The big jelly bowl called Universe

Yesterday I talked with my friend and colleague Richard Schultz about what it means to be environmentalist and in contact with nature these days. He said some people think we have to move back generations and live as they did in the early 1900 and through away the evolution we have gone through since then.

I think being environmentalist is being conscious about our connections and relationships. We are all unique beings and important parts in this Universe. Some years ago I read an interesting book, given to me by another dear friend, Birgitt Williams. The title was “Stalking the Wild Pendulum” and it explained the physics of our world and some of Einstein´s theories in ways I could understand. In the book, the notion of connectedness was described as if people were all raisins in a big pot of jelly. If you push one the whole jelly pudding starts to move. When we think of this picture, we become conscious of how our behavior, thoughts and actions affect other people, nature and the whole big bowl of jelly where we live.  I think that is when we become more cautious of how we treat other people and nature.

It would be so easy today to feel this connection, because we now have the technology that makes so many of our connections visible, such as Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram. The technology also allows us to connect across the world in a second and to have friends on all continents. But somehow the consciousness is buried deep within some people, so deep that they are not aware that when they start a war against someone on the internet, in fact they affect the whole universe including themselves.

We have the opportunity to be responsible for our actions, to create the connections and networks that are life nurturing both for us and the world we live in and to act for the good of the whole. You are invited to discuss how that might happen. On Sept 11, we will talk about the future regarding organizations and collaboration. Organizations are in fact connections and relationships between people and places. How we create them will affect everyone in the huge jelly bowl. Register for this conversation at www.collaborativeways.com

Recipe for Change - a simple one

Some say changing an organization and its culture is a huge effort and is very difficult. Big organizations need the implementation of complex systems at a huge cost. Some say that you need to implement many different protocols so people know what to do and an overall control system so you know they follow the protocols. Some say it is necessary that consultants do the change work so that senior leaders can do their job as usual. Some even talk about change management.

I say that what you need is a recipe, a simple and easy to do-recipe that everyone could learn to use, a recipe that creates a different body language which tells people about a different approach and way of working. What you also need is the big commitment from the senior leaders to do the work and to hang in there when things get uncertain, which they always are when change comes. Which they in fact always are, because change can not be managed.

So you take this recipe and do just as you do with any recipe or manual you use when you want to learn something new. You follow it to the point when you make the cake for the very first time. Then you learn how it originally tastes and what are the features of that special cake. Then you start experimenting to make it your own cake, adapting the recipe to what you have at home or what kind of occasion you make it for. It becomes so easy for you to make the cake that you share the “easy cake” recipe with many others and it becomes a natural piece at your coffee tables.

My thesis about the recipe comes from many years of experience of facilitating meetings with a different body language, showing people that there are other ways of working that promotes a different approach. Those meetings are participatory, inclusive and invites people´s creativity and responsibility. They work from the values that people are valuable, wise and want to make a difference. Adults are fully capable of making well-grounded decisions and taking responsibility for them. Just reflect a second - what are underpinning values of the meetings you attend?

Changing the culture and approach in an organization requires a commitment from the senior leaders and a change of meeting methods so the organizational body language changes. It takes about 20 days to start the process and share the recipe with internal facilitators. After that it is a part of the daily ongoing work, naturally implementing itself while at the same time adapting the recipe so it fits the organization. At the same time the people nourish what is already working fine and cleanse what is no longer useful.

The recipe has a name – it is called the Genuine Contact© program. My dear friends Birgitt and Ward Williams are the originators of this recipe and I was lucky they shared it with me.