps enjoying the spoils of your success until they bore you, or to set new goals and re-enter the cycle of permanent presuccess failure.

     
    • Rebecca 12:52 am on October 31, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      I’d love to have a conversation about this. I heard him on NPR, and was intrigued. It’s also challenging, as I find goals really helpful for me in succeeding using a process (systems) orientation. I’m trying to be open-minded, while recognizing that by some interpretations this could challenge some core assumptions of how I do my work. I recognize he’s talking about individuals, not groups…

      • Eugene Eric Kim 3:01 pm on October 31, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        Next time I see you, I’ll bring the current Rockwood Leadership Institute strategy (which unfortunately is not available from their website). They’ve declared a “nature-driven” approach to strategy. I think it’s a bit overstated — it’s very similar to how we do strategy —but I think it’s a nice piece of work and worthy of examination.

        On a related note, you should think seriously about doing Rockwood! You could talk more with @renee about this, but I think the timing would be really good for you. @lauren did Rockwood on @renee’s recommendation, and I think she had a great experience.

  • Dana 9:34 pm on October 18, 2013 Permalink |  

    Hey everyone,

    Tuesday was my first bootcamp and it was really awesome. As a young person I am often told I don’t have enough experience or enough education, but in bootcamp you’re encouraged to tap into your own internal resources. I love that the answer isn’t in a book. A reflection I had on Tuesday was that trusting my own skills/ knowledge is challenging for me and I hope I can learn to trust myself more.

    Similar to Brooking I learned we all have different ways of seeing/ thinking about power. I appreciated the discussion we had and the opportunity to hear the wisdom of the group.

    Another reflection I had was in thinking about my project working with a multi stakeholder group. The practice I chose to shift the power dynamic was to create space for participants to feel empowered and take ownership over the process. I am not sure yet how to create that space but am hoping to get clearer. Here’s a general question to the group: how do you get participants not too rely on the facilitator to make the right conversation happen?

     
    • Eugene Eric Kim 5:38 pm on October 19, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      So glad you’re participating, @dana, and appreciate your reflections!

      Humans are social animals. We all have wisdom about collaboration that has absolutely nothing to do with school or professional experiences. I started my first collaboration consultancy when I was 27 with zero qualifications… on paper. But, I could draw on the experiences that I had working and being with other people in all kinds of contexts — sports, family, friends, hobbies, music, school (not necessarily content from the classroom), etc. Today, I have some paper qualifications, which are useful for getting work, but which actually mean little in terms of actually understanding and being able to practice collaboration effectively.

      Putting aside your year at Groupaya and your undergraduate degree in this kind of work (which is more formal education in this space than I have!), you bring experience working in restaurants and in retail. You bring your experience in dance, which to me epitomizes craft and collaboration. And most importantly, you bring your experience as a human being living among other human beings.

      At the end of the day, the only things that matter are a desire to learn and constant practice. Bootcamp is meant to help with the practice, but it can’t create the desire. If you bring that to the table, good things will happen. You’re clearly doing that. The fact that you’ve chosen the Delta Dialogues as your project is incredibly bold, and I love it. Looking forward to seeing what your bootcamp experiences unlock in you as you explore this incredibly complex project.

      For the rest of you, here’s some context on Dana’s project:

      http://eekim.com/blog/2013/02/delta-dialogues/

      It’s the knottiest project I’ve ever had to deal with, and it’s only gotten more complicated since I left.

    • Rebecca 1:00 am on October 31, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Yeah Dana!! I just want to reiterate Eugene. I’ve learned a lot about collaboration from my work in restaurants. Don’t underestimate that wisdom.

      “The practice I chose to shift the power dynamic was to create space for participants to feel empowered and take ownership over the process. I am not sure yet how to create that space but am hoping to get clearer.”

      What a great frick’n question Dana. I think you’ve picked probably the most important and hardest question 🙂 I can’t answer it. But this is at the crux of why we invest so much time in thinking through the “structures” that support any collaborative experience. How do you create enough frame to help guide the conversation, but clearly make things ‘hackable’ and emergent?

      I think the check-in, check-outs are a big intervention to this end. And in my last process, we decided to make it more explicit, asking “how are we doing as a group?” Just asking this question subtly reminds everyone they have influence over the group without explicitly saying it. This is our responsibility, not just the facilitators.

      It’s also a big part of why I try to work transparently (with varying degrees of success). OK, enough rambling 🙂

      • dana 5:59 am on October 31, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        Thanks Rebecca for your comments! I like your idea of asking a more explicit checkout “how are we doing as a group.” The checkouts seem more valuable when it’s more than just “how do you feel about today?!”

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    Brooking 1:07 am on October 18, 2013 Permalink |  

    Hi everyone – Brooking here, new addition to bootcamp and excited to join the experience. I’m a facilitation nerd and always happy to learn from others in the field. I enjoyed the stirring the power pot in our bootcamp this week, and I think my notes on power research were somewhat of a reflection in themselves, as I left reflective on what I know, don’t know, assume and imply about power. One thing I got was that we all hold different implicit notions about this confusing topic, which have significant effects on how we perceive group dynamics and how others perceive our approach to leadership and/or facilitation (12 angry men clip got us going on that question…) So I appreciated the reminder of the power to make the implicit explicit – with no right or wrong even, just that alone can really help in group processes.

    Another reflection is that being asked to reflect on power dynamics in my project was fascinating, since I’ve chosen to do a personal/internal time management & career development sort of project. I got this idea to play with internal power dynamics and to design and facilitate a half day sort of process for myself as I would for any multi-stakeholder group. I.e. the parts of self with their different interests – the voice for financial security, the voice for creative expression, community building, physical health, the voice of my parents (we all have that one right!?), etc. I left super intrigued by this experiment and plan on doing it over the weekend if I can squeeze it in, and will report back next week!

     
    • Eugene Eric Kim 5:20 pm on October 19, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Voice of my parents! Not me! 😉

      Thanks for sharing, @brooking. Hope you find the time to squeeze in your personal workshop this weekend, and if you do, looking forward to hearing how it goes!

  • Eugene Eric Kim 3:00 pm on October 16, 2013 Permalink |
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    Thanks again for a great power workout yesterday, and welcome Dana and @brooking! The power framework I mentioned in our discussion is by David Kantor. My ex-colleague, Kristin Cobble, wrote an excellent blog post about his work at:

    http://groupaya.net/blog/2012/01/david-kantor-the-secret-life-of-groups/

    He’s also written a book about his work:

    If any of you have resources to share, please add them in the comments!

     
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      Brooking 2:01 am on October 17, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Hi everyone – Brooking here, new addition to the group. Yesterday definitely stirred the pot for me in my thinking about power (personal reflections forthcoming), and I wanted to share the main camps of influence on the topic for me. First, academic organizational behavior research, specifically French and Raven’s (1950) distinction of 5 types of power:

      legitimate (i.e. role based)
      coercive (ability to punish)
      reward (ability to reward)
      referent (i.e. charisma based)
      expert (i.e. knowledge based)

      That’s just a taste of one way to categorize types of power, and I can share a nerdy academic piece that digs into this more if anyone is interested, or a quick google search would probably give you more to dig into.

      Secondly, I really like Arnold Mindell’s “process work” approach to facilitation w/ awareness of power dynamics. He’s got a great discussion of social rank and implicit power in his book Sitting in the Fire, which is about using conflict to create connection in groups. He has dealt with some INTENSELY heated power dynamic situations with incredible grace, and in my experience with process work it makes power dynamics really explicit in a way that often actually increases connection.
      http://www.amazon.com/Sitting-Fire-Transformation-Conflict-Diversity/dp/1887078002/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1381975092&sr=1-1&keywords=sitting+in+the+fire

    • Eugene Eric Kim 2:43 am on October 17, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Thanks for sharing these, @brooking! All of this also reminded me of an upcoming workshop (November 6) on power dynamics being hosted by the Leadership Learning Community, a wonderful Oakland-based organization on whose board I serve. It’s called a Star Power Workshop, it’s being facilitated by Dave Nakashima, and it’s supposed to be amazing:

      http://leadershiplearning.org/blog/llc-staff/2013-10-08/register-bay-area-learning-circle-star-power

      Have any of you heard of the Star Power exercise? I was told not to Google it in advance, as it is supposed to be a much better exercise when you come to it cold. If any of you would like to participate, I’d encourage you to register quickly, as they’re expecting to sell out quickly. It costs $20.

  • Eugene Eric Kim 2:42 pm on October 16, 2013 Permalink |  

    A lot of you have asked for more information on designing and facilitating online processes. My friend, Tim Bonnemann, is co-organizing an online unconference next week covering exactly that. It’s free to participate:

    https://ofu13.eventbrite.com/

     
  • Jessica 6:19 am on October 15, 2013 Permalink |  

    Two reflections on our last boot camp:
    1) I was listening to Marie’s challenge with an ear to the questions that were implicitly / explicitly asked and/or answered. But in the process of listing and posting questions, I sometimes forgot to include the highest level questions — the ones we started with, the most important ones. Starting with the details vs. up-framing can be so easy to do, especially with colleagues who you think are thinking about the same thing!
    2) Eugene Chan’s measured-self like experiences really got me thinking about this video: http://vimeo.com/31401743 about a young woman who decided to make a lifelong change in her weight by simply measuring and tracking her weight (10-day running average) over time, based on the Hacker’s Diet. Her story is super inspiring, and is all about creating SYSTEMS with positive and negative feedback loops that help us maintain a healthier lifestyle.
    Looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow! (BART strike permitting)

     
    • Eugene 1:31 pm on October 15, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Thanks for your reflections, Jess! Your first thought was a wonderful reminder for all of us. We all do this; this is how our muscles naturally develop. Part of the point of bootcamp is to make it a habit to start with the highest-level questions and to simply reflect back what you heard.

      Love the video and the lessons underlying it!

      Looks like the BART strike is off for at least a day, so looking forward to seeing all of you at Bootcamp!

  • Rebecca Petzel 10:42 pm on October 14, 2013 Permalink |
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    Bootcampers! I’m in desperate need of some changemaker advice. I’m running a 20 person retreat next week (once again, working with @renee) and there’s one BIG obstacle. Literally, a big, huge, board room table that despite all my attempted arm twisting will be smack dab in the middle of the meeting room.

    Any advice / strategies for neutralizing the big behemoth in the room, helping attendees connect and stay focused despite the big table standing between them? Any exercises / guidelines from successful meetings you’ve participated in?

     
    • Eugene 1:08 pm on October 15, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Ooo, excellent! A group physics exercise! Unfortunately, this was the workout that tanked the last session, and the new group hasn’t gotten to the revised workout. 🙂 Still, I’d love to hear what others think.

      Modeling bootcamp, my first question is about the goal: What is the goal of the meeting?

      My second set of questions is about understanding the constraints a bit more. How long is the meeting? Is there separate breakout space? If not, is there room around the table to do small clusters? What shape is the table? Is the room carpeted? Is there blank wall space? Are there windows? A picture of the space would be wonderful!

      Finally, a question for my bootcampers, past and present: What’s been your best meeting experience with 20 people stuck in a conference room? What made it great?

      I just finished my last site visit (of six) with Garfield Foundation. All of them have been full-day meetings in conference rooms with long tables. Yesterday’s had 15 people, which was not ideal, but was fine. We’ve gotten excellent feedback on all of our meetings both in the checkouts and afterward.

      We’ve been using graphic recording heavily at our meetings, and we’ve employed two exercises designed specifically to get people moving. The space does you no favors in this regard, so you have to prod a bit more as the facilitator. We haven’t had breakouts, but if we needed to, we could have made it work, either by pairing people up in cases of severe space constraint or more if you have some flexibility.

      So despite all of my previous ranting and ravings about the evils of conference tables, it will totally be okay. 🙂 I’ll wait to hear your answers to above before making suggestions, and I hope others will share their experiences as well.

      • Rebecca 2:04 am on October 16, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        Hi Eugene. What a great question: “What’s been your best meeting experience with 20 people stuck in a conference room? What made it great?”

        Would love to hear the answer to that question!

        And to answer yours, here are our meeting goals:

        Shared understanding of what we’ve achieved together: organize our shared thinking
        Group understands the potential and existence of “we” : The FCCP network
        Catalyze collective strategy for the network

        Hard for me to upload a picture of the space… but we will have a break-out room so that’s a plus!

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      Natalie 1:53 pm on October 15, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Doughnuts and bacon down the center of the table within easy reach of all participants?

      Hi, Rebecca! 🙂

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        brooking 9:35 pm on October 15, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        Hi there Rebecca – I’m a new bootcamper starting today and just chiming in as I read all the recent posts to catch up 😉 One Idea I used to do with Adaptive Edge was to have objects to play with in the middle of the table – white sheet paper, markers and crayons for doodling, some fun finger toys that you can get at a science/discovery sort of store or a 5 and dime, and PLAY DOUGH. Play dough is magical — it actually can really help people focus and stay in creative space while they talk, especially helpful with tension diffusion. Another trick to make use of the table is to get a bunch of cut outs of images from magazines, e.g., that might relate to content, and have an exercise where folks gather favorite images from the center of the table to create a collage related ot whatever visioning you are doing. These images, the play dough creations, doodles on the paper can all end up being powerful anchors for themes that emerge from whatever process your group is diving into. I don’t have much context to be more specific but all these are creative ways to make use of that table and bring some life to it and to your group, and make it a tangible representation of the creative space that lives between all your participants. Good luck 😉

        • Rebecca 2:02 am on October 16, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

          Hi Brooking! This is all great advice. I was just shopping for play dough today! I’ve decided to cover the whole table with butcher paper and provide crayons, pipecleaners, and play dough. It could turn into a fun palette!

      • Rebecca 2:00 am on October 16, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        Thanks Natalie! Nothing beats this advice. Eager to catch up soon 🙂

    • Rebecca 1:07 am on October 31, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Hi all!

      Just wanted to follow up and let you know that we had a good meeting despite the big table in the room!

      One thing we did was downgrade, we chose the smaller conference room that was technically too small for us. This intimacy was well worth the distance created by the large board room table.

      There was colored paper and markers all over the table, and folks started off with a creative exercise. It was a bit more touchy feely / creative then I often like, but really important in setting the tone for “this will be a different type of meeting.”

      But really, what made all the difference was the PLAY DOUGH!!! Great suggestion @brooking. Here’s a glimpse into what was created: https://plus.google.com/photos/106758161096309037901/albums/5940338959027890849?authkey=CMrjmLOYpqC5qAE

      • Eugene Eric Kim 2:57 pm on October 31, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        Glad to hear it worked out! Thanks so much for coming back to share how it went. There was some serious Play-Doh artistry going on at your meeting. My favorite is the dude bowling.

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    Renee Fazzari 6:45 pm on October 14, 2013 Permalink |  

    Hi new & old bootcampers –

    Thanks to Eugene for the reminder to come back and use the water cooler. I’m doing so with an explicit thing to “get” but I hope to find time to “give” a little too!

    Recently hosted a great retreat with several of our grantees in Boulder, designed by Rebecca Petzel, Eugene’s colleague. This was the project I was focusing on in Bootcamp. We would like a way to stay in touch with each other afterwards but don’t really want to use a listserv. I guess people feel that listserv’s get abused with too frequent posts and people start ignoring them.

    One cool outcome of the retreat is that people decided to set up an “innovation team”. Their first task is to come up with a way to stay in contact and “have conversations about projects that develop post retreat”.

    Any suggestions for technologies that would be useful? I will suggest wordpress. I have enjoyed this format. But I also think if posts don’t hit your inbox, people are unlikely to follow through with requests, etc.

    Thanks all!

     
    • Eugene 1:27 pm on October 15, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      So great to hear from you, Renee, and glad that the retreat went well! Love that an “innovation team” emerged from the meeting.

      I’ll start with some tactical thoughts, then ask you some strategic questions. I think email as a channel for notifications is totally different than email as a channel for discussion. Clay Shirky wrote a wonderful essay years ago about why listservs are such a poor space for conversation, and how blogs and wikis structurally shift that energy:

      http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_user.html

      It’s a group physics exercise, only applied online.

      My questions:

      Regarding “conversations about projects that develop post-retreat”: Are these possible or actual projects? Are these for subgroups or for everyone?

      More importantly, why do you want people to have these conversations? Is it to make sure something concrete emerges from the gathering? Is it a way to continue having generative conversations? Is it simply a way for people to stay connected?

      Finally, where does your group hangout online right now? What tools do they use for work?

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