Comments on: Doing More with Less

By: Christine M Merkel

Christine M Merkel — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 11:07:35 +0000

Dear Susan, Thank you very much for this great synthesis of more than a decade of exploration in leadership and innovation. Very timely, indeed.

As a contribution to the European Women in Management Development network (which will celebrate its 25th anniversary in June 2009) I have been calling a Circle of Change since 4 years. This is a space for sensing the collective intelligence on a personal “liberating structures” . I call this the inner foundation of life-sustaining leadership (which echoes ALIAs “outer” culture of collaboration and innovation).

By: Hal Richman

Hal Richman — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 01:41:19 +0000

Susan,

After two years of trying to establish a healthcare business in US that focused on adjunctive nursing support services and patient focused learning your post is refreshing. A completely different world view is needed.

That said, the question I have been asking for a decade about all this is “What are the skillful means and communication vehicles for communicating with people who work in “case hardened” environments where this view would get nothing but eye glaze?” There is virtue in brewing up ideas but at some point ideas needed to manifest as actions and results.

By: Kate McLaren

Kate McLaren — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 14:48:52 +0000

Thank you for this great summary of some leading edge work using the lens of complexity theory. In Canada, the Social Innovation Generation (SiG) group of organizations, including the SiG centre at Waterloo University, has been working on exactly these ideas and experimenting with ’scaling up’ the social impact of innovative programs and organizations in the non-profit sector. Professors Frances Westley and Brenda Zimmerman have been working with the McConnell Family Foundation to introduce these lenses and methods to leaders in social innovation across the country. It is an exciting and powerful approach to shifting mindsets and setting powerful strategies for change.

By: Terry Edlin

Terry Edlin — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 17:37:56 +0000

Susan, your thoughtful, timely post is an invitation for collaborators to seek each other and cross-pollinate our ideas and our work.

New Community Vision’s goal is to foster cooperative communities to support individuals, families and, by extension, neighborhoods. NCV’s strategy is to facilitate monthly gatherings community-by-community using the Open Space format. From these gatherings, alliances will form and ideas will germinate to address the universal issues of child care, elder care, food, nutrition, housing, transportation, jobs and social isolation. Providing the framework, or the infrastructure, for people to have meaningful conversations month after month is an acknowledgment of the need for “just enough structure.” What comes from it is entirely up to the people who show up, what is important to them and the resources they can galvanize.

I hope that this shift takes root everywhere. I envision a network of people leveraging their collective strength, resources and commitment to nurture healthy communities. Creating an exchange program to swap locations with other community developers for several months at a time, to cross-pollinate people, ideas, and techniques, would “kick it up a notch.”

The world is changing so rapidly that our current structures of commerce and government can’t address the challenges fast enough. It is up to conscious individuals and communities to create healthy systems to fill this void.