visions, dreams, problem-solving and change

So, I’m pretty sure that I’m not saying anything new here (I have been thinking about it for a while and have taken inspiration from numerous sources and even woven it into my own practice)… but it does kind of strike me as being rather important… here it goes:

• Vision-driven change is completely different from problem-solving-driven change.
• For the most-part, people are uncomfortable with moving away from problem-solving
• Vision-driven change requires an understanding of the problems but, instead of beginning with the problems, begins with tapping into people’s dreams, unearthing them, sharing them, building common dreams and then catalyzing collective action around these dreams
• Vision-driven change and problem-solving-driven change are not mutually exclusive… but putting the vision gives a better context for the problem-solving
• Vision-driven change is all about creating new realities – this gives a real sense of moving forward towards something that is desirable rather than simply away (or aside from) something that is bad
• Problem-solving change is all about trying to get out of slippery holes – getting out of one doesn’t mean that you haven’t fallen into another
• Vision-driven change is holistic, and presents an inclusive and clear goal that people can both relate and aspire to
• Problem-solving change is fragmented, and often fails to consider how one problem is linked to the next – it also often encourages looking for solutions at levels that are far beyond people’s grasp

I have nothing against problem-solving. What I do lament, however, is the striking absence of vision-driven change. We go into a place and focus first and foremost on what the problems are. I even heard a very senior, experienced staff member (perhaps a little too old now?) say that one of the jobs we do is to show people dreams… as if the people didn’t have their own dreams before we turned up!?!? I was a little bit taken aback at this and wondered about the extent to which we may take ownership for people’s dreams and, correspondingly, perhaps, the extent that we fail to really tap into the potential of really engaging people voluntarily in taking action to realize their dreams…

One thing is for sure: the dream-based leadership workshop that we conducted in Delwara – which included an exercise for linking people’s own actions to the realization of their dreams – worked! Within a few days, a Muslim lady – a local leader – was out and about in her neighbourhood trying to collect money from each household to cover the cost of getting the neighbourhood cleaned on a regular basis. And just the other day, I was translating for a volunteer studying the relationship between women and water in Delwara, and two women quite clearly recounted: “it’s not that we didn’t have dreams before the Citizen’s Forum was established, it’s just that we didn’t have a way of realizing them”.

This is an urgent plea to not let ourselves start trying to possess other people’s dreams and to focus instead on trying simply to listen to, know and understand them, to get people to own up to having them and to cultivate a passion for realizing them – both individually and collectively!

I sincerely believe that these dreams are the source from which any glimmer of hope for positive social change emerges. As such, they are worthy of unfathomable respect.

dealing with tensions in conversation... a start

I now have some questions on the role of conflict, taking stands, - more generally surfacing tensions as a self-appointed change-maker in an unofficial organizational change process. There are a lot of complexities here – especially in terms of how the roles and the situation itself is framed…

For example, the organisation considers itself to be a learning organisation continuously undergoing a kind of gradual learning and change process as a result of learning-by-doing. Another example is my own role as ‘person putting together the 6th Comprehensive Plan’ – a kind of in-house, part-facilitator, part-writer, part-outsider, but not with a totally clear organizational change mandate since we haven’t really been using that term (thanks to Hugh at Gaping Void for the cartoon)… But I do see myself as trying to contribute to organizational change… and in a way, this Comprehensive Plan is all about change...

Anyway, it seems to me that there is a general sense that facilitators should never utter harsh or strong words or express a stance on anything other than the design of the sessions that they facilitate – i.e. the meta-container. But often I have found myself not even really having proper control over these very spaces. Indeed, a lot of the ‘competition’ I face in my work seems to be around control of the container. In these situations, I need to think about how my individual actions, words and body language can be used to influence the container (or the people in it).

This, for example, is what led me to decide to simply keep quiet and out of the way on that day when I got upset about the attitude of a top manager during a staff gathering on strategies for not appreciating the open-space approach and wanting to bring more control into the process (see this earlier blog post)… In a way, I stepped back and the group then had to take ownership for the whole process… Though I was out of the way, at least the people were in charge and trying to figure it out themselves.

Anyway, several days later, and preparing for another event, I remember having a little clash over the idea of open space. I was trying to advocate for an open-space approach but the response from a top manager was negative. They said that they had seen open space in the past and that it hadn’t worked. They also said that they were concerned about the use of time by their staff – a process that doesn’t work out at a retreat for the whole organisation means that the time of some 250 people would be getting wasted – convert that into rupees and it really does seem like a big risk!

But then… it’s also a bit degrading for the staff at some level… don’t we have enough faith in our staff to want to use their time productively? Beyond that, in line with the general spirit of voluntarism and meaningful engagement, my sense is that a lot more value can be obtained from a group of people who are engaging with something pationately (while the rest wander around aimlessly or lounge in the trees) than forcing a group of disinterested people to sit in a circle silently, perhaps staring into space or at their navel, while a few people actually talk. Oh well…

In any case, the funny thing is that at the time I hammered my point, disagreed strongly with the evaluation of open space and cited an example of the villagers in Delwara (with whom we conducted an open space session as part of a visioning process) – which included a very mixed group (Hindus, tribals, muslims, women, men, adults and youth…) and yielded quite wonderful results! If they can do it why can’t we. Anyway, I feel as though I have been pushing this point on a number of occasions, occasionally arguing the case… and recently, I got the feeling that people might just be catching on a little to this idea… though I’m not totally sure about it…

There have also been a whole spate of examples of people using the ‘oh but we already tried that and it didn’t work’ statement – which pretty much ended a particular line of discussion. One was in the context of mobilizing the community to put pressure on the local government (panchayat) to secure better quality services and another was in the context of dissemination of improved agriculture through farmer-to-farmer learning. I have heard countless other applications of the same killer response to certain ideas that may have been tried in the past and they really do kill the mood. Generally, there is a reluctance – and perhaps the absence of the required time and space – to engage with some of these subjects in greater depth; the depth that would be required to get somewhere meaningful.

The first case, I tried to resolve – not by saying anything at the time – but by several days later talking to the person who had effectively ended that conversation and letting them know the impact of what they had said. What was most interesting was that the intended impact of what was said and the actual impact were quite different. Now it seems we are all quite happy about the idea of working with the government.

In the second case, I suppose I was lucky to have some kind of an inkling into the issue. I decided to start talking to the people who had proposed the idea and advocated the idea of us getting involved in a study to really explore the dynamics of farmer-to-farmer learning and the dissemination of farming practices within a community resulting from training a limited cluster… Really understanding these dynamics across several villages could help the organisation design much more effective dissemination strategies (which could involve various roles for local community organisations) that can get more people adopting good practices for a much lower cost… but for that we would have to know how the knowledge spreads! This would also help whoever is advocating the approach to counter the kind of ‘we did that in the past and it didn’t work’ kind of statements…

Indeed, there was a third case just today, in which there was a discussion about whether we should work to create model villages. A number of senior staff didn't like this idea (for various reasons - mostly, as far as I could figure out, to do with assumptions about what this implied). I tried to present an alternative conception of these model villages by suggesting that we view them as opportunities for conducting in-depth action research into what it takes to make really strong communities in these places - particularly in the context of securing real integration of all the organisation's activities, etc. This didn't go down too well. The basic response was that the organisation already has 40 years of experience so we don't really need to go studying these things and, in any case, the whole organisation is like one big action research process. To which I replied quite directly - 'you're wrong' - along with a whole host of other things explaining why (e.g. learning can't be taken for granted, it needs to be systematic, we clearly don't have all the answers, there are many things we are still struggling with, etc.). It's too early to judge where this will take us and the issue has now been flagged for further discussion (where I plan to present a more reasoned/structured version of my take on the issue and each of the 'blocks' will also present their thoughts...) Let's see where this goes.

I also find myself wondering about whether my somewhat unclear role has something to do with my need to take these positions… By this I mean to say the fact that I am part-way a facilitator of change and part-way just another person in the organisation… I’m not an external facilitator with an ‘expert’ reputation. But then reading Dave Pollard’s recent post (amazingly, I came across it in the middle of writing this one – is that synchronicity or what!?) helped me to realize that these are questions that one may have to face even as an external ‘expert’ facilitator.

I suppose that the best way to deal with it is to be open, honest and authentic, acknowledge that one is also learning and trying to make sense of things and do one’s best to accept that different people have different view-points and that one has to work with things the way they are. I also believe that sometimes leaving a little bit of a sour taste (that lingers) might be a good way of getting someone to ponder something a little… a kind of cognitive dissonance that resonates for a bit longer than usual…

innit?

on complexity, chaos and self-organisation

Just the other day, I was reading a post by Dave Snowden on management vs. self-organisation that triggered a few questions in my mind... This is what I commented:

chaos and anarchy are not the same thing at all. anarchy would imply not having any ruler but this does not mean chaos since a group can be self-governing and leadership a dynamic and distributed process... take for example the classical example of a jazz quartet doing improvisation (would it mean anything to say that the underlying form of the music manages the player's interactions)? now, can the same thing be said of management? can a system be said to display self-management or self-organising properties?

i often come up across this question in the context of my work... is it about the coordinator 'coordinating' the team or is it about there being 'coordination' within the team and does thinking about it differently lead to different ways of trying to achieve the end result (i.e. a team operating with a high level of coordination or coherence)?

For some reason, I also thought that self-organisation was supposed to be a property of complex, not chaotic (= lacking any organisation or coherence) systems... tipping a system into a chaotic state may be a way of temporarily unlocking the system so that it has greater chance of self-organising in new ways (this would also be where the role of the 'manager' comes in - creating the container/parameters within which all this can happen)... It's also worth pointing out that self-organising does not mean 'good'.

I also think that you can call it management if you prefer the horse analogy but there can be many other words for it... one, possibly more appropriate one - given all the connotations - might be facilitation... but then perhaps there is a scale from command and control (absolute micro-management) to not doing anything at all (with facilitation somewhere more towards not doing anything)?

but what I understood from what I have read, practiced and reflected on of systems theory is that the whole point is that regardless of what you are doing in the system (i'm talking about an organisational -i.e. complex - system here), the system has its own complex dynamics, attractors, etc. - which leads to self-organisation (which could be good or bad)... so, like you said (but in different words?), the manager has to work with the self-organising characteristics of a complex system in order to help it continuously transition to levels which secure it a better fit with more of its external environment... in a social (human organisational) system, this would entail communication and quite possibly involving the whole system in the management of itself...

for some reason this always gets me thinking about the fact that little organisms had a big hand in making our atmosphere into something breathable... and plants which continue to play a critical role in regulating the earthly climate...

sorry for the rambling! does this make any sense?

Am I in a bubble?

Every once in a while, confusion sets in... and when it does, it tends to be everything at once. This leads me to believe that confusion is more about a state of mind than it is in relation to specific things... Though I may be off the mark here... In any case, a little bit of introspection always goes down well in these situations!

So, perhaps, it is time to review a few things:

1. Why did I come to India? What was I thinking before I came? What was my world view? What was my idea of change? What inspired me? How? Why?
2. What did I actually end up doing? What have I learned? How have I and my ideas changed over the course of the five years that I have spent here?
3. What do I feel right now? What is calling me? Am I in a bubble? Where do I need to be?

Now, none of these are small questions. But I will have a go all the same.

1. Why did I come to India? What was I thinking before I came? What was my world view? What was my idea of change? What inspired me? How? Why?

I came to India after finishing my BSc in Environmental Policy with Economics. I had also completed several years of cultivating an anarchist, anti-system philosophy with radical green fringes. The City of London was the Heart of Evil and the whole transnational, capitalist elite that it represented was a part of a global network out to dominate the world and take humans away from the true path of liberation and freedom by putting them in little boxes where they live futile lives to earn the $$s so they can pay the bills and muddle about in little meaningless circles without ever knowing the Truth. People, instead, were caught up in self-centred, individualistic lives based on material gratification - and in the meanwhile, swathes were living meaningless lives, like robots. Linked to that, the last 50 years or so during which 'Development' arose as a fabricated story of the West/North (post-colonial powers) to exploit people and take their wealth, had undermined the rich cultures and sustainable livelihoods of people from the world over.

Hmmm... So there were a lot of people in the Rest (as opposed to West) of the world who had been oppressed, marginalised, exploited, disenfranchised, broken. My idea of my work probably had two main components: (a) seeking ecological restoration of the world; (b) bringing about radical transformation of societies to achieve this - keeping in mind the issues of power relations and social justice. I remember at the time thinking that in order to achieve the former, work would have to be done on the latter. I had this idea that if the people of countries like India could be sensitised to the ecological problems and socio-economic injustice that was making their lives worse; if they could be organised to raise their voice and get their issues onto the agenda, then there may be some scope for pressuring the rest of the world to modify its own behaviour. But there was a lot that I also knew I didn't know...

At the same time, i was particularly inspired by the ideas of direct, participatory, deliberative - maybe even ecological - democracy; of sustainable communities linked to their natural resource base, engaging in dialogue in order to make decisions and working things out. People taking control of their lives and enabling the full potential of human flowering to take place in a simple, natural and joyful way.

Equipped with these ideas and also lack thereof, I decided that I needed to go to India. There were many reasons for this, encompassing: food, philosophy, culture, abundance of NGOs, relatively safe and democratic, having lots of oppressed people, my family having been there before I was born. The idea was: go to India, find an NGO, spend some time working there, get a sense of what the work is, what development is, how does change happen, learn a good deal, and then make a plan about what to do next.

2. What did I actually end up doing? What have I learned? How have I and my ideas changed over the course of the five years that I have spent here?

Well, I came to India immediately after finishing my degree - perhaps a little prematurely. I came with a bunch of my good friends, my ex-girlfriend and a reasonably unclear agenda. Although I had planned to come later and on my own, the enthusiasm of all my friends about going together swept me up and I headed of a good deal earlier - without a clear plan and without enough money to last very long...

My initial travels took me to Kashmere, where I was completely absorbed in the beauty of nature and the complexity of my own self. Lazy days, soaking up sunshine on Dal and Niggin Lakes and experiencing the bizarre atmosphere of a place filled with soldiers, death, fear, hope, loss and such tragic beauty... Trekking up to Sonna Marg and Gangabal, jumping naked into a glacial lake, catching fish, seeing marmots, sitting on goat skins with bearded, turbaned men in a little tent (to shelter from the rain) and eating boiled eggs... it was a very powerful experience. The travelling continued down to Dharmshalla and then into Rajasthan until one by one my friends had all gone... leaving me to fend for myself. It wasn't long before I hit Udaipur.

I got stuck in Udapiur, in the late monsoon season. The lake and the sunsets over it blew my mind daily. The other travellers were great company - so many good conversations. I made several excursions to Eklingji and Ranakpur. I wrote letters that I never sent explaining how I felt. And then, one day, I asked my rickshaw driver friend, Jameel, if he knew of a place where I could volunteer - and he said Seva Mandir. So I said take me there... and he did.

After some formalities I was accepted and assigned the task of helping the organisation prepare impact indicators. ? ? ? No-one, including myself, seemed to really know what this ought to involve... Gradually things became clearer - the result of a lot of muddling through. The main part of my first three years can be summarised thus: finding out about all the different work the organisation does by talking to people, thinking about indicators, talking about indicators, developing indicators, revising indicators, developing tools to collect data, testing these tools, training people to collect the data, getting the data collected, developing data entry modules, getting the data entered, cleaning the data, analysing the data, preparing reports based on the data, presenting the data back to people.

On the side, I spent a lot of time reading about evaluation, organisational learning, participation and participatory approaches/methods (including PRA, PLA, Open Space, AoH, Appreciative Inquiry, etc.), community development and complexity theory - and I was continuously trying to implement what I was learning in my work. I also wrote various reports - annual, progress, donor, proposals, and so on... Then, three years later (wait a minute... did you say THREE?), I couldn't work with my new boss and asked to be transferred somewhere else... So I ended up in Delwara, a small town 30 kms outside of Udaipur where Seva Mandir was working on integrated community development, focusing on responsible citizenship and local self-governance....

I was there for a year and a half - and I still am in a number of ways. I learned a great deal here that I still haven't managed to put into words. After this I was asked to help the organisation put together its 6th Comprehensive Plan which has involved facilitating dialogue across the organisation on issues of strategy, culture and structure (though mainly the former two). This has been my icing on the cake and this is kind of where I am at today. Almost 5 years have elapsed since I came to India. I never had any idea that I would stay in one place for so long.

So how have I and my ideas changed? The hardest question! I suppose that I have learned a huge amount about all the things that I have worked on, read and written about: evaluation, learning, facilitation, community dynamics (and what holds people together), organisations, empowerment, how change happens in an organisational and community context, complexity. I think I have also learned a great deal about myself... though I am not completely sure what. I have definitely evolved as a person - become more balanced, capable, in control of myself - maybe even wise... In many ways, though, I know that I still have a long, long way to go!
i have also developed a whole host of interests that I knew nothing about before coming - like facilitation, like complexity theory, like story-telling, like organisational change... I have become able to articulate one of the things that I would like to see myself doing in the coming years: working on organisational change processes as a means to attaining larger scale positive social change. None of the above does justice to what I have learned...

But I am still a green, spiritual, anarchist at heart. And I am still concerned with radically transforming power structures in the world, attaining ecological balance, claiming social justice and creating a world where humans live in harmony with each other and nature and where the full potential of all people can flourish. So in that regard, I think I have just gone deeper, not really sideways.

3. What do I feel right now? What is calling me? Am I in a bubble? Where do I need to be?
Another tough question. My decision to go and study - which I continue to question intensely from time to time - seems to signal something about how I feel... and it seems that I have to try and decipher my actions in order to really understand what is going on. The application (after 5 years of just thinking about it) is a sign that something deep within me (something beyond my simple, conscious chattering) wanted to go from here - for at least a while - and probably, eventually, for a longer time. My choice of course, one that lets me spend another year here though, shows that I really am not quite ready to just leave this place.

I have unfinished business here in Seva Mandir, in Udaipur. And there is a need for continuity - not just in terms of the work that I do but also in terms of my own personal learning trajectory: there are ideas that I am struggling with, trying to make sense of and trying to put into practice... and the place where I am now seems as fertile ground to work on as anything else... A list of some of the things that I would like to work on here can be found at: learn2act4change.

The items in that list seem to be what is calling me... But am I really hearing the greater call or am I in a bubble... is this just the local call? Am I really doing justice to what I am and what I believe in? Am I really doing justice to my ecological and environmental concerns? Have I found a way of weaving these dimensions in to the work that I do or have I somehow lost touch with these things by getting all caught up in other dimensions of the work? Is the scale at which I am working significant enough to really address the concerns - is it too big? is it too small? How is what I'm doing tying in to what's going on in the world? Is this work in Delwara - soon to expand to other peri-urban settlements - actually meaningful in the face of the bigger changes that our world is under-going...

I suppose I don't have the answers. I suppose that my decision to enroll in the Participation Power and Social change course, somewhere deep inside me, is an attempt to try and connect to people and knowledge that will help me make sense of all these things. Maybe it will let me look at my bubble from the outside, get a sense of perspective on things, understand how what I am doing and have been doing up to now fits in to the bigger scheme of things, the multitude of efforts for change going on at all scales and in all places... and then, perhaps, I will be able to make a more informed decision about what really matters... to me... for the world... and, therefore what I should do in the coming years.

half full or half empty... the muddle continues

It's way past my bedtime but I feel compelled to write. Failing to follow on from my last blog, this is a return to a lingering question of growingly nagging proportions: appreciative inquiry - is it a biased way of looking at things and does this make it somehow less useful or worthwhile in the broader endeavour to make positive change in the world?

This question first began to move beyond being a simple blot on my landscape to a kind of subject for inquiry after reading an article by Dave Snowden. A recent blog post by Dave Snowden got me thinking about this again. He wrote:

One of my real concerns here is the frequent conflation of Cognitive Edge methods with NLP and that other current popular method Appreciative Inquiry (AI). Now there is a big difference. My concern about AI is that it privileges one type of story over an other. Why should anyone tell people what type of stories they should tell? Despite my disagreements I can respect its practitioners and see that it has utility in constrained circumstances. [He then goes on to talk about NLP - for which he clearly has less respect than he does for AI]

So, the question that I am really grappling with is: in what contexts does applying Appreciative Inquiry makes sense? Or even better, where does the role of purpose fit in to the whole practice of story-work?

It seems that Dave's approach is concerned with eliminating any kind of bias into the 'inquiry' or story-eliciting process. Now, I may be just fuddling my way through, but it seems to me that any process of gathering stories will need to have some kind of a purpose (am I missing something?) - whether it is simply to generate a database of contextualised organisational happenings from diverse perspectives (why would we want this) to something more overt like enabling an organisation to become more effective at what it does (e.g. by becoming more responsive to its clients needs, learning more effectively, improving leadership and communication patterns, etc.).

I recognise that I may have the wrong end of the stick (please point this out if I do). I also recognise that the very process of surfacing a question or purpose for 'inquiry' itself may require an inquiry in its own right... But even this sense that 'something needs to be done' will be informed by some kind of nagging notion that... well, there is something that needs to be done... about something!? Hmmm...

But Dave's critique focuses not so much on the subject or purpose as the 'type of story' - i.e. in the case of AI, this would be the story of what worked and what were the conditions that led to this thing actually working - a positive take. I suppose, the point is that it makes good sense to look at what isn't working and how things end up not working -because this might tell us what we ought to avoid doing.

In various articles of Dave's that I have read, he talks about using the story of the chap who discovered that latitude could be calculated simply by using a clock as a way of getting people to feel comfortable about telling stories of times when good ideas were scrapped because of bosses with old-paradigm world-views... Now isn't this as much an attempt at telling people what kind of story to tell as doing an AI would be?

So is the point that we should ask people to tell all kinds of stories - the good, the bad and the ugly? How do we decide how we should lead the questions? It seems that we have to elicit a certain type of story - at least in a number of situations - in order to get at the juiciest bits which may not respond to a simple question like 'tell me about leadership in the organisation' - it just seems way too vague - and therefore liable to elicit a vague series of answers that have to be gradually probed to get to the depth by gradually making it more specific (e.g. by using the latitude example).

The other tendency that I have observed is that people love talking about negative stories. Huge amounts of staff time go into ranting about problems, complaining about things, etc. My sense is that this tends to breed a negative mindset and can be very counterproductive. Just imagine if some more of this time was spent by people having constructive conversations about how to solve problems, or for sharing knowledge and experience, coming up with new initiatives and so on... Now wouldn't this lead to a dramatic increase in effectiveness? Perhaps I am completely missing the point!? What if bosses could listen to stories about times when their staff had really felt able to perform and deliver change?

In the end, I suppose that both the positives and the negatives are essential. It seems to be as important to know what we can do as it does to know what we shouldn't do. But when we are on the move, and we don't have vast resources to put in place high end knowledge management systems (as in the case of the NGO where I am working in India), might not an AI allow us to get rather a lot done - even if only in such constrained circumstances?

In any case, I have resolved to take this question with me into my practice and really have a go at unearthing all manner of stories - positive and negative - with the hope that I can begin to get a sense for what all of this adds up to...

Trying to get some bearings...

It's been a while since I managed to get back to the blog and I have a lot to say. At the same time, I really want to learn how to say whatever I am trying to say in less space. One approach could be to use several smaller blog postings (to create the illusion of using less space). Another is to try and use visual media (to really use less space). I think I will use a combination of the two.

In any case, here are the main things on my mind that I want to blog about a little bit more (though not in any particular order) in the coming days:

1. How most communication takes place (and why)
   
2. How this leads to the mess we're in (and why)
   
3. What getting out of it might involve (and why)
   
4. The place for spirituality in all this (and why)
   

All of these seem to be connected to each other - within myself at least. Making sense of this all will be an important part of my own learning journey. All this is inspired by various things I have experienced and read over the last couple of months, including:

1. Re-visiting my early reflections on Action Science
   
2. Reading Dave Snowden's work on stories and complexity
3. My recent engagement with anthropology
4. Reading the Katha Upanishad and the Tao Te Ching
5. Facilitating communication between a volunteer and organisational staff
6. Witnessing various conflicts within my 'home' and within the organisation
   
7. Late night and other engaging discussions with friends on much of the above
8. A good bit of improvised fictional story-circle
9. Some reflections on stepping out into the unknown and how this makes me feel

Let's see how this unfolds.

If I were God... Oh but I am - if only I could realise it!

After that last outburst on narratives, which seems to have opened up an entire new dimension of reality to me, I started reading San Beck's translation of the Katha Upanishad. This marvellous story, and I really mean MARVELLOUS STORY, is a must read. This little quote gives a taste of what it is trying to tell us:

Know the soul as lord of a chariot,
the body as the chariot.
Know the intuition as the chariot driver,
and the mind as the reins.
The senses, they say, are the horses;
the objects of sense the paths.
This associated with the body, the senses and the mind,
the wise call 'the enjoyer.'

But why did I start to read this? To be honest I have a little theory about the Upanishads - one that I have long been nurturing but that makes itself clearer to me every day. Upanishads means (etymologically) 'to sit down beside/close to'. Usually, it is presented as sitting down close to the Guru - but I think that this is unnecessary Guru worship (and this is where I defect). Doesn't the Guru learn from his student? What, nothing at all?

Perhaps we all host a collective Guru when we sit down close together and talk from the heart about what really matters - at moments it is you, at moments it is I (for This is That) - and together we learn in communion with a self that is self-transcendent - more than just you and more than just me. And this is what is so beautiful. Even while having a conversation with Death itself!

Sounds like the foundation of a great community to me!

Full Circle? Maybe more of a spiral!

Today, I am reminded of a dream I had when I first joined this organisation. I entered a room, lit by sunlight and decorated with potted plants. In the room there were a series of low tables (of the coffee table kind) with chairs around them. People were sitting around these tables engaged in conversation. The people were from all the different units in the organisation and they were excitedly and passionately sharing their ideas. The air was ripe with inspiration...

An odd dream, I suppose (it's not made up, honestly!)... Clearly a sign that I am obsessive! But today, having completed my first Appreciative Inquiry (at least the first part of it), having discovered World Cafe, Open Space and the Art of Hosting, having come across the work of people like Dave Snowden and Shawn Callahan of Anecdote, and having discovered all this gigantic world of story-telling and meaningful conversations, I feel a little like I am coming home. Is this the reason why I came here (here being this 40 year old organisation in Udaipur, Rajasthan with whom I am presently associated)?

The reason I came here, and stayed on, was simple: I wanted to make a 'sustainable contribution'. The more I worked, the more I learned about people, systems, organisational learning, systems dynamics and complexity theory, the more I came to understand what this 'sustainable change' really meant and what it might take to bring it about.

The more I think about it, the more i realise that the deep change will take place when the patterns of conversation within the organisation change. And changing the patterns of conversation within the organisation is, by and large (not meaning to sound overly naieve), a matter of opening spaces for conversations and asking the right questions to get the right kind of conversations. And the message that I am getting now, after reading and listening to all kinds of things on the subject, is that stories need to be the basis of this conversations.

Of course, the conversations can build on, manipulate, deconstruct, reconstruct and distill the stories in myriad ways - all guided, of course, by matters of purpose (why these stories?) and context... But those stories are the foundation of any learning and change that is going to emerge. They are the raw data for creating meaning collectively. Story, it seems to me, only really has significance, only really comes to life, in an inter-personal setting.

I have been using anecdotes throughout my time here at a personal level to explain or justify things. Not very effectively though! For the most part, I seem to have used them almost accidentally - not as the foundation of a carefully considered way of generating deeper understanding. Now I feel that a whole new universe has opened up before me based on story-telling. It is as though the entire organisation just dissolved into its basic unit: stories.

The story has the potential to connect the women's group leader who isn't getting the support she needs to the chief executive in a way that a target (30 women's group leaders trained) doesn't. It can also connect the health in-charge to the education in-charge through the story of the child in the community school who got ill and none of his friends had basic first-aid knowledge. (By the way, I just made these stories up... to prove a point).

Another realisation, and one that came just now, is that the real pressing need - to complete the learning cycle - is to link the stories of the villagers themselves (the local leaders, the users of the irrigation system, the trained birth assistants, the children in the community schools) to the stories of the field workers and to link the stories of the field workers to the stories of the block staff and the stories of the block staff to the unit staff and the executive committee and beyond.

Now I may be obsessing a little. But for an oral culture, of which Mewar (the region I am living in), I do believe, is a fine example (though it has its writing too), story telling should be a piece of pie as natural as herding goats or collecting berries from the forest! All we need to do now is navigate the donors and their out-dated obsession with de-contextualised numbers that drain time and energy away from meaningful, inspiring, change-inducing conversations based on stories!

This is all, perhaps, a gross simplification of what will probably take a lot of perseverance and (self-)mastery to apply. And I by no means intend to do injustice to story-work. But I feel I have just reached a new level in my understanding of something of great importance.

The excitement of the adventure continues! Or, rather, begins (again, only more so)!