Building the Ne’er-Do-Well Generation
I saw the phrase ne’er-do-well this morning and felt; there’s something to be said about this idea. In the nineteenth-century Australasian colonies, it referred to young British…
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Community Resource Advocacy: It’s More than Flyers
One of the things I try to remind our Community Resource Advocates is that people rarely come to us because they’re having a good day. Most of…
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Which Came First, the Chicken or the Egg? Really?
When we encounter someone living in chronic need, there’s often an unspoken question lingering beneath the surface. How much of their situation was caused by their choices?…
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Mary Parker Follett: Her Ideas Still Matter
The purpose of leadership is not to direct people, but to create the conditions under which people can discover and exercise their collective power… to paraphrase her…
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You Can’t Just Lean on a Shovel and Pray for a Hole.
I guess it sounds obvious when you say it that way. But, people do it all the time. We hope for better relationships while isolating ourselves from…
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Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Reach, and Freedom of Ownership
I’ve been thinking a lot about social media. Specifically how it’s been coopting me to do its dirty work. How it’s been brainwashing me, slowly and imperceptibly,…
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The Darjeeling Limited: Letting Go of the Baggage
On the surface, it’s a story about three brothers traveling across India by train after the death of their father. But like many of Wes Anderson’s films,…
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The Real Work is Stewardship
For many years, I believed my work was about changing things. I believed the challenge was to build better systems, create stronger networks, develop new models of…
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How Metaphor Shapes Our Experience of Reality
One might think that metaphors belong in poetry and literature. We tend to see them as decorative language; colorful ways of expressing ideas that could just as…
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Tending the Social Garden: living systems have their own agency
“If you can see patterns across systems, connect people across networks, and inspire culture toward a shared purpose, this is your moment in history.” When someone hears…