Culture of Inquiry — Mobilizing a Citizenry

Two weeks ago I worked with a community in Klamath Falls, Oregon. Thirty-four people with focus on improving health and access to health services in Klamath County. We spent a day together. One of the questions I wanted to explore during our afternoon open space was about the most simple ways to mobilize a community in support of health. How to unleash a community movement?

Six of us gathered and came up with something playful and and I believe, helpful. We were thinking together about how we could get many people — everyone — talking about heath in a way that would have the community talking not only about health, but about the way that everybody is talking about it. Like the way a people might in casual conversation talk about current events. At that time the Football World Cup was on. We wanted to learn from the way that people were talking about that. We wanted to find a simple question and activate the energy of that question.

For me this applies not only to the people of Klamath in this county health initiative, but to many others that I am working with. Sometimes it is a question about leadership. Sometimes a question about strengthening families. Sometimes a question about health.

The gems from Klamath Open Space included:

-start by just asking the question, “what have you done today that you feel was healthy?” To anyone. Anywhere. In casual settings. In serious settings. The question itself matters and could be altered. However, the idea of people everywhere asking a simple question like this has appeal.
-“deputizing” those we ask to ask others. It might start as a “Volunteer County Health Research Initiative.” That’s the more formal part. The informal part is just inviting others to ask the question of one person during the day, and of themselves.

I don’t mean to over-simplify. Over over-dramatize. I do, however, feel there is something really important to pay attention to in how we can mobilize a culture with the most simple question. Unleash it on itself. Much energy for this as a way to work with networks to create change. The inquiry itself inspires the change in those asking.

Thanks to Bob, Steve, Joel, Jim, and Catherine in particular for their creative thinking and support.

Profound Distortion — Sam Daley

Thanks to Meg Wheatley for forwarding this, an 18-minute Ted Talk by Sam Daley. He is a musician that at a young age awakened to broader purpose in the world. For him, ending global poverty. He speaks some of purpose and pitfalls in this journey.

The reference to “profound distortion” is one that grabs me. He shares about “standing by as millions starve locally while we’ve developed technology to aim a missile over the polar ice cap and strike within 100 feet of a target.” Rather than referencing this as innovation, he references the “profound distortion” of the purpose of human beings on the planet.

Glad to have listened / watched this today. It awakens me further in this day. And strengthens a similar message that showed up in a dream for me last night.

Klamath — Rural Health Network in Community

Last week, Steve Ryman, Teresa Posakony, and I teamed up to work again with a growing network in Klamath county. Steve and I hosted on site with our friend and colleague Bob Marsalli.

There is a movement beginning in Klamath County. A movement of citizens. Of community leaders. Of health care professionals. People committed to exploring a next level community and inquiry-based approach to sustainable health in the county. What began as one individual, Bob Marsalli (CEO, Klamath Health Partnership) wanting to connect health care leaders into a different way of collaborating, grew into a collaboration that included local colleague Wendy Warren, process design support from Steve, Teresa Posakony, and myself, grant resources through the Office of Rural Health Policy, a core leadership team of eight, and later fourteen, supporting the approach.

We work from a Berkana principle, “whatever the problem, community is the answer.” June 24, 2010 was a day dedicated to working as community with 34 people from Klamath County. To improve health and access to health services in the county. To be a community learning together, building relationships, and taking on projects. To work together using tested social technologies on key questions with community stakeholders.

We worked as a group on eight areas of this rural network development, including next steps for the core team.

  1. Welcome and Context
  2. Need and Purpose — What is the curiosity that brought you here?
  3. Community Strengths — What is already working well?
  4. Strategic Assessing — What needs to change?
  5. Working Groups — What needs to be explored and offered for the network to thrive?
  6. Commitments — What do you feel passion about doing with / for this network?
  7. Expanding the Community — Who needs to join us at the next level for this to be successful?
  8. Steps for Core Team (next six months) — What is next? How can we build on today to further support the emergence of Klamath County’s rural health network?

What I like most about this is that it is growing into a network seeing itself. The sparks of possibility are being seen together. People want to work together. They want to find ways to pioneer together. Add to this an architecture for change, which we are offering, and the possible grows from a dream into the absolute practical.

Invitation — Thanks Bob Marsalli
A few photos from the day.
Klamath Herald and News Forum Page
Executive Summary
Report

Harvest — Edmonton Art of Hosting

Thank you to the group of 46 that gathered at Star of the North Retreat Center in St. Albert, Alberta, just north of Edmonton, June 6-9, 2010. Thank you to local hosts, Mary Johnson, Chantal Normand, and Corrina Chetley-Irwin. Thank you to callers of a February 2010 Art of Hosting in Edmonton, Beth Sanders, Marg Sanders, Hugh Sanders. Gratitude for the space of a community in deep learning and applied practice. The learning and experience is lasting and lovely.

A few harvest offerings and collections with thanks from other participants:

Invitation — For the training (also, shorter one-page invitation)

Photos — A few of people, phrases, and flipcharts

Video — Social Movement through two days of learning (thanks Joanne Delmonico)

Blog Post — on Minimal Structure and Practice for a Community of Practice

Blog Post — on 12 Principles for Creating Healthy Community Change