Organizing for Change: Lessons Learned Part three

Go Sow To Get Fast: There is part of us that wants to see change happen QUICKLY! so we
are eager to “get down to business”. However, investing time and energy to make sure the entire
group is looking at the same thing (problem) in the same way (all perspectives are expressed and
understood) by (1) making all information explicit, (2) giving as much attention to the process as as
the content, and (3) fostering a “win-win”, “both-and” culture, can embed ownership and
alignment within the process, ultimately making the group more coherent and effective. [The
Collaborative Operating System]

Create a Community of "Fearless Leaders": To accomplish something we have never done
before, requires us to travel through “the land just beyond proficiency”. Whether it is struggling
with a camera during a video conference, having difficulty accessing Google docs, or stretching
ourselves to stay engaged in a conversation that feels threatening, we will need to grapple with
feelings of incompetence, frustration, and vulnerability. Anticipating the learning curve
normalizes and depersonalizes the awkwardness. Establishing a culture where learning is
supported and mistakes are embraced will nurture personal and collective growth, as well as
group cohesion.

Define Who "We" Are: In her book, Children Who are Not Yet Peaceful, Donna Bryant Goertz
illustrates the healing power of inclusion. The mindfulness community considers
loving kindness/compassion to be a skill set we can develop by reflecting on: What are we paying
attention to? Whom are we paying attention to? Whom becomes the other? Whom do we
ignore? By observing and being aware, we train our attention to include or exclude.
Improving our ability to monitor our attention gives us the potential to harness the healing power
of inclusion.

Leverage the Power of Systems Thinking: Dr. Montessori understood systems! (The power of
Montessori education lies in its totality and interrelationships; it can never be replicated by
piecemeal copying because the synergy of Montessori education is created by the way all the
parts work together.) Montessorians can leverage the power of systems to shift our community
from fragmentation to cohesion (until we do, time and energy shortages will remain one of the
greatest obstacles to collaborative work), anticipate “delays” (collective work to promote public
awareness and affect policy will ultimately lighten our individual loads, but there will be a time
lag between these actions and their consequences, which, unrecognized, might lead to
discouragement), and harness Collective Impact to create a unified voice for policy change.
[The Fifth Discipline]

Welcome Chaos: Today’s rate and scale of change, and degree of complexity, require more
innovative, adaptive, and self-regulating systems. There are many organizational tools and
structures that harness the group’s dynamic capacity to self-organize (a concept that has many
parallels to the child’s drive to self-construct), including Dynamic Governance/Sociocracy,
Open Space Technology, World Cafe, and Appreciative Inquiry; by inviting in chaos (in the sense
of “having many possibilities”) they allow innovative solutions to emerge. [Mapping Dialogue]

Tomorrow's entrry will bring this thoughtful article full circle.