Laird's blog

Recently I was facilitating for a group that I've worked with a number of times—a community that was familiar with a lot of my thinking (as well as my penchant for graphic metaphors). While I was being given background on a complicated topic, one long-term member confided, "You know, it'll be one of those hairy eyeball topics."

Momentarily bewildered by that phrase, I paused. Then I laughed. "Actually," I said, "I think you mean it's a hair ball, which is bad enough."

The biggest challenge with complex topics is not knowing where to start (almost anything can work); nor is it figuring out the best way to subdivide the topic into digestible chunks (there are often a number of productive ways to slice and dice big things into manageable yet meaningful flllets. The hard part is holding clearly the ways each subtopic relates to others and having the discipline to keep the group focused on one at a time.

The challenge is the lure of interrelationship—the ways that the answer to one subtopic almost always impacts how you answer others, and it's damn hard—especially when you're first getting under way and don't have answers to many other subtopics to guide you—to resist the temptation to jump to another, related topic before completing the one you're on. What I urge groups is that they assume for the time being that they have an answer they'll like to related questions—they just don't know yet what it is.

Using this approach you can productively chip away at an iceberg. Eventually all you'll have left is a pile of ice cubes, with which to cool your celebratory drinks at having completed the Herculean task of cleansing of the Augean Stables. (How's that for a mixed metaphor?)

Another big benefit of this divide-and-conquer approach is that it generates momentum, which is important to group morale. That is, when your bites are smaller, they're easier to chew and swallow, and each one gives the group a discrete experience of progress. You can check something off your To Do List and actually observe the number of remaining topics diminish.

Here are a couple of traps:
o  Some people don't enjoy being narrowly focused on one subtopic. They find it inhibits flow and stifles creativity. 

While there's no doubt some truth to that claim, all too often "free range" equates to "free of product." That is, when a group is all over the place—even when no one is off topic (which isn't that high a bar when the topic is broad)—it can be the very devil figuring out what to do with stream of consciousness input. While flow and creativity are valuable commodities, they don't guarantee success per se. 

Better, in my view, is that you offer a clear construct (a defined non-trivial subtopic) in which flow and creativity can flourish—gently, yet firmly, redirecting folks who start coloring outside the lines.

o  Some are consistently lured by the idea of prospecting for the mother lode: a unified field theory that will be a simple solution to the complex issue at hand. The idea is that sitting with the gestalt of the whole issue (and not limiting the conversation to fragments) will allow for a breakthrough understanding that will elegantly resolve the whole mess in a single stroke of brilliancy.

Because this strategy is occasionally successful—perhaps just enough to reinforce the desire to search for the Holy Grail each time—it can be difficult to get some members to give it up. It can have the addictive quality of buying lottery tickets: once you've managed to win once, it can be borderline irresistible not plopping down a couple bucks every time you're at the gas station.

The nuance here is knowing when a topic is complex enough that the piecemeal approach is a surer bet. The main clue here is the number of pieces. Simply put, the more interesting components (ones for which there is not an obvious and overwhelming group preference) there are to the consideration, the less likely it is that the group can weave a pleasing tapestry with all skeins on the loom at once.
• • • At the end, after all the threads have been addressed as subtopics, you have to see if it all hangs together well. It's not uncommon that there's some tailoring needed at this stage, to make sure you have a suit that fits handsomely. But don't be daunted. It's almost always the case that last minute rehemming (and hawing) entails less shock than discovering at the prom that your new suit of clothes doesn't include pants—or enough fabric to cover your hairy eyeball.

[For more on this topic, see my blog of Sept 23, 2008, Untangling Hair Balls.]

In order for honeybees to survive cold winters, the workers surround the queen in a ball, conserving heat by dense packing. When the bees on the outside of the ball get cold, they rotate positions with those on the inside, so that all can survive. Although operating on a different time scale, healthy communities are rather like healthy hives.

If you conceive of a community as a living organism there is a core of committed individuals that collectively comprise the heart, and I want to write about the relationship of the heart to the whole, and what it takes to maintain a vibrant heart.

In a healthy beehive there is exactly one queen at the center. If there are ever two they will fight until one dies or is driven out. If a hive loses its queen it will try to make a new one (by feeding larva royal jelly); if the larva are too advanced to make this adjustment, the hive will die—unless the apiarist is able to requeen it in time.

Communities, however, are more nuanced on the matter of leadership. To be sure, some have a single charismatic and inspirational leader, a la the beehive. While there is definitely trickiness in such groups to pulling off leadership succession without loss of vitality or dynamism—partly because strong queens tend to suppress the development of queen-like qualities among worker bees—it can be done if the reigning queen has sufficient awareness of the need to groom a successor, and there is enough quality material to work with among the disciples.

While the charismatic leader model is historically the most stable and long-lived in the sweep of the Communities Movement—think Oneida (John Humphrey Noyes), the Shakers (Anna Lee), and even Kerista (Jud Jerome)—most groups listed in FIC's Communities Directory today make decisions collectively, depending on the group's wisdom, rather than on the wisdom of any single individual. This model (which is almost the exact opposite of the charismatic leader model) relates to the beehive in that there is a cadre of members who hold the leadership center, and in a healthy group the composition of the cadre rotates over time.

Further, it is the responsibility of those in the heart to judiciously invite the outer bees into the center, rather than expecting them to fight their way in, or to wait until the inner bees die off. Thus, a healthy heart will not only pump a steady supply of nourishing blood to the entire corpus of the group, it will offer a permeable membrane such that there is a clear pathway by which newbies (new bees) are able to become the heart.

Like with a hive, in a healthy community every bee need not be highly skilled, fully integrated into the group's culture, or equally capable of leadership—they just need enough members with those qualities to establish a strong enough flywheel that the rest of the hive is pulled along. The leadership cadre, or heart of the group, needs to consistently articulate the community's common values and be walking their talk—incorporating those values into their everyday lives. The core sets a tone. If the note sounded is clear and melodious, harmony ensues, creativity flourishes, and joy abounds. Friction leads to compassion and resolution; rather than brittleness and divisiveness. Newer folks will respond to the positive modeling like, well, a bee to nectar.

The key here is that in a healthy hive the core bees take the initiative in welcoming the outer bees into the opportunity to serve in the core—not to be drones (or clones), but to make their own choices about what frequency to buzz at and what flowers to frequent in service to the hive. 

In community, it behooves us to be all we can bee.

This entry continues a series in which I'm exploring concepts encapsulated in a set of 91 cards called Group Works, developed by Tree Bressen, Dave Pollard, and Sue Woehrlin. The deck represents "A Pattern Language for Bringing Life to Meetings and Other Gatherings."

In each blog, I'll examine a single card and what that elicits in me as a professional who works in the field of cooperative group dynamics. My intention in this series is to share what each pattern means to me. I am not suggesting a different ordering or different patterns—I will simply reflect on what the Group Works folks have put together.

The cards have been organized into nine groupings, and I'll tackle them in the order presented in the manual that accompanies the deck:

1. Intention
2. Context
3. Relationship
4. Flow
5. Creativity
6. Perspective
7. Modeling
8. Inquiry & Synthesis
9. Faith

In the Context segment there are eight cards. The keystone pattern in this segment is labeled History and Context, so that's where I'll begin. Here is the image and text from that card:  

History and Context hugely influence how the rest of the patterns are invoked. Pay attention to why things are the way they are and what the people coming expect. Tune in to discern when to respect the existing culture vs. when it benefits to stretch toward something new.

People see reality through the lens of their experience. If the topics to be addressed have had a rocky history, then loins will be girded when revisiting them. If the group has not had success dealing with distress, than you can expect there to be tension whenever there is tension.

Sometimes change (in formats, facilitation style, setting, time of day, etc.) will help a group open up to new possibilities—while the past is prologue, it need not be fate. Sometimes change will be unsettling, and you can ask the group to swallow too many new things at once. You must gauge the group's range and resilience. Does it slant more toward risk tolerant or risk averse? Sometimes the group will be ready for a change out of frustration (we've been stuck for a while; what have we got to lose?); sometimes the group will open up to experimenting from a sense of security (we trust our base and the strength of our connections; if this doesn't work we can always return to what has served us well in the past). More, you need to be sensitive to how you are perceived by the group and its willingness to trust you. 

The image that accompanies this pattern is evocative. Where one remembers flood, another—perhaps someone who has never known high water—sees only dry ground. Neither is wrong, yet it may require a strong construct to bridge the swirling eddies that separate these realities. Unexamined, imagine how differently these two people would respond to a proposal to purchase a boat? What would be prudent to one would be paranoid to the other.

Context comes in many flavors. Let's walk down the aisles of your local Context Mart and peek at what's on the shelves:

o  Relationship to Cooperative Culture
In the mainstream culture, meetings are a civilized battle (at least they're civilized most of the time; sometimes they're vicious). The dominant society is competitive, hierarchic, and adversarial. If you're operating in a cooperative group, there is an attempt being made to turn those things around—to think and act collaboratively instead of competitively; to be curious when people disagree with you, rather than combative. While the cooperative theory isn't that hard to lay out, it ain't easy undoing a lifetime of conditioning and living up to cooperative ideals in the dynamic moment—especially if it's about something close to the bone. 

Hardest of all to navigate is the situation where Person A is being enthusiastically cooperative and Person B is being defensively reactive. On the one hand, you want to honor B's viewpoint and make sure the train doesn't pull out of the station with them still standing on the platform. On the other, you want to object to their uncooperative energy and reestablish a collegial and creative atmosphere to continue the examination. 
 
o  Relationship to Meetings
As a professional facilitator, I believe that practicing one's craft is an important step in getting better. When I work with students learning this skill I urge them to be brave and volunteer often to run meetings, so that they'll get this practice. I tell them, "Hey, the bar is really low. Most meetings are just awful and you almost can't help but offer a better experience, even if you're just a beginner. While your performance may have been only so-so, most participants will think it was fine."

For the most part, people in Western society think of meetings as a necessary evil, as something you try to survive—certainly not something to look forward to. Even if your cooperative group is trying to do better in this regard, you need to be aware of the possibility that meeting participants are at different places along the journey to rehabilitating meetings as an opportunity for celebration, connection, and collaboration.

If one participant dreads meetings, while another squirms in their seat in anticipation, you have a decided gap in context that you'll need to navigate.

o  Relationship to the Topic
Not everyone identifies as a stakeholder on every issue (thank God), and people tend to behave differently based on how much they care about the outcome. More nuanced still, people will behave differently based on whether prior engagements with that topic have gone well (by their lights) or gone poorly. If it went well last time, then it will probably be smooth sailing again. If it was tough sledding last time, then it will likely be a slog.

Unconsciously, we tend to expect that future engagements on a given topic will be a continuation of past engagements. While that may not be good thinking, it's human nature, and we're better prepared for meetings when we have a sense of participants' personal history with the topics queued up for consideration. It's especially useful to know if there's been what Yoda might describe as "a disturbance in the Force."

o  Relationship to Other Stakeholders
Sometimes the trickiest dynamics are not the identification and balancing of values underlying positions, but the damaged connections and/or low trust between the people active in the consideration. 

This can play out in a number of ways:
—Personality clash, where one person's behavior is found irritating, independently of what they're saying.
—Unresolved tension, where an unhealed prior hurt leaks into the current situation.
—Poor track record, where there is skepticism about the reliability of a person's commitments to a project because they've flaked out or under-performed in the past.
—History of selfishness, where there is low trust in the speaker's ability to think in terms of what's best for the whole.
—Power imbalances, where there is a reaction to strong statements from someone too new to the group to have established credentials. Or, going in the other direction, a reaction to a well-established member who appears to expect deference by virtue of their years in service, rather than because of the strength of their thinking.

o  Relationship to the Facilitator
While the ideal facilitator for cooperative meetings is skilled, neutral on the topics, and well prepared, sometimes you have to settle for less than that. Participants can have doubts about the facilitator in any of these respects and that perception can undermine the facilitator's effectiveness just as surely as their making poor choices.

o  Relationship to the Setting
The size and shape of the room; lighting; time of day; quality, variety, and arrangement of seating; acoustics; and presence or lack of visual aids all have an impact on the atmosphere and energy of the meeting. Good facilitators give conscious thought to these factors in setting things up to create an environment congruent with the kind of meeting desired, and in a way known to be conducive to productive engagement based on knowledge of the group. (Heart sharing tends to go better in the evening, with the chairs in a circle and soft lighting. Business meetings typically benefit from a morning slot, with good natural lighting, and the chairs arranged to focus attention on a projector screen, flip chart, or easel.)

o  Relationship to the Format
Even though people always bring their emotional and intuitive selves to meetings (just try checking them at the door and see how that goes), that part of our humanness is not always welcome. Lacking agreement about whether to work emotionally at all—and most groups do not have explicit agreements about this—there will be predictable tension between the "Product People" who believe that meetings should be principally focused on addressing issues and solving problems, and the "Process People" who believe that meetings should only proceed in ways that enhance relationships among members.

While these two views are not inherently inimical, and can learn to play nice together, you can usually witness a manifestation of the awkwardness between them whenever there is a request to have a sharing circle, where people are given the opportunity to use valuable plenary time to speak from their heart, perhaps to clear the air or to establish the breadth of the environment in which an issue will be considered. It is expressly not a time for problem solving. What may be pejoratively styled as woo-woo navel gazing by the Product folks may be considered the gem of the meeting by the Process contingent, and this conextual gap will need careful navigation.

o  Relationship to Speaking in Group
If you take into account that many fear public speaking more than death, it's hardly surprising that in any normal group you'll have members who find it awkward to state their views in front of everyone. What's show time for some is no-go time for those whose tongues are frozen with fear. Thus, you need to think about how to make input giving more accessible. (Small group breakouts can help, as can a culture of responding first with what you like about hat was just said, rather than with "but… ")

o  Relationship to Stamina and How Long the Group's Been Sitting
There's an art to managing the group energy and sequencing agenda items such that the heavy lifting (when the need for high focus and resiliency is greatest) is attempted when the group's energy tank is closer to F, rather than edging toward E. 

Most people need blood flowing to their brain to do their best thinking (duh), and that translates into avoiding heavy agenda right after a meal (when blood is otherwise busy in the stomach) and getting traction on tough topics within 30 minutes of people sitting down. By and large it's unproductive to ask a group to sit longer than 90 minutes without a break or a movement exercise, so a good facilitator won't open up a large can of complication unless there's enough of the 90 minutes left to get the worms back in the can, or at least well tagged and into holding pens before it's time for a break.
• • • As you can see, context and history have a lot to say about what gets said and how it's heard. Flying blind, or worse, simply assuming that others will relate to topics and the meeting environment in the same way that you do, is sure to lead to unpleasant surprises. There might be a flash flood coming at you out of a clear blue sky.

Today I'm going to start a long series in which I'll explore concepts encapsulated in a set of 91 cards called Group Works, developed by Tree Bressen, Dave Pollard, and Sue Woehrlin. The deck represents "A Pattern Language for Bringing Life to Meetings and Other Gatherings."

In each blog, I'll examine a single card and what that elicits in me, as a professional who works in the field of cooperative group dynamics. My intention in this series is simply an amplification of what each pattern means to me. I am not intending to suggest a different ordering or different patterns—I will simply reflect on what the Group Works folks have put together.

The cards have been organized into nine groupings, and I'll tackle them in the order suggested in the manual that accompanies the deck:
1. Intention
2. Context
3. Relationship
4. Flow
5. Creativity
6. Perspective
7. Modeling
8. Inquiry & Synthesis
9. Faith 

in the Intention segment there are five cards. The keystone pattern in this segment is labeled Purpose, so that's where I'll begin. Following is the image and text from that card:
Purpose is the destination we choose from a sea of possibilities. Shared purpose calls us together and focuses us, evolving as understanding deepens. It gives impetus and energy to our work—when we're connected with genuine purpose, energy flows and things happen. For me, the concept of purpose varies considerably by scope. I'll illuminate four, working from larger to smaller. —Purpose of the Group For groups to function well, it helps if everyone is mindful of the reason the groups exists;  what it's trying to do in the world. This helps members shift perspective from what they'd like with respect to a given issue, to thinking about what's best for the group. 
While holding the group's purpose clearly doesn't tend to be a problem when groups are first founded, there can be drift over time and occasionally groups are well advised to pause to reflect on whether their vision and/or mission statement are still valid or in need of adjustment. 
When a group labors over how to respond to a given issue, it is often wise to refer to common values and purpose in order to build a solid foundation for a response.
Given the potency of purpose, it's important that groups do a solid job of inculcating in new members a sense of common values and mission. —Purpose of the Meeting  In the sense of what you're hoping to get out of a particular meeting, purpose can be a synonym for "objectives"; what we want to get out of this time together. Lacking clarity about that can lead to considerable drift in how time is used.
For example, there is often tension between using plenaries to address issues and using plenaries to build relationships—which are different purposes. If half of the group is prioritizing the former and the other half the latter, it can lead to a train wreck when someone says something like, "I don't know, but there's something about this proposal that just doesn't sit well with me." The problem solvers will be ready to go on (until and unless the speaker can get less nebulous), while the relationship builders will want to hear more. Instant tension. —Purpose of a Format There are many ways in which to approach topics, and many factors that go into selecting which format to employ. In selecting how the group may most productively engage on a topic, a skilled facilitator will be weighing such things as whether the group needs: a) To move physically b) To change pace c) To work in small groups so that more people will get air time in a less daunting environment d) To share in such a way that everyone hears what's being said. e) To focus on feelings more than problem solving —Purpose of a Comment While you might think that statements are always self-explanatory, it's not at all unusual for a comment to be confusing, with the group not understanding why a person said what they did. It might appear to be off topic, it may make no sense, it may have been too rambling to follow accurately.  In any event, if you don't understand where a comment is coming from, it's that much harder to know where it's going—or how to work with it constructively.  • • • In sum, whenever purpose is unclear—at any scale—you need more information. 

This entry continues a long series in which I'm exploring concepts encapsulated in a set of 91 cards called Group Works, developed by Tree Bressen, Dave Pollard, and Sue Woehrlin. The deck represents "A Pattern Language for Bringing Life to Meetings and Other Gatherings."

In each blog, I'll examine a single card and what that elicits in me as a professional who works in the field of cooperative group dynamics. My intention in this series is to share what each pattern means to me. I am not suggesting a different ordering or different patterns—I will simply reflect on what the Group Works folks have put together.

The cards have been organized into nine groupings, and I'll tackle them in the order presented in the manual that accompanies the deck:
1. Intention
2. Context
3. Relationship
4. Flow
5. Creativity
6. Perspective
7. Modeling
8. Inquiry & Synthesis
9. Faith 

In the Intention segment there are five cards. The second pattern in this segment is labeled Commitment. Here is the image and text from that card:

A group dedicated to its work persists through obstacles, distractions, and lulls. Remind yourselves of your larger purpose and what you really care about. As the group moves toward action, support effectiveness by getting clear on who will do what by when and how to ensure it really happens.  For me, commitment mainly distills into: a) dedication to cooperative process; b) persistence in working toward goals; c) steadfastness with respect to relationship; and d) integrity when acting and making decisions consistent with values.  The challenges to commitment manifest as awkwardness, isolation, impatience, weariness, self-absorption, and distraction. There may be times when it's tempting to cut corners, give in, give up, settle for less, or otherwise weaken one's resolve, but committed people don't do those things; committed people stay the course. Finding the strength to sustain commitment (especially when one is tested) is often related to clarity of purpose and proximity to personal values (or identity). The closer to the bone, the firmer the resolve. 
In cooperative groups (in contrast to competitive ones) it matters as much how you do things as what you do. Thus, I rank commitment to process equal to commitment to objectives. In cooperative settings you need to listen to both drumbeats, not just give obeisance to the god of product.  While there's no question that attention to implementation is appropriate—the who does what when and with what resources—that's not where the heavy lifting of commitment is done. For my money, commitment is mainly tested in the trenches of discussion and proposal generation. For more on these concepts, see my blog of Jan 30, 2010, Nurturing the Culture of Collaboration and Curiosity.
All of that said, it can be an interesting nuance distinguishing commitment from stubbornness. When does dedication to principles degrade into pigheadedness? When does the gold of loyalty debase into the lead of chauvinism? I believe that the litmus test is whether there's curiosity and a willingness to be wrong. The love-it-or-leave-it folks have essentially checked their minds at the door (a mule has commitment, but who gives a shit?); while those who are prepared to seriously entertain opposing viewpoints are the one's whose dedication is inspiring. They are the ones who thoughtfully sort the wheat of principle from the chaff of casuistry, and the bread baked from that grain is both uplifting and nourishing. Wouldn't you like a thick slice of fresh-baked commitment right about now?

This entry continues a series in which I'm exploring concepts encapsulated in a set of 91 cards called Group Works, developed by Tree Bressen, Dave Pollard, and Sue Woehrlin. The deck represents "A Pattern Language for Bringing Life to Meetings and Other Gatherings."

In each blog, I'll examine a single card and what that elicits in me as a professional who works in the field of cooperative group dynamics. My intention in this series is to share what each pattern means to me. I am not suggesting a different ordering or different patterns—I will simply reflect on what the Group Works folks have put together.

The cards have been organized into nine groupings, and I'll tackle them in the order presented in the manual that accompanies the deck:
1. Intention
2. Context
3. Relationship
4. Flow
5. Creativity
6. Perspective
7. Modeling
8. Inquiry & Synthesis
9. Faith 

In the Intention segment there are five cards. The third pattern in this segment is labeled Invitation. Here is the image and text from that card:

Bring people together by expressing a clear call toward shared purpose, tuned to getting the right people into the room with shared intent. Let people know why this is important and what to expect, while requesting the honor of their presence.

While the image and words on this card are elegant, they also tend toward the formal and come across as a bit too starched. To be fair, there are some gatherings in life freighted with sufficient ritual and weightiness to justify embossed letterhead and formal attire (a wedding?) but they are few.

Most meetings are come as you are, and the invitation (or reminder) will arrive electronically through a list serve. Or perhaps you'll get a postcard or a phone call. 

Though I've begun this post by lampooning the tone of this card—all facilitators know you have to play the card you're dealt, and as the choice of words and image were made purposefully, I figure that affords me a free poke at formality, which I've mostly been allergic to in my life, and which I find often masks authenticity and stifles creativtity—I want to mine a few golden nuggets in the ore of Invitation.

1. Getting the Right People in the Room
For the most part, this translates into the stakeholders (those affected by an issue or the proposed responses to it) and the people with authority to do something about that issue. If we're talking large numbers then this almost certainly means representatives of stakeholder constituencies, rather than everyone.

When it's not possible to have all stakeholders represented, you can make sure that good minutes are taken, that they are disseminated to the missing folks as soon as possible afterwards, and that an effort is made to allow those folks an opportunity to offer delayed input.

2. Being Clear about Objectives
It's one thing to know what the agenda is before a meeting, it's another to have a clear and commonly held idea about what is expected to be accomplished by focusing on those topics. 

Your answer here can vary widely depending on factors such as:
o  Has there been prior work done on this issue or is this the first time ti's being tackled in plenary?
o  Whether or not there are existing agreements that bear on this issue .
o  Whether there are strong feelings evoked by this topic, and whether those feelings have been expressed and/or resolved.
o  Are you ready to do problem solving?
o  How much is this about addressing an issue, and how much about building relationships?

3. Doing Your Homework
Part of the reason for extending an Invitation is to give attendees the chance to get ready for the meeting. It's not just a matter of showing up; a prepared participant is an informed one who has read the background material, discussed the issue with his/her constituency, and taken the time to organize their thoughts and concerns ahead of time.

That said, there is a significant difference between coming into a meeting with an open mind and coming with an empty mind. While there may be a purity and innocence about an empty mind (in a tabula rasa kind of way) it is not honoring an Invitation to have skipped your homework, and then play catch-up in the meeting. (Hint: if you're reading a proposal for the first time in the meeting at which it will be discussed, somebody has fucked up: either the drafting person (or group) didn't circulate it far enough ahead of the session, or you misspent your time getting ready.)

Going the other way, it is abusing an Invitation to make up your mind about issues ahead of the meeting such that you are not available to be persuaded by what others say on the subject. In short, you want to cultivate curiosity and flexibility, while eschewing naiveté and unpreparedness.

Finally, there is a more subtle version of getting ready that entails getting centered, such that you are in a suitable psychic space to listen fully and think well. Arriving at a meeting late, frazzled, or distracted is not taking the Invitation seriously. Honoring an Invitation is much more than getting your body in the room and sitting quietly while others speak; you need to be energetically present as well.

4. Selecting Formats and Settings that are Inviting & Congruent with Objectives
One of the most delightful things about people is also the most maddening: we are all so different. While meetings (at least those conducted in a cooperative setting) are almost always meant to be equally welcoming to all participants, the truth is they aren't. 

Not everyone is equally comfortable speaking in groups, not everyone takes the same amount of time to know their feelings or to know their mind (which are not at all the same thing), not everyone hears accurately, not everyone can sit for 90 minutes and remain focused and productive. If you want the meeting to be inviting to all participants, you need to give some thought to how best to do that, which almost certainly means variety—as there is no format or setting that works best all the time.

Your vocabulary here includes:
—Time of Day 
Some people are like chickens—full of energy in the morning, and asleep when the sun goes down; others don't hit on all cylinders until the pm or after they've had at least two cups of coffee strong enough to float a spoon.

—Choice of Formats
The default format for most groups is open discussion, which is often the most expeditious way to tackle an issue, yet that choice inadvertently favors extroverts, the garrulous, and the quick. Sometimes you have to slow things down or make the setting more intimate (such as with small group work) in order to protect an ingress for the diffident.

—Working with the Whole Person
Almost all meetings are set up to work with ideas, yet people are much more complex than that. We "know" things emotionally, intuitively, spiritually, and kinesthetically as well as rationally. With consciousness of this richness, meetings can be structured to access these lesser honored forms of knowing, enhancing the quality of the consideration.

—Selection and Orientation of the Meeting Space
There is nuance to selecting a suitable place for a meeting and the orientation of people's attention. You want a room large enough that it's not crowded, yet small enough to contain the energy. The ceiling needs to be in proportion to the square footage (too low feels oppressive; too high dissipates the juju).

In most cases, you'll want a variety of seating choices. Some like well upholstered, cushy couches; some prefer straight backed chairs with firm seats; some will sit on the floor if that's an option.

Meetings tend to go better if there's natural lighting in the room (especially daytime meetings), but you want the main bank of windows behind participants rather in front of them, where outside activity will tend to distract. Windows, if they can be opened, will also help with ventilation and temperature control.

—Matching Ambience with Objectives
If you want a heartfelt meeting that emphasizes connection, then you'll want a softly lit, cozy environment—think floor lamps and candles—not harsh fluorescent lighting or a place where participants will have to compete with loud street traffic or raucous children to be heard. 

If you will be tackling a complex topic where visuals will be relied on to convey important information you'll want a space with excellent lighting and either a flat wall for posting flip chart pages, a chalkboard, or a screen to project images and graphs onto.

If you want to do an exercise that involves movement, you'll need a space where the furniture can be moved in and out of the way easily, or have access to a nearby space that is sufficiently uncluttered. 

Forcing activities into unsuitable spaces is not inviting.
• • • As you can see, there are many elements to a well-crafted Invitation. If you want to participants to feel truly invited, and to anticipate an experience of movement—meetings that are dynamic and not stationary—it requires much more than the right stationery.

This entry continues a series in which I'm exploring concepts encapsulated in a set of 91 cards called Group Works, developed by Tree Bressen, Dave Pollard, and Sue Woehrlin. The deck represents "A Pattern Language for Bringing Life to Meetings and Other Gatherings."

In each blog, I'll examine a single card and what that elicits in me as a professional who works in the field of cooperative group dynamics. My intention in this series is to share what each pattern means to me. I am not suggesting a different ordering or different patterns—I will simply reflect on what the Group Works folks have put together.

The cards have been organized into nine groupings, and I'll tackle them in the order presented in the manual that accompanies the deck:
1. Intention
2. Context
3. Relationship
4. Flow
5. Creativity
6. Perspective
7. Modeling
8. Inquiry & Synthesis
9. Faith 

In the Intention segment there are five cards. The fourth pattern in this segment is labeled Priority Focus. Here is the image and text from that card:

Guide the group's energies, pace, and trajectory appropriately to achieve the stated intention and purpose. Help the group set and stick to priorities, recognizing that what's most important to the group sometimes shifts.

After a quarter century as a group process consultant, I've developed the following mantra for how people can best conduct themselves in a meeting: What does the group need to hear from me on this topic at this time?

There are a number of screens here, which illuminate what is meant by both focus and priority. 

1. What are we talking about (what's the topic)? 
Getting this right is everyone's responsibility: from the agenda drafters to the presenter; from the facilitator to the listener. This is a question of focus and discipline.

2. What do I have to say on this topic? 
—Perhaps others have already said it. This is a mater of selflessness (ego management) and discipline.
—Perhaps the topic inspires you to make a comment about a related, yet different topic that is not appropriate for this moment. This is a matter of focus and discernment.
—Perhaps what you have to contribute is relatively minor. This is a matter of priority.
—Perhaps the setting does not feel safe. This is a matter of emotional discernment.
—Perhaps you have a way to bridge views expressed by people who are missing each other. This is a question of seeing the whole and not getting bogged down in personal attachment.

3. Is this the appropriate setting (plenary, committee, or one-on-one conversation) for your comment?
There is a time for giving input to a committee, and there is a time for giving comments in plenary. It requires focus to understand the most constructive context to offer input. If you withhold concerns until after a committee has developed a proposal, you are not respecting their need to know what factors they should be trying to address in their proposal.


4. Is this the appropriate timing to offer your views? 
If you have a proposal, is it premature to offer it? If you have a background question is it too late for that? There is a normal sequence for addressing issues and if you offer comments out of sequence, you are not focusing well.

One of the nuances of making group decisions is deciding when you have enough information that it's time to stop exploring (the expansion phase) and begin problem solving (the contraction phase). What makes this tricky is that you never know everything. You have to make a judgment call on when you know enough and that delaying a decision to gather more data will have diminishing returns. You also have to weigh the cost of delay and possibility of lost opportunity.

If individuals are being asked to maintain focus in meetings, the group must accept a concomitant responsibility to be disciplined about what it tackles in plenary, being diligent about only allowing plenary worthy topics to come forward. It's harder to keep focused if the plenary drifts into committee micromanagement.

Once the group is demonstrated the ability to work only in the plenary worthy zone, each individual has a responsibility to maintain focus throughout the session. Even if a particular issue is not one you care about, you can play a valuable role as a safeguard of process; as a potential bridge builder. When you are not a stakeholder, you can care more about relationships and how you reach a decisions more than what decision you reach.

In my experience, when a group is spinning its wheels it's almost always traceable to one of four causes (singly or in combination): a) lack of clarity about the objectives for a given topic; b) lack of clearly defined priorities for using time wisely; c) lack of discipline to stay focused; or d) lack of ability to handle the dynamics that come up—which usually means working constructively with strong emotions. That said, it sometimes happens (as was mentioned in the text for the Priority Focus card) that priorities shift as a consequence of what emerges in the meeting, and then adjustments need to be made on the fly.

While not common, this definitely occurs, and it's a test of the group's sophistication and acumen that it can recognize and articulate those shifts when they arise. For the most part this is a matter of being able to read the energy in the room—being able to "hear" what's underneath the words. And that skill especially requires focus.

This entry continues a series in which I'm exploring concepts encapsulated in a set of 91 cards called Group Works, developed by Tree Bressen, Dave Pollard, and Sue Woehrlin. The deck represents "A Pattern Language for Bringing Life to Meetings and Other Gatherings."

In each blog, I'll examine a single card and what that elicits in me as a professional who works in the field of cooperative group dynamics. My intention in this series is to share what each pattern means to me. I am not suggesting a different ordering or different patterns—I will simply reflect on what the Group Works folks have put together.

The cards have been organized into nine groupings, and I'll tackle them in the order presented in the manual that accompanies the deck:
1. Intention
2. Context
3. Relationship
4. Flow
5. Creativity
6. Perspective
7. Modeling
8. Inquiry & Synthesis
9. Faith 
In the Intention segment there are five cards. The fifth and final pattern in this segment is labeled Setting Intention. Here is the image and text from that card:  Envision and name what will be done to reach toward or achieve the purpose of the group. Setting intention reminds us of our responsibilities, guiding us to actions that fulfill the reason for which a gathering was called.

The pivotal term here is setting. As the segment is labeled "Intention" and we already covered "Purpose," the focus here is on focusing—making a conscious choice about direction and scope. 

The image conveys a sense of struggle (trudging uphill through the snow with a load on), which may or may not be the case (fortunately, all topics are not such a slog). Much depends on the group's clarity of purpose, a sense of where you are on the topics to be explored, and the discipline of participants to know how to use meeting time well.

The point of making a conscious choice is that you are much more likely to end up where you intend to be. While it's possible that focus can effectively be blinders that cripple creativity and prevent the group from seeing possibilities, solid focus generally helps the group stay on task and increases productivity.

There are two other points to make here: the value of agenda drafters articulating what they're trying to accomplish, and the importance of the facilitator reminding the group what it's doing. 

1. A Clear Agenda
While it's likely that the folks responsible for crafting the agenda have a solid idea about why they've suggested what they've brought forward (at least I hope they do), often that's transmitted to the group in the truncated (and mysterious) form of a single line (sometimes only one or two words), leaving it up to the group to sort out what all lies behind the curtain. In most situations (especially if the group is rather large) it's a better idea to post the draft the agenda accompanied by a paragraph or two laying out the objective and relevant background on each item—rather than surprising folks with that information in the meeting.

While I'm all in favor of concision, the prime directive here is accurately conveying intention—not a contest to see how you can give the group a decent hint about what will be discussed with the fewest words possible.

2. Posting Road Signs Along the Way
There's a great story about veteran baseball announcer Jon Miller, who distinguished himself as a consummate play-by-play radio broadcaster toiling 14 years for the Baltimore Orioles (1983-96) before returning home to the Bay Area to announce Giants games. When working for the O's he used to keep an egg timer on the counter in front of him, as a reminder to announce the score every time the sand ran out. Even though he was fully absorbed in the game, he knew that: a) there were always people just tuning in who didn't know the score; and b) many who listen on radio are splitting their attention with other things and tend to lose their way without some help from the announcer.

In much the same way that Miller reminds listeners of the score, a good facilitator will periodically remind meeting participants what they're doing. While it probably doesn't need to be repeated every three minutes (the time it takes to soft boil an egg), it's much more helpful you may think, providing participants with regular signposts reminding them what road they're traveling. As a professional facilitator, I regularly take time, a la Miller, to remind groups what we're doing. Think of it as a preemptive strike on off-topic comments.

Last Thursday I finally made the switch to my spiffy new MacBook Pro Retina laptop. It's now five days later, I'm still trying to iron out all the wrinkles adjusting to my new email program—Mail (which comes bundled with Apple computers). Maybe I should call it "Male" for stubbornness.

As I disclosed March 12 (Operating at the Edge of My Technological Tether), I've had to let go of my beloved Eudora, the only email program I'd ever used (but which is now no longer supported and can't be run on my new machine) and the move has been klunky at best.

o  While I was able to import all my old email files (great), I lost any reference as to which ones had been read and responded to (not so great). 

o  All the email that I ever authored (which is about half of my records—the other portion being emails sent to me) has been time stamped as of the day of the transfer, May 9. It's an absolute bitch losing any ability to sort my work over the last 14 years by date.

o  About 50 emails that I recently disposed of from my In Box (representing the last couple days of work before the transfer), suddenly relocated back in my In Box, as if the last few days were caught in some Groundhog Day time warp, giving me the unwanted opportunity to refile them. Although I didn't see an image of Bill Murray, I saw plenty of other things I'd already seen plenty of times. Ugh.

o  I have not yet figured out a way to keep two files open and visible on my screen at the same time. While that may not seem so problematic, here's the deal:
—It's common for me to realize in the midst of composing one message that I also need to send another and it's convenient to pause temporarily to take care of that late-breaking need without losing my place with the first one. 
—I have developed a management style where I'll start an email that I don't have time to finish and then leave it open—to immediately capture the gist of the point I want to make and to help me remember to get back to it, as open files are easier to keep in view.
—It's often helpful when cranking out a bunch of personalized emails that rely on the same basic text to: a) queue up a copy of the master; b) go to a different window to record that that individual was notified; c) copy the email address of the next person in line; and d) go back to the master message and tweak it appropriately for the new recipient. I need three documents visible on my screen to pull that maneuver off expeditiously.

o  Mail has a Draft folder, a Sent folder, and an Outbox. Eudora only has an Outbox, but there was a way to mark emails as to whether they were if draft form, queued to be sent, or actually sent. While I don't reckon either system is better than the other, Mail has this annoying habit of keeping a copy in Draft for a while even after it's been Sent. More than once now I've moved both the Draft copy and the Sent copy into storage, only to discover that I now had (unwanted) duplicates. Sigh, another victim of the Sorcerer's Apprentice.

o  I have no idea (yet) where attachments that have been sent to me are stored. Sometimes I can remember that a document exists as an attachment but not the date that it was sent. Knowing where attachments live on my computer is fairly useful. With Eudora I knew where that was, but my clever new computer is playing a coy game of Hide the File. (Who's in charge here, anyway?)

o  At first I couldn't figure out how to change my signature (at the bottom of emails). Now I can't figure out how to have one appear as a default, instead of requiring a cut and paste each time. I had as much fun with cut and paste to last a lifetime when I was five; at 63 I have no urge to relive kindergarten unneccessarily.

o  My first full day using Mail I tried to send a reminder and a draft agenda for an important conference call scheduled for later that day. When the time came, almost no one showed up on the call because I relied mostly on listserves to get the word out and the ic.org server had bounced my messages because I didn't look like me. Grr.  

Fortunately I have friends (notably Rachel & Tony at Dancing Rabbit) for whom this stuff isn't all that difficult and who are willing to patiently hold my hand while I experience email growing pains. While it seems a stretch at this point to project that I'll come to love Mail, my more modest goal right now is simply to be able to play nice together.

Today I'm trying figure out if I've got Mail… or Mail's got me.

Today Sandhill Farm is hosting its annual May Day party, marking the anniversary of when the two founding couples (Ed Pultz & Wendy Soderlund, and Ann Shrader & I) first arrived on the property back in the spring of 1974. That's right, Sandhill has finally reached the same age as Jack Benny—39 years old.

Because we tend to give greater homage to the extension of longevity when it reaches decade milestones—"Lordy, lordy look who's forty" will happen next year—I thought it might be nice to give a little love to 39, which doesn't ordinarily get much time in the limelight.

Aside from my quip about Jack Benny's perennial age—a schtick that he milked for decades as a vaudeville comedian with legendary durability—it turns out that there aren't that many well-known references to 39. Luckily, I've never let relative obscurity stand in the way of a good story...

With a little refection, I've come up with three ways to celebrate 39:

1. Gestation
Humans typically take 38-42 weeks to incubate from conception to birth, and 39 weeks is considerate the target minimal length for full-term babies. The idea being that if babies are left in the oven at least that long they are much more likely to be born with fully developed brain, liver, and lung functions—all of which are rather handy.

So, while 13 is often considered unlikely, three times 13 is favorable—at least when it comes to human babies. And, of course, this is '13, so it all comes together.

2. Three Suits
As a road warrior I face a steady diet of logistical challenges. Fortunately, having only three suits in my closet is not one of them. In today's more casual business environment my work as a process consultant and as a nonprofit administrator rarely necessitates that I change out of jeans and knit shirts that don't have tears or holes. As a professional, the point of clothes is to dress well enough that people aren't distracted by what I'm wearing, and in most situations today a dress suit would come across as formal and stuffy—which is not the tone I want to set with clients I'm hoping will open up in my presence.

While my wardrobe isn't challenged by my travel schedule, my card playing is. Duplicate bridge has been one of my favorite recreational pastimes since I took it up a bit more than 13 years ago (there's that number again), and my playing time is frequently interrupted by my travel schedule. While I'm occasionally able to shoehorn some time at an out-of-town bridge club into a free afternoon or evening, mostly I just play when I'm home on Wednesdays (which is when there's a game in Kirksville MO). 

In the context of a deck of cards, you see, three suits equates to 39 cards. While it's generally an advantage to be void in one suit when playing bridge, I don't consider it an advantage at all to have a void of card playing in my weekly routine.

3. Hitchcock 
Growing up in the '50s and '60s, one of the best known film directors of my youth was Alfred Hitchcock, the master of suspense. Before cranking out such critically acclaimed hits as Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), Psycho (1960), The Birds (1963), and Torn Curtain (1966), he did a movie in 1935 called 39 Steps, which took its name from a 1915 espionage novel by John Buchan.

The story hinges on a spy ring in Britain that has 39 components, each ignorant of all but the steps immediately in front of and behind themselves, excepting an idiot savant who doesn't know the import of what he knows, and which the protagonists are ultimately able to get to spill the beans. 

While the plot of the film may be a bit unlikely, a lot of people thought that Sandhill's chances of seeing its 39th birthday were just as unlikely, and here we are.

Though I think that Sandhill's 39th step toward a more cooperative future will be far less nefarious than a spy ring run amok in Britain, I recognize that conservatives may find the association I've posited between Sandhill and Hitchcock more apt. Oh well, it's hard to please everyone. 

As I tend the sweat fire today, reflecting on all we've accomplished over 39 years and enjoying the company and companionship of the scores of friends and neighbors who will help us raise a glass, I promise to let Republican dismay intrude on my enjoyment.
• • • By the way, Jack Benny died in 1974, which means he took his final curtain call just as Sandhill was getting started. While any putative connection between Benny and Sandhill is rather fanciful (I've never even picked up a violin) it's only appropriate to take this moment to honor him in passing. I'm thinking a Jack & Coke in the early afternoon might be just the ticket.

I'm in Springfield MO, midway through representing Sandhill Farm at the Baker Creek Spring Planting Festival, held today and tomorrow (that's right, a rare Sunday/Monday gig) at the home of Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds in Mansfield MO—about 60 crow miles east of the motel room where I'm typing this blog.

Oddly enough, though I've been a resident of the Show-Me State for 39 years, and Springfield is our third largest city, this is the first time I've ever done more than drive through it at 60 mph. It's 300 miles from home and I hardly ever come this way.

While the calendar says it's May (happy Cinco de Mayo!), the weather was stuck in the 50s today with everyone strolling by our booth in windbreakers, earmuffs, and woolen caps. Friday, for the first time in living memory, they had a May snow shower in Joplin, which is in extreme southwest Missouri. Ufda. Last year it was warmer than this in March, and I have the eerie sensation that the seasons are running backwards.

[While I was only home about 13 hours between my recent East Coast consulting foray and this trip as a purveyor of Sandhill's organic food products, it was long enough to poke around in the woods for two-and-a-half hours wildcrafting morels (I was able to snag nearly three pounds of these delicate little beauties). While spring's emergence seems delayed this year, the mushrooms are making their appearance in line with historical averages. I'm keenly interested to see what's still out there when I return home Wed. I'll be ecstatic if this unseasonably cool weather translates into a prolonged morel season.]

Here in Springfield we've been promised (by the weather gurus) temperatures tomorrow "soaring" into the upper 60s, with occasional glimpses of sunshine. We can hardly wait.

While it's always good for Sandhill to experiment with different fairs to see which ones are good for our product mix, sales were desultory today ($285 in gross intake doesn't justify driving 300 miles one way) and I doubt we'll be back next year. I was persuaded to try this mainly because it was an excuse to hang out with my good friend, Ira Wallace, who I've known since my very first community conference 34 years ago.

Ira was selected as the 2014 recipient of the FIC's Kozeny Communitarian Award, which honors someone's lifetime achievements as a community builder. In addition to peddling sorghum this weekend (and catching up on inter-community gossip), it's my pleasure to spend time collecting sufficient details about Ira's life that I can craft the citation for her award. Some tasks are more pleasurable than others, and this assignment is one I'm genuinely looking forward to.

Among other things, Ira & I have each:
o  Lived in community for about four decades (though never in the same one, we've always lived in secular income-sharing communities that have been affiliated with the Federation of Egalitarian Communities.

o  Been involved deeply in community networking, often enough at the same time.

o  Been entrepreneurial and have helped start successful community businesses.

o  Developed a capacity for public speaking and blogging.

o  Developed a fondness for playing bridge.

[For more on Ira and her amazing life, see this interview from in the current issue of Communities magazine.]

So it's always fun to hang out with Ira an find out what she's been up to. A conversation with her can warm me even on a blustery day when the outdoor temperatures are running well south of our ages. It represents both a springing back (to any number of stimulating conversations we've shared over the years), and a springing ahead where we grizzled community veterans can dispassionately discuss what it will take to replace us, and the key role we can play in greasing the skids for our successors.

It turns out that busy people never really run out of work; we just run out of time.

I was recently asked to facilitate a community meeting where there had been a considerable build up of unresolved tension with a long-term member who wasn't living on campus. This member had been asked on short notice to attend a rare mid-week meeting to make some progress on the tensions (with my assistance) and the wheels were put in motion based on his acceptance.
Less than 24 hours before the start of the meeting, however, it was discovered that there had been a major misunderstanding about this person's availability and he couldn't come after all. Oops. I had prepped for a meeting at which we could work on unpacking the backlog of distress based on the expectation that all the key players would be in the room. Suddenly, that meeting was not longer going to be possible. Now what?
• • • One of my recreational passions is duplicate bridge. While contract bridge is a beautiful and complex card game in its own right, the genius of duplicate is that you score points based on how well you play hands compared with how others play the exact same hands, thus eliminating the vagaries of being dealt good cards. While it's typically more fun to hands with strong cards, there is no inherent disadvantage to picking up a weak hand—because everyone you'll be scored against will play that hand as well.

Thus, to be good at duplicate bridge, you need to excel at playing whatever hand you've been dealt. Interestingly, skill at duplicate bridge is reasonably analogous to skill in facilitation, where, over time, you will be dealt a mixture of strong and weak hands, and the real test is how well you do with what you have—rather than how well you can avoid surprises.

To be sure, when you have a facilitation assignment, it behooves you to do your homework and to create a plan that you think will give the group its best chance for a dynamic and productive meeting. (Sticking with the bridge analogy, planning allows you to stack the deck in favor of a good meeting, and you certainly want to take advantage of that.) That said, it's a myth that you're totally in control, or that good planning is destiny. As happened to me in the opening story, sometimes you get a meeting that's fairly far removed from the one you'd planned for. In such instances, you can complain about your rotten luck… or you can deal with it.

In the situation that inspired this blog, I asked the group what it wanted to do at the start of the session. While clearing up tensions is far and away better done with everyone in the pool, there's still good that can be accomplished with a crucial participant missing.

When there's significant distress associated with an issue, I've learned that it's almost always salutary to try to lean into it rather than away from it as a prelude to problem solving. Here's why:

a) Distress distorts
When you're in the grip of a reaction, there's a strong tendency to filter whatever is said in relation to the triggering events through a negative story that assigns bad intent to the speaking person. Rather than looking for the value in what they said, you look for a nefarious, duplicitous, or divisive motivation. Worse, once you find a way to accomplish that you then use your projection as further evidence to justify the original story. Yuck. This is a poisonous environment that greatly complicates constructive problem solving.  

b) Unresolved tension undermines trust
Responses to group issues depend on trust among members to produce satisfactory results. Brittle decisions (which is what you get when you push ahead without resolving tensions first) tend to lead to lukewarm implementation at best, and sabotaged follow through at worst. While you may think it's quicker to bypass dealing with distress, it's a poor bargain if the problem remains unsolved and you have to come back and do it again. In the end, damage to trust (being confident in everyone acting from good intent and meaning what they say) is very expensive.

c) A guarded attitude kills creativity
In order for collaborative decision-making to blossom, you need to create and maintain an environment of ease and curiosity. That's damn hard to manifest with people simmering, on edge, and suspicious. Instead of out-of-the-box breakthroughs, you stuck-in-the-box tug-of-war dynamics where each side of an issue keeps trying (unsuccessfully) to pull the unconverted over to their side of the line. (Has anyone ever seen that lead to a happy ending?)

[Note that this principle obtains whether you're using consensus or a ouija board, so long as you're intending inclusive and spirit-lifting results.]

For all of these reasons, it's better to tackle the tensions before the issue, and half a loaf is better than none. Thus, at the outset of the meeting, I laid out a summary of the places where the unresolved tensions were adhering and invited the group to spend the first half of the session voicing what's been hard for them about these dynamics—expressly not attempting any problem solving. For the first hour we were simply trying to clear the air. 

While this was intended to be done with the lightning rod person in the room, we went ahead anyway with my having laid out four important caveats at the beginning:
o  I had already sent to the missing member the same summary of the tension points, so he knew what we might be speaking to.

o  I insisted that the group commit to sending to the missing member a summary of what was said, so that people knew that before they spoke, and the  missing person wouldn't be hung out to dry in the agony of imagining the awful things that might have been said out of his hearing.

o  I made it clear that the missing person would undoubtedly have his own things to say about these same dynamics and that it was crucial for everyone to understand that what was said in the meeting would not be the full picture and that there needed to be another opportunity set up for an exchange with the missing person present, if at all possible. 

o  The point of proceeding (even though a key person was missing) was to ease tensions among those present for the purpose of moving into a less charged or spring-loaded environment for sorting out how to respond. It was expressly not for the purpose of faction building or coalescing condemnation of the missing person.

I was pleased that everyone spoke at least once during the opening hour, and we were able to use the second half of the meeting for a productive sorting out of the various threads of the presenting challenge. The quality of the listening was solid throughout (which outcome was significantly enhanced by starting with heart statements rather than head statements) and we were able to end the meeting with having laid out the essential factors that need to be bridged in order to moving forward with all on board: 
—The ways in which the missing member had inadvertently been placed in a role vis-a-vis the group for which he was ill-suited and that wasn't working well for anyone—including the missing person.
—How financial stress, and the disparity of personal finances within the group, both increased pressure on the dynamic and complicated how to navigate a safe passage through the issue.
—What constituted acceptable risk.
—A delineation of the opportunities available if the risk was accepted.
—A counterbalancing enumeration of the ways things could go south if the risk was accepted.
—The impact on the group (& relations with the missing person) if the risk was not accepted.
 
My fondest hope is that we were able to turn the corner on advocacy at the meeting and be in a sustained environment of moving forward with the sense that all of these considerations are legitimate, and that the prime directive from this point forward is making suggestions that people think could work for everyone.

While it remains to be seen how well that was accomplished, I felt pretty good about our chances to still make a three no trump contract after discovering that we were missing the ace of our longest suit. In meetings, as in life, there are always chances. The challenge is making the best of the ones you have, rather than lamenting that you don't have more.

This past weekend I facilitated a series of meetings in Boston (at Jamaica Plain Cohousing), and I started my work —as I always do—by asking for permission to operate under a set of Ground Rules that I've developed over the years. Among them is the group accepting my being "agreement prejudiced."

As that may sound like an odd request—a) why is that noteworthy; and b) is it OK to be "prejudiced" about anything?—it occurred to me that it would make a worthy blog focus to explain why I go there.

Almost without exception, people who have been raised in the dominant culture have been conditioned to think first in terms of how they are distinct from others, rather than how they are the same. To a large extent, our identities are associated with differences more than with similarities, and you know yourself most surely by the ways in which you stand apart from those around you. Certainly that was true for me. (Note that from an anthropolocigal perspective that all cultures aren't like this. In Inuit society, for example, individuals develop a much stronger sense of "we" than "I.")

Mind you, I am not saying that we have been raised to be cantankerous, or iconoclastic (although some, of course, turn out that way). Rather, I'm saying that when someone says something with which we are in partial agreement (which happens "only" all the time) our overwhelming tendency is to focus our initial response on the ways in which we disagree, rather than on celebrating the ways in which we align—even though they are equally valid responses, and one isn't more true than the other.

This is, I believe, a direct consequence of a culture that hero worships the rugged individual (think of it as the intersection between John Wayne and Ayn Rand). We are a competitive society that is founded on the notion that the best thinking is that which survives a fair fight; that rigorous and dispassionate debate exposes weak thinking, casuistry, and unsubstantiated rhetoric. After four decades of cooperative living, I've come to deeply question whether that strategy is superior. Though it's unquestionably what we know how to do, I no longer believe it leads to the best results.

First, a lot of people are uncomfortable speaking in public at all, and will avoid doing so even if there were a guarantee that people would respond favorably.

Second, there are many who would rather keep quiet than risk having their ideas attacked (or even questioned) in public. It can be downright humiliating. 

Third, if you think that there is already too much momentum moving in a different direction than the one you favor, in a competitive dynamic you may strategically decide to fold rather than raise, keeping hidden your preference so as to not squander social capital on a lost cause. Better to save your chips for an issue you might "win."

To the extent that these dynamics sound familiar, you can begin to appreciate how much a competitive environment does not particularly bring out all the ideas. In fact, it often suppresses them. Further, brisk competition tends to promote counterattacks and defensive responses rather than thoughtful reflections and an atmosphere where people can gracefully change their position.

More excited by the potential of cooperative culture—which is the essence of community living—I've trained myself to respond differently to disagreement, and differently to the presence of tension.

Now, when I encounter alternate views, my first thought is to wonder how the other person got to a different conclusion. What factors are they looking at; are they weighing things differently than I am? If you have two different ideas about what to do and you keep the focus on what action to take, the proposals will be in dynamic tension. Typically this will lead to a competition, a virtual tug-of-war.

In order to shift this dynamic, as a facilitator I try make sure I understand the root concerns or interests that undergird the conclusions and then legitimatize (if possible) the reasonableness and appropriateness of those concerns being in play. Then I invite ideas about how to bridge these different interests (which are almost never directly in opposition), rather than how to find a middle ground between proposals.

In my experience, it is much easier for people to stretch to accommodate the concerns of others if they feel that theirs have been fully recognized. Then it feels like a collaboration—rather than a competition, a compromise, a conquering, or a capitulation.

Unfortunately, the field is frequently more complicated than that. If, for example, there are significant tensions or heightened emotions present as well, then you need to pause the consideration to recognize those and explore what they mean before proceeding with the identification of interests and underlying values. 

Essentially, strong feelings correlate highly with distortion, and you cannot do solid work unless you're able to deescalate reactions to the point where people can hear accurately. Attempting to plow ahead anyway—perhaps because you don't know how to deal with feelings, or are afraid that their examination will open Pandora's Box and lead to chaotic, uncontrolled accusations and name calling—will result in exhaustion, damaged relationships, and brittle conclusions with weak buy-in. Yuck!

(Note that the poor outcome I've projected above for failing to work with strong emotions is independent of whether you're attempting a cooperative or a competitive approach. While I don't think it's a simple matter to learn how to do this well, any group not doing this at all is already incurring a stiff price.)
• • • To the community's credit, the members of JP Cohousing "got it" why being agreement prejudiced is valuable. What's more, they had humbleness about how hard it is to access that mind set in the heat of the moment. That's why they hired me, to help them navigate a large issue where the group needed to bridge between: a) a core concern about affordability and the need to be prudent about living within one's means; and b) a core desire to be bold and inspirational when presented with a unique opportunity to use one-time money to enhance the quality of community life.

When I'm brought in as an outside facilitator, I tell groups that I'm ruthless about agreement, by which I mean that I'll offer it up for consideration as soon as I smell it, which is typically before anyone else in the room. The reason my skill in this stands out is not so much that I'm a superior problem solver, as that people tend to find what they're looking for, and by virtue of having trained myself to look for common ground I'm often better at finding it. 

The bad news is that not that many have done the work needed to be proficient in thinking this way in the dynamic moment—even in community. The good news is that anyone can learn this skill—you just have to want it bad enough and be willing to put in the work.

  Donald Walters—Swami Kriyananda—died peacefully last Sunday in Assisi, Italy. He was 86 and had lived a very full life. The image above was taken in a joyous moment last year.

Though I never met him, I have known of him for many years, first as the founder of Ananda Village in Nevada City CA, and then as the author of a slim volume he wrote in 1988: Intentional Communities: How to Start Them, and Why, which was notable because it advocated cooperative living without proselytizing for the spiritual path he loved.

It is extremely rare, in my experience, for a spiritual person to see that there are many paths that lead to good in the world and that it makes sense to support and ally oneself with others devoted to worthy principles even if they don't share the same spiritual guide, or even have one at all. Donald Walters was just such a man.

To be sure, he was a very spiritual man, and a devoted follower of Paramahansa Yogananda. Over the course of his life Walters established eight successful intentional communities (two in India, one in Italy, and five on the West Coast of the United States) and about 100 meditation and teaching centers around the world, all of which are based on devotion to the principles of Kriya yoga and the teachings of his guru.

As I understand it, Walters espoused for all of his centers the guiding principle that "people are more important than things," which is a philosophy I wholeheartedly endorse—providing only that "things" is interpreted as inanimate objects or concepts. (I have added this caveat because some may prefer the view that "people are more important than other living things," which is philosophy that has been used to justify all manner of unsustainable mischief and environmental folly from which I want to assiduously distance myself.)

At my community, Sandhill Farm, there have been many occasions where we had to face a delicate choice between: a) supporting individuals; and b) following precedent or policy. I think that you can measure our maturity as a community by how we have learned over the years to place people first in those moments. To be clear, I am not saying that we ignore history or what experience offers us. Nor am I saying that we always give people what they ask. Rather, I am saying that we try to take the time to look deeply into what is best for the individual and the group in this moment—taking into account what is in our hearts and bellies as well as what is in our heads; taking into account that our information is imperfect; and taking into account that the future is uncertain—rather than be straight-jacketed by the dead hand of prior decisions.

As a young man searching for spiritual inspiration in post-World War II America, Walters came across the recently published Autobiography of a Yogi (1946) by Paramahansa Yogananda, who had moved to the United States from India and had established a monastery in California. This book immediately struck a responsive chord in Walters. In short order he traveled to the West Coast, met Yogananda, and became a disciple, distinguishing himself sufficiently that he was recognized by his guru as a future spiritual teacher at the age of just 22.

While Walters was a prolific writer (he authored around 150 books), I think his outstanding legacy will be the imprint he left on his communities, which offer a rare mixture of ecumenical curiosity and gentle strength.

Though Ananda Village has been an established star in the firmament of intentional communities since its inception in 1968, I had not visited any of the Ananda communities until last winter. In November I was the guest of Larry Rider at their enclave in Lynnwood WA, and in December I stayed overnight as the guest of Timothy Hickey at Expanding Light, their retreat and conference facility in Nevada City [see my blog of 12/12/12: Village of Light for reflections on the latter visit].

Ananda has consistently put out the message that it is open to collaboration with others in offering the tools and inspiration of community living, and even offers how-to courses about that at its Ananda College outside Portland OR. In fact, the FIC is now in dialog with folks at Ananda about how to make the on-the-ground experience of other communities more a regular part of their curriculum. I believe this interest in keeping the door open to others comes directly from the wisdom and modeling of Kriyananda.

It's my view that the fundamental challenge of cooperative living is how one responds to the articulation of viewpoints that differ from one's own about non-trivial matters. It is an unusual person who can be at least as interested in trying to understand other people's truths as they are in expressing theirs. It's even rarer when that person is a recognized spiritual teacher with thousands of devotees worldwide (when you're so busy teaching it can be hard to find the time or motivation to learn).

As far as I can tell, it was central to the way Kriyananda conducted himself that he encouraged his disciples to be in the world and open to partnering with others interested in the common goal of addressing the amelioration of suffering and injustice in the world; to help build cooperative communities where people come first and quality of life is not defined in terms of the acquisition and accumulation of material possessions.

This admonition to make common cause with others doing good in the world should not be seen as a dilution of spiritual beliefs among Anandans; rather it is an expression of them. People find inspiration where they find it, and it is never always in the same place. Thus, Walters did not insist on acceptance of his spiritual views as a pre-condition for listening to what you had to say.

While Kriyananda will be missed, his life remains an inspiration available to us all.

I've just returned home from a six-week road trip. I left Missouri March 11 in snow and returned April 21 in spring. It was a world of difference.

We (Sara Peters, Ma'ikwe, and I) woke up Saturday morning at Hummingbird, an established community of about 20 gentle souls where we have many friends. They own a breathtakingly beautiful 500 acres of land outside Mora NM (about 50 miles northeast of Santa Fe). Before getting into the car for a back-to-back days of close confinement, the three of us took a few minutes to commune quietly next to a babbling creek that runs through the property, the water clear and ice cold from snow melt.
 
While our reality Saturday morning wasn't as green as this view from Hummingbird (which was probably taken in late May or even June) it accurately captures how much snow was still visible on the tops of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to our northwest.

The last leg home was 930 miles, descending gradually from an altitude of 7500 feet at Hummingbird to 800 feet at Sandhill Farm in northeast Missouri; from a place that averages 20 inches of annual rainfall (and is currently choked in the grip of a horrific drought) to a place that gets 38 inches of rain on average (and has been blessed with more than five inches the last two weeks). We may as well have been coming from the moon, the difference was that stark.

Our drive home started by winding down from the foothills of the Rockies, traversing northeastern NM, and then threading the needle through the panhandle of western OK. According to NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) much of that stretch is in "exceptional" drought (which is their most dire category). When we crossed the Cimarron River (a major tributary of the Arkansas) northeast of Guymon OK, there was no water in it. I don't mean little water; I mean none. When you reflect on the fact that we were traveling through in April—ordinarily the wet season—that's Dust Bowl sobering.

From there we went across southern Kansas, where the drought gradually lessened to "extreme." I want you to get a clear impression of how dry it's been in the Great Plains. While there were occasional green shoots visible on some of the more precocious trees, it seemed more a measure of silvicultural bravery than an indicator of subsoil moisture. These areas are badly in need of rain.

Happily, we were working our way toward water the whole drive, and by the time we got past Wichita (in east-central Kansas), the drought had improved all the way to "severe." Lawns and wheat fields started looking positively Irish. After crossing the Missouri at Kansas City the moisture pendulum continued its swing toward the moist and we witnessed standing water in low lying fields all across northern Missouri. What drought? What a juxtaposition!

Driving the last segment in our home state, I started translating the landscape into what I'd likely find at home. My first concern was whether the season was advanced enough to find morels. It didn't look like it. Usually you need to see a substantial amount of leafing among elms & maples, and there were only smudges of green among the trees as we zoomed passed at 55 mph. Whew. I was only going to be home for 60 hours and was loathe to miss mushroom hunting.

Next I thought about what would be flowering. For sure, the henbit would be making its annual appearance, smearing the gardens and cultivated fields in broad swatches of tiny pink/purple flowers, rather like a delayed splash of Easter excess (where they had to do something with the surplus pastels). This wildly successful and broad-ranging plant is a relative of the mint family. Though a weed, it provides a beneficial early pollen source for honeybees and is not much of a nuisance because it disappears from the agricultural scene before we get into serious soil cultivation. Besides that, it's offers the eye a mood-elevating contrast after the monchromatic palette of winter.

While the forsythia was already in decline, and the redbuds were just coming into their prime, the thing I was most looking forward to was a little cluster of grape hyacinth just outside the back door of the White House (which is the hub of Sandhill). They are one of the things that evokes my Mom's older sister, Aunt Hennie—my patron saint of homesteading. Because she had them in the backyard of her rambling house in Elmhurst IL all of my childhood years, the sight of these delicate blooms invariably evokes her presence in my soul. Her I am basking in their aura:
 
Finally, I thought of these whimsical and topical four lines of doggerel that were first published in 1951—when I was a mere tad of two—and which I got reacquainted with this past February while randomly skimming through a copy of Pogo, happily available as reading material in Harvey Baker's necessary at Dunmire Hollow. This is what Walt Kelley had to say about spring:

How pierceful grows the hazy yon!
How myrtle petaled thou!
For spring hath sprung the cyclotron
How how browse thou, brown cow?

It was good to be home again.

Last Wednesday, Ma'ikwe and I visited Sky Island, the rambling three-story housing complex of Anthony & Lydia Allen in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains overlooking Albuquerque. It's a place filled with special memories because six years ago Ma'ikwe and I got married in that house.

It was my first time back since the wedding and the house was both the same and different. There had been a lot of repainting of interior walls in the interim and Anthony had gone wild with glass beads and glue gun, but the bones of the house remained the same.

As there were only two adults and three children on hand for our visit, it was a sharp contrast with the 175 celebrants packed into the upstairs great room for the main ceremony back in '07… but it was fun trying. There was a flood of images evoked by specific locations in the house:

o  In the back of the upstairs great room I had stood before Ma'ikwe's and my blood relatives at a Friday afternoon luncheon and toasted the memory of my mother with a jar of pickled beets.

o  In the outdoor plaza that same afternoon, my son, Ceilee, ran the outdoor bar with equal parts elan and insouciance (shaken, not stirred) while the crowd mingled in Brownian motion. It was unique mix of people I saw regularly; people I hadn't seen in a more than a decade; and people I'd never laid eyes on before (Ma'ikwe's friends)—yet there were welcoming tamales and homemade black currant wine for all.

o  In the second-story great room Friday evening, Ma'ikwe & I sat on raised chairs and were roasted in place. We never knew from speaker to speaker whether the forthcoming stories would be tender, embarrassing, or both. (I don't think I've ever laughed so hard in my life).

o  Awakening Saturday morning we discovered immediately that our plans for an outdoor 11 am ceremony were not going to work. Instead, we were greeted with the weather gods' idea of a cosmic joke: a brooding sky, chill temperatures, and gusty winds. Luckily, the bride and groom were professional facilitators and used to improvising when presented with unexpected roadblocks—we promptly moved the entire ceremony indoors and rewrote the choreography to accommodate the shifting set.

o  In the main kitchen I have an enduring image of my daughter, Jo, bustling efficiently as she orchestrated the preparation and delivery of the wedding banquet. 
o  I pictured Ma'ikwe ascending the spiral staircase, glowing in her red dress, about to join me and our officiant (Elph Morgan) for the wedding vows. The image to the right was captured by Marty Klaif just at that moment. Sitting at my feet, out of view of the camera, was my granddog, Zeus, stoically tolerating being trussed up in a tux for the occasion (an indignity I don't believe he's been asked to endure since).

o  In the breakfast nook on the south side of the kitchen I enjoyed a quiet post-ceremony moment with Beth Arnone, where my Italian friend told me of the magic of Cinque Terre—five small villages clumped along the rugged Italian Riviera that became one of the highlights of Ma'ikwe's and my honeymoon.
o  Standing on the outside of the great room along the north parapet, the newlyweds had their picture taken in a sudden spring snow shower.

The best part, though, was wandering outside the house and finding the site of our sweat lodge amidst the scrub brush and prickly pear. Ma'ikwe and I, you see, had conceived of a four-day wedding (both to prolong this singular occasion and to enhance the chances of having actual conversations with the special people who had traveled cross country to be with us). 

While the crescendo was the Saturday ceremony, with Ma'ikwe and me dressed in ritual attire, the wedding "officially" opened at dawn Wednesday morning, with Ma'ikwe and I emerging from a sweat lodge in our birthday suits.

I had built the lodge on Monday with the help of Robert Griffin and Ann Shrader. Tuesday night was a new moon and Ceilee & MaryLou Singleton (a dear friend of Ma'ikwe's) accompanied us to Sky Island where the four of us settled in for an all-night vigil of fire tending, getting a representative assortment of Missouri firebricks & New Mexico chunks of scrap iron gradually heated to cherry red.

Toward dawn Jeffrey Harris & Cecil Scheib joined our circle and were on hand to witness Ma'ikwe & I enter our small hut and emerge 30 minutes later as steaming, cleansed lobsters to greet the day—and the beginning of our wedding.

Six years later there was not trace remaining of the wood-framed lodge, yet we had no trouble identifying the location because the fire ring remained, and lying nearby were all 10 of the firebricks I'd hauled from Missouri.

As we reconnected with the energy of that site, it suddenly occurred to us that we were there on April 17—the exact sixth anniversary of the day we arrived to begin our wedding. With the circuit completed, the energy of union surged through us… again.

  
Last Sunday Ma'ikwe and I visited the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, where the featured exhibit displayed artifacts recovered from the Titanic—a seven-month traveling show that opened March 23.

(Ma'ikwe and I are spending a week in Albuquerque, where she lived 2003-08, and we had enough flexibility in our social calendar to be touristas on the weekend—something we didn't get around to doing much when she lived here.) 

The exhibit was built around thousands of items salvaged from the ocean floor, 2.5 miles below the surface, since the wreck was located back in 1985. It's borderline unbelievable what has survived a century immersed in salt water at 6000 psi.

We joined a steady stream of the curious, lured by the fascination of large-scale disaster—romanticized, of course, by the 1997 box office hit of the same name, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.

Eerily, we noticed that we were walking through the exhibit exactly on the 101th anniversary of the ship being mortally struck by a North Atlantic iceberg: April 14, 1912.

As much as anything, the story of the Titanic is about hubris. Determined to build the biggest and most modern ocean liner ever, the White Star Line joined forces with Harland and Wolff (a Belfast shipbuilder) to construct the largest boat afloat, and clearly the most luxurious (when going to meals aboard the Titantic, second class passengers reported being confused about the possibility of having accidentally entered the first class dining room—the appointments had been upgraded that much from industry standards). 

Have no doubt about it, this ship was a bruiser. It had 29 coal-fired boilers—each large enough to swallow a school bus—powering three screw propellers. A pound of coal was enough to propel the ship one foot. As the distance from Southampton to New York is a bit more than 18 million feet (without any detours), that equates to a hair over nine thousand tons of coal needed for a one-way trip. Ufda. There was some serious around-the-clock shoveling going on below decks.

Though the ship sailed at only two-thirds capacity (passengers and crew totaled 2,224 combined for that fateful trip), there was only enough lifeboat capacity for half that number. While maritime safety standards have since been revised to insist on 100% capacity, that wasn't the case a century ago. Worse, in the haste to get people to safety (there were just 160 minutes from when the ship struck ice at 11:40 pm until it broke up and went down at 2:20 am), many lifeboats were launched without being completely filled. In the end only 705 survived—not quite a third.

Even though the Cunard Line's RMS Carpathia was able to arrive on the scene less than two hours after the Titanic went down, the water temperature was 28 degrees F and almost no one survived outside of a lifeboat.

The captain was Edward Smith, who'd led a distinguished career in service to the White Star Line. As a popular figure he postponed retirement solely to captain the Titanic on its maiden voyage. While he was correct in forecasting that that would be his last sailing, it was not in the way that anyone anticipated.

The ship included many innovations in design, which, taken together, gave the ship owners and operating crew a false sense of security. Among them was the creation of 16 watertight bulkheads that could be remotely activated to isolate damaged sections of the hull in the event of a collision. The ship was designed such that it could remain afloat if as many as four of these bulkheads were compromised, but the iceberg punctured five, sealing the ship's fate.

On the one hand, it's unquestionably bad luck to strike an iceberg. While the ship managed to avoid colliding with the visible portion of the berg, an underwater spur (common in icebergs) buckled the plates of the hull on the starboard side. This is where hubris comes into play. The Titanic was equipped with the very latest in wireless technology and had been fielding reports from other ships for several hours of iceberg sightings along their track, and yet Smith opted to cruise at full speed—21 knots—on a moonless night through the danger zone. I reckon a delayed arrival in New York wouldn't have set the right tone for the pride of the White Star Line. So much for expediency, and the tendency to compromise prudence in service to appearances.

If the ship had been proceeding at reduced speed as a precautionary measure, it would not only have done less damage to the hull, there would have been opportunity for the lookouts to have identified the berg in time to navigate clear of it. Woulda coulda shoulda.

When we entered the museum exhibit we were admonished not to take pictures (to protect the integrity of the deeply subdued lighting that evoked an ambience of maritime depth and impending gloom), and we were handed a card that was a facsimile boarding ticket in the name of one of those who sailed that ill-fated ship 101 years ago. At the end of the tour (right before entering the souvenir gauntlet), we were encouraged to look on a plaque that alphabetically listed all the passengers and crew to see if "we" made it through safely or not. (Ma'ikwe's passenger survived; mine did not.) It was a touch of verisimilitude that provided a tender moment of permeability to the membrane that separates exhibit participant from tragedy participant.

While the pre-World War I era of 1912 is long gone (along with the hidebound Edwardian class system of the day—there was, for example, an opulent first class men's smoking lounge on the Titanic, that distinguishes then from now in several ways that I have no desire to ever return to), tragedy will forever be with us. Witness Monday's horrific bombings at the conclusion of the Boston Marathon, which was a fresh punch in the gut for those of us who lived through 9/11. 

Also, sadly, hubris is still alive and well. Back in 1972 a sitting US President was implicated in the break-in and cover-up of the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in the Watergate office complex. Remember Reagan's Star Wars Strategic Defense Initiative in 1983? Or how about McCain's inane: "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, Iran" parody of the Beach Boys' classic pop hit "Barbara Ann" during his 2008 Presidential campaign. 

And lest the liberals out there get carried away gloating over the Republican gaffes I've enumerated, don't forget the furor over Clinton's spectacularly ill-advised sexual shenanigans with White House intern Monica Lewinsky in the late '90s. Despite Teddy Roosevelt's admonition to the contrary (which he adapted from a West African tribal adage), the truth is that people who carry a big stick often find it incredibly difficult to not use it, much less to speak softly. 

I reckon the sinking of the Titanic is as good a reminder of that tendency as any.

 
Last weekend, at FIC's spring organizational meetings in Prescott AZ, Tony Sirna (leaning against the railing in the middle of the image above, schmoozing with Amanda Creighton and Jack Strasburg) declined to re-up for another three-year Board term. 

That means that at our next set of organizational meetings this fall, we will not have Tony in the room for the first time since the spring of 1995. Tony was only 23 years old when he showed up for his first organizational meeting, and served as a volunteer to help keep track of book sales. At the time, his forming community, Dancing Rabbit, was renting a house in Berkeley and was still two years away from buying land in northeast Missouri. Yikes! 

While 17 years on the Board makes him second only to Harvey Baker for the obscure honor of most years in harness, Tony will be sorely missed for much more than his trenchant and insightful comments about Board matters. Though the camera caught him in an uncovered moment above, Tony has worn so many FIC hats over the years that he's rubbed his pate smooth in the steady need to shifting chapeaus—all of which bear feathers marking his estimable contributions. Here are some highlights:

o  Finance Manager
Right from the beginning of his tenure, Tony labored to put our financial house in order, computerizing our accounting system (using QuickBooks) and establishing a standard for financial reporting and concise analysis that we've relied on ever since. While this skill is not rare, FIC finances are complex and the organization faces the unenviable task of filling rather large shoes in manifesting a new CFO of comparable quality.

o  Web Manager
From the standpoint of hours spent in devotion to the cause, by far the largest claim on Tony's FIC time has been as manager of our family of websites. This work was pioneered by Elph Morgan & Jillian Downey (who were prescient enough about the future importance of web-based services to have secured a two-letter domain name for FIC in 1994) and Tony took over the helm from them around 2001-02. He managed this crucial area for a decade, until he handed over the wheel to Susan Sloan last year.

Under Tony's guidance, the web became the #1 medium for public interface with FIC, and he oversaw the release, in 2004, of our Directory of intentional communities as a free, searchable, online database (which is currently viewed by more than 2000 unique visitors every day, each requesting an average of seven pages). We now have a team of four people trying to replace him.

o  Communities Directory Editor
Twice Tony served as Managing Editor of the book version of Communities Directory (for the 2005 and 2007 editions), and he was the main technical support for the 2010 effort as well. Each book takes more than a year to produce and represents a massive logistical effort—not the least of which is determining with sensitivity what it means when a group does not respond to our invitation to update or affirm the accuracy of their old listing.

Silence can mean many things. Is the group dead, dying, disbanded, dispirited (tired of responding to naive inquiries from strangers), distracted, disorganized (no one left who has the energy to respond to inquiries), demonized (by a wider society that doesn't understand or approve of their choices, causing them to hunker down and drop below the radar), disgruntled, defensive (weary of being misunderstood), demonstrably happy (and not looking for new members or attention), or just plain dumb (as in not speaking)? Who can be sure if they even received the message? I'm telling you, it's a booger.

o  ERB Member
Tony served steadfastly as a member of our three-person Editorial Review Board from 2000 to 2012. This group mainly labors behind the scenes to make sure there isn't a scene when something goes out in public under our flag. Think of it as a group of firefighters who typically doesn't get called in unless something heats up. Occasionally it means putting out a fire, though more often it's to advise on the least incendiary way to proceed without smothering information.

FIC does not try to duck controversy, yet neither does it try to court it. The ERB is asked to safeguard the FIC's core value of promoting cooperative culture while being even-handed in collecting and displaying information about what group's stand for. It's a dance between transparency and discretion and it doesn't mean everyone will like your moves.
• • • Now take into account that everything that Tony did above was a sideline. By far, his main work the last 17 years has been to create and nurture the development of Dancing Rabbit. In fact, he's stepping down now from active Fellowship involvement not because he no longer cares about our mission, or is too old to do the work (he'll only be 41 in May); rather it's because DR is at a crucial stage in its development as a model ecovillage, and he wants to give all of his attention to the attempt to successfully navigate the difficult transition from cohesive community to thriving, eclectic village.

Understandably, Tony wants Dancing Rabbit to make a difference in the world and he sees the potential of offering an example of how to create sustainable, village-scale culture from scratch that doesn't rely on residents having at least a six-digit grubstake to get in the door. He's reaching for a large and lofty goal and I wholly support him in that effort.

Make no mistake about it, DR is an important experiment and I fully respect Tony's choice—even as I'm personally disappointed to lose my friend as an active partner in the Fellowship's equally important mission to foster the development of cooperative culture.

One the most amazing things about Tony is his commitment to trying to be an example of healthy leadership in a cooperative setting. He's exceptionally talented in the art of making complex topics accessible to a lay audience. He listens carefully, has the emotional capacity to work sensitively in the presence of strong energy, is brilliant at balancing perspectives, and has his ego firmly under control. He works tirelessly backstage to address concerns and open up the flower of dialog that would generally be too delicate to withstand the harsh light of plenary debate. In short, Tony gives way more than he takes, and most people know only a fraction of what he does. 

While he's mostly respected and beloved at home, that attitude is not universal and he fields a near-constant stream of minority criticism as a powerful person who's motivations for being such are considered prima facie evidence of poor ego management. (Unfortunately, we have a long way to go yet in understanding the healthy uses of power and leadership in cooperative culture, and the pathfinders in this effort are taking a lot of arrows.)

For all of the laurels I've heaped upon Tony's bald head, he isn't Superman. He can be broody, and is often impatient with slow thinkers, victims, the short-sighted, & whiners. He fidgets in meetings that aren't moving productively, and tends to keep a lid on his emotional reactions until they boil over (which is no fun to be scalded by). Still, taken all together, I think Tony is as good an example I know of someone who has devoted himself to positive social change and cooperative leadership without taking his foot off the gas. The world needs a lot more Tonys and I'm proud to have him as a friend and confidant.

While I'll miss him in FIC, there's no need to close the door on the possibility of his returning down the road, and I have every confidence that I'll meanwhile still have access to my compatriot for informal consultation.

I take solace in the fact that: a) Tony lives only three miles away from me at Sandhill; b) I visit DR a lot because my wife, Ma'ikwe, lives there; and c) we're in the process of raising money to build a permanent FIC Green Office on the second story of Dancing Rabbit's new common house. Thus, I prefer to view this change in Tony's relationship to FIC as a shift more than a departure. 

It's all about setting the right tone Tony.

 
I'm immersed in a lovely three-day holiday at Riverbend Hot Springs in Truth or Consequences NM. Nominally, Ma'ikwe and I are celebrating our fifth wedding anniversary—now just 10 days before our sixth. We had meant to mark this occasion nearer to when it actually occurred, but we postponed due to Ma'ikwe's poor health last spring.

The image above is of one of the Riverbend pools, where patrons can soak in warm water overlooking the Rio Grande River as it wends its way from Albuquerque to El Paso. It's a pretty nice set up.

We're also celebrating Ma'ikwe's rising return to health after a brutal 2012 battling Lyme disease, and, most important of all, we're marking that our marriage is doing better. In fact, much better. All good reasons to suspend normalcy for a few days of communing with hot water. (As someone who earns a living working with groups in hot water, there's a certain poetic justice about turning literally to hot water for rest and renewal.)

We arrived Tuesday afternoon and were being shown around by the proprietor, Wayne Long, when Ma'ikwe happened to mention how different the weather was here (in the 60s and breezy) than back home In Missouri, where they were coping with a forecast of cold rain. At mention of the (I'll show you mine if you) Show-Me (yours) State, Wayne asked where we were from. When we disclosed that we lived in the northeast corner, he shared that he had grandparents in Canton (only 45 miles to southeast of Rutledge). Well how about that? Then it got really strange.

When Wayne continued, saying he grew up in Missouri, we naturally inquired where. His answer was: De Soto. While this small town of 6400 (an hour south, southwest of St Louis) is best known as the boyhood home of our current governor, Jay Nixon, it was noteworthy to me because my daughter-in-law's grandparents, Bob & Juanita Purcell, live there and it's the headquarters of Purcell Tire, where my son, Ceilee, works.

Given that De Soto isn't all that big, I asked if Wayne had heard of Purcell Tire. Gobsmacked, he put his hands on his hips and replied, "My brother, Paul, was childhood friends with Dennis Flynn (the Operating President at Purcell) and Paul has a career with the company." Small world, indeed.

Dennis is my daughter-in-law's uncle, and both Ceilee and Paul had just been together in Phoenix for a meeting of Purcell executives. Here I thought Ma'ikwe and I were disappearing from the known universe into a sleepy town of 6400 noted for its warm water and goofy name, and we may as well have been the second coming of Ralph Edwards given how much we matched up with Wayne's World.

If you were paying close attention above, De Soto (named for the Spanish explorer, not the car) & Truth or Consequences (named for the popular '40s radio show, not an oracle working in concert with the hot springs, a la Delphi) have, for some reason, the same population within half a percent. I tell you the parallels between these two disparate places is downright Roswellian. (Speaking of which, Wayne was wearing a bright, rainbow-colored tie-dyed tee shirt featuring a green alien in the middle as all of this unfolded. Take me to your leader?)

With all these revelations going on during the first 15 minutes, you had to wonder what kind of mindbending experiences we'd have once we got into the hot water. Fortunately, Ma'ikwe hasn't been passing out (which was the unexpected highlight of our last trip together to a NM hot springs—see Adventures in Hydrotherapy for more about that). It has been spectacularly relaxing though, which is what we had in mind all along.

FIC held its spring organizational meetings April 5-7 at Manzanita Village, a well-established cohousing community in Prescott AZ. This is an image of the participants, posing on the deck outside the community's Common House at sunset at end of the first day. While not everyone in attendance coalesced for this photo op, it's interesting to note that there are seven FIC veterans in this configuration, and seven first-timers and non-regulars, which is a good mix.

The theme for these meetings was transition. As in:

o  Tony Sirna (the dude kneeling in front of me with the broad smile and the dark beard) stepped down from the Board after 17 years. In addition to his Board work, Tony managed our websites for a decade and has been our main financial analyst during his tenure. He'll be damned hard to replace.

o  Christopher Kindig (the other guy with a dark beard, standing in the middle in a green  shirt) stepped up to become our Business Manager—a role we've been trying to fill for years.

o  Ma'ikwe (in an oriental print pink shawl to my right) stepped off Oversight Committee and onto the Board, which requires less travel. While she continues her upward trajectory from chronic Lyme disease, she still has compromised stamina and travel wears her out.

o  Amanda Creighton (kneeling in a green dress and brown shawl) stepped up to become our on-site coordinator, in addition to her role as Development Assistant.

o  FIC stepped back from the brink of charging groups to list in our Communities Directory. To be sure, we'll ask for donations to support the work of maintaining the website, but we won't require it. Mainly, we're excited by the business initiatives that Christopher is bringing to his work, generating more revenue for both Communities magazine and our web activity.

o  We stepped into uncharted waters by deciding to separate—for the first time—the role of Development Director from that of main administrator. I had been wearing both hats for more than a decade and we agreed that it's too much for one person to handle both. So in the next year I'll be trying to raise the money to compensate my replacement.

o  The Fellowship is stepping into potential partnerships with a handful of sustainability education initiatives: 

a) Ubiquity University
This 10-year-old institution (formerly Wisdom University) is launching a fully accredited undergraduate program that is essentially delivered online (with an annual tuition of $2000, which is in sharp contrast with the national average of $34,000). The key concepts are the living university and Integral theory and practice, taking inspiration from the work of Duane Elgin (Voluntary Simplicity) and Ken Wilber.

b) Global Phoenix Foundation
This group is focusing on creating demonstration models of sustainable development aimed at revitalizing under-developed or stagnant economies. This scope is worldwide and the foundation has approached us to look at the educational component—how local citizenry will learn the skills and mindset needed to be sustainable.
 
c) Ananda College
This 10-year-old undergraduate institution (with a campus outside of Portland OR) is looking to FIC both for curriculum enhancement and instructors outside of the Ananda family of communities to strengthen their Cooperative Communities & Sustainability program.

d) Ecovillage Education US
There were five people (I am one one them) in Prescott this weekend who will be part of the team producing this 37-day immersion course at Dancing Rabbit this summer (July 5-Aug11). While we offered this course last year, we didn't get enough enrollment and we cancelled. This year we tried again. Needing a minimum of 10 students for the course to work financially, we got our 10th enrollment in the past week. Yeehah!
 
Without question, FIC is blessed to be operating in interesting times.