Reflections on attentional violence

Most of us are probably familiar with Johan Galtung’s ‘typology of violence’. As a peace researcher Galtung is known for developing the term and theory of structural violence. The concept of structural violence dawned on him while seeing the victims of poverty in India. People were suffering and yet the cause […]

Networks: a love story

We recently stumbled upon the work of Interaction Institute for Social Change (IISC), one of a growing number of capacity-building organizations taking an ‘inside-out’ approach to social transformation. One of their associates, Curtis Ogden, wrote this piece a few months back reflecting on their journey of stepping more fully into their most deeply held value: “the love that does justice”.

In praise of dreams and magic

Time is ticking. There is less than half an hour until my teaching starts at Norwich Business School at the University of East Anglia. I am in my office trying to focus and prepare for my afternoon lecture of “Management Skills and Personal Development” course for about 200 students. I feel terrified. […]

Anna’s class list

My last post, on John McKnight, has quickly become one of the most read posts we’ve had on Organization Unbound. I’m not sure why. But maybe it has something to do with the how central ‘disdain’ has become to our political and and social change conversations. I suspect that […]

Turning John McKnight inside out

In workshops and classrooms I frequently hear some form of the question: “But how do we deal with those people who just don’t get it?” The ‘it’ is usually undefined, but everyone in the room understands it to be some combination of justice, sustainability, compassion…Heads nod. How can we hope to move forward when so many people don’t see the world from this perspective, when so many people don’t seem to care about the things we care about?

Fun change = real change

I burnt out in third year university. The nail in the coffin on top of school and work and everything else was the effort and time I’d put into organizing a day of panel discussions about ethical consumption. I booked the best minds of our university, matching them with on-the-ground activists in the community and a good smattering of ethical producers and consumer representatives.

Bringing minutes to life

“At this point there was a terrible cow manure smell that came across the lake.”

I came across this sentence as I was reading through the minutes of an annual general meeting that I attended some time back. It appears as its own paragraph, in the middle of the document, in italics.

The people in the room

Gregory Branch is a doctor and public health official who also happens to direct an unusual gospel choir in Baltimore. We knew Gregg a number of years ago when we lived in Maryland, and for a little while we even sang in the choir. Gregg is a fiercely kind man with a large spirit and […]

Appreciative feedback triads: Kupa humbowo muhutatu

At Kufunda Learning Village, we’ve recently experimented with a powerful exercise called ‘Appreciative Feedback Triads’ or ‘Kupa humbowo muhutatu’ in Shona. Here’s how it works…

Turn to wonder

Several years ago, when I was in the thick of major organizational shifts at COCo, I came home one evening in a fit of tears and with a back full of knots. I felt horrible about how things felt at work and frustrated that my attempts to move things to a better place seemed to […]