When you’ve tried the practice she suggests, take a little more time and explore her exciting new web site. She has a book coming out soon that I’m eager to get and share with my community.

Recently I composed a few poems in which I tried to convey some essence of systems thinking. See what you think:

Do not blame for bad

Behavior look instead to

Change system structure.

and,

Wise understanding

Flows from open clean questions

Intention to learn.

And then just this weekend, while working in the garden preparing beds for seeds (sweet peas!), the idea for this haiku came to me:

Conversational

Leaves change color and falling

Mulch relationships.

I’ve designed and hosted a lot of conversations in community settings in the last six months. The issues that matter to these communities include how to increase awareness about employment of people with disabilities, diabetes awareness and overall community health, access to health care in rural communities, and strengthening families to prevent child abuse and neglect. In all these situations, my intention is to help build new relationships through meaningful conversations. I invite my community colleagues to consider the value of going slow now in order to go fast later. That is, of course, to focus on relationships early in any change process so that the “real” work seems to go quickly and smoothly. I think next I will try to find some images to convey the idea of mulching relationships to support creativity and high performance later.

David referred often to the conversations we all have (even when we refuse to have them we are having them in some sense) – with others, with our work, and with ourselves. In these relationships we might have a sense that a new conversation is what’s needed. We then try to start and sustain a new conversation so that we can make a change in a particular relationship. And we discover that this is hard to do, because the old conversation is still present, and it intrudes.

In order to have a new conversation – with a partner, with our work in the world, or with ourselves – we first must stop having the conversation we’re having now. Just stop. There will be some silence, maybe a lot of silence. Good.

What does it mean to stop having a particular conversation? To turn away from a conversation that is not helping you? It can mean not being drawn into talk about what’s wrong (with anything), about what’s not working, about who’s to blame. It might mean refusing to engage on a topic that you know will take all of you down a dark path of complaining or victimhood or partisanship. It might mean shifting from debate to something else. It could also mean abandoning the stance of a “knower”. I invite you to reflect on an old conversation that you would like to stop.

What does it mean to start a new conversation? A new conversation, in my experience, is easily started with a powerful question, an open and clean question that flows from a genuine intention to learn or help. Here are a few examples from Margaret Wheatley’s “Turning to one another”:

What is my unique contribution to the whole?
When have I experienced working for the common good?
How can we reclaim time to think? (And, are we willing to do so?)
When have I experienced good listening?

What powerful question is waiting for you to ask it?

“The conversation is the relationship” was on my mind as I prepared to meet my new granddaughter in late May. Tesla le Tigre Byers was born on April 13, to Rebecca and Andrew. They live in rural circumstances south of Ithaca, NY. As I flew across the country overnight from Seattle, I was thinking about the quality of the conversation I wanted to have with this new family, now and in the coming years. I was grateful for this awareness. I felt ready for my new role, and was quietly quite happy with the idea of “grandfather” and what actual term of endearment will emerge.

I noticed, as I held Tesla over many peaceful hours, that I craved conversation with her. So I talked to her, of course, and made up stories about her as we paced together around the porch of her parents’ cabin, looking out over Cayuta Creek. I imagined her responses. Our relationship began to take shape as redwing blackbirds, Canada geese, mergansers, and the occasional beaver flew or floated into view.

I also noticed the ongoing conversation between Rebecca and Andrew as they went about their day and their work, with Tesla included in nearly everything. Their cycles and rhythms of living are different from my city routines, and I could feel how conversation was part of these rhythms. Conversations were cyclic in that the same, yet not the same, topics came around again and again over the days of my visit. As an observer, I could feel the complex fabric of relationship emerging, taking shape and form in this new family, this emerging system. I’m part of it, of course, as is my wife, Janet, and I could also listen from a bit of distance and have a sense of how it is when only the three of them are in the house. Janet and I, too, are weaving new threads of conversation as our relationship of 37 years is enriched each day.

I listened to other conversations during my eight days in residence, as Andrew and Rebecca worked with others in their immediate community, building fences, bottling apple wine, sharing garden wisdom and new baby wisdom as their lives unfolded before me.

“Everything is at stake, and everything in creation, if we are listening, is in conversation with us to tell us so.” (From David Whyte (2001), “Crossing the Unknown Sea – Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity”, p. 61.)

I’d like to invite you to consider coming to the 2012 Forum, which is already being designed. It’s possible to participate for up to six days for a single registration fee of $350. Between now and next April, I also invite you to join the monthly Ongoing Discussions, a free teleconference open to all and featuring a variety of stimulating Thought Leaders. Send an email to Bill Bellows (wjbellows@yahoo.com) and ask to be on the list for these announcements. The format of the Ongoing Discussions allows conversation between the Thought Leader and participants calling in, as well as among participants.

This year I hosted a preconference workshop with two colleagues – Jon Bergstrom (Bergstrom Learning Center) and Robert Dickman (First Voice). Our workshop was titled “Exploring Opportunities for Change:
Powerful Tools For Helping Your Team”. Our design emphasized learning from each other through meaningful conversations. In this way we helped a group of InThinkers learn about the habits of systems thinking, storytelling, setting team direction, and finding leverage for sustainable change. Jon and I will expand this approach into a full day workshop to be offered ahead of the Pegasus Communications Systems Thinking in Action conference this year in Seattle. Jon and I will also host the Teams Program again this year, in which we help teams have an intense and meaningful conference experience. Questions that matter and meaningful conversations are key to that experience.

I believe it is important to notice how we frame our work and the web of relationships within which the work is done. The Little Book of Practice suggests this about framing: “Framing is a primary leadership act. By our invitations, by our presence, by how we open and close a meeting, by the questions we ask and the physical spaces we create, we are either reinforcing existing frames or establishing new ones. We are influencing how people show up and the direction that things will go. When we encounter a frame different from our own, we can either solidify the boundary between us or be open to the possibility of creating a new, larger frame together. The ability to suspend attachment to our current frame long enough to explore these possibilities is a first step towards true dialogue, collaboration, and innovation.” (p. 22).

Where in your work is it particularly important to give attention to the frame? How might this attention influence how you show up as a host? How might you practice (and invite others to practice) suspending attachment to your current frame?

One result of my growing awareness and appreciation is that I’m hyper-alert to the quality of presentations wherever I encounter them, especially my own. How to bring what I’m learning into practice? I felt the need to work on something real that I would actually deliver to a group of people. A practical and convenient circumstance is a course I’ve been teaching several times a year in the M.A. in Leadership program at St. Mary’s College of California, titled “Globalization and 21^st Century Leadership”. Systems thinking is a major theme of this course, and we read Donella Meadow’s “Thinking in Systems – A Primer” over several weeks at the beginning. I want to deliver a new, fresh presentation on systems thinking at the next opening executive weekend meeting (late February!) for this course. My intention is to invite this group of learners to approach systems and systemic thinking with a sense of excitement and in the powerful context of gaining a deeper understanding of complex global challenges.

I’ll follow the principles of Presentation Zen, which means I will start not with PowerPoint or Keynote open on my computer, but instead with a flip chart page of Post-Its. Reynolds says “there’s just something about paper and pen and sketching out rough ideas in the ‘analog world’ in the early stages that seems to lead to more clarity and better, more creative results…” This is where I am now, brainstorming with myself. In a future post, I’ll share my experience in designing this presentation, and the presentation itself.

I send an email to about fifty people at the end of the month, proposing a starting topic or question for the following First Wednesday. We meet at Traditions Fair Trade Cafe in Olympia, a lovely space with good food, from 4:30 until 6pm. There’s no wireless service here, by the way, as the proprietor is intentional about encouraging conversation in the community! We begin with introductions, if necessary, and a check-in question to ground ourselves in the conversation. Then, the conversation happens. Lately, the group has been about 8 or 9; it’s been a while since I had a solo conversation, though that is part of the practice.

I’ve noticed a few things in 2010. I’m not always the first to arrive. People often bring a friend, and sometimes the friend becomes the more regular participant. Some people come mainly to listen. We all appreciate the power of a good question. Olympia might be the perfect location for this practice. Traditions Cafe certainly is an ideal environment. Ninety minutes is about right, though we have gone past 6pm on occasion. People who have met in this conversation have gone on to form working relationships. A mature group can move quickly to meaningful conversation.

2010 was devoted to learning more about the practice of inquiry in our lives and work, including the role of poetry in helping shape meaningful questions. The theme for 2o11 is still under consideration. Prior to 2010, we talked for multiple months about systems thinking (via “Thinking in Systems” by Donella Meadows), Peter Block’s Six Conversations (as described in “Community: The Structure of Belonging”), shaping powerful questions, adaptive leadership, World Cafe design and practice, and many other one-time-only topics. Of course, any single conversation goes where it will go.

I continue to be inspired by David Whyte, Margaret Wheatley, Peter Block, the World Café community, the Art of Hosting community, and the First Wednesday Conversation community in Olympia, WA.  For me, conversation is a rich topic, connected as it is to relationships and systems, inquiry and powerful questions, learning and adaptive leadership, and to the significant change we all seek in whatever community we find ourselves.

I believe I’ll use this space mainly to practice writing about my learning and my work, to air and test assumptions, to find clarity. I’ll also share resources and make connections in the hope of inspiring collaboration and opportunities to do more good work for Helping Human Systems. There’s room for art and poetry and stories and photographs and the daily news.

One of my favorite questions to ask a group convened for some purpose is, “What do you sense is emerging for you right now?” This blog is part of my intentional “design for emergence”. I’m excited to see what begins to unfold.