Community listening
Early on in my community-listening learning journey this year, I wrote that I was interested in working with groups in three related areas: * How a group listens to the community members it serves. * How a group makes sense of what it is hearing from community members. * How community members move
Environmental equity
A opportunity may open up, to work on how how a collection of environmental groups consider environmental equity as integral to their practice. This post is some early thinking about how to address this opportunity. The context. The groups are part of a not-for-profit collective organized to advance climate-change initiatives
Thinking out loud
What gets lost in my weekly thinking-out-loud routine here is the through-line of activity generated by Environmental Justice Evanston (EJE), the group with which I became associated earlier this year. A lot is happening behind the scenes and I want to honor that work. For what it accomplishes in environmental
Community listening
Sometimes you just need to listen to what the universe is telling you. Stay with me on a short side trip before I get to the main point of this post. I recently was recommended a book by author Peter Block that opens by honoring the influence of John McKnight
Community listening
Earlier this week I attended another open session of Evanston's Environmental Equity Investigation (EEI) project. It was unfortunately sparsely attended (my perception) by community members. Maybe 10-15 community folks, about 1/3rd the participation of a previous session. Unfortunate in part because the session was well designed and
Community listening
That question was one of my notes in reading Peter Block's Activating the Common Good - Reclaiming Control of our Collective Well-being. This was a weirdly serendipitous read, recommended by a friend and occasional colleague with whom I share professional interests in learning and change. (More on the
Thinking out loud
It's the 4th of July here in the U.S. We gather with family and friends to celebrate and attend events that show off our patriotism. Yes to the family and friends gatherings (my kids and grandkids are still in town with us, and it's been
Community listening
The discipline known as knowledge management is one of the through-lines of my career. A common scenario when you work in this discipline is helping folks think through how they deal with the loss of deep expertise as people leave the workforce or transition out of active service. I am
Community listening
I've been (slowly) hacking away at a longer essay to summarize how I came to think about learning and communities. It's challenging. Like herding concept cats. When I write things like this, I start by trying to find key ideas or concepts that come to represent
Community listening
"It's exhausting." That comment is stuck in my head. It came at the end of an email exchange with a leader of Environmental Justice Evanston (EJE), an elder, and veteran activist and community organizer. The exchange was about implementing progressive changes that come out of large-scale
Community listening
I recently facilitated two meetings that took me slightly outside of my normal setting, which was teaching working professionals in a graduate degree program. Both recent experiences yielded interesting insights in my journey to apply my know-how in different settings. One of the things I realized is that these three
Community listening
I originally wrote about this question in At what point does your spidey-sense tell you that you have the right amount of community input? The question is coming back again in a slightly different context. But it is the same fundamental challenge. How do you assess progress toward a vision