Thinking out loud
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
Thinking out loud
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
Thinking out loud
"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
Design
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
Thinking out loud
A few notes and observations from recent events and activity. Pausing the 100 Evanston Stories project I'm putting the 100 Evanston Stories: Navigating Trumpism project on pause. What I learned (once again) is that folks find it challenging to tell a story about their lives. I heard "
Thinking out loud
This is offroad a bit from thinking about community listening. But...it's really not. It's about paying attention to human moments. Stay with me here as I connect these dots. I am not a huge baseball geek but am slowly growing to appreciate the sport'
Community listening
I had another opportunity this past week to attend a community listening event. This one was successful in a number of ways, but I am now beginning to form a short list of principles I think may lead to improving the design of these events. * Design to the type of
Community listening
Earlier this week I attended a meeting billed as a community listening event. It drew 100-plus folks. And it has me thinking about missed opportunities to engage every participant who attends such events. The event I attended was styled as a town hall with a very specific topic focus: Options
Community listening
In the next two weeks I have the opportunity to participate in a few community listening events. I've been thinking about what I want to pay attention to. Three things jump out: * How are the sessions designed to actively listen? And did the design reasonably facilitate that desired
Protest
I did not plan to write this story/post. But the moment filled my heart, and head. I'm using the question prompts to tell the story and what it means to me: How deeply you feel community when it is visible. I wrote more than is really necessary
Thinking out loud
An acquaintance of mine, educator and higher ed leader Suzanne Wilson Summers, posted a comment on LinkedIn to an article calling on us all to remember history and to heed current calls for action. Her comment struck me at a moment when I was questioning my own current strategy of