Last week I met with friends in Seattle who are beginning to imagine a learning event in their area. It was a meeting at the home of Sheri Herndon, round a living room table, sharing tea, four of us (Sheri, Christy Lee-Engle, Teresa Posakony, myself). Friends feeling a desire to bring together other friends and colleagues who care about similar work and that want to make a difference in our communities. In health and wellness. In sustainability. In education. In building a connectedness and capacity that can be unleashed in an instant for whatever the needs are.
Our focus was on social innovation, a topic around which there is now a lot of interest and excitement. This builds for me on a few things: 1) a model I’ve used for the last several years with Berkana, 2) an event I’m co-hosting later this month in Nova Scotia, and 3) another event I might support and co-host with Bob Stilger in mid May in Japan. Social innovation. The way that people are coming together in networks and communities of practice to create influence and change. No longer are we as people waiting for organizations to lead the way. There are now simple tools and social technologies that are repatterning how people come together to work at large scales, formerly a possibility solely restricted to large corporations, governments, or religious organizations. Clay Shirky says much of this well in his book, Here Comes Everybody, including descriptions of what conditions have changed.
Social innovation. Four friends. Imagining. What could we learn further about this art of hosting social innovation? What could we create and commit to as practices together — not master plans, but instead master practices — that support the needs of this community?What could we further learn about accelerating the plethora of “what” needs in our communities with the “how” of community in social tools and methodologies? What are the deeper levels of consciousness that we could reach together that hold the energy of transformation to match the transformation of this human era?
It was Teresa who spoke the crystal clarity, intentions that were among us, intentions that I’m now carrying with me into many places.
Work in harmony at the scale of our dreams.
Meet in friendship and vision to be in leaderful community at its highest learning.
Work from longing in the spirit of transformation, yet grounded in real needs of our world.
It is a time for communities to come into next levels of leaderfulness. I see this everywhere I go. Social innovation. Many of us creating the next level of story that can hold the bigness of work and the abundance of people who want to help.
Fascinating to be with friends. Have tea. Notice together what we wouldn’t have if alone. Thanks Sheri, Teresa, Christy-Lee.
