Once again I am awake in the middle of the Japanese night. Head and heart buzzing from yesterday’s work. I was invited to join KDI — Knowledge Management Initiative in Tokyo for a afternoon workshop with participants in their new Future Center. KDI was started 10 years ago to work with knowledge creation and realationships to knowledge, building in part on the inspiring work of Dr. Ikugjiiro Nonaka . There approach is one which places emphasis on “individual vitality” and the “dynamic field,” or ba.
Crazy bunch, with titles like “Wild Knowledge Architect, “Ba Conductor,” and “Sexy Works Stylist,” they work together in an almost completely flexible workspace in the middle of Roppongi, the international district of Tokyo. What caught my attention most is where they’re headed. They’ve been looking at the Future Center idea currently being developed in more than 30 locations in Europe. See The Reality of European Future Centres. Last week I wrote about a deep resonance between the work being done by GreenHouse Project and Kufunda Learning Village in Southern Africa and the work of St. Luke’s Health Initiatives. Guess what? The resonance continues.
Future Centers, at least as envisoned by Dr. Takahiko Nomura, KDI founder, are incredibly similar to leadership learning centers in the Berkana Exchange. The core work of Future Centers is to surface the knowledge, wisdom and leadership already present in organizations and to create conditions which all it to be used by all for maximum creativity and innovation. AND, the same four core competencies we surfaced last month at St. Luke’s Health Initiatives show up as core in Future Centers:
- connect and convene
- peer learning
- source of research and information
- strengths based approach
So we spent the afternoon with about 35 people from a dozen or so Japanese companies who are thinking about embracing the Future Center concept, each creating a Future Center inside their company as well as a trans-local network which links these Future Centers as a community of Practice.
I think it is going to happen. These folks are going to step forward and start using all forms of conversational leadership to invite innovation forward. AND, like elsewhere in the world they’re not doing it because it is the next groovy thing to do, they’re doing it because they know their survival depends on it.
I continue to be impressed with the level of receptivity in Japan for new ways of thinking about leadership, creativity and innovation. It is not just thinking about it — it is a yearning to step into new practice fields with new partners.
One last note. We talked about the community of practice work KDI has done over the last 10 years. The conversation is incomplete, but part of what we talked about is how in their communities of practice perhaps the most important thing that’s happened is that people have learned they are not alone. Others have some of the same intentions and ideas they do. We’ve always looked at Communities of Practice as places where knowledge is created. That’s part of their function. What may be more important is that they are places which people discover more about their own identity and step into their own leadership.
Beginning of a fascinating several weeks in my adopted homeland.
I’ve had the chance to come to Southern Africa a couple of times a year for the last decade to work with wonderful people. My work has been as part of The Berkana Institute and our efforts to create the Berkana Exchange as a translocal network of people and places building healthy and resilient communities. Especially for the last couple of years I’ve been working with people from Johannesburg, Harare, Cape Town and Durban about how to find and support the people doing “our” kind of community work. This work is based on beliefs that are resonant with those listed on the About section of Resilient Communities. We find them everywhere (next month my daughter Annie Virnig and I will be talking about these at the 2010 TEDxTokyo — but that is a different blog).
So, what’s cooking? Over the last three months the GreenHouse Project in Johannesburg, South Africa and Kufunda Learning Village outside Harare, Zimbabwe, have been involved in an in-depth Appreciative Inquiry Process with the “Champions” of different community-based work and their partners. They both asked certain key questions:
- What motivates you? What gives you strength?
- What do you value about your work?
- What are you working to change?
- Really Why are you doing this work?
- Where do you see yourself and your work in the near future?
- What do you need to take you and your work to the next level?
- What natural partnerships are emerging and will be necessary in your work?
- What practical lessons have you learned? Are you sharing them with others? How do they respond to your work and the lessons you have learned?
- How is your work and the lessons from it useful?
- What have you learnt from sharing with others?
In a word, these sessions have been amazing! Listening to Dorah Lebelo talk about these conversations with people who are just getting on with getting on — who are changing their lives for the better by working with what they have without complaint — was inspiring. And, at the same time, we noticed the difference in her energy when speaking about this work as compared to her protracted battle with the National Lotteries Commission to release funds already awarded to GreenHouse Project for two major construction projects.
I’m going to link their reports here — the one from GreenHouse Project is over 50MB so it will take a while to download — filled with lovely pictures and well worth the wait! GreenHouse Project Report. Kufunda Learning Village Report. They are amazing, powerful and delightful reads.
As we talking about the learning from this process some different key phrases kept surfacing:
- growing the work while shrinking the institutions
- reclaiming relationships with people, land and food
- learning — doing – reflecting
- finding new meaning, creating new beliefs
At its core this is all really simple stuff. And, most of us have forgotten it.
As our conversations continued we began to speak of the role of GreenHouse and Kufunda in all this. They are hubs, seed crystals, catalysts, enzymes. They play the critical role of helping people and systems see themselves and each other. But what do they really do?
Okay, this is where it gets even more interesting. They do the same things as the people ar St. Luke’s Health Initiatives mentioned in other places on my blogs. Last month, working with SLHI in Phoenix we eventually said they have four core competencies:
- They connect and convene
- They support peer learning
- They are the “goto” place for information and knowledge
- They work from a strengths-based approach.
BINGO. In their roles as hubs and catalysts, this is exactly what GHP and Kufunda do. This is the core work which supports communities that practice what they believe and which aspires to create an influence beyond the immediate boundaries of their work.
Lots more to say about all this, but I’ll stop with this teaser!
That’s what is said in Japan when one returns home. “I’m back, I’ve been out in the world and I am back.” ただいま. And that is exactly how I felt this past weekend will leading a workshop in Japan. This blog is both a bit about my personal journey and my amazing week in Japan.
My relationship with Japan began in 1970. I “escaped” to Japan when the U.S. invaded Cambodia and the National Guard murdered four students at Kent State University. I was finishing my Junior year at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, USA and was active in the student movement and the anti-war movement and on the fringes of the civil-rights, womens and environmental movements. I left the U.S. with a combination of deep anger and deep grief that was characteristic of those times.
About the only thing I knew about Japan was that it was near China. But once again my guardian angels were on duty and pushed me where I needed to go. I began my own spiritual journey in Japan in 1970. The culture and my host family have been part of my life ever since. I met the grandfather of my heart in Kyoto. He was 71 and I was 21. For forty years our families have been intertwined. His son is the only grandfather my daughter, Annie has ever know and her time with her ogii-chama and obaa-chama are special. Japan has always been a place of my heart and spirit and I’ve never been inclined to take my work there. That all has shifted, dramatically.
Last November at the Pegasus Systems Thinking In Action I was amazed to see 25 or so people from Japan. Normally there are just several. I wondered: “what’s happening?” I discovered that a lot was happening. Over the last couple of years there has been a tremendous opening, a search for new ways of being in life and in work in the world. People are working with systems thinking, Presencing, World Cafe, Appreciative Inquiry and a host of other processes to see what else is possible. They have not only embraced these methodologies, they have created a huge new opening for new ways of thinking and being. And in Japan, when something begins, it moves quickly!
Conversations quickly evolved into an invitation to The Berkana Institute to put together an Art of Hosting. My sense was that it would be important to precede this Art of Hosting with a design session which ended up evolving into a workshop which incorporated different elements of Art of Hosting and my own work on the Art of Change. The two day workshop was followed by an evening of Dialogue Bar which was astounding in its own right.
I was amazed and deeply moved by the two events.
The weekend workshop with 20 people in a workshop was a combination of Bob, Enspirited Leadership, Art of Hosting Sampler and Art of Change Sampler all rolled into one. We met in circle and open space and world cafe. We walked the “two loops” together. We walked in silent pairs and in dialogue pairs. We modeled with clay. And the clay was so loved that it became a part of the rest of the world cafe sessions as well. By Sunday morning the design and hosting team space was opened and we designed the second day together and much of the hosting was done by the participants.
Monday night was “Dialogue Bar”. More than 100 people from all walks of life and all ages came for what ended up being a 4 hour dialogue bar. The atmosphere was incredible. I spent 10 minutes speaking (and 10 being translated) to give glimpses of my life until 2000. We began the first round of World Cafe with a question: “what social innovation makes enough of a difference to make a difference?” After 30 minutes, we did a brief harvest, and I spoke for another 20 (plus 20 for translation) about my journey of the last 10 years and about Enspirited Leadership. Yuya, the organizer asked for my personal story as a weave and context for the World Cafe. After I spoke a second time, we had two more rounds of cafe.
The response in both events was powerful.
How to explain it? You know that Japanese know how to be silent with each other. They know how to listen to each other with their whole bodies and to hear far beyond the words. They know how to be respectful. They know how to find questions. AND, there is an expression in Japan: “the nail that sticks up is pounded down.” Edward Hall speaks of Japan culture as being the most “high context” culture on the planet. But what does this mean? My friend Jeff in Kyoto, who has lived there now for 40 years (longer than any other living foreigner) points out that even in Japan, high context is translated simply as “high context.” What does it mean? It means Japanese take in everything with their listening. That is the cultural competence. AND, the nail that sticks up is pounded down.
How does one continue to listen with one’s whole being AND, stick up, stand up, find courage and clarity to offer one’s leadership in a time of immense change? This is the question that Japan is ready for and it has been cracking wide open for the last two years. That is why there were 25 people from Japan at the Pegasus Systems Thinking In Action Conference this past November where there have been 4 or 5 in the past.
I’ll be back for some work in May and suspect I will be returning more frequently. Since I first arrived in Japan in 1970, it has been a place of my heart and spirit. In the early years, I wondered why I never tried to bring my work there. Later, in this past decade, I realized it was my “upbringing” in Japan that allowed me to travel into and with other cultures. Now, it seems that work around the world has left me with something special to offer in Japan and it feels wonderful!
It is a time of change, and I am interested in the parallels to the Meiji Restoration of 1868 when 250 years of rule by the Tokugawa Shogunate came to an end, rapidly. I did my undergraduate comprehensive project on it 39 years ago. What I saw happening then was that the underlying mythic structures of the culture were no longer sufficient to interpret daily experience and they were washed away in an almost bloodless revolution. Extraordinarily different than the French Revolution or the later Russian Revolution. I suspect a similar thing is beginning to happen now.
So we spent the afternoon with about 35 people from a dozen or so Japanese companies who are thinking about embracing the Future Center concept, each creating a Future Center inside their company as well as a trans-local network which links these Future Centers as a community of Practice.
I have worked closely with Bob since 2000, when I invited him to join the Berkana Institute at a time when we were going global and focusing on supporting younger leaders in many different countries, especially those in the Global South. Together with a few other colleagues, we developed several programs and initiatives, and discovered hundreds and thousands of leaders emerging from their communities filled with bold ideas and a deep desire to serve their communities. These people were not formally appointed leaders, but those who saw a need and were brave enough to step forward. They were leaders who knew they had to mobilize their communities, and not fall into the heroic leader trap. They were extremely committed, yet often lacked the tools and confidence to be as effective as possible.
It is has been an eye-opening experience to interact with Bob Stilger from The Berkana Institute over the years in his short trips to Southern Africa. Bob has been around the work we do at the eThekwini Municipality’s INK Area-based Management and Urban Renewal Programme as a friend, a co-learner, a coach and consultant. Through his multifaceted roles and relationships, he has helped us to navigate our landscape and made us feel that is in fact okay to have questions and not have all the answers. Our practice is deeply embedded in co-creating with communities be they not-for profit community organisations, local business, Councillors and other government departments. Bob has been precise in identifying the need for internal practices and rhythms which provide a foundation to take our work to the next level. He has made these suggestions without prescribing, but rather encouraging us to find our own answers. We have been honoured by his sharing of the Berkana experiences through insightful presentations and the depth of Bob’s view as a community development worker. The community of Inanda Ntuzuma and Kwa Mashu is now richer through his thoughtful, dynamic and easy manner in which he made the development practice easily understood by both ordinary people and professionals. As a programme, we salute his tireless and continuous efforts to enable community to collectively create and hold a vision. Through Bob’s commitment to learning we are now able to appreciate the thread that connects various community learning centres in South East Asia, America, Africa and elsewhere. Bob’s work has been overwhelmingly positive in the lives of many people he has met, and I hope he never stops giving in to what he has called `the energy of yes’.