In praise of boldness

In our experience, skillfully designed and facilitated collaborative learning, planning, and action initiatives create the environment that brings out the best in people, taps into the creativity, collective intelligence, and deep commitment needed to tackle the complex issues of our time.

I recently handed out copies of Daniel H. Pink’s A Whole New Mind to the entire Interaction Institute staff. This fascinating and fun little book makes the claim that we are on the verge of a new era for right-brained thinking, or what Pink calls The Conceptual Age.

Pink points to three different trends that are spelling trouble for knowledge workers who, until very recently, have been the toast of the economy. Through new technological developments, material abundance, and globalization, Pink anticipates the passing of the Information Age, and with it, the strong reliance on reductive and analytical skills. In their place, he sees emerging the call for those who can create, empathize, synthesize, make connections, and craft meaning. Good news for you artists, designers, counselors, caregivers, storytellers, and big picture thinkers!

Many of these Conceptual Age skills are precisely what IISC relies upon in our efforts to plumb the potential of collaboration in order to realize high impact social change. In our experience, skillfully designed and facilitated collaborative learning, planning, and action initiatives create the environment that brings out the best in people, taps into the creativity, collective intelligence, and deep commitment needed to tackle the complex issues of our time.

Take, for example, our recent work with the Ford Foundation and its US foreign policy grantees. The Ford Foundation had the bold vision to commit to bringing its grassroots activist and think tank grantees together to explore the big foreign policy challenges this country now faces. In February, the second convening of the Laboratory for New Thinking in Foreign Policy engaged participants in considering what it would mean to bring a justice lens to US foreign policy. The intent was not to set strategy, but to learn.

IISC’s challenge was to design and facilitate an interactive, boundary busting, multiple media experience to encourage new thinking, new alliances, and new possibilities. This included incorporating elements such as poetry, music, FLASH video, youth perspectives, panel discussions, small group work, and open space for participants to determine portions of the agenda.

Our closing plus/delta evaluation of the convening indicated that many found the event to be unique and valuable for the diversity of the participants, appreciated the multiple ways of engaging the topic, the non-competitive and liberating atmosphere, and the opportunity to step outside of one’s issue area to try on new perspectives. I am reminded of the basic message of another of my favorite books, The Medici Effect, whose author Frans Johansson states that innovation and remarkable ideas sit at the intersection of fields, cultures, and different perspectives.

All of this to say that I believe that we are being called to be bold; to step outside of our silos and comfort zones; to cross boundaries; to engage both sides of our brains, our hearts, and each other in pursuit of the kind of change in the world that we are seeking to make.

I thank you for the important work that you do and am always eager to hear your thoughts and reactions.