by lori | Jan 22, 2012 | Benefits, Community, Recognizing
Daniel and I spent this past week in Texas visiting Daniel’s parents. The trip was a delight. They’ve retired to a quiet farm and have, I’m certain, the world’s goofiest dog. Here’s Mac with the toy alligator Daniel and I bought him…
The weather was sunny and warm almost the entire time.
We ate.
A lot.
Ribs. Cowboy Beans. Chicken Fried Steak. Potato salad. Meatloaf. Open-face Pot Roast Sandwiches. Chorizo Spinach Salad.
We found a place that sold fried pies, and which I’m pretty sure is where the expression “OMG!” came into existence. We also went to a bookstore, a hardware store, a feed store, and a coffee shop. We took drives around the beautiful countryside. They showed us the effects of the drought they’re in and effects of the summer wild fires. We played cards, watched football, and ate dinner with their friends. More pie—this time a delicious combination apple/pecan pie that I think only an inspired southerner could have invented. Daniel and his dad trimmed some trees while his mom and I curled up in the sunshine and read and played games. Life was good.
But for me, the best part is what I learned on this trip.
It wasn’t that many years ago that I wasn’t the biggest fan of Texas. I was 17 when I first visited Texas and the visit was to look at a prospective university. As we began the university tour—at the dormitories—the tour guide said “The girls’ dormitories have a curfew of midnight. The boys’ dormitories have no curfew. We’ve found that the boys don’t really want to stay out late once the girls have to come in.” My immediate, 17-year-old-self hit rage in less than one second. “Severe inequitable treatment of women and men! Arrgh! In this day and age! You have GOT to be kidding me!” I thought. All this must have shown on my face, because I remember looking at my mom and dad and sharing the collective thought: “We just flew all the way to Texas for nothing.” We stood quietly looking at each other as the tour began to move on. I think my dad was the first to speak. He sighed. Then said, “Well. I guess that’s it. Let’s go.” 🙂
My next visit to Texas wasn’t smooth either. I was 29 and meeting my boyfriend’s parents for the first time. I don’t remember all of that trip—I’m sure there were good times. However, I remember my fear. I remember being scared to go shopping. I’d heard that malls there were experiencing a lot of vehicle break-ins, because so many people in Texas carry guns under their car seats. I remember being scared to meet women. I’d heard a story that many women in Texas carry guns in their handbags. Guns scare me to death. I also remember several sets of people having momentary existential crises about whether they should give two rooms or one to their 29-year-old son and his girlfriend. I was so completely out of my element that when I called my own family to wish them a happy Thanksgiving, I cried. And that wasn’t the last time I cried on that trip. What in the world was I doing in a place so foreign and dangerous?!
Fast forward to this visit. Here’s a small sample of what I learned on this trip:
- My mother-in-law reads all of my blog posts—even the ridiculously long ones I write primarily for myself and other researchers. I strongly suspect that nobody on my own beloved side of the family could say the same (and I couldn’t blame them—the only person I expect to read every blog post is me). She said to me “It’s so much fun to watch you progress. You’re a person who has moved from seeing just THIS [hands held about a foot a part] to seeing all of THIS! [hands held as far out to her sides as they would go].” This made me feel lucky and special. Um, wow.
- A local sheriff is a woman, as is a local fire chief. The fire chief is seeking to know everyone in her entire district, because she believes it’ll make them all safer from, and safer fighting, fire. So smart, this woman. Go Texas women!
- Their friends have a dog that absolutely refuses to bark—even the time he was accidentally locked in a storage room overnight,
and they thought he’d run away. We have a dog like that. These same friends give help, kindness, and work to a man who spent most of his adult life drunk. Here in our Seattle neighborhood, we do the same.
- There’s a nudist colony in the area where Daniel’s folks live. Nudists. In the Bible belt. I just find that cool.
- Several of Daniel’s parents’ friends have bravely battled back from life-threatening illnesses and beaten the odds to keep living and spending time with their family and friends. When friends and pets pass away, their grief is as deep as mine, and their generosity in helping others through grief appears to exceed my own. I have much to learn.
- In 1937, natural gas leaked at a nearby school, killing many children. Parents and other community members raced from all directions to help and kept on helping in the face of learning they may have lost their own children. I learned that the smell that is added to natural gas in the U.S.—to protect me and my family from similar explosions—came into being thanks to those people in Texas. Twice in my life I’ve lived in homes with old furnaces that started to leak, and we called in professionals immediately because
of that smell. Those people in Texas in the 1930s saved our lives—70+ years later. Thank you brave and persistent people.
This time, I recognized so much of my own South Dakota childhood in the towns we visited. And just like in South Dakota, some small towns are pulling together as communities and restoring their downtowns into warm, welcoming, unique, and beautiful places. Other small towns seem almost to be fading into non-existence, and I felt the sadness of loss as we passed through their crumbling remains. One local diner reminded me of my own family’s former small-town diner, the Dakota Diner. Across our 6-day trip, every time we ventured out I found myself talking to warm, friendly, and curious people who started conversations with a smile, struck up conversations with me (a quiet stranger), and who gave me the benefit of the doubt even though I come from crazy progressive Seattle. People were telling me there life stories in the book store and twice while I stood in the line for the women’s restroom. Most were also funny—weaving jokes and kind teasing of themselves and each other into their stories. I found open people, willing to listen and learn. People frustrated by many of the same things that frustrate me.
If you’re from Texas, you might be asking yourself “Well, what did you expect girl? Texans are known for their welcoming nature and big hearts.” Where I’m from, though, that’s not exactly what Texas is known for anymore, and you Seattleites might even suspect that I’m sugar-coating my recent experience now that I know my mother-in-law will read this. No matter. This is my truth and my story.
There are still many differences between what I believe and what many in Texas believe. But it was also in Texas, not Seattle, where I learned for good how little that matters. It was in Texas that I came to fully trust myself to live in the moment with others. Where I learned to make my judgments (because I’m not the Dali Lama, folks, as an individual I do slip into judging people now and then) not on what we believe but on who we are together, in each others’ presence. Thanks to my community, I’ve experienced the pointlessness of judging others from a distance and how my individual fear really does hurt me the most.
As I sat in the airport, this is what I experienced and recognized:
- Gone is the individual who allowed her own fears to dominate and cloud her experience of different others.
- Gone is the individual willing to make snap judgments (and fly into rage) based on a single spoken sentence and without taking the time to learn the context, the all-important back story, and the differences there may even be in the words we use and what they mean to us.
- Gone is the individual who judged others based on the stories told about them—stories told by distant and fearful others.
- Gone is the person who allowed a single characteristic—such as political party affiliation or gun ownership—to stand in the way of friendship. And my favorite…
- Gone is the person who valued and told other people’s stories instead of her own. My story matters.
My community made this a possiblity for me and my community now includes the state of Texas. I learned that when I show up as community, there really aren’t distant others anymore. When I show up as community, I’m surrounded by the people I love and the people my community is helping me learn to love next. That’s it.
So it really wasn’t Texas that needed to change. It was me.
Lucky me.
by lori | Nov 29, 2011 | Community, Learning as
A remarkable new community member, Anthony Lawlor, got me thinking about transitions this morning. In August I blogged about the experience of consciously moving from four different perspectives: individual, self-organizing group, community, and planet perspectives. He’s curious about what the transitions between these places look like. I am too, which may be why, although we’ve only just met, I’m already pretty sure that he’s a genius.
Community ask:
If you have a talent for drawing (and reading between the lines), and would like to draw images for future transition-related posts, will you let me know? Please don’t make me draw these images on my own, my friends. It might break my brain.
Three stories of individual and self-organizing group transitions follow. The three stories together are also a story of community. In upcoming posts, I’d love to add drawn images to further illuminate one or more of these transitions. Creative friends, what does the transition look like between and among:
- Our individual selves and our self-organizing group selves?
- Self-organizing groups and self-organizing work groups?
- These self-org group selves and my community?
- Our individual selves, self-organizing groups, and our community?
- Our communities and our planet? (You’ll need to rely fully on your own imagination for this one.)
The story of Doug and Lori
In the fall of 2010, Doug emailed me when he recognized something of himself in the Collective Self blog. We met for coffee and learned we’d both left Microsoft several years back. We immediately liked one another and believed that we could be better together than on our own, in part because our areas of focus are very different from each other. At that first meeting, I invited Doug to join the Seattle Consultants Grotto group I was part of, and we began to meet monthly as part of the group. By January 2011, we were talking weekly, as friends, and decided we’d like to work together somehow. Here are the highlights of what we’ve become and done together this year:
1. Across the spring:
- We created and submitted several conference workshop proposals together. The first was unsuccessful, the second one was accepted. Although still not fun, being rejected together felt considerably better than being rejected as an individual, and I spent less than 5 minutes feeling sorry for us before moving on.
- Doug found new, paid consulting work thanks to the Seattle Consultants Grotto group.
- Lori found a new group to study thanks to Doug’s recommendations and spent time with that group.
- Doug invited Lori to lunch with his friend Greg, who brought along his friend Cathy. Cathy and I connected immediately.
2. Across the summer:
- We facilitated a workshop at the Organizational Systems Renewal conference at Seattle University. We had a great time, even though I was recovering from food poisoning the day of the workshop. Had I been facilitating this workshop on my own, I would have cancelled because I couldn’t have done it alone. Doug’s friend Neil attended the workshop. Neil is now my friend and we recently started talking about working together as well.
- I invited Cathy to join the Seattle Consultant’s Grotto group.
- In our spare time, Doug and I wrote an eBook together—a first for both of us. I met Doug’s family and learned about a great group his wife Wendy is a part of, which I talked about a little bit in this blog post. During one meeting with Doug, I started to cry because I was so thankful to be learning with him and not on my own. This blog post, one of my personal favorites today, is a result of that meeting. Doug learned that sometimes my gratitude bathtub runs over and spills out my eyes. I learned that my best work is improved by my tears, not hindered by it. We planned to finish the book in June (ambitious since we started in May) but Doug had a lot of commitments in June and July. There was one day, one moment, when as an individual I worried that Doug wouldn’t or couldn’t finish the book. I decided that the experience writing it with him was more valuable than the finished book itself and let go of that worry. We finished and published the eBook to our Web sites in August.
- In July, Doug, Cathy, Doug’s friend Neil, and I together created a speaking proposal for a 2012 conference that none of us has ever spoken at before.
- From his boat one sunny day in July, Doug called me and told me about another person/group he thought I should study.
3. Across this fall:
- We haven’t been working together as much, each moving on to new work. However, we did manage to create another workshop proposal for a conference that Doug has spoken at in the past. Feels like it takes us almost no time to throw proposals together now.
- I met with the new group that Doug recommended to me this summer: a group I intend to feature in the new Different Work eBook I’m writing with Bas. Learned so much!
- We continue to meet monthly via our Seattle Consultants Grotto group. I love hearing about what Doug is working on now.
- Later this month I’ll be interviewing Doug to include his story in the Different Work eBook I’m writing with Bas.
The story of Cathy and Lori
Cathy and I met on May 19, 2011, at a lunch arranged by my friend Doug and Doug and Cathy’s mutual friend Greg. Doug thought there might be an opportunity for connection, since we all do consulting work. I liked Cathy immediately. She’s so open, welcoming, and warm. She has an amazing smile. She also has a very different life and work history than me—having spent most of her career working for and within the school system (my background was within business and several non-profits). She reminds me of my sister—another person who has spent her career within the school system. Cathy and I both have doctorate degrees (Yea, another book nerd to hang with!). She received hers studying trust. Here are the highlights of what we’ve become and done together this year:
1.Later that same day (that we met):
- Cathy sent me a list of questions about self-organizing groups.
- I invited Cathy to join our Seattle Consultants Grotto group.
- Cathy and I began discussing self-organizing groups and trust—a discussion, from my perspective, that is unlikely to ever end, because I’ve believed from the beginning that Cathy and I will be friends. Some of our earliest learning is in this blog post.
2. Across the summer:
- We continued to exchange ideas (our own and others) about trust and self-organizing groups. We got to know each other better as Cathy went through a medical crisis with a family member and I talked to her about my own experiences with medical emergencies and chronic illnesses within my family. I was pretty surprised to be sharing this much with someone I’d just met, but I trusted my trust in Cathy (after all, I’d trusted Doug from the very beginning and that turned out pretty well, plus, isn’t someone who spends years devoted to studying trust likely to be among the most trustworthy people on the planet?).
- We created a proposal, together with Doug and Doug’s long-time friend Neil, to speak at a conference together next year as a panel.
- Cathy joined our monthly Seattle Consultants Grotto group. I continue to be amazed by this because she lives more than an hour away (more than 2 during rush hour).
3. Across this fall:
- When I expressed my desire to start working with some of the Grotto group members, Cathy was supportive and the first person who volunteered.
- We’re now writing a paper (or maybe eBook) together titled, at the moment, Coming to Trust as Self-Organizing Groups. We chose an informal dialogue format so that our collective learning, vulnerability, and growing trust—as a group—is documented. We decided that the outcome of the work, whatever it is, is pretty much icing on the cake. The cake is our friendship, which will outlast this and any other work we do.
The story of Bas and Lori
I’m not entirely sure how Bas and I met—that is, which events came first. It might be that our mutual friend Ali (in Jordan) told Bas (in The Netherlands) about the Collective Self blog and Bas then showed up as a contributor to it. Or it might be that Ali told me about Bas’ The Project Shrink blog, and I showed up as a contributor there first. Or maybe we found each others’ blogs on our own and our mutual friend Ali had little to do with it. Can’t remember and it makes little difference to me now (although thank you Ali, if it was you). Here are the highlights of what we’ve become and done together this year:
1. Across this summer:
- Bas and I began reading each others’ blogs and regularly contributing to them.
- We began recommending each other within our respective online communities.
- I learned where Zandvoort, The Netherlands is (had to Google it) and decided to add it to my travel “bucket list”.
- I read Bas and Ali’s eBook.
- I remembered my experiences working with the best project managers at Microsoft (hi Josh and Maura) and decided it’d be really fun to work with a project manager again.
- Bas spoke so highly of the Collective Self blog in his blog that I offered to do his laundry for him the next time he’s in Seattle.
- We began speaking regularly and reviewed some work for each other. I learned that I can be my whole self with Bas.
- I included a picture of Bas in one of my first posts about community.
- We started following and supporting each other via Twitter and Facebook as well.
2. In early fall:
- We had a couple of Skype conversations, which is a little challenging but mostly fun given our 9-hour time difference. Doesn’t bother me in the slightest to meet at midnight my time so that some of our conversations can be morning conversations for him. This is a very different experience from my days at Microsoft, where I was at times resentful for having 10 p.m. conference calls. Heck, I’d meet at 3 a.m. if Bas wanted to meet then.
- I asked Bas if he’d like to work together and he replied YES roughly 10 times. We decided to work together.
- Two weeks later, we’d begun research for an upcoming eBook, tentatively titled Different Work.
- We enjoy working together enough that at some point we decided to consider this the first book in a series. Telling people I’m writing “an eBook series” is just a cool thing to get to do. Makes me feel fancy.
- I told Bas that I’d learned with Doug that it’s not a successful work group for me until I cry–in gratitude for collective learning–as least once. This didn’t scare him off. In that moment I decided that I really like The Netherlands–yes, the whole country–as a result. Any country that could produce Bas must be pretty great.
- I learned that Frau Shrink (Bas’ significant other) is an amazing photographer. So is my husband. Coincidence? I don’t think so.
3. This past month:
- Bas took on another large job on top of his current work. He feared he wasn’t working on our book to the extent that I was. I said I don’t care if I do 100% of the research work, I’m just happy to be working with him, which is true. That momentary pang of “Yikes, will he finish this?” that I had with Doug back in July taught me that no momentary pang of this nature is needed. We’ll finish eventually. Staying connected matters more now than finishing one particular project.
- We’ve found ~20 groups to include in the book and are plugging away on story gathering right now. Bas, who feared he wouldn’t have time, appears to have found ample time. As a researcher, I’m in heaven getting to talk to new groups almost every week between now and February.
- I’ve recommended Bas’ site to several project manager friends and people in my Seattle Consultants Grotto group—people who thought they might need my help. I think his work is more likely to help some of them than mine is, given what they need right now. Mine can be a bit long-winded for busy folks working within large organizations.
- Bas learned what the Seattle skyline looks like, thanks to the lovely image Daniel recently created and added to the Collective Self blog.
- I’ve begun sending Project Status reports to Bas periodically. He doesn’t seem to need them. Who is this magical project manager who feels no need for status reports?! 😀 Another score for The Netherlands.
by lori | Nov 11, 2011 | Community, Recognizing, Recognizing, Self-organizing groups
This large-ish question appeared on my radar this week. Thank you, Lori Schilling, for meeting with me Wednesday and your willingness to tell your story and have a delightful conversation with someone new. It was from our conversation that this question emerged for me. I also need to thank Doug Nathan for suggesting that I connect with Lori. Lori and I sat in a bakery on Bainbridge Island for two hours Wednesday. She’s amazing. My goodness, is everyone on this island amazing?! Seems to be the case. But I digress… Among the many things Lori does (mom, learner, community builder, educator, etc.), she’s a member of the New Life non-denominational Christian church, and I was there to learn about what’s working in this large, happy, growing, and new-traditional organization. The story of the church—and the amazing small groups within it—will most likely appear in the Different Work eBook series that Bas and I are writing now. Lori, I am so grateful for you and our discussion. Thank you!
View from the ferry pulling into Winslow, Bainbridge Island
Now, in a move uncharacteristic for me, I’m going to be brief on this subject. These are my initial thoughts based on my conversation with Lori and my reflection on her story amongst all the communities, self-organizing groups, and individuals I study and am part of. Let me know what you think!
What matters most about us as community?
As community we:
- Create space in which self-organizing groups can more easily form and thrive
- Cause people, including strangers, to feel welcome and that they belong
- Never stop learning and teaching ourselves how to support ourselves and others in feeling welcome and that we belong
- Experience abundance
- Thrive
What matters most about us as small self-organizing groups?
As small self-organizing groups we:
- Create space in which individuals can more easily thrive
- Expose our own needs and motivate ourselves to continue building connections
- Bring our individual vulnerabilities* out into the open, experience and move with/through them together, and transform them into learning, power, and action
- Create resilient relationships and intimacy that binds us together and persists even after the group ends*
- Expand the boundaries of community as the individuals within them expand their own boundaries
- Make our communities, and individual selves, stronger*
- Experience deep gratitude
- Evolve
What matters most about us as individuals?
As individuals we:
- Are vulnerable, make mistakes, experience humility and fear, and need help—all of which are connection points that make self-organizing groups and community necessary and possible
- Recognize and name self-organizing groups and community
- Identify and protect the boundaries of ourselves as individuals, self-organizing groups, and community
- Experience awe, wonder and delight
*Lori said something similar to this right off the top of her head—indicating to me that she is clearly part of amazing community and small groups!!
Goodbye Bainbridge!
by lori | Oct 4, 2011 | Benefits, Learning as, Recognizing
My self-organizing community gives me so much, so freely, that often my personal humanity-sippy-cup runneth (no wait, tippeth) over. I live within this community, as this community. And it is because of this community—real human people and groups and ideas—that I can find gratitude for every single day, especially on the bad days.
This community gives me more perspectives to ponder and space within which to ponder them than can be individually imagined or described.
Wow. Just wow.
People, experiences, and perspectives so different from me and mine that my world turns quietly upside down: a snow globe in the palm of a friendly hand. Yet somehow, they are also familiar. Their voices are my voice. Their heart my own heart.
My self-organizing community is everywhere I’m learning as much as I want to, as fast as I can, and all the time, just like the river does. It’s also where I lay my head at night to dream and to rest. It’s home. A river bed.
What is your self-organizing community teaching you this week? Here are the lessons I’m learning from mine right now:
- We humans can create infinite time for those we love. Best example this week: my dad, writing and sending email to my sister and I. Not his own email messages, although those count too. No, this was a message from my mother to us. E-mail from my mom, who has Alzheimer’s disease, and who had something funny to say to her daughters but who is no longer inclined to send email messages herself. Infinite time my dad has for my mom. Infinite time, I’ve learned, that Jen and I have for them too. Note: my mom also has a stubbornness combined with a sweetness that brings to mind an image of the imaginary lop-eared offspring of a mule and a fluffy bunny. She still plays Soduko on her iPad. She’ll not let this ultra-fashionable device go entirely without one hell of a fight! 🙂 This brings to mind another lesson…
- We humans are utterly overflowing with courage. Beyond my family (who demonstrates this daily for me), I witnessed stunning courage this week thanks to my self-organizing community. Here are four examples:
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Offering help to another when you don’t believe that you have much to give and/or when you yourself are recovering from tragedy and believe yourself to be the one in need of/receiving help. My dear friend did this for me this week. My living room walls were feeling sad around me, and he filled them with beautiful artwork that was sitting in his garage and closet. This friend recently lost first one, and then another, family member to terminal illness, has been struggling financially this summer, and may well lose his job in the coming months. Yet when my own artwork failed to inspire us as we were hanging it, he instantly jumped into his car and brought us multiple pieces of valuable artwork, including his own, to fill in the gaps. Do you even know how courageous you are my friend? How amazing? I will NOT let you be blind to this!
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Owning and speaking my edge opinions. Thanks for sharing Amy. I think we all have perspectives and opinions that live outside the mainstream. Think we’re all
center to something and
edge to something else. Am I openly speaking my edge perspectives like Penn so bravely does here? Could I be doing better? Hmmm…
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- We humans can embrace anger and forge it into art and action:My two favorite examples from this week:
- Find “Art” with a capital A a bit stuffy? Try this manifesto. Whenever I listen to Lenelle, I imagine I get to co-invent the word artist and goddess along with her. Hmm, let’s see. Open, powerful, creative, funny, gorgeous, kind, angry when anger is truly warranted, trusting of self, and a real and human being. I’m just now learning to honor and trust my own fear and anger, Lenelle, so thank you for sharing your work and yourself.
- Something in my heart just loves the fact that the Occupy Seattle folks—coming together downtown to demonstrate support for the Occupy Wall Street folks in New York city—decided to occupy first and then to come up with a demand once together. BTW, you can weigh in on their demands here: Occupy Seattle’s demands. Creative moving with and channeling growing community anger is what I see here. Should I love or fear these people who demand that we all get to co-create our organizations, communities, and government? People who openly invite me to have a say in what it is they are protesting? People who want my help in whatever form I chose to give it? I choose love.
- We humans are utterly overflowing with creativity.Three examples my community brought me this week:
- Office building post-it-note wars. Score on this appears to be cube dwellers 1 and lifeless buildings and cubicals zero. 🙂 Am planning a post-it sunflower in my home office window as a show of solidarity.
- Artificial leaves drawing energy from water and the sun. Um, wow. Cool.
- In the kitchen. Skip what I said in this post and just check out the beautiful photos of my friend Diane’s infinite culinary capacity in the kitchen here. Seattle-area friends, you’ll find her soon at the Redmond Whole Foods, demonstrating cooking, baking, and God-knows-what-else like the improv ninja kitchen artist she is.
- My community members are all around me, and are working on my behalf, even when I’m unaware of it. One example from this week: I just learned about this great series of videos created this summer by a local group less than a block from my house. At the corner store! Go Grrls!
- We humans appear to be stretching our own old, hardened boundaries all over the place these days. My own hard “cannot be changed” boundaries have proven stretchy, fluid, and sometimes imaginary, within my self-organizing community. Most of the people and examples above are examples of this for me too. The Collective Self site used to be focused entirely on my own self-organizing work groups research with my own hard lines drawn around it. A year ago, for example, I would never have linked the Collective Self site to a religious site, political opinion articles, news sites (mainstream and otherwise), or to profanity-laced artwork (no matter how spot-on and kick-ass and lovely), nor would I have shamelessly promoted my dear friends’ work in the community. Yet here I am. Surprised to find myself outside my own narrow boundaries yet again, thanks to my self-organizing community. Two final examples of boundary stretching shared within my self-organizing community:
Thank you community for stretching and, in doing so, stretching me well past what I imagined I could be and believe. You are a gift.
by lori | Aug 19, 2011 | Recognizing
In no particular order:
- Being part of the community feels even better than being part of your smaller self-organizing groups
- You notice that there is no end to the community
- Community purpose has become your individual and group purpose
- You experience remarkable difference within the community—many people who look, think, and act nothing like you—yet you feel completely safe within the community
- You recognize yourself as the community
- You have so many more options and ways of moving in the world than you used to that you start to experience your individual and group decisions as one giant experiment
- The amazing experiences that you used to have primarily within your self-organizing groups you find yourself experiencing with complete strangers as part of the community
- Your self-organizing groups take on a life of their own—overlapping, integrating, and recreating themselves
- Synchronicity becomes the norm instead of the exception
- You find yourself with ample time to hear hints from the universe and limited time to worry that people will judge you
Daniel, you can stop reading here as I’ll undoubtedly talk your ear off about this all weekend.
For those of you with a taste for detail, here’s more. I’m documenting this in detail because I know I’ll be revisiting this list in the coming years. This is how these 10 hints showed up in my own life and work recently…
- Hint #1: being part of a self-organizing community feels even better than being part of your smaller self-organizing groups. I began studying a 100+ person men’s friendship group this spring. This group was unique among the groups I studied because it didn’t end. During an interview with 6 group members, their response to the question “How do you know when it’s time to let go of the group?” was to simultaneously shout “You die!” followed by peals of collective laughter to the point of giggling. They were kidding but also seriously telling me that only death or significant bodily and/or mental impairment kept members away from their weekly meeting. Until that moment, when I studied groups not my own but connected to my own somehow, I was happy to study the group, learn with them, and then move on. This was the first of 30+ groups I studied that made me think “I want this. I want to be part of a group like this one: a self-organizing group that grows steadily and quietly, making their entire community better along the way, and also long after individual group members leave the earth. A self-organizing group that you never have to let go of.”
- Hint #2: there is no end to the community. That 100+ member men’s friendship group was the first time a group/community said that to me out loud. Thanks to them, I started seeing the same thing in the flash mob community. I showed up at my first flash mob (Sept 2010) to study the mob as a group and the small groups with the group. But even back then I could see that there was a substantial core of people who knew, loved, and helped each other at flash mob rehearsals and events and also outside of the events into people’s everyday lives. People who showed up at event after event: friends who became family. I learned that there was such a thing as an OG (original gansta), which means people who’d been mobbing together since the beginning–several years and dozens of mobs together. I learned there were A, B, C, and D teams within the mobs and that moving from D (everyone) to C (people know you) to B and A (friends and family) teams had more to do with dedication to the community than it did about individual skills and abilities. And the more mobs I attended, the more I could see it—this community was large and always evolving and flowing in and around the events that strangers experience as flash mobs. In this case, the community’s purpose is to foster surprise, delight, connection, and joy among themselves and total strangers. If the purpose doesn’t have an end, then the community doesn’t either.
- Hint #3: community purpose has become your individual and group purpose. Thanks to community member Bernie DeKoven, this summer I recognized that my individual, group, and community purposes are all one and the same. I first noticed this as part of my flash mob family (FMF), as community members became my friends, and as some of my friends joined the community. When I’m with them, I’m a friend first, then a flash mobber, and then a researcher. I couldn’t care less if some people think that flash mobs are a passing fad or have been done to death or aren’t doing anything meaningful for planet earth. This community will evolve and change, and I will be with them as long as they want me. What’s more important, I wonder, than demonstrating that complete strangers from all walks of life and all over planet earth can bring joy to each other and completely trust each other? Now friends in person, we’re also extending our time together via Facebook, YouTube, email, Twitter, and so on. Where I used to have the photos my husband and I took of flash mobs, I now get hundreds, and videos, and invites to flash mobs from entirely different communities. I never stop being a learner/researcher, but I recognize that this community is allowing me (and others) to be so much more. It’s safe to check my individual needs at the door and just enjoy being a flash mobber. My individual needs will be met by the community—my individual intentions often aren’t needed.
- Hint #4: there is remarkable difference within the community—many people who look, think, and act nothing like you—yet you feel completely safe within the community. The remarkable differences within flash mobs are apparent to anyone who has been part of one. Every human difference you can think of shows up in these groups—nationality, culture, age, color, orientation, ability, political affiliation, likes, purpose, religion, and fashion to name a few. What remarkably different and also safe does to a person is astonishing. You begin to move in the world differently—more fluidly, less haltingly. I noticed this spring that this is true for me within my own Central District neighborhood. If you live in my neighborhood, to me, you are a genius by default. I may not like everything you do and say, but I’m glad you’re here, making the neighborhood unique and special, and I’m honored to be living in a neighborhood with such amazing people now and in its history. This also fully hit home for me a few weekends ago with my FMF. A group of 30 or so core flash mob community members mobbed a wedding (at the request of the bride and groom, who mobbed with us). As we were leaving the very fancy building, I saw somebody point to us and screech happily saying “Oo, there goes the entertainment!!” as we walked up a grand hotel staircase. Wow. Somebody pointed at me and saw me as “the entertainment.” I am a quiet, geeky, book worm, academic, less-than-athletic, researcher, shy, home body. There isn’t even a small part of me that I imagined ever having the courage to become “the entertainment” and to hear that applied to me was pure joy. I looked around me and realized that I was surrounded by people radically different from me—actors, dancers, entertainers, event planners, students, moms—some several decades older than me and some several decades younger than me. This community made that moment possible. Seeing something in yourself that you couldn’t even begin to imagine was there—that is the gift of self-organizing community.
- Hint #5: You recognize yourself as the community. As I was co-writing an e-book with my friend Doug this summer, he pushed me into saying out loud what I myself am experiencing these days–things I hadn’t fully thought through until he showed up and together we pulled ideas out of our group. I realized that I now experience the ability to move in and out of three “selves” and I can imagine a fourth. I think of these selves as 1) fish (my individual self), school of fish (my self-organizing group self), river (my self-organizing community self), and ocean (my self-organizing planet self). I’ll talk more about this in upcoming posts.
- Hint #6: you have so many more options and ways of moving in the world that you start to experience your individual and group decisions as one giant experiment. My experience of negative conflict within one of my groups this summer opened my eyes to what living with my fish, school, and river options (see #5 above) really means. Instead of getting angry and avoiding the issue or yelling when negative conflict happened, I experienced being able to move in and out of my individual perspective, my group perspective, and my community perspective. I got to choose from among an extraordinary amount of different options for how I handled what happened. With several core members’ help, I landed on a “pull my individual self out of the group for a few months and wait and see what the amazing group does without me” option. I’m experiencing the whole thing as a giant experiment that the group and I are part of—there’s no longer anything negative about it. I noticeably changed my own past. Cool. I became able to feel gratitude from each perspective and for each perspective, even for my individual self for speaking up loudly to me that the boundaries of the group, for me, felt like they were in jeopardy. I realized that it might be time for me to leave the group, but that the relationships I’ve built with core members will last–they are part of my community, my “river” self. It may also be time for the group itself to change. Can’t wait to see how it all unfolds!
- Hint #7: the amazing experiences that you used to have primarily within your self-organizing groups you find yourself experiencing with complete strangers within the community. We’ve lived in our neighborhood almost 9 years now. It’s a large urban neighborhood, so every year we meet new neighbors and learn about the amazing people who live in all directions around us. In late July, the people on our block threw together a large, fun block party in just a couple of days. Everybody joined in and contributed what they could. Some of these people I recognize as self-organizing groups and are close friends, some I know only by sight, and many are total strangers. As I watched email go back and forth all week, I realized that many people on the thread didn’t know each other at all. Yet it didn’t matter. We did what we needed to do. Things went remarkably smoothly. We had a blast. Everybody was a leader and nobody was. We had more food than we knew what to do with. People from other blocks came over. So did people from other neighborhoods in the city. This group acted like the smaller self-organizing groups I study–groups in which members are all close and deeply aware that they are part of a special group. But there were complete strangers in this group and they got to have the amazing experiences too.
- Hint #8: your self-organizing groups take on a life of their own—overlapping, integrating, and recreating themselves. This year my own self-organizing groups began to noticeably overlap, integrate, re-create themselves, and get all mixed up with each other. Group boundaries have become porous, fluid, yet they still feel stable. It’s become impossible for me as an individual to keep track of how many self-organizing groups I’m part of—it’s chaotic and messy and enjoyable. Examples:
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- A friend of a consultant friend ended up at a workshop I did, then joined our consultants group, and is now working with me on a project
- A person who found my blog became my friend, then joined our consultants group, then invited one of his friends to join the group. Now that friend and I are working together
- The spouses of several of my group members have helped me with my work
- I regularly share ideas from one 3-person international group with several of my in-person groups
- A neighbor and good friend of mine reimagined herself as a consultant and then joined our consultant’s group. This same neighbor is also part of my larger neighborhood-centered self-organizing group and several smaller groups I’m part of as well
- A Microsoft-days friend of mine and my husband recently decided to support each other’s photography work and community build together—years after my friend and I worked together (during which time none of us knew about the photography interests of the others)
- A work colleague of a friend of a friend became my friend and is now my work colleague
- A consulting group friend connected her flash-mob-curious friend with two of us who regularly flash mob. We connected her with flash mob core members/organizers to get her questions answered.
The more overlap and mixing across my self-organizing groups, the better, from my perspective, because the more visible the community becomes and the more visible opportunities within it become to all of us. But this also means letting go of my individual researcher’s need to track and study all these groups as separate groups. Means making a big decision to trust that the community will provide a coherent answer within me if someone ever asks me “How many groups have you studied?”
9. Hint #9: synchronicity becomes the norm instead of the exception. Synchronicity is becoming an every-day sort of thing. Now I’m surprised when something amazing doesn’t happen within my communities on any given day. Off the top of my head, here are a few examples from the past 6 months:
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- Spontaneous 1-hour planning, funding, and coordination of a road trip by groups members for a member who really needs to get away but can’t afford to travel
- Friends and family members—as self-organizing groups—now regularly helping with my blog, which I once thought was separate from my “life” because it was my “work”
- A self-organizing group member offering to serve as a conscious learner/researcher at Burning Man—a self-organizing community that he’s part of and I’m not—and guest blogging about the experience
- Resources show up within one part of my community (such as an article posted by a Twitter friend) the very day that somebody else in my community (a member of my consulting group, for example) needs them
- I just learned that a new flash mob friend of mine also happens to be friends with a close friend of mine from my Microsoft days—the boundaries I created between my old work life and my new work life just collapsed
- One of my planet-wide personal heroes started following me on Twitter last month. I have no idea how this happened but, for me, this is akin to all four of the Beatles deciding to follow one screaming teenage fan. OMG!
10. Hint #10: You find yourself with ample time to hear hints from the universe and limited time to worry that people will judge you. My work is more challenging than ever before, yet these days I’m experiencing it as remarkably easy thanks to the community. For example, my community shows up daily now and puts examples and ideas directly into my hands. I have more to reflect on that I possibly could reflect on and more to share than I possibly could share. Many of the groups I study and am part of—for example, my consulting group, my book club, my friendship and hobby and learning groups, my flash mob family, Collective Self blog responders, my Central District neighborhood, my husband’s and friend’s communities, and my biological and extended family—are now themselves creating most of what ends up in the Collective Self blog. This freed me up to hear the universe’s “hints” and to recognize where to direct my attention next. Today I plan less, worry less, have more free time, do more of what I love, work with more people I love, and I see more, learn more, and get more done. I’m also talking about “hints from the universe” which my individual researcher self would have stopped me from saying out loud in the past for fear of being judged. This self-organizing community business rocks!
This time, I recognized so much of my own South Dakota childhood in the towns we visited. And just like in South Dakota, some small towns are pulling together as communities and restoring their downtowns into warm, welcoming, unique, and beautiful places. Other small towns seem almost to be fading into non-existence, and I felt the sadness of loss as we passed through their crumbling remains. One local diner reminded me of my own family’s former small-town diner, the Dakota Diner. Across our 6-day trip, every time we ventured out I found myself talking to warm, friendly, and curious people who started conversations with a smile, struck up conversations with me (a quiet stranger), and who gave me the benefit of the doubt even though I come from crazy progressive Seattle. People were telling me there life stories in the book store and twice while I stood in the line for the women’s restroom. Most were also funny—weaving jokes and kind teasing of themselves and each other into their stories. I found open people, willing to listen and learn. People frustrated by many of the same things that frustrate me.
