Dialogue, Decision-Making, and Mattering

by Miki Kashtan

One of the cornerstones of our modern culture, the great reward that arose from being freed from earlier feudal times, is the idea of personal rights, the freedom to make decisions for ourselves. In the countries that are categorized as liberal democracies, this freedom is often sacrosanct. Once we reach adulthood, and assuming our specific group is not barred from having civil rights (as in women before being allowed to vote, blacks in the South before desegregation, Palestinians in the Occupied Territories), we don’t have to ask anyone for permission to move, to vote, to enter or exit spaces, to eat or not eat, to befriend people, or to do anything else we want to do provided it’s not specifically illegal. Granted, in our workplaces, we trade this freedom for money. We accept that our bosses can tell us what to do – within limits. Still, we do this freely (or so we believe). 

So enamored are we with this particular version of what freedom means, that the idea of involving other people in our process of making decisions appears to many of us to be the same as asking for permission. When I used to work with couples, often a sore spot was when one of the partners would be making decisions that affect the other person without consulting with the affected person. More often then not, when I invited the person to check with their partner before the decision, they would balk. Many of them found it really difficult to discern the difference between asking their partner for permission and asking their partner for feedback about the effect of the decision on them. Back in the workplace, when I work with managers, they often struggle with the idea of involving the people they supervise in decision-making. Again, I sense that they associate any form of dialogue about a decision with loss of autonomy.

I believe that one of the best kept secrets about the rewards of choosing interdependence is the wisdom and the richer freedom that are often unleashed through entering dialogue with others as a path to making decisions: together, in complete autonomy, honoring everyone affected. To make this secret more available to more people, to help usher in a possible future, I want to share three stories about how dialogue created shifts that resulted in an outcome that served everyone better than before. Each of these stories illustrates one of the challenges that we face on the path to full integration of autonomy and interdependence.

Holding Dilemmas Together in the Workplace: A Sneak Preview of the Future

by Miki Kashtan

Throughout human history, stories have been a source of inspiration and bonding. Especially in these difficult times, when we need inspiration about what’s possible, when so many of us are hungry for some faith that collaboration can work, I feel so happy to have some examples that nourish me in my own work. This is, simply, about what work can be like when we embrace a deep intentionality of collaboration.  (These are three real-life stories, two of which are changed in non-substantial ways to protect anonymity.) They all exhibit the path I think of as inviting people to hold a dilemma together. I have written about this path in other contexts, and I am truly delighted to share something that can offer a visceral sense of what the future could look like, however small the scale.

A Hiring Challenge

A colleague of mine, let’s call her Jennifer, was in the process of hiring an administrator. In the process of interviewing people, one candidate, named here Susan, stood out as being an absolute fit for the scope and quality of the job. The only catch was that Susan wanted significantly more money than Jennifer’s budget; more, in fact, than Jennifer herself was earning. She approached me, initially, to get a sense of what people at BayNVC were getting paid, to help her assess how to respond. After some back and forth, what stood out to me was that she was going to make the decision by herself, without involving Susan. Whatever course of action she was going to take – accepting what Susan asked for, turning down the offer, or negotiating with Susan about a lower pay – all of that was going to be inside of Jennifer. In this, our familiar and common world, she would be operating separately from Susan, and Susan from Jennifer. Each would decide for herself what works for her.

Here’s what I said in a final email: “Does she know she will be making more than you? Are the reasons for the ‘minimum’ she wants about sustainability or about dignity/value? Dialogue with her, invite her into the dilemma, make a decision with her.”

This idea – inviting people into the dilemma – is one I am more and more drawn into. It’s one of the ways that I see myself supporting people to embrace collaboration. It’s revolutionary in its simplicity, and in general doesn’t occur to people. Most often, when I find a specific enough application, people welcome and embrace it – whether parents or bosses. In this case, with Jennifer being an NVC trainer, she was very happy to experiment, and invited Susan to have a conversation.

Myths of Power-With: # 2 - The Either/Or of Decision-Making

by Miki Kashtan

Recently, I was at Rainbow Grocery, a local worker-owned coop where I do a lot of my shopping. Rainbow has been around since the 1970s, and is one of not so many such places that have survived the test of time and are still thriving. As I was looking for a particular bulk spice (for those who care, their bulk section is what I most go all the way to San Francisco for), I overheard a worker explain to a customer an oddity in the way that the spices were organized. I heard weariness in her voice, so I turned to her afterwards and said something to the effect that this oddity could be fixed. She looked at me with what I saw as an odd mixture of commitment and resignation, and said: “Change is very slow when you run a democracy.”

To me this sentence sums up the crux of the issue I am exploring today. This response assumes something I myself question: why would change have to be slow in a democracy? I know the answer, because I think I know what she and others mean by a democracy. I think they mean a certain version of participatory democracy in which everyone participates in all decisions. I used to share the belief that this was the only possible path. In this understanding, we either compromise on the possibility of making things happen, or we compromise on the ideal of power-with, the value at the heart of this version of democracy: no one has anything imposed on them in any way, shape, or form.

Although this dilemma overlaps with the issue I named in Myth#1, I see a significant distinction between the two. When writing about the first myth, that everyone can be included, I was focusing more on the complexity of membership, which is about who gets to be part of a group or organization in the first place. Membership, then, involves a host of privileges and responsibilities, of which decision making is only one. Here, in this post, I am focusing on the process of decision-making within a group or organization whose membership is already clear. 

Beyond Consensus or Majority: Notes about Decision-Making in a Leaderless Movement

by Miki Kashtan

On October 18th I participated in the general assembly meeting in OccupyOakland. On October 22nd I posted a piece about that experience, which I named In Search of Dialogue. Even before writing that piece I have been engaging in my mind with the large question of decision-making in this movement. Since I posted this piece, I have received many comments and have read much that others have written, all of which have taken my thinking forward.

I remain deeply humble as I reflect on this movement. I believe even more than before that no one at this point can predict what this movement will bring about. With all the humility, I still want to ask the question: how can a movement maintain its focus and vision, include everyone that wants to be heard and create an efficient collaborative decision-making process?

Is Leadership Necessary?

Some time ago I talked with one of the core organizers in NYC, a young man who has applied himself seriously to the study of Nonviolent Communication. I was struck by the astonishing challenge of continuing to make decisions on the basis of full consensus with everyone present as the number of people participating kept increasing while more and more of the participants were transient members. As I offered him some tips about facilitation and decision-making to address some of these issues, I noticed that he loved the ideas, and yet didn’t see a way to implement them. This was not due to lack of skill on his part, since I could walk him through the processes easily. Rather, it was because he was deeply concerned that anything that looked like active facilitation would be viewed as taking power and leadership, and would thus run counter to the intense ethos of operating in full shared power and in a leaderless manner. Could there be room for leadership within this leaderless movement?

I so loved what Sharif Abdullah wrote about the role of leadership in movements, that I would rather invite you to read his piece than say similar ideas less eloquently. He writes almost daily about the movement, and you can find his writing at http://www.praxis.commonway.org. In his piece on leadership in the Occupy movement, Sharif makes two significant points. One is that the movement doesn’t have all the conditions necessary for thriving without leadership. The other is that leadership takes many forms. People are reacting to a perception of leadership as control, as someone telling them what to do. Sharif is advocating a form of leadership that he calls “emergent” and is based on encouraging and stimulating others along with several other features. I see the facilitation of collaborative decision-making as an active form of leadership that is fully aligned with Sharif’s vision of emergent, catalyst leadership. I so hope that this kind of leadership will be welcomed in the communities spreading around the globe.

Is Consensus vs. Majority All There Is?

I read a piece today from Michael Albert called Occupy to Self-Manage. He’s been on the road for six weeks, and has talked with people in a number of European countries about their experiences of their occupations. Many of them had been dwindling - although people still show up for specific actions. In response to his questions, people repeatedly shared that the consensus process of the general assemblies was a large component of what interfered with people making the commitment to stay for a long time.

I can completely see the appeal of consensus as compared to majority vote. On the face of it, consensus honors power-sharing and is concerned for everyone in a group. This direct sense of everyone’s participation has got to be a key reason why this process was adopted so widely. Despite its appeal, the process has encountered serious obstacles because of the issues that arise around blocking, because it can take such a long time, and because random people that show up can interfere with reaching decisions. As a result, OccupyOakland, for example, has adopted a modified consensus process based on 90% of non-abstaining votes. Although 90% is a very high proportion, that still leaves open the question of what happens to the minority, and especially if the issues that a minority has with a particular decision are significant for it. Is there truly a way to include everyone, or does inclusion by necessity mean losing the possibility of an efficient decision, or reaching one at all?

Collaborative Decision-Making

I have been working with groups intensively for the last fifteen years, and have been consciously examining the question of decision-making within groups for at least ten of them. Based on my experience and my reflections, I see a clear path to a process that efficiently generates decisions that people can truly accept, without implicit of explicit coercion, and with care and attention to all that’s important to everyone. I have been teaching this process and people have applied it in many settings. I haven’t yet seen it applied in a group larger than 250 people. I am confident that applying it in the Occupy movement as is, without modifications, would run into some similar problems to a consensus process. Either process, to be fully operational, would require learning how to function in smaller groups and still reach decisions that work for everyone. In a manuscript I recently finished and am now editing I include a vision of a possible world and in it I describe a global governance system based on similar principles that could, with some adjustments, apply to the settings of the occupations. For the moment, I only want to discuss some key insights that by themselves could possibly help in certain situations. Beyond that, I can think of few things that would give me more satisfaction than working with some facilitators to adapt the process to the existing conditions at the various encampments.

Positions, Arguments, Human Needs, and How We Shift

Most of us have been trained to assume that the only way that someone’s position would shift, if at all, is through a compelling argument. Most activists that I have worked with and coached have been given extensive training in how to speak about their opinions, and see it as their work, in many instances, to convince others who may have different opinions.

My own experiences of dialogue have led me to a tentative other conclusion: that we shift positions, when we do, when the following happens, not necessarily in this order:

• We are fully heard for what’s important to us, or what our vision or dream is, that have led us to adopt the position we have. This allows us to relax emotionally and be more open to hearing and more curious about others’ positions.

• We come to a place of understanding of what’s important to someone else that is underneath their position, or what their dream is, or what human need is motivating them. Not just intellectual understanding; we actually open our hearts to where someone else is coming from, or are moved by their humanity or the vision they have.

• We trust that on the deepest level what this other person most wants is not at odds with what we want.

• We accept the premise of finding a solution that works for everyone.

• We experience freedom to choose rather than any coercion to adopt a certain position or to shift in some direction towards others. We trust that we are cared about, and so is everyone else.

I have had enough experiences of polarized people coming together to know this is entirely possible, even likely, when enough connection has been achieved through dialogue. It is the foundation of the decision-making process I designed.

Practical Inclusion

I have a deep and abiding interest in inclusion. I know my own desire to be included, to know that I matter, that what’s important to me counts, that I can have a say and affect an outcome. I also know how important it is to me to include others when I am part of a group and even more so when I lead a group.

At the same time I know how exponentially unwieldy discussions can become when the numbers grow. One person speaks, others want to speak, then others want to respond. Meanwhile others sit in amazement as the same points are made over and over again. As Sharif Abdullah said, “Just blurting out whatever you want, whenever you want to, is NOT democracy.” Is there a way out of this nightmare that doesn’t sacrifice the value of inclusion?

I have found that one distinction makes all the difference in the world: the difference between including everyone’s voice and including everyone’s needs. If, as people speak, we are able to capture the true needs for which they speak to their satisfaction of being heard, and if we are indeed committed to including all the needs, there is no reason to hear anyone else articulate a position or opinion that stems from the same need. Once the need has been named, only additional needs can be invited to speak.

I see this confusion between hearing needs, issues, and concerns, and hearing everyone’s voice as a big impairment to group functioning. Reaching decisions, especially in large groups and under stressful conditions, benefits from focus, clarity, and conciseness. That is not a substitute for each person being fully heard as an individual human being, which I see as an irreducible aspect of becoming more empowered, whole human beings. What’s vitally important in my view is to separate those two, so we can have a context for making decisions, and a separate context for hearing people’s stories, pain, concerns, needs, dreams, and everything else about them.

In practical terms, if I stand in line to speak at a decision-making meeting, and what’s truly important to me has been named already, even if in different words and through a different opinion, then I can sit down knowing that my need is already included, especially if I trust that some other context exists for me to be fully heard as a human being. A facilitator can invite people to only speak for issues that hadn’t yet been named. This, to me, is a key to efficient inclusion: we never need to hear the same thing twice, because it’s not about how many people have the same need. If we commit to shared ownership of all the needs, and working on a proposal that addresses all of them, we can let go of more and more voices.

The Role of Facilitation and Leadership

When I facilitate a process of decision making, I focus on a few key areas:

• I put a tremendous amount of emphasis on creating shared holding of all the needs that are named - before, during, and after creating a proposal.

• I engage people in stretching to be open to including others’ needs. Towards that end I hear everyone’s objections and identify needs in them; and I invite them to the commitment to create an outcome that works for everyone.

• I work diligently to identify for everyone what the underlying needs might be. I write them on one sheet of paper, regardless of positions, so that everyone can see and join the commitment. I always name needs in terms of what someone wants to create, what’s important to them, or what is their dream, rather than in terms of positions, what “should” happen, or what is not working.

• I support people in evaluating proposals relative to needs that have been named, with the aim of reaching a proposal that can address all the needs.

• I guide the process of reaching an actual decision through a series of questions that check people’s willingness at different levels, until a decision is reached that everyone is willing to embrace, even if it’s not their preferred outcome.

I never see it as my job to tell a group what decision to make, though I have often participated in crafting proposals based on needs that had been identified.

Veto, Blocking, and Minorities

I have heard people raise two key issues in regard to the dilemmas of holding minorities within a consensus process. One is the frustration about there being a small group, sometimes even one person, who can block a decision from happening, a frustration that arises from the desire for efficiency, movement, or trust, among others. Conversely, I have heard grave concerns expressed about people being pressured to go along with a decision even when they are in disagreement because of the fear of judgment of them if they chose to block the decision. In this context I have heard people express the hope that majority voting changes these dynamics, even a sense that minorities are respected when they have the opportunity to vote their dissent without thereby blocking the process.

From the vantage point of the process I have created, and especially with the transformative power of dialogue that aims to bring people together, expressing a dissenting view gets depolarized through the finding of shared human needs that everyone subsequently owns. I have both found people willing to express their concerns, as well as others willing to hear them, when a facilitator can maintain a relaxed attitude of trust in the process. In fact, the process of surfacing the concerns, issues, and underlying needs is one of the key building blocks towards a decision that is attentive to more and more needs and is therefore more likely to lead to robust agreements that are kept by everyone, because they know they matter and are part of the whole.

An Invitation

This coming weekend, Nov 5-6, I am offering a 2-day training in group facilitation, including an entire day focused on the decision-making process I mention here. I would be honored and moved to have people from any occupation movement attend this training and engage with me about whether and how these insights can be applied in the complex and ever-changing context of these movements. The training is called “No One Left Behind: Facilitating Efficient and Productive Meetings.” I am not thinking this is the only way to go. I am thinking of it as a way to go. May this movement find all the necessary support to move forward towards the vibrant dream of a world that works for all of us.

In Search of Dialogue: Notes from OccupyOakland, October 22nd

by Miki Kashtan

After my first visit to OccupyOakland I felt inspired. I was connected to the vision, to a sense of possibility. I was fully open to the unfolding, to seeing what would come. I’ve been very encouraged by the response I’ve been getting to my post about that visit.

Before I posted those notes I had a second visit to OccupyOakland, and my current picture is very different, more nuanced, sober, intrigued, concerned, excited, and even more clear that I don’t know much. I notice how much harder it is to write about those experiences. I find it challenging to express concerns about the movement, and yet I know it’s vital to express truth with love, and I am reaching into the courage to do that.

On October 17th I attended the general assembly meeting at OccupyOakland. I had never been to a large group meeting following consensus rules, and I didn’t know what to expect. So much happened during the evening that I simply cannot speak about all of it, and there is no way to get the feel of it from reading the notes posted on the OccupyOakland site. What’s below is by necessity filtered through my very personal perspective and sensibilities.

One thing that stood out to me is the extraordinary patience of hundreds of people sitting in the small amphitheater outside Oakland City Hall. Most people sat through more than two and half hours of people speaking with more or less discernible relevance, announcements about many activities, committees, requests, offers, opinions, questions.

What was also striking to me, and the main reason for this post, is the absence of anything I would call dialogue. When a proposal was put on the table, what I saw was a lineup of people expressing their opinion about why a letter should or shouldn’t be sent, or about why this or that paragraph would need to be revised or taken out. I saw nothing that resembled what I consider to be the building blocks of collaborative decision-making. The facilitators were mostly occupied with controlling traffic - not a small task in a crowd that contains people using drugs or inhabiting different realities than most, and where almost everyone’s comments extended beyond the time requested. Between this challenge and the overall set of rules, people had the space to speak, and yet there was nothing set up for them to be heard. How would anything emerge in such a context that would allow creative solutions to take place? How could people ever come together on a divided issue?

The proposal on the table was to send a letter in response to the Mayor’s two letters to the assembly, in which the city was making some requests (or demands, as the case may be) to those living and using the space. As the lineup of speakers proceeded, I learned more and more each time about the depth of the issues that this proposal was raising. I also understood more fully that at least some people hold the term “occupy” to mean taking full possession of the territory such that they no longer hold the city as having authority over that area.

For these people, and for some others, responding to the Mayor means accepting the authority of the city to make requests of the campers. I understand this logic deeply: if the idea of a parallel life being formed is serious, then I can see why people would fully question business as usual, and why they would want the rules to be made, freshly, by the group for itself.

For others, responding is a way to make a statement that the group is not about creating chaos and dirt; that there is a sense of responsibility and care for the environment. Some believed that such a statement could make the camp, and the movement, more compelling and appealing, invite others to join.

Again, I can see the logic. Unlike in other places in the world, what I saw wasn’t a cross section of the entire population. I believe it’s still associated in the public eye with a particular subculture, and many are uncomfortable joining even if they fully sympathize with the critique being articulated. So I can see why people would want to appeal to such people by being less different-looking.

With my growing experience in collaborative decision making, I was itching to see a process, something that metabolizes all the opinions, that allows people to see beyond the surface words spoken to the underlying concerns, issues, needs, and dreams in the name of which people speak.

Could there have been a way to move forward that would honor what’s important to both groups? Is it possible that at least some people could have shifted as a result of getting more deeply what was important to others? Or that some people might have been willing to stretch to accept a solution that wasn’t their favorite because they could see why it was important to others? Or could the entire issue of what this “occupation” means have become clearer to everyone, leading to some surprising direction that would have satisfied everyone?

When the lineup of speakers was finished, the proposal was put to a vote. Over 100 people voted for sending a letter to the Mayor and creating a committee to finalize it, and over 40 people voted against it. In the consensus rules that govern the general assembly this means the proposal is now off the table. I am not satisfied with this outcome. Not because I necessarily want the letter to be sent. I abstained during the vote, because I didn’t have a sense of having been enough of a participant in the movement to have integrity about voting, nor did I understand the issues well enough to make a considered opinion.

I am not satisfied with the outcome because it left the people who wanted to send a letter without a way to address what’s important to them. No, I am not suggesting a simple majority vote instead of the 90% existing rule, because then I would have the same question about the minority. I am aching for some way to transcend the either/or paradigm on which such votes rest. We have been raised to believe that the way we can affect the outcome is by making a compelling argument and convincing others of the rightness of our opinion. I am sad as I am winding down this post, because I see this preoccupation with arguments and with who is right as part of the very world the “occupiers” are seeking to transform.

I am longing, instead, for everyone to matter and to have a true voice, so that what’s important to them can be heard and they can truly affect the outcome. I want those working to create change to have access to the plethora of ingenious methods that exist to support groups in converging, in learning together, and in integrating divergent opinions. More than anything, I want so much for the Occupy movement to have this as part of what gets modeled: the possibility of transforming conflict and disagreement into a solution that works for everyone.

Seeing the surge in visits to my blog since I started writing about the “occupation”, I plan to be writing more about it each time I go. My next scheduled visit to the site is today, when I am also part of a training taking place right onsite and hosted by Seminary of the Street (where you can see more information about it). While everything I do is fully infused with NVC, this training is about nonviolence more generally, and I am co-leading with other folks. Hope to see some people there, and I anticipate posting something within the next few days.

The Power of Collaboration

by Miki Kashtan

Everything that at some point is in the future eventually becomes the present and then the past. I know this is not major news for anyone, and yet the experience of it continues to amaze me each time. For some months now I had been inviting people to come to the Making Collaboration Real conference that took place this past weekend. Now that this conference is in the past, I want to share some of my highlights and what comes next.

Collaboration has become more and more of a stated goal or practice in many places. One of the things that became apparent to me during this conference is just how much we need to learn in order to achieve true collaboration. Perhaps counter-intuitively, in order to collaborate well we need to learn how to engage in conflict in a productive way. Sometimes when we are uncomfortable with conflict we end up acting indirectly, which may result in more pain and discomfort for others, sometimes even for ourselves, rather than face the discomfort directly. For example, today I heard from a friend about a former employee who is very dedicated to nonviolence and collaboration, and yet since this person left she has engaged in actions that stir up conflict and may result in punitive action directed at a former co-worker instead of coming to her supervisor to attempt a resolution. What would it take for all of us to learn to walk towards conflict so that we can find ways of working with those who are different from us or whose actions are upsetting to us?

Collaboration means learning more about power, and engaging effectively across power differences. One theme that showed up repeatedly is the isolation of people at the top of organizations, especially those who run the most traditional of them. Because others are afraid, those at the top don’t get full information; they hear more often than not an inauthentic “yes”; they are not challenged enough; and they are seen as the “enemy” which means that actual co-creation is less available to them. Ulrich Nettesheim presented a series of insights and practices for making the focus on human needs relevant to people who work at the top. All in all, I became even more aware than I was before how essential it is to relate to the goals, vision, and perspective of the person at the top in order to establish sufficient trust to get any openness to the power of connection and collaboration.

We also explored power from a different angle, when Edmundo Norte challenged us to look at our unconscious assumptions and perceptions about people different from us. We learned how being positions of power and privilege makes us less able to see the effects of our actions, and how essential it is to learn to engage others and invite their insights and wisdom, because they can see what we cannot. And when we are in a position of less privilege, how important and vital for the whole is our capacity to find courage to speak up. True collaboration appears to require both love and courage, speaking and listening, and changing our habitual ways of acting in the world so we can see and show more of what’s going on.

I was delighted to see how much of the conversation during the conference focused on systemic considerations, beyond looking only at individual needs. I have had a sense for some time now that the community of people who have been studying Nonviolent Communication have not been sufficiently informed about the organizational level, and I am delighted the word is now out for many that when humans form an organization something else is going on. Marie Miyashiro, organizational consultant, discussed her distillation of the needs and conditions that are essential for any organization to thrive: identity, life affirming purpose, direction, expression, and energy/resources. Gregg Kendrick, former business owner, inspired us with his personal story of how he applied the principles of Nonviolent Communication in his own business, and how he now supports other organizations in shifting into a paradigm of true collaboration using a combination of Nonviolent Communication and Dynamic Self-Governance. I was inspired and intrigued by his firm commitment to work only with those who are consciously ready to embrace the cultural transformation.

We also heard about two ongoing experiments with introducing Nonviolent Communication into large scale organizations that are only minimally committed to such change at the highest levels. While the trainings of people who work at the organizations are showing powerful results in terms of a variety of measures, the question of how to translate the successes into a shift in the structures of decision-making remains open. Whether internal to the organization, as Wes Taylor is, or an external consultant/trainer as Dian Killian is with her team of trainers, I am left with a great deal of curiosity about how far change can proceed without the explicit blessing of the person in charge, which loops back to the question about how connection with the person at the top can be made. I am glad that Jane Connor who works with Dian is conducting scientific research on their work at a Fortune 500 company.

Over the course of the conferences many people expressed a tremendous hunger for practical how-to’s that they could apply back in their own organizations. Two of the sessions we presented were more practical. Martha Lasley led us through a preliminary practice of coaching skills using the tools of Nonviolent Communication, and I modeled a decision-making process based on the principle of maximizing willingness, a way of making collaborative decisions that everyone can live with.

I am deeply committed to integrity between what we teach and what we practice. Because of that, my biggest personal celebration is the degree of collaboration that I experienced among the presenters. Some of us had never been in a room together, and yet we worked together to make this conference a success. We met every morning to reflect on how things are going and how we might adapt the flow of the conference to respond to feedback. We had several conversations in which we explored some differences in our approaches to the work, and I found our trust deepening as a result of these explorations, reaffirming my faith in the power of dialogue to metabolize and make use of differences. I know that it’s only through deep collaboration that we can truly rise to the challenge of the immense need we are facing on a global scale. I can’t wait to see how this collaboration will continue to unfold in the coming months and years.

If you are interested in seeing how you can learn about more collaboration in your workplace or consulting practice, come to our next informational call for the MCR yearlong program that starts in May.

Business Not as Usual

by Miki Kashtan

A week ago I wrote about facilitating a simulated City Council Meeting. That same day I participated in a real meeting that was very enjoyable and productive for those of us who were part of it. Sometimes I think that some people don’t even have an idea of how simple and easy it could be to function differently, and I want to offer, perhaps, some way of envisioning. I have a deep faith in the value of vision, especially practical vision.

This meeting took place as part of the Consciousness Transformation Community that I created last February. From the start, this community has been an experiment in doing things differently. I created a list of 17 commitments that together comprise my understanding of what living the consciousness of deep nonviolence means, such as “Assumption of Innocence,” “Openness to the Full Emotional Range,” “Risking My Significance,” “Generosity,” and 13 others. I invited people to join me in living these commitments and forming a community of learning and mutual. We have people in the group from North and South America, Europe, and Israel. I set up structures of support and decided for myself what I was happy to offer within the community. I created a gift economy structure, so that people who join are invited to contribute and are not in any way “required” or even subtly “expected” to contribute, either financially or otherwise. I had a very large vision for what we could create over time, and I was ecstatic to see the initial response.

Although vision comes easy to me, sometimes staying patient during implementation doesn’t. I confess to getting discouraged rather easily at times, which I am sad about because of the toll it takes on others around me. And here, too, as the first few months unfolded and I didn’t see the self-organizing happening, I became overwhelmed and worried that unless I did everything (which I was clear I wouldn’t do), the community just wouldn’t happen. As part of my own path of living these commitments I chose to share, in full, with the community what my experience was. I was deeply moved and amazed by how I was received. This initial reception turned into a structure that is now more aligned with my original vision than the one I initially created. Not only do I love the outcome, I also have been amazed at the process by which it came to be. In addition to my own coming forth, other people stepped forward and empowered themselves to make requests, offer themselves to the community, and express their longings, dreams, and concerns about the initial design. The new structure emerged from our collective engagement with all that was put on the table.

One of the elements of the structure we came up with was the establishment of monthly, open meetings for attending to community business. Anyone who is holding any responsibility for anything in the community (whether offering groups, or doing administrative support, or welcoming new members, or any other function, all of which are voluntary) is welcome to participate. In fact, anyone, even if not holding responsibility, is welcome to participate or submit agenda items. Our intention has been to have these meetings, themselves, be conducted in accordance with the commitments we have all embraced.

Last Sunday’s meeting had a number of agenda items. The one that engaged us for most of our time was the process for accepting new members to the community. I want to describe the unfolding of this discussion without getting into the details of the conversation, which would take many more words than I imagine people would want to read. At one point all but one of us were comfortable with the process as it has been so far. For a moment there seemed to be an impasse, because this person wanted something I was very much non-negotiable about. One of the commitments was primary in guiding our conversation: “Openness to Dialogue”. We engaged fully with attempting to understand the needs behind what this one person wanted. I was in awe at the care, the openness, and the presence. One by one the needs and their related strategies became known, until everything was heard. The result was a deeper understanding on all of our parts which led to a process of accepting new members that all of us liked better than what we have had. Along the way we discovered that one member was challenged at an earlier moment in the conversation and had lost trust, and we turned our attention to her. From this bit of conversation emerged more clarity about our process for deliberation and decision-making.

I am sitting here, writing this, and suddenly feeling almost inept at finding a way to describe how radical and hopeful this one meeting appears to me. I have been advocating that connection and effectiveness can go hand in hand and that full collaboration and inclusion do not necessarily mean loss of efficiency. Here, in this meeting, I experienced it in full.

Granted, we are not producing anything on which anyone’s life depends. And yet experiments like this can pave the way and show what’s possible. I am very hopeful and passionate about offering the building blocks of collaboration to organizations of all sizes that do have products and services on which others rely in a timely manner. Last May I co-led the first Making Collaboration Real (MCR) program, and wrote about it on this blog. The effects of that retreat were so powerful that we decided to make more offerings. We are launching an MCR full yearlong program starting this coming May, and an MCR conference in March. If you are curious, you can get answers to all your questions in one of our informational calls coming up starting in January 2011.