Tag Archives: Decision-making

Posts Tagged ‘Decision-making’

Becoming a festival
February 9th, 2015 | Expressive Change | Katherine Therese Whaling | 1 Comment
In a letter to her fellow organizers, Katherine Therese Whaling offers a heartfelt reflection on her experience organizing last year’s Muizenberg Festival, a week-long celebration of community-led development in the seaside town of Muizenberg, South Africa. We were struck by how beautifully her reflection illuminates what it means to live an event as a process rather than simply plan it as an outcome.
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Structuring our Beloved Communities?
September 8th, 2014 | Expressive Change | Liam Barrington-Bush | 2 Comments
If we believe that changing the world involves changing the kinds of relationships we have with one another, what role do organising structures have in helping or hindering the relationships we are trying to create?, asks Liam Barrington-Bush.
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How we gather
April 21st, 2013 | Expressive Change | Marianne Knuth | 3 Comments
At Kufunda Learning Village we had fallen into the rut of our weekly meetings having become very task oriented. They were the least inspired place of our village (mostly), and several issues were being discussed with only a few voices repeating themselves. There was little collective wisdom at play, and oftentimes we left our weekly Village Circle feeling drained and tired, although we might have managed to tick off many items on our to-do list. One day – after one too many such meetings – I decided, no more […]
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Gestalt at the South African Treasury Department
July 20th, 2012 | Expressive Change | Tana Paddock | No Comments
I’m stumbling along, trying my best to remain in the single file line the path has forced us to form. We crest the hillside, overlooking a quiet river freckled with boulders and dragonflies. I overhear Jonathan and Kirsten chatting in front of me. They are introducing themselves, having only just met on this day hike organized through the Cape Town Hiking Group. I hear Kirsten say that she works for the National Treasury […]
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Daring to hibernate
May 31st, 2012 | Expressive Change | Podcast | 3 Comments
A couple of months ago I received an intriguing note in my inbox from The Berkana Institute. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Berkana, you might know one of it’s founders Meg Wheatley, a well-known author who writes about […]
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Social innovation from the inside out
May 13th, 2012 | Expressive Change | Warren Nilsson & Tana Paddock | 11 Comments
We are excited to share this talk that Warren gave last month at University of Cape Town exploring the organizational dimensions of social innovation. In our experience, few social purpose organizations spend much time looking at how their own organizational cultures support or hinder the kinds of changes in the world they are working so hard to create. In this talk, Warren challenges us to consider how much of our current difficulty in fostering and scaling social innovation is bound up in this disconnect. What kind of change might we create if […]
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Token presence or true participation
August 19th, 2011 | Expressive Change | Caroline Howe | 3 Comments
During the Organization Unbound workshop in Delhi, I was honestly struggling to distinguish form and experience, until Warren gave what was a really helpful example I have felt and seen many times. When we talk about participation and equality in an organization or a meeting, many go to the easiest form of making it happen […]
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The people in the room
March 25th, 2011 | Expressive Change | Warren Nilsson & Tana Paddock | 2 Comments
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 […]
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A conversation with Turi
July 20th, 2010 | Expressive Change | Warren Nilsson | No Comments
The following is an edited transcript of a conversation that Tana and I had with my sister Turi Nilsson. She is the Director of Instruction and co-founder of Southwest Baltimore Charter School, a place of great inspiration and learning for us. We’ve written about it in previous posts. RENNIE: What would you say are the […]
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The practice of consensus
May 21st, 2010 | Expressive Change | Tana Paddock | 1 Comment
Michael Lenczner recently posted a comment that got me thinking a bit more about specific practices of expressive change. He mentioned “check-ins” as being a pretty reliable practice in his experience and pondered on the potential of the Quaker tradition of “speaking from silence”. One that I find to be particularly helpful is a process […]
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