Mojo: Building Block 4

photo credit: Craig neal

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Four vital ingredients need to be combined in order for you to havegreat Mojo.

The fourth element is acceptance. What can you change, and what is beyond your control? On the surface, acceptance—that is, being realistic about what we can and cannot change in our lives and accommodating ourselves to those facts—should be the easiest thing to do. it's certainly easier than crating an identity from scratch or rebuilding a reputation... And yet acceptance is often one of our greatest challenges... When Mojo fades, the initial cause is often failure to accept what is—and get on with life.

from MOJO: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back If You Lose It, by Marshall Goldsmith, our 3/23 VisionHolder Interview

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Mojo: Building Block 3

photo credit: craig neal

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Four vital ingredients need to be combined in order for you to havegreat Mojo.

The third element is reputation. Who do other people think you are? What do other people think you've done lately? It's your coworkers, customers, friends (and sometimes strangers who've never met you) grabbing the right to grade your performance—and report their opinions to the rest of the world. There is a lot you can do to maintain or improve your reputation, which can in turn have an enormous impact on your Mojo.

from MOJO: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back If You Lose It, by Marshall Goldsmith, our 3/23 VisionHolder Interview

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Mojo: Building Block 2

photo credit: craig neal

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Four vital ingredients need to be combined in order for you to havegreat Mojo.

The second element is achievement. What have you done lately? These are the accomplishments that have meaning and impact. We look at accomplishments from two perspectives: 1-What we bring to the task; 2-What the task give to us. Until we can honestly put a value on what we've accomplished lately, we may not be able to regain our Mojo.

from MOJO: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back If You Lose It, by Marshall Goldsmith, our 3/23 VisionHolder Interview

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Mojo: Building Block 1

photo credit: craig neal

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Four vital ingredients need to be combined in order for you to have great Mojo.

The first is your identity. Who do you think you are? Not how you think others see you, or what others say about you. Who do you think you are? Without a firm handle on our identity, we may never be able to understand why we gain—or lose—our Mojo.

from MOJO: How to Get It, How to Keep It, How to Get It Back If You Lose It, by Marshall Goldsmith, our 3/23 VisionHolder Interview

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MOJO with Marshall Goldsmith: Tour de Force

photo credit: craig neal

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Marshall Goldsmith is a force to be reckoned with...like entering the ring with a verbally facile Aikido master. Remember the Maxell tape commercials with the guy in the chair having his hair blown back? That's what is was like for Craig to enter the interview dance with Marshall.

For an hour he delighted and amazed us with his personal bio, ruminations on his new book, MOJO, How to Get it, How to Keep It, How to Get it Back If you Lose It in an engaging no-holds-barred conversation.

Don't take our word for it, listen to the audio of the entire session here: http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=Pba1f6533ee1642f56baa7606d84b5859YFh9R1REZmF9&buffer=5&shape=6&fc=FFFFFF&pc=666666&kc=009900&bc=CCCCCC&brand=1&player=ap26

In the interview, Craig asked Marshall, "What is your work and the new book for the sake of?" "What surprised you the most about the book when you finished writing?" "Tell us about what is underneath the book, the story of how you came to write it."

Craig & Patricia Neal

 Be sure to register forthe next VisionHolder interview on 4/20.
Join the Heartland Network social networking site (free)

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Revelation

photo credit: craig neal

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while we wait
for the days of revelation
and restitution to begin...
 
while we wait
to ignite our folded up dreams
and fire up our old hopes
perhaps there is time
to engage in the ancient practice
of simply sitting around the fire
and listening ourselves and one another
into wholeness
 
while we wait
for the glory days
and paybacks long overdue...
 
while we wait
in the shadow of a new day dawning...
 
and
while we wait for the celebration
that will burst forth when
the world is set aright
perhaps it would be good and wise
to set a place at today’s table
where those who will do the work
can be fed
 
and
since we are those people
perhaps right here
around these sturdy tables
and glowing campfires
and sacred spaces
and living rooms everywhere
right now is a good time
to engage in conversations that matter
to speak of possibilities
to give language to our hopes
and with our words
to begin to BE THE CHANGE
we wish to see
 
≈ from the heart, mind, and pen of Minx
© 2009 Minx Boren.  All rights reserved.

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Kavita Ramdas: Let's play a different game

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"As my husband often says, people don't realize that when the women's revolution is complete, both men and women will have more opportunities, free from stereotypical expectations about what they can and cannot do. Of course, that is very scary, because it's a dramatic departure from what we have right now, but it's also very exciting."

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The moststriking thing about the international women's movement is that it isn't an anti-male movement. We've gone beyond asking to be allowed to play the game, because we've realized that the game we're all playing is a terribly unfair one where people get hurt. So women activists are saying, 'Let's play a different game.' We're asking, 'What is the world that we want to see for ourselves, women and men, and our children?'

My VisionHolder Interview (2/2) with Kavita Ramdas, President and Chief Executive Officer, Global Fund for Women, was a conversation with a person dedicated to leaving a profound legacy for the world. The Global Fund for Women is a nonprofit grantmaking foundation that advances women's human rights worldwide.

But they are not just about women!

Kavita is clear that a new "game" should be created. One in which men and women are treated with equal dignity, and acknowledged for their wisdom and contribution. The failure to include 50% of the population is a failure of vision, but also an economic and democratic failure.

I asked Kavita WHY she has devoted her life to this work, FOR THE SAKE OF WHAT?, and,
Looking out 10 years, how will you know GFW has been successful?
she responded:

For the sake of what?
Hope: Connections being made all over the world: Hope for global community
Being a great mentor. The best mentors are those who push you off the edge. One of her mentors encouraged her to take the GFW job, saying, "Unless you take a risk you will not find what  you are really hear to do."
My husband also challenged me in the best ways—he really believed in me.
Courage was required.

Looking out 10 years, how will you know GFW has been successful?
UN: commitment to gender equality among all members and all member states.
Follow-up to Beijing conference 15 years ago. Countries are afraid to commit to hosting because of the controversial platform involving equality of women.
US as global leader in gender parity, women's human rights
Military budgets slashed in ½. So much of the earth’s resources flow to the miliatry vs. true sustainablilty, building up human capital resources.
Change the paradigm of giving: Less than 7% of all giving in US focuses on supporting girls and women’s rights.

Many thanks to Kavita for her inspiration, courage and love.

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The Compromise Trap: 1/19 VisionHolder Interview

Photo credit: craig neal

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The Compromise Trap: How to Thrive at Work Without Selling Your Soul with Elizabeth Doty, of WorkLore.

This evening's call with Elizabeth Doty was another in a wonderful series with evolutionary leaders of speaking to living a life of wholeness and integrity. Like all of our VisionHolders, Elizabeth holds a vision for a world that works not just for the individual, but for everyone. The topic of unhealthy compromise at work is VERY important to thetransformation of our organizations and the people who care about them.

The Compromise Trap helps you tell the difference between healthy and unhealthy compromise, and how to stay true to yourself and be a positive force in your organization. Some key components of the book:

Some key components of the book: the 10 Misconceptions about Compromise at work, Six Personal Foundations that bolster your courage, the 5 Positive Plays that one can take for a fulfilling life, concluding with It’s Bigger Than a Game.

Those on the call heard a compassionate real voice of experience from this Harvard MBA and former corporate manager on how to navigate the world of a commitment to reality and a commitment to integrity. She left us with an energetic question and a big vision:

How do people reconcile the contrast between what they care about as people, with the societal challenges that the organizations they work for may sometimes contribute to creating, intentionally or not?

What if each person stood up to take one small step for change and leadership? What might happen?

[Based on over fifty candid interviews with businesspeople at all levels, including vivid firsthand accounts of compromise and courage, Elizabeth details an inspiring strategy for staying true to yourself at work while contributing to your organization’s effectiveness and integrity.]

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Collective Wisdom, the movement: 11/19 VH Call, 12/4 TLG, 1/8 TLG

photo credit: craig neal

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We're honored to welcome Alan Briskinand the book that is the beginning of a movement that will bring wholeness and sustainability to our communities and organizations: The Power of Collective Wisdom and the Trap of Collective Folly. Alan was our November VisionHolder Interview and is our Conversation Starter for both the December and January Thought Leader Gatherings.

Listen to Alan's VisionHolder Call from November 19!
http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=Pdda4aacd5e5cb7fdd4f2a643e632822dYFh9R1REZmN3&buffer=5&shape=6&fc=FFFFFF&pc=666666&kc=009900&bc=CCCCCC&brand=1&player=ap26

What enables us to collectively make wise decisions and sound judgments instead of splintering apart? When human beings gather together a depth of awareness and insight, a transcendent knowing, becomes available.  We have the potential to tap into an extraordinary co-creative power that exists in every group.  How can we do this more reliably?

Collective wisdom refers to knowledge and insight gained through group and community interaction. At a deeper level, however, it is about our living connection to each other and the interdependence we share in our neighborhoods, organizations, and world community.

Based on nine years of research The Power of Collective Wisdom shows how we can reliably tap into the extraordinary co-creative potential that exists whenever human beings gather together. Stories and historical examples illustrate how collective wisdom has emerged in a range of cultures, settings and traditions, and we offer a set of practices to help readers realize the key lessons of the book. Equally important, the book describes how to recognize the pitfalls of polarization or false agreement that lead to collective folly. Ultimately, this work emerges from a deep conviction that we all have a stake in each other and that what binds us together can be greater than what drives us apart.

We see our efforts as part of a larger social movement. Everywhere we look, we see groups, networks, and communities rising up to address common challenges. What all of us share is a collective outlook and a desire for wise action. We seek what human beings have always sought: to find what is best in ourselves and what is best in and for the group.

What a wonderful conversation to be engaged in. Please join us by listening to the VisionHolder Interview, attending a TLG, commenting on this post, contacting Alan.

-Patricia & Craig

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Welcome!

photo credit: craig neal

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Heartland: A Global Resource for Evolutionary Leaders
Heartland:Heartland delivers the future through conversations of thought leadership and transformation in intimate ways and settings. We connect, convene and support evolutionary leaders engaged in creating well-being for all in our communities, organizations and the world. Join our vibrant community with others looking to step forward in new ways.
-Join the Heartland Network (free): Heartland Network
-Become a Convener or hone your Art: The Art of Convening TeleTrainings
-Be Inspired: by our unique VisionHolder Calls
-Attend & Engage: The Thought Leader Gatherings (MN, CA)

Martin Luther King, Jr., 1957: I am convinced that love is the most durable power in the world. It is not an expression of impractical idealism, but of practical realism. ...(read more)

Far from being the pious injunction of a Utopian dreamer, love is an absolute necessity for the survival of our civilization. To return hate for hate does nothing but intensify the existence of evil in the universe. Someone must have sense enough and religion enough to cut off the chain of hate and evil, and this can only be done through love.

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What you think, you become: Healing the Rift

Photo credit: Craig neal

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“What you think, you become. Change your thinking, change your future. I hope people will understand, they are VERY empowered.”

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Leo Kim, author of Healing the Rift: Bridging the Gap Between Science & Spirituality, joined Craig last for this month's VisionHolder Interview. Many thanks to Leo for a visionary conversation. He spoke to recent and coming scientific advances that coincide with spiritual beliefs about the power of the mind to heal. Clinical trials are demonstrating and proving the power of the mind.

Your mind can change your body at the cellular level. Science is confirming that literally, what you think gets relayed to the rest of your body. You can create a “reframe,” change your mind from negative to positive, to rewire your brain. Positive thinking gives you positive chemicals that spread to all over your body.

Scientific spirituality...

At work: treat people like they are your family. What motivates them? What are people’s dreams? Create the workplace to be congruent with people’s career goals and dreams to create a successful workplace. When people look forward to coming to work, it changes their chemistry to more presence and success for themselves, which translates to a successful workplace.

Help the individual to be highly productive, while moving them toward their dream, whether it’s with your organization or another future goal.

WWTWB: What we think, we become. What the group thinks, the group becomes.

When Leo realized that the world religions all teach the same thing, and then realized that science is now speaking to those teachings, he knew it was time to write the book. The book cover graphic is an elephant, representing the Hindu parable of The Blind Men and the Elephant. Each religion represents one point of view. Put them all together and you have an elephant.

There is more to the world than material things, i.e. A higher power. Spirituality is finding your own spiritual self.

Practical applications:
In order to practice WWTWB, you first have to quiet the mind, move to mindfulness. To rewire our brains, change our lives, we have to learn how to utilize the mind. 70 year-olds can reclaim the mental acuity of a 30-year-old.

How do you heal rifts? What can we do to put this into action?
If one focuses on differences, the rift will never be healed. If you focus on commonalities, you heal rifts. That’s how negotiators work. They look for the commonalities and build on them.

Integrate the commonalities within the business/employees/marketplace to have a successful business.

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Leaders Make the Future: A provocation from the future...

photo credit: craig neal

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• A provocation from the future... The goal of forecasting is not to predict but to provoke insights and conversation.
• We used to be driven by engineering; now are driven by biology, natural systems.
• Moving from problem-solving to dilemma-holding.
• Foresight, insight, action: an underlying pattern of leadership.

Leadership Self-assessment tool

Our VisionHolder Interview with Bob Johansen, author, former CEO, Distinguished Fellow, Institute for the Future spanned a swath of ideas from religion and the role of faith to Superstructing (using crowd-sourcing: 7000 players in 90 countries game playing for 6 weeks, contributing to this year’s forecast).

Listen to the call here: http://www.hipcast.com/playweb?audioid=P5e6885e96b7f69dfd1c8aba485784031YFh9R1REYWB9&buffer=5&shape=6&fc=FFFFFF&pc=666666&kc=009900&bc=CCCCCC&brand=1&player=ap26

Predictions of leadership—what is needed to thrive? We’re going to need new skills. The big challenges are not problems you can solve—where you figure how to make a world that works for all in spite of the problems.

What is the role of faith, of religion in the future, as an external force in a "VUCA" world: Volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity—are likely to get worse in 2009. 

The most basic challenge for leaders: making sense of this highly uncertain world—uncertainty in ways previous generations never had to.

A basic shift: going from a period of "good leaders could solve problems" to "we can't problem-solve our way out of this."

These days, most leaders spend time with dilemmas: problems they can't solve. How to thrive in the space between judging too soon (problem solver) and deciding too late (academic). That's where faith comes in. Faith lives in the same space where strategy lives in the corporate world.

Faith involves a leap/leap of faith. As leaders, we have to have faith, but willing to make decisions.

• "Dilemma flipping": most of us have been taught to problem solve: examine all the possibilities, reduce to 2 solutions, choose the best solution and run with it. But that doesn't address current problems with multiplicative sources and implications.
• "Smart Mob": ex. is Iran. people are organizing to bring about change in a disruptive, emergent way.

Next generation leaders will lead through multiple media, multiple sources of information. Look for the "commons" as new structure: commons creating/shared space, allowing for win/win solutions.

IBM used to sell machines. Now they give away software and sell solutions with higher margins. we're moving from closed intellectual property to open source.

Commons is a more sustainable version of a smart mob.

• Superstruct: used crowd-sourcing to assemble this year's forecast: open innovation process. Forced a rethink of the notion of expertise. We can't control the outcome.
• "Diaspora": smart mobs linked by their values or the values they are seeking. After katrina, P&G sent tractor trailers of washer and dryer machines, and free Tide. Today 1/2 of the population is still not returned to the city—have created the Katrina diapora—and are tide loyal.
• Link purpose and brand to spread: the purpose-driven brand.
• Wisdom: basic to the concept of leadership. Leadership has to come from inside. It's built in to what motivates you. There is wisdom of crowds.
• Enduring leadership traits/styles: the context in which wisdom gets mined, grown, explored within community. Everyone is in a network--we're all nodes in a network. Leaders try to grow the networks.

QUESTIONS FROM OUR PARTICIPANTS:

• Religious studies: is it where we’ll be in the future? Is spirituality at the core of our next phase?
• The link between leadership and spirituality: In the past month, at a business conference, topic was spirituality in the workplace. At a recent TLG, a CEO mentioned serving clients with love. Is this a cultural shift? A shift in consciousness?
• Leadership capacity of different generations: different needs for different times, different traditions of native cultures, intergeneraltional wisdom.
• What is the nature of the sacred in uncertain times in relation to leadership. The role of the leader is a keeper of the sacred things of the community. It’s the root of the word “Hierarchy.” Traditionally, sacred has provided the roots. In this technology-connected world, how is sacred changing?

BOB'S response:

• Marcus borg: relationship w/ god is more imp than belief about god. What is sacred in uncertain times?
• The Episcopal Church came to us to do a 10-year forecast: their notion of discerning questions is particularly appropriate for these times. Sacred will come from questions, not answers.
• Dilemmas love the space between answers and decisions. It’s the same faith space religion traditions speak to.
• The threshold of righteousness as people look for solid answers, so they move to being right. And everyone else is wrong. The rich/poor gap will play into this also.
• Tradition of elder to younger needs to be encircled. Young people are increasingly in immersive learning environments.
• Under 25: Generations now shorten to 6-year cycles.
• Immersive learning environments: We adults/parents are going to look back 10 years from now and think that we made a horrible judgment about video gaming. It’s teaching dilemma sense-making.
• Sacred/wisdom will be uncovered, tapped into.
• Cyberspace will disappear. Where we go online will be the same where we are in the physical world. We’ll have a virtual overlay on the physical world.
• Leaders provide a filter. Servant leadership: listening to communities and engaging them.
• We predict a backlash against speed.
• God in the workplace: a more sophisticated experience of neuroscience. The psychologists did nothing but studying deviance. Now they study happiness, meaning.
• We know that being engaged in community gives people more meaning, stimulates portion of the brain that gives pleasure.
• The Golden Rule: neuroscience documentation gives credence to it. People who can forgive, are healthier.
• Leaders constructively depolarize.
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• NEXT STEP: where do you want to learn, grow? Bioempathy- most leadership teams are weak at this. Use the principles of nature to guide your organization/decisions.

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Consciousness...The Blind Spot of Economic Thought

photo credit: Craig neal

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Intellectual bankruptcy in most organizations
Stages of Capitalism
4 levels of crisis response for organizations/ecosystems
7 Acupuncture Points
Creating Co-sensing Infrastructures: Listening the New Into Being
What is needed
Principles of groups

Heartlanders gathered today to hear Otto Scharmer speak online. More powerful, incisive reflections from Otto, who is a true visionary, in the most collaborative, generative way possible. Download SevenAcupuncturePoints

Intellectual bankruptcy in most organizations: How people pay attention collectively affects the outcome. The quality of consciousness we share as human beings directly connects to the future we collectively want to create going forward. What do we really do? What is the essence of leadership work on how people pay attention to shifting the fields of collective attention? The reflective turn opens the possibility of something new. How do we help people to be attentive?

Stages of Capitalism:
1.0: Shareholder Capitalism [growth, extractive, externalities I]
2.0: Stakeholder Capitalism [distribution, welfare state, externalities II]
3.0: Conscious Capitalism [transformative, regenerative, eco-system renewal]

In order to get to 3.0, the important point is to convene the key players within each ecosystem that is evolving: i.e. local/city, business/global.

The main differentiator of Capitalism from 1-3 is based on 3 different levels of awareness.
1- Ego
2- Stakeholder
3- Eco-system awareness- seeing things whole

Competition [2.0] vs. collaboration [3.0]
Competition creates opportunity and diversity
Collaboration creates innovation through seeing and acting from the whole.

4 levels of crisis response for organizations/ecosystems:
Reacting -> Redesigning -> Reframing -> Regenerating
Most organizations only consider levels 1 and 2, in a continuous loop and never get to levels 3 or 4

photo credit: pexels.com

7 Acupuncture* Points: Innovations in Infrastructures to move to 3.0
Co-sensing Infrastructures: Listening the New Into Being
[Creating a new mechanisms]
1- Coordination mechanism: Infrastructure for collective action arising from shared seeing and common will. Local living economies
2- Nature: New property rights for commons (Trusts)
    the challenge/nature of the current way we consume the earth needs 1year/4months to recover.
3- Labor: Basic income as a human right. Access to health, education, entrepreneurial opportunity
    1/2 of the global economy 3-4 million— live below the poverty line. Billions are unemployed.
4- Capital: Transparent e-Bay-style participatory banking+investing. Carrying Costs. Complementary currencies.
5- Technology: Open source technologies for community entrepreneurship and innovoation.
    Need massive investment in new technologies: green and social, particularly collaborative technologies
6- [MOST MISSING] Management and leadership: Global and local action leadership schools [G schools]; challenge of cross-sector innovation.
    Create joint understanding and innovation. This competence is not nurtured in educational systems, nor leadership development work.
7- User/Citizen: Reinventing media+public conversation. Deepening democracy: participatory public planning.

*in Chinese medicine acupuncture is used to activate the resilience of the bodily organism as a whole. Working to heal and evolve the collective social body means co-creating it moment to moment.

What is needed: a whole new concept of leadership learning and management. Move it out of the classrooms, into the world. Create new kind of leadership schools working within centers of societal innovation and communication. Doing rather than reading.

Citizenship: renew how we communicate across boundaries.
Civil Society/Business/Politics move from this level to create fields of conversation and innovation to allow for collective creativity. Inner space/innovation space missing today.

Principles of groups:
Intention of Group- Common intention on the innovation journey to create something together
Co-sensing- systems thinking
Create opportunity for connection to Source or presencing: Create opportunity for asking “what is my intention?” “what is my calling?”
Prototyping- holding space and enabling infrastructures
Enabling co-sensing Infrastructures

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Agenda for a New Economy: Moving from Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth

photo credit: Craig neal

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Reflecting on an extraordinary VisionHolder Interview with David Korten last night....in which David outlined a lifelong journey leading to a profound stake in the ground: an agenda to liberate the latent entrepreneurial energies of Main Street from Wall Street’s deadly grip and bring into being a new economy—locally based, community-oriented, and devoted to creating a better life for all, not simply increasing profits. David is a strategic visionary who synthesizes complex, obscure concepts into understandable, actionable ideas.

As David and others noted, it will require courageous and imaginative changes to how we measure economic success, organize our financial system, even the very way we create money. Everyday small actions, consistent large actions that bring to voice/create a collective demand to change our systems for the sake of health and wholeness that create a world that works for all.

We are grateful for David's pioneering voice that encompasses a serious and strategic assessment of our current condition, while holding profound hope for people to step up as citizens in compassion and love.

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Theory U: the future is now

photo credit: craig neal

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Our May 7 Thought Leader Gathering with Otto Scharmer as Conversation Starter was mind-blowing! 110 of us gathered and experienced presencing the future, modeling the behaviors of leadership that support a positive future and a world that works for all. Both Otto and David Sibbet have blog posts that capture the essence of the day.

As Otto notes, "In spite of most people in the room meeting for the very first time, what happened throughout the morning was profound. it felt like a huge energy shift (or energy generator) that changes the state of self, awareness, and personal source connection.  This morning we had time to [take the conversation to] a deeper level by applying the U to one’s personal situation right now, right here.... I wonder how we could use this enormous potential for shifting the state of awareness more fully?"

A critical question posed during the morning: "How do we create the inevitability of sustainable, positive change?" By practicing and presencing and continuing to gather with people who are engaged in these important conversations.

Many thanks to Otto for his vision and great energy, and all TLG participants for a powerful morning session.

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Leader as Convener: The Power of Intelligent Community

Photo credit: Craig neal

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The question is: “Who you gonna be while you do what you do?" –song by Barbara McAfee

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Craig was joined by 2 other unforgettable leaders, Pablo Gaito, Cargill Corporation and Michael Trebony, Best Buy Corporation, April 3 at the Twin Cities TLG. Craig's life work has in large part been influenced by the concept of "Leader as Convener" and his remarks brilliantly outlined the tenets, practices and principles of this concept. Then it was brought into sharp focus for us when Pablo and Michael shared their very different paths, but very similar principles in leadership with the group.  This is what Thought Leader Gatherings are about.

Which brings us to another question:

Why are we still here?

For 11 years the Thought Leader Gatherings has convened over 1800 leaders in Minnesota and the Bay Area to explore and practice what it means to be an authentic leader.

We get to be the leaders and we get to convene. It doesn’t mean you are a leader with a big title. It is the relationships that we have. No matter where we are, we find that a lot of what we do is based on principles—core principles. When those principles are enacted and community is enacted, we see what is present is our own choice. People feel they have a choice. There is wonder. It isn’t just for children.

There is trust and faith, and understanding and safety. How do we feel safe in this community? The underlying principles that we use. We deeply listen to one another. We use inquiry and questions and the ability to look beyond.

Reflection: a leadership quality of reflection, to deeply reflect about who we are and who we’re going to be; allowing collective wisdom to surface; realization of our interdependence. The success of each of us as individuals is connected to the success of us all. One is based on the other. We create communities of success and intelligence.

Listening, speaking from their own experience, allowing pauses, suspending certainty, and allowing space for differences. These principles carried the day and brought enthusiastic participation within the gathering of about 60.

Patricia filled the role of convener this time, with Wendy Morris assisting. They set the conversation that day to one of "power rather than predictability" and clearly held us all in their hands. Patricia took her role to heart and when Craig, who is usually the main Convener of the TLGs, began to advise, she simply said "Who's the convener?" We all knew.

Barbara McAfee, singer, musician, poet, speaker, muse and much more, closed the gathering with a performance of her song that says it all: "Who You Gonna Be While You Do What You Do?" Watch the video here.

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Theory U: Part Deux

Photo credit: Craig neal

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What an honor, again, to be invited inside the mind and heart of one of the seminal leadership thinkers and practitioners of our time, Otto Scharmer.

Reflections from participants on the call speak to the depth of Otto's work. Theory U encapsulates the integration of systems thinking, consciousness and organizational theory, including the Seven Leadership Capacities that form the foundation of the Theory U.

Otto revisited the theoretical framework and practice called “presencing” in “Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges” (2007).

*We've posted the audio of the session in the left column so you can listen for yourself.

For a wonderful primer on Theory U check out Download Uncovering_the_Blind_Spot_of_Leadership.pdf

Craig

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Something to Live For

Photo Credit: Craig Neal

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Something to Live For: Finding Your Way in the Second Half of Life
with Richard Leider, coach, author and founding partner, Inventure Group

Richard is consistently rated as one of the top executive educators and coaches in the world. He is ranked by Forbes as one of the"Top 5" most respected executive coaches and by Linkage as one of the "Top 50" executive coaches in America. So when Richard talks, we listen. :-)

Our most recent VisionHolder Interview with Richard provided powerful insights into ways of thinking and being that help us find meaning and purpose in the second half of life. Richard is clear that not only do we need to be fully alive, present and accounted for, but the world needs our presence and participation.

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We don't usually just decide to transform our lives; it often takes a crisis to trigger change.  At other times, we do it for a reason--a purpose of which our bodies may be more aware than our minds.  We may fail to see the purpose clearly, but it is important to know that it does exist.

Behind the numerous stories of change in later life,there's a common theme.  We seek deep renewal.
Our ability to sustain authentic and wholehearted change in later life, letting go of patterns that we formed in the first half of life to discover new ones as we age, is tangible evidence of a spiritually transformative power.

Whether we call this force would, spirit, or purpose, they all share a common bond.  They acknowledge the mystery of a deeper wisdom that emerges from an embodied spirituality.

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Community with Peter Block and friends

photo credit: craig neal

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Dear friend Peter Block was the Conversation Starter at our Thought Leader Gathering in San Francisco on 9/12. An exhuberant participant writes about her experience  : "Well, Istarted with "WOW" on Friday and I ended with "wow"  Friday and I'll just start there again today!!  First and foremost, thank you so much for the gift of all your hard work and insightful design with your entire team including the incredible Peter!  It was such a full, rich, powerful day done in the spirit of risk of trying something new... The biggest gift of all was the powerful end of the day-the acknowledging of our gifts...it is such a hard thing for me and I so needed to learn from that ah-haa moment of grace for myself."

[10/7/08 note: Mariah Howard created a beautiful graphic recording of the TLG Panel Discussion and Harvest. Take a look here!]

Some excerpts from Peter's remarks:

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~A distinction related to community – transformation vs. change: Transformation is changing the nature of things; Change is making things a little better.

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~You’re involved in the work of transformation, changing the nature of what we have today. A culture based on dominance, a “I know and you don’t attitude,” which is the high control, patriarchal narrative. The master narrative is to find conflict, controversy and rev it up.

~There’s a political element to building community – not just be among friends, but to shift the narrative in which this country functions. It’s too big for me to really grasp myself, but change is too small a God to worship.

~Community requires an act of leadership – the courage to step forward to imagine another world. Not management, which is to give order and structure, but that doesn’t create anything new. It gives order and predictability, and most of us will sacrifice our freedom for predictability any days of the week.

~Safety in response to the culture of fear – as long as we’re convinced it’s dangerous out there we will trade our sovereignty for the promise of safety. Leadership is a convening task of bringing people together in a way that changes things. That’s why the arts matter. The arts understand the nuances of experience – they tune us in to see the world in a different way. That’s the work – creating something we’re unaccustomed to.

...more to come in the write-ups later this week!

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