bringing about systemic change is less about trying to control things and force a particular outcome at a particular time, and more about trying to create the conditions for that change to happen. This doesn’t necessarily mean changing what we actually do. It just requires us to be more open to different understandings about the effect we are having – and the effect on us when we do it.
Sunday afternoon was spent at the rather magnificent Seale Hayne, an old country estate and ex- agricultural college near Newton Abbot in Devon. I was working with a small group of Transition Towns folk from as far afield as Paris and Forres at their annual conference. We were looking at ‘structuring and facilitating efficient meetings’. […]
Just a quick ‘heads up’ to say that from June 21st onwards, for about a month we’re planning to host a series of posts on strategy. We hope to bring you both a facilitator’s and an activist’s perspective on the joys and frustrations of planning actions and campaigns strategically, facilitating that process, and training activists […]
Wednesday saw me facilitating strategy in the park for the good folk of the Bretton Woods Project. BWP scrutinises the work of international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and provides up to date information to campaigners and campaigning organisations. The park in question was Waterlow Park in London. […]
I’ve just finished a series of 12 phone interviews with campaigners from the Fairtrade Towns network, and NGO partners of the Fairtrade Foundation. This was one small part of the Foundation’s mid-point review of their 5 year Tipping The Balance strategy. The excitement for me in this kind of work is having the opportunity to […]
Just a hasty post to point you at Lynn Walsh’s post on emergence. I’ve only skimmed it and already I’m thinking of its applications to groups working by consensus decision-making. There’s a useful language here and some useful imagery that a lot of the autonomous, non-hierarchical groups we work with may find exciting and intriguing. […]
I met David Babbs of 38 Degrees to discuss participation on-line, how it works and its impacts. 38 degrees was set up in May 2009 to enable people to be engaged in change using social software and email. 38 degrees is the angle of slope which naturally causes an avalanche; the analogy being that enough […]
Last week I was back working with Friends of the Earth, helping them take forward the vast quantities of ideas that came out of their recent staff away days. 10 staff members spent 4 hours painstakingly sifting through a mound of flipchart paper and video footage to distill the collective wisdom of the staff into […]
I’ve just received the evaluations from a ‘strategy day’ I facilitated for the staff and management committee of Labour Behind the Label back in mid February. LBL is a small but impressive campaign for the rights of workers in the garment industry around the world. They’re the UK platform of the international Clean Clothes Campaign. […]
Facilitating for full participation can be tricky. Usually we’re using techniques that break large groups down to allow quieter voices and less confident people be heard. It’s a generally accepted rule of thumb that to achieve full participation in large groups we avoid full group sessions. Smaller group sizes lend themselves to creating safer spaces […]
