Collaborative Leadership

Some of you may know of Peter Senge.  He promoted the terms 'learning organization' starting in the early 1990's.  He is now a senior lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management. 

Here is a link to a fascinating article he wrote recently.

http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/the_dawn_of_system_leadership

If you believe we need to get beyond the myth of the hero, Senge is looking at the power of collaborative leadership. Together we come up with visions for more sustainable styles of society.  Together we participate in co-creating the society we want.

In the article you will also find new insights into the food crisis, youth crime, toxicity found within fashion items.

Movements help us get around rigid monopolies

At the last event we discussed how the present economic system will not serve many of today's youth and how young adults are organizing in parallel economies outside of the established channels.  We focused on promising methods of organizing as a society that suggest a way forward.

For society to be organized requires predictable structure and movements for change - like a Snakes and Ladders board.  Movements have always been the main way to get around rigid monopolies.  Movements, such as human rights, have drawn our attention to the need for change whenever some of us find it difficult or impossible to get ahead socially and economically.

We will meet again on Wednesday March 11th. at 7p.m in the library of the beautiful Columbus Centre.  Take the elevator to the second floor and follow the signs.

The Columbus Centre is an Italian cultural centre just west of Dufferin on the south side of Lawrence. 

 
(Use the Allen Expressway or take the subway to Lawrence West Station and take a bus a few blocks west to Dufferin.)

Leslie Ann Coles will be our visiting speaker sharing with us her inspiration for starting the Female Eye film festival.  (See below for more information.)

This Social Creator event is free with light refreshments catered by Mama D'Aleandro. 
Let Nick or I know if you are attending.  Bring a  friend.

 


Its time to fill out the Snakes and Ladders board for a post-2012 era. We will look at immediate economic opportunities and set educational objectives so that we learn to become more fulfilled. 

Our session we will go beyond logic and we will learn to use tools for insight.

 

There will be lots for everyone to talk about after selecting various breakout groups to discuss visions and educational objectives:

1. empowering ourselves for a More Lively and Loving Toronto,
2. a proposal to organize Neighbourhood TV,
3. influencing food quality and freshness,
4. influencing how the health industry operates,3. an income model for these and other proposals.

The Female Eye film festival is ranked one of the world's "Top 50 Festivals" by Movie Maker.  See: http://www.femaleeyefilmfestival.com.  Read more, below this email...

We will also have a draw for free passes to some of the films.

​Leslie Ann Coles (above) has been an actress and producer since 1997.

In 2003, the Female Eye Festival launched the script development program.
In 2004, FeFF produced the first Dec. 6th program with films that pertained to issues of violence against women.
In 2005, FeFF traveled to the UN Headquarters to present films on International Women’s Day.
In 2006, FeFF launched a photo exhibit and produced the first Young Filmmaker Development Workshop.
In 2011, Jules Koostachin became the director of FeFF's Aboriginal Filmmaker Series. 

Our latest Social Creator event is this Thursday November 13, 7 - 9.30p.m. 

Bring a friend.  This is the third 'no-charge' Social Creator event of 2014.We will be on the third floor of the beautiful Columbus Centre.  Take the elevator to the right of the restaurant and follow the signs.

The Columbus Centre is an Italian cultural centre just west of Dufferin on the south side of Lawrence.  (Use the Allen Expressway or take the subway to Lawrence West Station and take a bus a few blocks west to Dufferin.)

We will feature health and nutrition.  Healthy living is not rocket science.  It is more about making informed food and lifestyle decisions. 

Come learn, and share what you know that can help others, so we can move towards a more lively, vital and loving Toronto.  

We will be opening the discussion with a presentation from nutritionist, Gianna Berretta!

Gianna Berretta has worked at U. of T. and Mount Sinai hospital studying the relationship between diet genetics and cancer.

She has been teaching and promoting preventive health care for the last 19 years, specifically the importance of daily intake of fruits and vegetables in maintaining a healthy diet. Ms. Beretta will discuss vitamins vs foods, the organic alternative health craze, and the silent killer 'inflammation' and its relationship to disease.

We will serve refreshments and have our exceptional free dessert table catered by Mama D'Aleandro!

At 7.10 p.m there will be a 20 minute introduction to Social Creator network for people attending for the first time. 

Speed Futuring:  Sharing our ideas about a technologically-assisted, loving society.  Applying what we've seen and heard earlier in the evening.

After a presentation on Organizing our Neighbourhoods in support of Healthier Living by Andrew Owens we will break into smaller groups to share ideas about assessing new innovations based on a big picture, international approach.

This promises to be another busy, fun and delicious evening. 

Let's enjoy a healthier Toronto - having fun, where we have influence, in our immediate neighbourhoods!

Fulfilling deeply held longings

My sense is that, in Toronto, we are transitioning away from meaning and becoming more in touch with our core values.  

First I want to explore the effects and conditions of this transition to soulfulness as individuals.  Then I want to look at how to adjust socially to a new mood that’s rising up in the city.

We can identify our unique values by what we do on a Saturday afternoon - family, community, or hobbies.  Though we may have a sense of what our values are, we don’t necessarily give them the importance they deserve as indicating what we have to contribute to society.

However, fewer of us are willing to live based on meaning alone – like getting a salary, getting ahead of coworkers, or waiting for our boss’ job.  Meaning was an important motivator from the ‘60’s – ‘90’s.  Now we want work activity that fulfills our deeply held values and longings.  

People in the arts and self-expression are in touch with, and must express their values each and every day.  We express our values when we decide what is important, gracious, lovely and essential to a course of action.  

We attempt to glimpse the wholeness in situations.  Our values are what indicate the way forward after taking any number of factors into account.  

Decisions made based on values, wholeness and inclusion are not logical or about taste.  They are decisions made based on love and a higher pragmatism.  Pragmatism beats what’s achieved with logic and thinking about a limited number of things we’re able to measure.  Pragmatic action is based on a realistic big picture.

Our values are our means to the things that we live for.  Our values are like gas in the tank, and a map.  We need a course of action or some idea of a destination that will fulfill an inner longing. But values and a course of action without engaging in community limit what we can achieve to express love. 

We know there is strength in numbers. Working in organizations goes further.  It is powerful.  In fact corporations and the military are incredibly powerful.  They’ve become the most powerful things on the planet.  

However we leave many of your values at the door or in the office lobby before starting work each day.  We limit the number of factors we consider.  We think in polarizing, competitive and disheartening ways.  We can be working to pull the social fabric apart.  We must adopt policies and an agenda set by someone else.

My second point is about society and our complete empowerment as individuals.  Complete empowerment comes when we combine our values and our direction on a map with the resources for moving forward.  We readily find help and resources to use in an organization.

However, once you are in touch with your core values the last thing that you want is someone else telling you what to do or setting a course for you.  That is why so many of us who have gone inwards and found our souls stayed away from corporations and group activities.  We want to be proactive in response to inner promptings and be free to do our own thing.

What’s been missing is a form of organizing that allows us to respond to whatever values we have registered in our souls.  That is partly why the Markham Street MuSE is very significant to you at this time.  It’s a form of organizing able to support the new mood in the city.  

A muse is defined as ‘the function of deciding among ourselves through ongoing distributed decision-making across a network of developing or emerging connections’.  

Compared to what’s produced when people get together and assume power after politicking among themselves, a muse leads soulful people to full empowerment with shared roles that make things more fluid and practical.

The function of a muse in organizing does not consider only one location.  It is meant as a source of inspiration for organizing across neighbourhoods and organizing in any local area, no matter how small.  I recommend that you check it out and look at the degree to which we are free to do what we want once we’re connected with our values.  

It allows for all our multiple, diverse visions.  These are the courses we chose individually on a map of a creative era.  

If you are in touch with your core values and aim for full empowerment, then you don’t have to wait for society to change completely.  Find out more about how to use a muse to get from where society is now to where you want to be.

Future of Media

'Future Media' is the book title that jumped out from the shelf at me while I was sitting at the library today.  The back cover explained what to expect between the covers:

"Combining their prescient nonfiction and fiction, Future Media showcases ... innovative explorations of the mass media...  Both cautionary and optimistic, this groundbreaking anthology offers challenging, engaging predictions of a future that will not be ignored."

It sounded great except for the bit about 'mass media'.

Because of the internet, mass media will continue to disintegrate even further beyond the 1000-channel cable bundles.  Ultimately the outcome is decentralization of the power to influence and persuade.

What will be new about the media in future will be a YouTube channel for every neighbourhood featuring the work, aspirations and needs of entrepreneurs.  You will check out interviews with local entrepreneurs and know who you want to connect with and help in some way.

We have seen the rise of social entrepreneurs who have missions of supporting a new kind of society.  People are making money out of entrepreneurs who deeply want to support neighbourhoods.  Centres or hubs for social entrepreneurs provide services and venues for gathering and collaborations.

City councilors and economic development departments understand and support this concept of a home for entrepreneurs to incubate projects.  It's another aspect of building management.

There are other trends in business besides social missions. Entrepreneurs have started to get into energy supply, ecological clean-up / recycling, re-purposing of material that would otherwise go to landfill, education, and community animation. 

What has been missing in all this innovation is ways for neighbourhoods to support entrepreneurs.  That's where neighbourhood YouTube channels come in, that link video interviews to wish-lists.  Neighbours can find ways to support the local start-ups instead of waiting for the start-ups to support them during times of increasing instability.

Changing the world will continue to involve a massive number of new initiatives.  It is not a mega project.

We can create a future that benefits everyone when we help business start-ups that we feel warrant our support.  Media can help us make those decisions.  

We need building managers for entrepreneurs.  Help for entrepreneurs in other forms are also necessary.  To find out more - here is a link to the QUEEN EAST Agency website.  I hope you will recognize that the future of media is partly local, and partly a means for us to help create a new kind of world. 

How we tackle Cancer

'Speed Futuring' is like speed dating.  Choose a future.  Spend some time with it and see if you want it in your life.

June 3rd marks our fourth 'no-charge' Social Creator event of 2014 before our usual summer break.   

Mark your calender for Tuesday June 3, 7 - 9.30p.m.  We will be in the Columbus Room on the Columbus Centre main floor, to the right of the restaurant.

We are featuring a presentation by world-renown cancer researcher and geneticist, 
Dr. Andrew Hessel from the University of Ottawa Institute for Science, Society, and Policy, and former co- chair of bioinformatics and biotechnology at Singularity University. He is trained in both microbiology and genetics. 

Doctor Hessel is a catalyst in biological technologies helping industry academics and authorities better understand the changes happening in life science. He is also the co-founder of the Pink Army Cooperative, the world's first cooperative biotechnology company aimed at making viral therapies for cancer 'open source' i.e. available to everyone. Since the cooperative was founded in 2009, the cost and time needed to make a new biotechnology therapy for one person (which skips over the most expensive and slow parts, like big clinical trials) has fallen by 50% (and continues to fall). Source: http://andrewhessel.com/?page_id=141

'Open source' is a powerful, relatively new model of development that promotes a) universal access to a product or service's design, and b) universal redistribution of that design, including subsequent improvements to it by anyone.


The Columbus Centre is an Italian cultural centre just west of Dufferin on the south side of Lawrence.  (Use the Allen Expressway or get the subway to Lawrence west and take a bus a few blocks east.)

We will serve refreshments and have our exceptional free dessert table catered by Mama D'Aleandro!

At 7.10 p.m there will be a 20 minute introduction to Social Creator network for people attending for the first time. 

Speed Futuring: Applying what we've seen and heard earlier in the evening

After a presentation on Organizing in Neighbourhoods to end our use of Toxins by Andrew Owens we will break into smaller groups to share ideas about assessing new innovations based on a big picture, international approach.

This promises to be another busy, fun and delicious evening.  Bring a friend.

Please confirm with Nick D'Aleandro or Andrew Owens if you plan to attend.

Meeting with City Councillor, Mike Layton

Here is a quick update on the development of collaborative villages.  Hope you find it inspiring for what you are up to in your neighbourhood.  Let me know if you and your neighbourhood would like to collaborate with the Bathurst and Bloor area of Toronto.

Councillor Mike Layton and I met January 6, 2014, regarding the Markham Street MuSE for living in a more creative Toronto.  It is also a community-led innovation and social response to today’s creative and learning economies.  We noted the fact that the Canadian economy is now less reliant on manufacturing, and that the City of Toronto wants to encourage citizen's to be leaders in today’s economies.

Mutual Support Enterprises are proactive member-owned associations that develop and advance a neighbourhood vision of urban living, or a ‘hyper-local’ vision for a street.  A MuSE is an association and hybrid of a social agency and a business.  It makes money to reinvest in social and economic development.

It encourages fulfillment of each person’s preferred roles, values, and vision for their life.  As member-owners we become more of who we are, both individually and collectively.  We develop further understanding, creativity, and increased capacity for health, vitality and well-being.

A MuSE is also uniquely positioned to be first-in-the-marketplace for helping corporations look at the wholeness in situations so as to benefit their return on investment.

There is an opportunity for the City of Toronto to supply arts groups with reusable material such as wood, metal, ceramics, fabric, etc., that would otherwise be sold or put in landfill.  The councillor is currently looking at options, say, when contracts with existing service suppliers are up for renewal.
We live in an urban forest.  Neighbours could use felled local trees to make structures, such as gazebos and arbors, that could be sold for beautification of local gardens and parks.  This kind of logging would be more enterprising and locally advantageous compared to the noisy practice of reducing trees to wood chips.

The future of society depends to great extent on encouraging our entrepreneurs.  We had a conversation about establishing creative economy hubs, and the need for neighbours to support entrepreneurial start-ups.  Practices of supplying office space and services to entrepreneurs that support neighbourhoods (‘social innovators’) remain part of the solution.

The councillor is a board member of Artscape YOUNGplace which is an example of a new, multi-tenant arts & cultural centre in the ward – at 180 Shaw Street, just west of Trinity-Bellwoods park.

We also touched on how Waterfront renewal as an opportunity to demonstrate the advancement of larger scale creative and learning economy hubs.  Exhibition Place has always tried to showcase innovations, such as wind turbine technology.  Councillor Layton pointed out how governments are now limited in what they can responsibly invest in, in terms of supplying basic services such as sewage and drinking water, when there is no immediate return on taxpayer investment.

We discussed the possibility of making Waterfront development ‘more organic’, more responsive to community needs, more economically sustainable, and less reliant on investment through financial institutions.

China is building 1,000 new universities over ten years (source: Roger Martin, past dean of the Rotman School of Management, U of Toronto,) as a strategy for adapting to the learning economy.  However, ‘developed countries’ in North America and Europe are making little or no investment in new learning institutions.

This led to a discussion of our proposal for neighbourhood campuses and the possibility of using underutilized local spaces.  Ideas for gathering and streamlining existing learning opportunities into curriculum streams that develop new skill-sets necessary for today’s economies could have been discussed further.  However, we had talked for over an hour and it was time to adjourn.

Our appreciation goes to the councillor and his staff for their kind cooperation.

Andrew Owens.

Organizing for Understanding Freedom and Sustainability

We had a spirited session at the Intro Evening on Tuesday, October 29, 2013. 
 
Thanks to those of you who came to one or both meetings in October, and for your interest.

We have since launched a website for an agency where members of our association will represent us and our projects.  Our sponsored ad for the Intro Evenings ran in the first issue of Rapture - a newspaper dedicated to bridging spirituality, science and art.

Starting on November 11 at noon we will have the first Interim Meeting at the same location, (25 Sandale Gardens in Toronto near Sheppard and Bathurst - see Googlemaps for detailed directions ) and will begin identifying the best means to become an association that takes advantage of opportunities for –

1. moving the world agenda forward based on members’ existing projects and spheres of influence,
2. determining a self-sustaining and integrative direction for humanity where all can contribute and no-one is left behind,
3. promoting innovation in terms of how society adopts new learning and insights,
4. revealing convincing means for society to understand the consequences of actions taken,

At this Interim Meeting November 11, I am looking forward to showing you and discussing the actual business model - as developed to date - on how we organize as a self-organizing system.

Some of us have contacts in other parts of the world that are working on great projects and who could benefit from collaboration.  Consider bringing an outline of these projects on November 11.

At the moment we are -

a mutual support network that looks at areas of overlap amongst what we are already doing to advance scientific, spiritual, business, and psychological understanding.

I hope you can make it out for part of the day on November 11.  Let me know if this works for you by emailing ucitytoronto @ gmail.com.

There will be two further Intro Nights on Wednesday November 13, and Thursday Nov 28 to which you are free to invite friends with projects for a society that works  for everyone.

Speed Futuring - planning in no time

Here is the plan and notes from the Social Creator network's Speed Futuring workshop on November 28, 2012.

Attendees: Tony, Wolfgang, Susan, David H, Shea, Dorit, Nick, Andrew.

There were eight options for topics to be used for developing a plan during the evening.  We would use a combination of whole brain thinking of the whole situation (Mind-Mapping) and fore brain thinking (stages proposed within Self-organization of communities.)

Here they are, together with vote counts:

In-house facilities that distinguish condo buildings – 0
YouTube channel for a neighbourhood - 1
Clean technologies – 2
3D Printing - 3
Education - 4
Vertical farming up outside of high-rises - 4
Customized stays for visitors to Toronto - 4

The winner was:
Social development through community education - 6

Social development in response to crime, threats, bullying is a challenge that requires holistic methods. 

Who can be against something that would address these problems?
Why not use a breathing wall created by Wolfgang (an ecology of plants and animals and placed on an indoor wall,) as an experiential teaching method for holistic learning based on the study of ecologies.  This would engage youth and seniors particularly and could help participants look at local communities as social ecologies.

Strategy: Take Social Creator to a Finch and Jane community centre where people are thirsty for change.  They would probably like a YouTube Channel for the neighbourhood. 

Canadian Human Rights Orgn and Northwood Community Centre could be our initial local lead organizations.

With a lot of help from David H who works in a social agency at Jane and Finch, we first identified some pieces of the puzzle of self-sustaining social development.  See diagram below:

Then we developed the following stages of implementation as interdependent and integrated.  Later stages depend, and build on earlier stages.

The three developmental stages are:

1. Inspire a community –

·       Get neighbours to imagine / visualize (rather than stating some benefits)

·       Build a high-profile mini version of project that you almost have to walk over / believable 3D rendering / diorama  

2. Engage a community –

·       Lead partners must already have trust of the community

·       The 3D rendering is revealed to be evolving over time – delight

·       Educational information about the project is graduated in stages responding to feedback, as with education

·       Deliver persistent and consistent yet evolving messages

·       Means of giving anonymous responses at the rendering location

·       Appeal to youth

·       Facebook and Twitter

·       You Tube

·       Petition

·       On-line funding site mechanism where people vote and donate to initiatives

·       Speaker events or conference

3. Neighbourhood education, coaching and enrichment -

·       Community centre as a partner that facilitates setting up a school operated totally by kid participants (as with a government program in Costa Rica)

·       Lead kids record findings, and teach what’s been learned to following classes and in other schools

·       Focus on international collaborations amongst kids

·       Focus on breathing walls and society as ecologies

·       Similar programming for seniors

·       Inter-generational programming

Lectures from Wolfgang. 
Community coaching sessions. 
Free wikis for on-line storage of findings from classes

As an introduction to the planning segment we had the following "insights into the future":

·     
Apprenticeship movement will grow - Learning trades from elders who want to leave a legacy - as selected by the community centre, free of charge, candidates willing to work for free.

·       Souls will come in that have worked out much more of their karmas.

·       People will be together more. 

·       Lots more computerized on-line facilities from a young age.  Elimination of schools with traditional teachers and teaching methods.  We now see children in very different ways than we have in the past.  Some kids will be educating themselves.  We ask kids what they have an affinity for. 

·       Access to a world knowledge bank – material or spiritual storage.

·       Ineffective government and massive social turmoil leads to slowest thing becoming the fastest at bringing wealth as we thoroughly engage in them.

·       Wealth and abundance is created through addressing reality which has synergies where and 1 + 1 = 3 or more.  It creates massive engagement of people which brings happiness through helping one another.

·       Putting ideas in people’s heads (with marketing included) rather than have people ‘wasting time’ reading books.

·       Thought-controllable machines are going mainstream.  Wider recognition of danger with biofeedback because the brain becomes unbalanced. 

·       High, connecting bridges between high buildings.  Objects floating due to telekinesis.  Self-sustaining buildings reliant on solar power, kinetic energy derived from movement of inhabitants.

·       3D printers in every home.  Everyone doing 3D pictures at home. CNC machines (since 1990’s) computer controlled shaping machines that cut and shape wood go mainstream. 

·       Interactive walls that shape to what we want.  ‘Whole ceiling’ lights.

·       Food will grow in our houses as parts of our houses.

·       Photosynthesis by humans to get around eating.

·       New forms of personal transportation.