3rd Global Gathering of CFAN Has Ended with a Promise

From April 21-25, 35 folks from all part of the world met in Austria for the 3rd Global Gathering of the Change Facilitation Associates Network. While we still have to process the wealth of video, slide, audio and photo material, here is a first report:

We started on Day 1 to reconnect. Participants came from: Finland, Norway, Lebanon, Israel, Germany, Philippines, Romania, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Czech and Slovak Republics, Albania, Canada, UK. Using dialogue techniques, we explored the questions that would help us to digg deeper into our tasks and to recognize our joint emerging future. In the evening of Monday, Prof. Susanne Weber talked about Dynamics in Regional Networks. Read more...

Holger Nauheimer on Complexity

During my presentations in the United States, I shot a couple of video clips. Here is a 7 minute clip on complexity in organizations, including some reflections of contemporary models such as those of Dave Snowden and Ralph Stacey:



If you want to see the video in a bigger window, go to Google Videos.

Happy Birthday, Nancy White

Nancy White turns 50 today - happy birthday, Nancy.

Nancy is one of the most colourful, gifted, humble and commited persons I have met. She nourishes various communities of practice, she gives her entire warm personality to any event she attends. Nancy is a great graphical facilitator (I have documented several of her posters here), and she shows us the future of virtual change.

Currently, she blogs from the Seeds of Compassion conference in Seattle which is attended by his holiness, the Dalai Lama.

Photo (and a long interview with Nancy): http://www.netsquared.org/nwhite

At IAFNA: Holger Nauheimer's Slideshow on E-Change

The annual conference of IAFNA in Atlanta ended with the commitment of many participants to meet again in Vancouver, April 2009. For me, it was a great possibility to reconnect but also to meet a lot of interesting people who I didn't know before.

Saturday afternoon, I gave a 3 hours workshop on "Communities not Clients - How Web 2.0 Changes Everything, Including Your Business". Watch my slideshow and read more...

More from Atlanta: The Leap to Coaching Online Communities

Here is another interesting session at the IAF conference in Atlanta hosted by John Caroll from Dynamic Decisions. John starts with giving room to introduction of the 20 participants of the seminar after which he says rightly that he justhas sequentally hearded 20 good ideas which are all to assess and process. He recalls the time when facilitation started to introduce butcher paper, flip charts, paper cards, post its etc. to initiate brainstorming and collecting / clustering ideas. It is interesting to see how technology has moved on like that, and then again: do you realize, how little technology is used in workshops to spead up creativity? Read more...

America Speaks: Engaging Citizens in Large Stakeholder Processes

AmericaSpeaks is an organization that has developed a process to engage citizens in the most important decisions that impact their lives. The process uses ICT technology, including voting touch pads and laptops to record the results round table discussions to produce results that can be taken further by the administration. Read more...

IAFNA 2008 has started: Facilitative Leadership

The Annual Conference of the International Association of Facilitators North America has started in Atlanta, Georgia. What a good place for networking. After some good introduction into Southern US culture we were greeted by a keynote of Dr. Betty Siegel, the former president of Kennesaw State University and a gifted motivational speaker. She talked about connectedness. Read more...

Update on Story of Change

Good news: I now uploaded the entire video called The Story of Change in one piece to the Internet. YouTube does not allow videos longer than 10 minutes, Google Videos does. Unfortunately, the embedding of Google Videos doesn't work as well as YouTube videos. So if you want to see the full 23 minutes of the 40 years history of Change Facilitation, follow this link:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=659271750744887678

Please pass the link around to anybody who could be interested.

A Slideshow on History and Future of the Change Management Field

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to speak at the World Bank in Washington D.C. about current trends in Change Management and Change Facilitation. I made the point that we need to look at organizations from a fresh perspective. After three, four decades of systems thinking we know that organizations can better be understood complex living beings. I further elaborated about some new theories on how to approach change processes and finally talked about Web 2.0 principles and how they will impact the way we deal with organizations. Read more...

My Story into a Conference (7): A List of Top Social Applications

Atlanta is getting close, and I am getting prepared for my presentation at the IAF conference. Have worked my way down the East Coast (Bowling Green, Ohio to Hartford, Connetticut, to Boston, Massachusetts - today with Amtrak from Boston to Washington D.C., what a great train trip! It looks like Connetticut is one of the great places to live). Read more...

The Story of Change, Told at Nexus

At the first evening of Nexus II, on March 30, 2008 in Bowling Green, Ohio, Sandra Janoff facilitated a time line which allowed us to look at the fourty years history of the Whole Systems Change Movement. The storyline has now been published as a three part video on YouTube. Watch 20 minutes of collective memory of 80 folks who were part of this history, told by Barbara Bunker, Dick Axelrod, Peggy Holman and others: Read more...

My Story into a Conference (6): World Café in Second Life

At the Nexus in Bowling Green, I met Nancy White, one of the most talented virtual facilitators. We shared a great Open Space session on Web 2.0 together. She told me that just recently, a full World Cafe has been hosted and facilitated in Second Life. The event was organized for the Rockridge Institute, a think tank whose mission is "to deepen and broaden the public's understanding of the political world." Read more...

Nexus Yet Has to Grow

Nexus II ended with affirmation of most if not all participants that the whole idea of bringing people together who are concerned with large systems change has just begun. The conference provided a balance between exploring possibilities and connecting to the history of the movement. Read more...

Nexus Provides a Space to Explore the Possibilities says Steve Cady

Interview with Emily Axelrod and Steve Cady on Past, Present and Future of Nexus

I spoke with Steven Cady and Emily Axelrod, two of the originators and organizers about where Nexus stands in its second year. “Nexus is the place where all comes together,” says Emily. If Nexus can provide such a space of possibilities, we can actually serve the planet, adds Steve.

Listen to the full interview.

Still at Nexus: Peter Block on Communal Transformation

Peter Block, author of books like Flawless Consulting and The Answer to How is Yesgives us an entertaining afternoon, speaking on community transformation.

Peter about elements of convening

• Leadership is about convening capacity
• Subsitute curiosity for advice
• There are no answeres. Everybody who offers you an answer wants to sell you something
• Transformation is based on a platform of relatedness
• Ask groups not to report their findings but what strucks them

Peter about stories

• Some stories are more powerful
• "Even the past is unpredictable"
• "I was born and I made the rest of it up" - it is all a social construction

"Those large change efforts that were successful and sustainable started slow, small and underfunded. So when you want to be successful as a change manager, as for lots of time, a small project and only some bread crumbs of money."

"I desparately look for clients who don't need me. That's were I learn a lot."

On Your Own System

The gap between you and another is exactly the gap between you and you.

Myron Rogers at Nexus II

Day 3 in Nexus - Deeper Patterns

Third and last day at Nexus. We are listening to a series of conversations about systems. The panel consists of people who have been involved very early in the development and dissemination large scale interventions.

from left: Barbara Bunker, Jean Bartunek, Sandra Janoff,
Myron Rogers, Dick Axelrod, Peggy Holman

Read more...